A ronin (a samurai without a master) arrives in a 19th-century village, where he cunningly uses his fighting skills to pit two local crime bosses against each other. Strongly influenced by the American westerns Kurosawa had seen in his youth, the film would in turn have a major influence on all westerns that followed Yojimbo. A few years later, Sergio Leone would virtually copy the storyline for his hugely successful spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964). This would lead to a lawsuit won by Kurosawa, which – as the Japanese director later joked – ended up earning him far more than he ever made from Yojimbo.