Sanjuro
1962 film by Akira Kurosawa
Sanjuro (Japanese: 椿三十郎, Hepburn: Tsubaki Sanjūrō) is a 1962 Japanese jidaigeki film directed, co-written and edited by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune. It is a sequel to Kurosawa's 1961 Yojimbo.
Originally an adaptation of the Shūgorō Yamamoto novel Hibi Heian, the script was altered following the success of the previous year's Yojimbo to incorporate the lead character of that film.
Plot
Nine young samurai believe that the lord chamberlain, Mutsuta, is corrupt after he tore up their petition against fraud at court. One of them tells the superintendent Kikui of this and he agrees to intervene. As the nine meet secretly to discuss this at a shrine, a rōnin overhears and cautions them against trusting the superintendent. While at first they do not believe him, he saves them from an ambush. But as their rescuer is about to leave, he realises that Mutsuta and his family must now be in danger and decides to stay and help.
By the time the samurai get to Mutsuta's house, the chamberlain has been abducted and his wife and daughter are held prisoner there. Following the rōnin's suggestion, a servant from the house gets the guards drunk, allowing the samurai to free the women.
“Sanjuro” enters the record as 1962 film by Akira Kurosawa. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sanjuro, film and Akira can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Sanjuro” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sanjuro, film and Akira provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q575014. VIAF identifies the subject as 179320107. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sanjuro” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.