Yojimbo is a spaghetti western which takes on a Samurai guise and presents Kurosawa at his best, playfully blending genres and imitiating the cowboy western to create a film that is uniquely Japanese. This action-comedy takes place in the feudal town o fedo in the 1860s. Toshiro Mifune, the hero, is a jobless samurai who is not even remotely heroic. An outsider, he wanders into the town, bases himself in a drinking stall, cunningly pits the town's two opposing factions against each other and then sits back and watches the fun. His machinations culminate in a showdown in which the two sides wipe each other out. In a sense, he beats the world by seeing through it, and he beats it on his own terms.