ABSTRACT
Sound and music function in an intricate relationship to the visual in two of Akira Kurosawa’s period films, Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962). In particular, certain pieces of music from two American westerns, William Wyler’s The Big Country (1958) and Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo (1959), inspired Kurosawa and the composer Masaru Sato in the making of Yojimbo, whose musical themes bind it to its sequel Sanjuro. Much has already been written about Kurosawa’s artistic debt to the western and his influence in turn on the spaghetti western, but few scholars have investigated the music of Kurosawa’s films. My purpose here is to illuminate audiovisual relationships in Yojimbo and Sanjuro, particularly the role of music, and show the connection between the musical themes of these chambara films and the scores of the two American westerns which inspired them.
