Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Akira Kurosawa’s tightly paced, beautifully composed Sanjuro. In this sly companion piece to Yojimbo, the jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan’s evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a “proper” samurai on its ear. Less brazen in tone than its predecessor but just as engaging...

***

Based upon the novel ”Peaceful days” by Yamamoto Shugoro, Kurosawa wrote the script for ”Sanjuro” before doing ”Yojimbo”, but rewrote it after “Yojimbo” became a success, changing the main character from a weak samurai to Sanjuro, as the study decided it to be sort of a sequel to “Yojimbo”. Kurosawa was going to give the script to Horikawa Hiromichi, his former assistant director, but Toho asked Kurosawa to do it, who then rewrote it again, for the third time, this time making Sanjuro even stronger.

The story is even more simple than “Yojimbo”. The nephew of the chamberlain and his friends, all young samurai, try to clean up the corruption in the city. Failing, Sanjuro steps in to help them.

Mifune is amazing as Sanjuro. Virtually repeating his character from “Yojimbo”, Kurosawa even copies the “my name is…” scene, Sanjuro is now a moral instructor, rather than an immoral dog. Mifune has also refined the character. Still having his idiosyncrasies, the context makes him stand more out, thus he underplays them slightly. I have always found it fascinating to view the two films back to back and see how Mifune is able to control his physical acting, at times even parodying his own character.

As the most didactic film by Kurosawa, it very much plays upon the naivety of the young samurai and the wisdom of the old samurai, and can be viewed as a variation of the oyabun-kobun relationship. Constantly moral issues are presented and answered for us. But, even though most of Kurosawa’s films are more or less didactic, due to his humanism, “Sanjuro” uses it as a sharp tool of satire and to note upon the fake and real samurai. Again here physical acting is important. Note for instance how Mifune sits (lazy, relaxed) vs. how the young samurai sits (ceremonial).

Always a major theme in the films of Kurosawa, the illusion of “reality” and actual reality, no other character than Sanjuro plays upon this. While being a real samurai, he looks more like a bum, unshaven and dirty with worn-down clothes. But where Kurosawa uses this to demonstrate social decay in “Yojimbo”, he here uses it to create a dichotomy between the fake samurai (those without training in war, but of “noble” blood) and the actual samurai. The group of young samurais, lead by the chamberlain’s nephew are little more than just the clothes they are wearing.

Kurosawa even takes this theme a step further and turns “Sanjuro” into a comedy, as he blends chambara with jidai-geki, thereby stressing the reality of a traditional period piece with the illusion of it thru chambara. Especially the final fight is chambara. Where swordfights in other jidai-geki from Kurosawa always are demonstrations of skill and style, here Sanjuro not only rips open his opponent in one slash, but he dies in a blood geyser. This is clearly not reality, as for instance in “Shichinin no Samurai” nor “Yojimbo”, but the illusion of reality.

Surprisingly, while the chambara normally attracts young viewers, it was “Yojimbo” which became the favourite of the young audience, while the adult audience preferred “Sanjuro”.

It is a film hard to approach. It feels at times claustrophobic and Kurosawa seems more interested in making fun of the genre, rather than making the story as fluid as his other works. It is demanding to watch, which probably was why the adult audience preferred it. But familiar with Kurosawa and the samurai genre, “Sanjuro” stands out as a delightful parody.