At one level Yojimbo can be viewed as a masterfully simple satire on the cold war, no less trenchant than Kubrick’s Strangelove, at another, between the tensions that were to arise between the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, at another between east and west (symbolized by the sword and firearm), and last but not least it can be regarded simply as a rip-roaring samurai swashbuckler romp. It succeeds on all these levels, and makes its point crisply, and with humor and seamless cinematic narrative.

In the beginning Mifune’s character (hilariously named Kuwabatake Sanjuro), the Mulberry Field thirty-something pushing at forty, is just that – a masterless ronin samurai, worldly-wise and cynical, without moorings, without purpose, without loyalties, a skilled wandering mercenary warrior in a midlife crisis quite happy to sell his skills to the highest bidder. Kurosawa brings out Sanjuro’s personality in one brief shot right at the beginning – contrasting his nervous shoulder twitch with the steadiness of the mountain range in front. The storied samurai ethos of yore and the code of bushido have been turned on its head. Yet by the end of the movie, he has found his purpose, he is redeemed, his arc is complete.

How this is achieved in under two hours, and how Kurosawa vindicates the samurai blood in Mifune’s character by the end of the movie, is what makes this gem Kurosawa’s masterpiece.