Tsubaki Sanjûrô (1962)

Director:

Akira Kurosawa

Writers:

Ryûzô Kikushima (writer)
Akira Kurosawa (writer)

Release Date:

7 May 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A crafty samurai helps a young man and his fellow clansmen save his uncle, who has been framed and imprisoned by a corrupt superintendent.

Plot Keywords:

Samurai | Corruption | Uncle | Rescue | Ronin

Awards:

1 win

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Toshirô Mifune	...	Sanjûrô Tsubaki / The Samurai
Tatsuya Nakadai	...	Hanbei Muroto
Keiju Kobayashi	...	The Spy
Yûzô Kayama	...	Iori Izaka
Reiko Dan	...	Chidori, Mutsuta's daughter
Akihiko Hirata	...	Samurai
Takashi Shimura	...	Kurofuji
Kamatari Fujiwara	...	Takebayashi
Takako Irie	...	Mutsuta's wife
Masao Shimizu	...	Kikui
Yûnosuke Itô	...	Mutsuta, the Chamberlain
Akira Kubo	...	Samurai
Kenzo Matsui	...	Samurai
Hiroshi Tachikawa	...	Samurai
Yoshio Tsuchiya	...	Samurai

Also Known As:

Sanjuro (USA)

Runtime:

96 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Perspecta Sound encoding) (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Australia:PG | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:15 | Switzerland:12 | UK:12 | UK:PG (re-rating) (2002) | UK:A (original rating) | West Germany:12 | USA:PG-13

Company:

Toho Company

Trivia:

This movie was originally going to be a faithful adaption of a Shugoro Yamamoto novel called Peaceful Days, and was going to be made before Yojimbo, which is about a group of nine samurai who are helped out by two ronin who are inadequate fighters and have to use there wits to trick two evil opposing sides into disposing of each other. The antagonists was changed to a corrupt government body and the tricking two opposing sides into fighting each over element was used for Yojimbo. After Yojimbo was a success Toho requested that Kurosawa produce a sequel. He changed the two weak ronin to the powerful Sanjuro character and rewrote the script to match the tone of Yojimbo. Also when this was going to be Peaceful Days, Kurosawa was only going to write it and 'Horikawa Hiromichi' (Kurosawa's assistant director) was going to direct it and Frankie Sakai and Keiju Kobayashi were to play the two ronin.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When the Chamberlain's nephew goes to peek over the wall to check if Kikui's house is full of troops, he supports himself on the wall which bends slightly, belying its supposed sturdiness.

Quotes:

Mutsuta's wife: Killing people is a bad habit.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999) (TV)

One of Kurosawa's most polished movies

Tsubaki Sanjuro is, unfortunately, not so widely seen abroad (= outside Japan) as Yojinbo, probably because it was not copied as a western. In Japan, however, Tsubaki Sanjuro is not less popular than Yojinbo. Not a few Japanese actually prefer the former to the latter, and it's easy to see why: It is stylistically more polished and smarter than Yojimbo and Mifune is 'cooler' as well - he shows a brilliant leadership and every Mifune fan would be really delighted to see how his young, naive disciples run after him like chicks following the mother duck.

And while Yojinbo's female main character, Orin, is an evil and crafty woman, Lady Mutsuta in Tsubaki Sanjuro is 'irritatingly light-hearted'. But she has a deep insight into Sanjuro's personality and understands him far better than his male disciples. An excellent character, and, in fact, she is the only person in Tsubaki Sanjuro AND Yojinbo to whom Sanjuro/Mifune speaks in a polite form (in Japanese).

Tsubaki Sanjuro is, so to speak, a 'concentrate' of Kurosawa's cinematography and one sees in it every aspect of his greatness in a very compact form. Therefore no one could remake this movie.