A Fistful of Yojimbo

So I just watched Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo the other day (one was recommended on the other's IMDB site) when I start noticing parallels right away. The lone gun/ sword (but actually the samurai uses a gun also) man striding into the town with two rival factions duking it out. And then it just starts getting downright uncanny. Each main character befriends an old codger who puts them up and gives them food and drink. They play the two rival factions off each other. They give back money to the first crew when the defect to the other side. They even order up a certain number of coffins from the coffinmaker before they wack some suckers. I do a little research and find that Yojimbo came first. Leone claimed he did not copy the movie, but it looks like he got ahold of the Yojimbo script and crossed out "samurai" and wrote "cowboy". At the time the courts ruled against Leone for copywright infringement and they had to pay a bunch of money to Kurosawa, who said he liked the Leone film, however. Check 'em both out. They're good. Kind of like eating a Kobi steak and an Angus.