This film was so popular that in the U.S. is was booked into some theaters that normally didn't run foreign language films.
This film was the best-seller among all Zatoichi films, due to Toshiro Mifune's portrayal of Yojimbo.
Current prints have replaced the original Toho logo with the Daiei logo.
Many of the Yakuza in the film are seen as being tattooed. This style of tattoo design was known as Irezumi, and would most commonly feature monstrous creatures from Japanese mythology known as yokai.
Yojimbo is the name most commonly given the character played by Toshiro Mifune in this film. The word Yojimbo is Japanese for 'bodyguard'. 'Yojimbo' is also the name of an Akira Kurosawa film from 1961 which starred Toshiro Mifune in the title role, however in this film his character claims that his name is Sanjuro. In 1970 Mifune again played a character called Yojimbo in the film 'Incident at Blood Pass' or 'Machibuse', directed by Hiroshi Inagaki and starring Shintaro Katsu.