Red Harvest
Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot was the 1942 "film noir" classic "The Glass Key", an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1931 novel "The Glass Key". It has been noted that the overall plot of "Yojimbo" is closer to that of another Hammett novel, "Red Harvest" (1929). Kurosawa scholar David Desser, and film critic Manny Farber claim that "Red Harvest" was the inspiration for the film; however, Donald Richie and other scholars believe the similarities are coincidental.