At the end of YOJIMBO, Sanjuro has laid an entire village to waste and ascends in a plume of ash. It's a startling, gusty ending. Major bad boy vibes are reinforced as Mifune is conclusively announced as a force to be reckoned with. Personally, I got the impression he didn't give a shit about the violence he caused, nor will he care about the violence he'll inspire among the rising generation when his deeds become legend. This is just the life of a fast-and-loose, down-and-dirty ronin. Deal with it.
 
Not so the case in SANJURO, although the context of YOJIMBO is critical to make sense of what’s going on here. The old timer has grown up a bit, his attitude towards violence is limp, and he now looks perpetually bored by all this silly samurai business around him. Caught between the yawns of jidai-geki samurai life and the violence of a young blade power struggle, Kurosawa satirically reimagines the glory of the samurai lifestyle, not as a series of romanticized sword fights, but as a young man's game that needs to be sheathed. 

SANJURO is a lot like young Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) talking to old Paul Schrader (First Reformed), a complex conversation about killer psychology, disillusionment, and the dead end of violence. SANJURO also reminded me a lot of what Tarantino tonally did between KILL BILL Volumes 1 and 2, the idea of paring back the thrill of violence with a more human dimension that allows greater access to the anti-hero's mythological standing. In other words, with SANJURO Kurosawa turns the myth of the samurai on its head. He doesn't want to repeat the savage ferocity of YOJIMBO (though some moments are debatable) as he wants to desperately claw his way out of genre tropes by making fun of the honorable warrior tradition.

SANJURO is still very much in tension with the violence of the past, so much in fact that it can't help but get campy at times, borderline EVIL DEAD 2 (that arterial geyser at the end is something else, amirite!?). The film never explodes in the same way as YOJIMBO, but as an anti-thesis to YOJIMBO's violent explosions it works quite effectively. It's not that Mifune is without violence, he just struggles to contain it. I like how my buddy Frank put it: "these samurai always put Sanjuro in a situation where he must use violence, creating a conflict from inside himself." My other friend John supports this idea: “When he does kill someone it’s because he was forced to.” The overall tones are mixed, it wants to be both a comedy and a serious reflection on the maturing samurai, and it uses those impulses to reflect the push-and-pull struggle between Sanjuro and his cabal of doting copy-cats. 

What I like about this tension is that it shows what age does to our perspective. The Sanjuro here is not the angry, wild Sanjuro of YOJIMBO. He's changed. He’s different. He’s an old, tired man. He’s more Toller than Bickle-adjacent, someone who realizes that he's supplied the wrong political myth to the rising generation, and who feels ashamed of his methods to incite lasting change. "The best sword is kept in its sheath." Great concept. I wonder what would become of so many anti-heroes if this statement was actually embraced.

Kurosawa Ranked