Day 53: Sanjuro (1962)

With “Sanjuro,” the sequel to yesterday’s ”Yojimbo,” director Akira Kurosawa once again delivers a top notch Samurai film with a lighthearted and more modern twist. Going even a step further than it’s series predecessor, “Sanjuro” looks into the classic Samurai archetype and judges it against our film’s hero- the wandering Ronin, played once again by Toshirō Mifune. To do this, we are given an opportunity to watch Mifune’s Samurai lead a group of young men in an adventure and compare and contrast the two- one, which represents the old school ways and the other, our protagonist, displaying a more modern flare.

In “Sanjuro,” the wandering Samurai has once again come across trouble. While going about his journeys, he enters a Samurai clan settlement and finds that its lord Chamberlin, Mutsuta, and his wife and daughter have been taken captive by the clan’s deceitful Superintendent in an attempt to frame Mutsuta and, therefore, get him out of power and out of the way.

Teaming up with a group of inexperienced and impatient Samurai students, the Samurai first saves Mutsuta’s wife and daughter and then heads undercover as a new member of the Superintendent’s gang, in hopes to grow closer to the group and find out where they are hiding Mutsuta. The Samurai’s plan seems to be working as Hanbei Muroto, the Superintendent’s main henchman, grows to trust him, but then four students, who have disobeyed the Samurai’s orders to stay away, are captured and the Samurai is charged by Hanbei with getting rid of them- permanently.

What makes “Sanjuro” such a great sequel to “Yojimbo,” is that it takes the questions brought up in the first film and looks at them in more detail. In this case, the actions and demeanor of the Samurai, once again, do not fit with the code and discipline usually seen in a typical Samurai or their film genre and, to best contrast our protagonist, he is forced to team up with students of the Samurai way, green in their experience and who only act by what they have been taught. With that, Kurosawa creates a situation where almost the old cinema of Samurai film (Seven Samurai, Musashi Miyamoto) must come face to face with this more spirited modern version and we, as the audience, get to watch the sparks fly.

And though, in the end, “Sanjuro” does deliver a message, much likes it predecessors, about the sharpest of warriors putting their killing instinct in a “sheath” until truly needed, Kurosawa does find a way to still end his film with a modern twist that changes the game for the whole genre. While, in the past, Samurai films, and cinema in general for that matter, have been careful about bloodshed, deeming it a thing worthily of censorship, “Sanjuro” follows this rule till the very end and then, in its final battle, makes up for lost time. Though it is less than five seconds, the Samurai takes one fatal slice at his opponent and a shower of blood explodes from his chest, killing the foe instantly. With that, Kurosawa helped open a door in blockbuster films that would eventually lead to grittier and more realistic depictions, for better or worse, of violence in film. Certainly without “Sanjuro,” for instance, we wouldn’t have the now infamous and over the top bloody henchmen brawl we find in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill.”

With “Sanjuro,” Akira Kurosawa once again delivers an excellent modern take on an ancient genre as well as a great example of how a good sequel can be accomplished.

To learn more about “Sanjuro,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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