Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django will open in Japan in September. It's an English-language adaptation of the epic battle between the Genji and Heiki clans set inexplicably in the Old West. Aside from the obvious challenges of non-English speaking actors speaking English (and colloquial cowboy English at that!) and the logistical weirdness of the Old West in 1000-year-old Japan, well, it looks awesome!
And it got me thinking about past examples of jidaigeki westerns. Japan, like most film-making countries in the 1960s, turned out its share of actual westerns, none of which (to my knowledge) are available for viewing in the US. What are available are a number of samurai films that either borrowed from or inspired, um, Western westerns.
Here are some of my favorites, in chronological order:
Seven Samurai (1954)
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa was an ardent admirer of American filmmaker John Ford and that comes across in Seven Samurai, Kurosawa's first big spectacle film and an attempt to bring the American West to Sengoku-era Japan. Of course, it's not as obvious as that, but the emphasis on action marks this as more than just a kimono show. Hollywood took notice of the action as well, and immediately remade it as The Magnificent Seven, thus setting in motion a back-and-forth of American/Japanese film that continues to this day.
Yojimbo (1961)
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa ushered in the 1960s with a different kind of samurai film, one that focused on the outcast ronin rather than on a group of samurai. This lone wolf ruffian became the perfect foil for a corrupt, chaotic society, and one that audiences obviously identified with. Yojimbo was a huge hit in Japan in 1961 and its effect on the Japanese film industry was immediate and long-lasting. It also made waves outside Japan, where it inspired Sergio Leone to remake it as A Fistful of Dollars and thus start a new wave of nihilistic westerns.
Three Outlaw Samurai (1964)
Dir: Hideo Gosha
First-time film director Hideo Gosha adapted his successful TV show Three Outlaw Samurai for the big screen in 1964 and achieved two things: he became the first jidaigeki director to go from the small screen to the large, and he upped the ante for samurai action. Three Outlaw Samurai is a little bit Seven Samurai, a little bit Yojimbo, and a whole lot of morally ambiguous characterization in the three main characters. The anti-hero with a strong moral center, as codified by the Yojimbo character, would continue as the defining element of both spaghetti western and 1960s samurai protagonists. In this film, we get three of them, almost as if the trio of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly decided to work together.
Kill! (1968)
Dir: Kihachi Okamoto
Kihachi Okamoto (Sword of Doom) went to the same novelistic source as Kurosawa's Sanjuro, the sequel to Yojimbo, for Kill!, a biting satire on feudalistic society that also borrows heavily from spaghetti western conventions. There are no ricocheting bullets or whistle cues, but the soundtrack is so evocative of Ennio Morricone you'll be shouting "Blondie!" every chance you get. The wooden frontier towns and blowing dust only add to the effect.
Goyokin (1969)
Dir: Hideo Gosha
Hideo Gosha's 1969 box-office hit Goyokin is set on the snow-covered Sea of Japan coast in the deep winter, the yukiguni locale recalling Sergio Corbucci's brutal The Geat Silence, released a year earlier. Gosha makes the most of the remote location and ramshackle outpost towns, evoking a sense of loneliness and dread that, when combined with the dead-of-winter setting, makes for one nihilistic film.
Incident At Blood Pass (1970)
Dir: Inagaki Hiroshi
Toshiro Mifune reprised his Yojimbo role for the fourth and last time in Inagaki Hiroshi's Incident At Blood Pass (the third time was in Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, also a fine western-inspired jidaigeki). A little older but no less principled, our Yojimbo finds himself embroiled in a powder-keg of a situation in an inn on a little-used mountain pass, also in the dead of winter. I use the term yojimbo (bodyguard) as the character's name for convenience's sake but actually he's nameless, the direct inspiration for Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name characters in his trilogy of films with Sergio Leone.
Echo Of Destiny: Shadow Hunters II (1972)
Dir: Masuda Toshio
In this sequel to Shadow Hunters, our titular trio of heroes must escort a cannon through some dangerous terrain, a spaghetti western premise if there ever was one. But in this case you get topless geisha and ninja to chew on as well. Duck You Sucker! meets Lone Wolf And Cub.
A couple of recent updates on Twitch on Zatoichi-related film projects. The first is Ichi, a retelling of the blind swordsman tale with a woman in the lead. Helmed by Ping Pong's Fumihiko Sori, the film stars Haruka Ayase as the wandering bad-ass. See the teaser trailer here. Check out this older post with a news clip on the casting of Haruka Ayase.
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