silly question maybe...

Don't know if it has been asked before, but what Hiragana or katagana characters would be used to make Yojimbo?
(or is it actually impossible, and you have to use Kanji for 'Yojim', and 'bo'?).

For that matter what is 'm' on it's own?
Is that short for 'mu' (but the 'u' is silent), like the 'u' in 'tsuki'?

Also what is the origin of the word. Everyone seems to know it means bodyguard (from the movie translation), but it's not in any Japanese dictionary that I have, nor in Breen's EDICT.

Is it actually a slang phrase?

I have seen Jimbo as a Japanese last name, and Gimpo/Kimpo airport in Seoul, Korea (but that may be a korean word not Japanese).

Is Yojimbo a loan word from Korean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo

Hiragana-> ようじんぼう

Matthew Zsebik wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo

Ok so the actual word in yojinbo, and whatever Heburn translation was used makes it an m instead.
Thanks.

More helpful was the tiny little question mark by the romaji word which states the rule:

Moraic n
An n before a consonant is moraic (its own mora).
A moraic n followed by a vowel or y is written n'.
The moraic n has various phonetic realisations:
Before an n, t, d or r, it is pronounced [n].
Before a k or g, it is pronounced [ŋ].
Before an m, b or p, it is pronounced as [m]. It is written as m in some versions of Hepburn, but as n in Wikipedia's modified Hepburn.

Matthew Zsebik wrote: Hiragana-> ようじんぼう

Now you added 'u' to 'yo' and 'bo' to denote the long 'o' sound, making the word 'youjinbou'.
I thought adding the u (ou or oo in old Hepburn) was just a romaji notation to help english speakers, not actually part of the Japanese word!?!

Bruce Kimpel wrote: Don't know if it has been asked before, but what Hiragana or katagana characters would be used to make Yojimbo? (or is it actually impossible, and you have to use Kanji for 'Yojim', and 'bo'?).

Huh, I found it in Jim Breen's site with no problem.

Here

And as for kanji, it's ???, which is "use" + "heart" + "staff/rod". How that end's up as "bodyguard" is beyond me, but Japanese is like that.

Yojimbo was a samurai film. One of Clint Eastwood's cowboy characters is based on that samurai film. I think I read somewhere that 'Yojimbo' inspired 'A Fistful of Dollars'.... Just like 'The Magnificent Seven' was a western copy of 'The Seven Samurai'

In gassho,
Mark