“So my heroes were actors like Clint Eastwood, Franco Nero, and Lee Van Cleef, and I fell in love with Morricone's music which was used in those films.”
Kojima discovered Morricone on television through the spaghetti westerns: Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo inspired A Fistful of Dollars, and he was the perfect age to become obsessed with those westerns, which were shot in Italy while pretending not to be. His heroes were Clint Eastwood, Franco Nero and Lee Van Cleef, and he fell in love with Morricone's music used in those films — the whistles, the unusual guitars, all integrated into a melodic score that he believes appealed strongly to Japanese audiences. From that came everything, he says, including people like Tarantino.
“Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo became an inspiration for the movie A Fistful of Dollars. And I had watched some western films before, but I was the perfect age at the time to become obsessed with these spaghetti westerns which were shot in Italy but made to look like it wasn't.”