Plot
A ronin wanders into a small town being ruined by a gang war between Seibei and Ushitora. Ushitora used to be Seibei's right hand man, until Seibei decided that his son Yoichiro would succeed him. Tazaemon, the silk merchant and mayor, backs Seibei, while Tokuemon the sake brewer is allied with Ushitora. Gonji, a restaurant proprietor, advises the stranger to leave while he can, but after sizing up the situation, he tells Gonji that the town would be better off with both sides dead, and that he intends to do the job.
The ronin first convinces the weaker Seibei to hire him as a kensei by demonstrating his skill, killing three of Ushitora's men. He eavesdrops on Seibei's wife Orin ordering their son to stab him in the back after their victory so they will not have to pay him. The ronin then provokes the two factions into attacking each other (while he stands back and watches), but the untimely arrival of an official spoils his plan before any blood is shed. Seibei and Ushitora keep an uneasy peace to avoid attracting government notice.
When the two factions decide to settle their differences, the ronin stirs things up again. Learning that Ushitora hired two assassins to kill an officer many miles away to get the government official to leave, the ronin captures and sells the pair to Seibei. Then he tells Ushitora that Seibei's men have caught them. Alarmed, Ushitora hires him. Ushitora has Yoichiro kidnapped and offers an exchange of prisoners, but double crosses Seibei, having his brother Unosuke shoot the assassins with the only firearm in town, his beloved pistol, when they are brought to be traded. The wily Seibei, however, has taken a beautiful woman that Tokuemon is infatuated with. The woman is swapped for Yoichiro.
Gonji informs the ronin that the woman is the wife of a farmer named Kohei. Ushitora seized her and Kohei's home as payment for a gambling debt. He then gave her to Tokuemon to gain his support.
The ronin kills all six guards assigned to the woman and reunites her with her husband and son. He gives them the money Ushitora paid him and tells them to leave town. However, Unosuke becomes suspicious of his claim that Seibei's men are responsible and uncovers the ronin's double dealing. The stranger is beaten in an attempt find out where the woman is hiding.
When the ronin manages to escape, Ushitora decides to eliminate Seibei once and for all. He succeeds in wiping out the opposing gang. With the help of Gonji, the ronin recuperates in hiding. However, when he learns that Gonji has been caught while bringing food and medicine, he returns to town to confront the remainder of Ushitora's men. Unosuke and his pistol are a dangerous combination, but the ronin manages to kill them all, sparing only one terrified young man he had encountered at the beginning of the film, who had run away from a boring, poverty-stricken life as a farmer. Then, the ronin leaves town.
Read more about this topic: Yojimbo (film)
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“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
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“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
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