In this new art collection and series of 'Notes from the Sketchbook,' I’m diving into the Western genre, with a special focus on Clint Eastwood’s journey from 1950s TV star to iconic movie figure. Eastwood’s rise to stardom came through Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, those spaghetti Westerns that reinvented the genre. I’ll be watching, reviewing, and creating art inspired by these films, tracing how Eastwood’s image evolved, leading to his masterful deconstruction of both the Western and his own mythos in Unforgiven. But before I start with A Fistful of Dollars, we have to look East—back to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the film that reimagined the Western hero through the lens of the samurai. Kurosawa, inverting the classic hero’s journey, created something so striking that Leone practically copied it scene for scene in A Fistful of Dollars. The result? A lawsuit—and a complete reshaping of Western cinema. Leone may have been sued, but not before he changed the rules of the genre and cemented an influence that echoes in film to this day.
In Yojimbo (1961), Akira Kurosawa crafts a film that feels like a mischievous wink at the Western genre, while slyly subverting the samurai epic.
The main character is Sanjuro, larger than life, so full of confidence from the very first shot, you know this man is the force everything will pivot around. The landscape may be immense, but Kurosawa uses the telephoto lens so he feels even bigger, as if the entire world shrinks in comparison to his quiet, imposing stride.
The dusty street where Toshiro Mifune’s Sanjuro eventually swaggers might as well be any frontier town, except it isn’t; it’s a twisted world where order has collapsed, and the remnants are a mix of greed, corruption, and farce. Kurosawa’s cinematic playfulness is front and center here. The film operates as both homage and parody.
The opening alone is a signal of things to come. A dog trots by, holding a severed human hand in its mouth. Kurosawa’s not interested in easing us into the narrative; he slaps us with the absurdity of the town’s depravity right from the get-go. When Sanjuro, with his lazy grace and insouciant swagger, rolls into this ghost town, it’s clear he’s not here to play hero. Mifune embodies a kind of effortless cool that isn’t heroic so much as it is anti-heroic. His Sanjuro looks around and sees a mess of competing factions, silk dealers and sake merchants, and instead of sorting it out, he decides to use their own greed to tear them apart.
The brilliance of Yojimbo lies in how it constantly toys with audience expectations. Kurosawa borrows from the Westerns of John Ford but flips the moral certainties. In this town, there are no good guys, no community worth saving. Sanjuro himself is hardly a beacon of virtue — he’s mercenary, manipulative, and, if anything, is only saving his own skin. Kurosawa gives him just enough wry humor and detached observation to make him likable, but never comfortable.
“ I'll get paid for killing, and this town is full of people who deserve to die”
There are moments in Yojimbo that make you feel like you’re watching the genesis of so many films that followed. You can’t help but think of the severed arms in Star Wars—Lucas clearly took notes from Kurosawa’s brutal precision. And the tension Kurosawa builds in certain scenes, the way danger lurks in every glance and gesture, feels like a precursor to something like Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds—especially that infamous cellar scene.
With Kazuo Miyagawa behind the camera, the film feels like a coiled spring, ready to snap. The spaces between the characters are charged, and Kurosawa uses them to heighten the sense of impending violence.
Objects slide in and out of the frame — doors creak open, shutters snap shut — always hinting at the danger just beyond our view. There's always depth to a shot, a foreground , middle and background, Kurosawa makes the emptiness of the town feel oppressive, and that’s where the real power of the film lies: not just in the sword fights, but in the spaces where nothing happens, and where everything is about to happen.
The compositions are clean, often rigid, with characters locked into the wide frames, facing off like pieces on a chessboard. The street becomes a stage where violence and greed unfold in stark, almost absurdist terms. Yet Kurosawa also injects a strange levity into the proceedings.
Sanjuro watches from a bell tower as the two rival factions square off, grinning at their mutual incompetence. It’s this blend of cool distance and sudden bursts of violence that gives Yojimbo its particular rhythm — a kind of detached amusement that’s punctuated by moments of bloodshed.
Sanjuro’s strategy is pure manipulation, playing both sides against each other, while remaining enigmatic. His motivations are never entirely clear, and that’s part of the film’s fun. He’s not driven by justice or loyalty; he’s driven by survival, and maybe a bit of boredom. When he rescues a farmer and his wife, the only decent people in town, it feels like more of a tactical move than an act of mercy.
It's also done with disdain and Sanjuro berates them for crying in gratitude.
“Stop. Stop crying. It's pathetic”
Kurosawa leaves us questioning if Sanjuro has any morality at all or if he’s just a man who thrives in chaos.
The arrival of Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) shifts the power dynamic in the town. Unosuke’s gun — a rare sight in this feudal setting — brings a new level of threat. Kurosawa uses it to disrupt the swordplay, giving Sanjuro an adversary he can’t simply out-duel. Unosuke, with his smug arrogance and trigger finger, becomes a symbol of the changing times, a world where traditional samurai values are becoming obsolete. Sanjuro’s final confrontation with Unosuke isn’t about triumphing over evil — it’s about accepting that the world is shifting under his feet.
The film’s humor is dark, often cynical. When Sanjuro casually orders “Two coffins. Maybe three,” you can hear Kurosawa’s sardonic laughter through the frame. There’s a coldness to the joke, a recognition that death is cheap and meaningless in this town. And yet, Kurosawa tempers this bleakness with moments of near-slapstick, like the injured Sanjuro being smuggled out in a barrel, peeking out to offer a wry commentary on his situation.
Yojimbo isn’t just about the death of the samurai; it’s about the death of old-world values. Kurosawa seems to be saying that the era of honor and duty is over, replaced by self-interest, creeping western values and survival.
Kurosawa, with Yojimbo, isn’t merely content to tell a story of swordsmen and schemers. He’s too smart for that. Instead, he pulls the rug out from under us, leaving us questioning the very nature of heroism, loyalty, and honor. And in doing so, he delivers a film that’s wickedly entertaining.
Those are my thoughts on Yojimbo, a film that still feels startlingly modern, even more than 60 years after its release. It’s a groundbreaking piece of cinema, and Kurosawa’s influence is unmistakable, especially in the directors who emerged in the 1970s—George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and, of course, Sergio Leone. Leone didn’t just draw inspiration from Yojimbo, he practically lifted its entire structure to craft A Fistful of Dollars. It’s a shameless act of imitation, but Leone executes it so confidently, with enough of his own visual flair, that even Kurosawa begrudgingly admitted, “It’s a very good film; it’s just mine.”
Leone may have started by copying, but he would go on to make films that were more original and ambitious—something we’ll explore in the coming entries of 'Notes from the Sketchbook.' His work, especially later on, would become a significant influence on Quentin Tarantino. Still, watching Yojimbo and Fistful back-to-back is an odd experience. The resemblance is uncanny—Leone took so much—but Kurosawa’s film is the superior work, with more polish and precision in its craftsmanship.
Ink Noir:Yojimbo
"Yojimbo" my Ink Noir is available in the store now (here) with Duo Pop Prints available by the end of the week.