Akira Kurosawa

Yojimbo

Yojimbo

The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic Yojimbo. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone and Walter Hill, this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential and entertaining films of all time.

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Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1961
  • 110 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 2.39:1 (4K UHD box-set edition); 2.35:1 (Blu-ray)
  • Japanese
  • Spine #52

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Optional Dolby Digital 3.0 soundtrack, preserving the original Perspecta simulated-stereo effects (DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)
  • Audio commentary by film historian and Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
  • A 45-minute documentary on the making of Yojimbo, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create, featuring Kurosawa, actor Tatsuya Nakadai, production designer Yoshiro Muraki, and longtime Kurosawa collaborator Teruyo Nogami
  • Theatrical teaser and trailer
  • Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and comments from Kurosawa and his cast and crew

    Cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa

AK 100: 25 Films by Kurosawa

DVD Box Set

25 Discs

$319.00

Out Of Print

Collector's Set

Yojimbo / Sanjuro: Two Samurai Films by Akira Kurosawa

Yojimbo/Sanjuro

4K UHD+Blu-ray Combo Box Set

4 Discs

$55.96

Collector's Set

Yojimbo / Sanjuro: Two Samurai Films by Akira Kurosawa

Yojimbo/Sanjuro

Blu-ray Box Set

2 Discs

$48.96

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Optional Dolby Digital 3.0 soundtrack, preserving the original Perspecta simulated-stereo effects (DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)
  • Audio commentary by film historian and Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
  • A 45-minute documentary on the making of Yojimbo, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create, featuring Kurosawa, actor Tatsuya Nakadai, production designer Yoshiro Muraki, and longtime Kurosawa collaborator Teruyo Nogami
  • Theatrical teaser and trailer
  • Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and comments from Kurosawa and his cast and crew

    Cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang
Yojimbo
Cast
Toshiro Mifune
Kuwabatake Sanjuro
Tatsuya Nakadai
Unosuke
Yoko Tsukasa
Nui
Isuzu Yamada
Orin
Daisuke Kato
Inokichi
Seizaburo Kawazu
Seibei
Takashi Shimura
Tokuemon
Hiroshi Tachikawa
Yoichiro
Yosuke Natsuki
Kohei’s son
Eijiro Tono
Gonji
Kamatari Fujiwara
Tazaemon
Ikio Sawamura
Hansuke
Atsushi Watanabe
Cooper (casket maker)
Susumu Fujita
Homma
Kyu Sazanka
Ushitora
Ko Nishimura
Kuma
Takeshi Kato
Kobuhachi
Akira Tani
Kame
Tsunagoro Rashomon
Kannuki, the giant
Yoshio Tsuchiya
Kohei
Credits
Director
Akira Kurosawa
Produced by
Tomoyuki Tanaka
Produced by
Ryuzo Kikushima
Screenplay by
Ryuzo Kikushima
Screenplay by
Akira Kurosawa
Cinematography by
Kazuo Miyagawa
Production design by
Yoshiro Muraki
Lighting by
Choshiro Ishii
Sound by
Choshichiro Mikami
Music by
Masaru Sato
Swordplay instructor
Yoshio Sugino
Swordplay technique
Ryu Kuze

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Explore

Toshiro Mifune

Actor

Toshiro Mifune
Toshiro Mifune

Akira Kurosawa once said, “The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression. Toshiro Mifune needed only three feet.” The filmmaker certainly gave Mifune a lot of space, however: over the course of sixteen collaborations, the actor and the director created some of the most dynamic characters ever put on-screen, all marked by an intense physicality and a surprising tenderness. Kurosawa first took note of the handsome actor when Mifune was twenty-seven, during an open audition at Toho Studios; he was soon cast in Snow Trail (1947), a film Kurosawa wrote for director Senkichi Taniguchi. Just one year later, Kurosawa gave him the lead in Drunken Angel as a consumptive gangster. Mifune proceeded to inhabit a variety of deeply felt roles for Kurosawa, including an artist hounded by paparazzi (Scandal); a bandit who may or not be a rapist and murderer (Rashomon); a loose cannon ronin who reluctantly protects a village (Seven Samurai); an elderly patriarch terrified of a second nuclear attack (I Live in Fear); and, probably most iconically, the wily, shiftless samurai Yojimbo. Mifune is known for more than his work with Kurosawa; see him in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Oscar-winning Samurai Trilogy and Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion. But it is Kurosawa’s greatest films that are most unimaginable without Mifune’s bravado streaking across them like lightning. The pair parted ways professionally in 1965.

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