Round 4: Tossup 13

Note to moderator: read the answerline carefully. Note to players: Description acceptable. Near the end of a film about this character, the camera depicts a man falling to his knees and pans down to track a fallen flower flowing in a river. This character admonishes a young man who fearfully screams for his “mommy” by telling him “a long life eating porridge is best!” Footage was reversed to create two shots in which this character throws a knife to impale falling leaves. A technical glitch is often erroneously thought to have caused a one-take shot in which this character slices a foe’s torso to spurt an absurdly thick gush of (15[1])(*) blood. (10[1])This character, (10[1])who often rolls his shoulders as if to shake off bugs, sees a dog holding (-5[1])a severed (-5[1])hand (10[2])in its mouth in a film (10[1])whose opening scene depicts him throwing a stick in the air at a crossroads. This character duels (10[1])a gunslinger in the finale of a 1961 film that Sergio Leone plagiarized for A Fistful (10[1])of Dollars. For 10 points, name or describe this warrior played by Toshirō Mifune in two films by Akira Kurosawa. ■END■ (0[1])

ANSWER: the ronin from Yojimbo [or the ronin from Sanjuro; accept Sanjuro, Tsubaki Sanjūrō, or Kuwabatake Sanjūrō; accept the nameless ronin; accept samurai in place of “ronin”; prompt on the ronin or samurai played by Toshirō Mifune by asking “in which film?”; prompt on Yojimbo by asking “which character from that film?”]
<AP, Japan> | Spec-Script_04
= Average correct buzzpoint

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