FROM THE CREATORS OF LONE WOLF AND CUB: Samurai Executioner

If you have access to Hoopla through your library, they have the entire LW&C manga on there. All of Samurai Executioner too!

Yojimbo is based on Dashiell Hammett!

Kurosawa films not a lot like lw&c films anyway, slightly more serious and b&w for a start.

Maybe better suggestions would be the other lw&c films (there are half a dozen), both snow blood films, or later zatoichi films (not seen but there are 20 odd). Chambara is the general term for them. There are lists around:

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls003893928/

Well, original question was if there was a tradition of this type of film in Japan that predates spaghetti westerns.

Yojimbo and Sanjuro are the Kurosawas that slot into that tradition imo, but there's plenty of other 60's stuff that's in the more violent, cynical vein of the spaghetti western - as I said, most of the 60's chambara is already revisionist and views the samurai code of honour as nonsense (partially the trauma of war playing into that). Okamoto, Hideo Gosha, Kobayashi. But yeah most of their stuff is in elegant black and white, too.

I haven't seen them but the Sleepy Eyes Of Death series and lots of films with Double Suicide in the title might also be worth a look.

(props to Jaq for pointing me at this)

All of LW&C, SE, PotA, Lady Snowblood, Crying Freeman and one other thing (but no golf manga...) in a humble bundle for the next 20 days or so. price currently about £20 for everything, drm-free.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/lone-wolf-cub-koike-from-dark-horse-books

(they look like the 300 page dark horse editions so they'll be reversed to read from left to right, which most newer manga isn't iirc. i don't know if the later omnibus editions of LW&C were different)

("one other thing" = Color of Rage)

I’ve seen almost 400 kung-fu and wuxia movies over the past three years, so when I say I’ve never seen a fight like this before, it’s not hyperbole pic.twitter.com/bot3h4shUW

— Justin Decloux (@DeclouxJ) March 21, 2022