Seven Samurai


Seven Samurai is a 1954 Japanese epic film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. Starring Toshirō Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima and Yukiko Shimazaki, it tells the story of a village of farmers who hire seven samurai to help defend their village from bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. Influential in world cinema, Seven Samurai is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.
Following the release of Ikiru in 1952, Kurosawa and Hashimoto researched the Edo period for stories to film. In the process they came across an account of samurai defending farmers from bandits. Together with Oguni, the screenwriters spent over six weeks writing the script and creating detailed plans for each of the film's characters. Produced by Toho, the film spent three months in pre-production casting and location scouting. Filming began on May 27, 1953 and took place on set at Toho Studios, and on location in Shizuoka and Kanagawa Prefectures. Mid-way through production, the film ran out of money, Toho eventually funded Samurai to a total of, making it the most expensive Japanese film made at the time. For the film's final battle, Kurosawa innovated the use of a multi-camera setup and telephoto lenses to adjust audience perception. Filming wrapped in 1954 after taking 148 working days to shoot.
Seven Samurai was released in Japan on April 26, 1954 with a runtime of 207 minutes, making it the longest Japanese film released at the time. The film was recut before entering the Venice Film Festival. At Venice Kurosawa won the Silver Lion for direction, and the film was distributed in the United States by Columbia Pictures in November 1956, where it was again recut to 141 minutes. The film grossed in ticket sales in Japan making it the highest-grossing film of that year, though due to its high production cost, it was not highly profitable. In the United States the film grossed $113,600 in 1956 and 1957. The film received a mixed critical response in Japan, but a generally positive response in the US. Reviewers praised the story and acting but criticized the film's length and attitude towards the farmers. American reviews often compared the film to Western movies. Samurai was nominated for two Academy Awards and three BAFTAs, but won none.
Subsequent opinion of the film has seen scholars and reviewers praise it as a masterpiece. Seven Samurai has been influential among western filmmakers, with its story and approach to action being remade and reiterated upon a large number of times, most notably the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven. Seven Samurai also influenced other media, including anime and video games. Scholarly analysis of the film has looked at it through a humanistic and formalistic lens. Topics of discussion focus on the morality and heroism of the samurai, showing their relationship to class and the environment. In addition to allegorical readings, scholars have also looked at the film's cinematography, use of music, and Seven Samurais place within the genre.

Plot

In 1586, a bandit gang discusses raiding a mountain village, but their chief decides to wait until after the harvest for a better haul. Overhearing this, the villagers turn to Gisaku, the village elder. Gisaku advises them to hire samurai willing to only fight for food to protect the village. Traveling to a nearby town, the villagers find Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin, whom they see rescue a young boy from a thief. A young samurai named Katsushirō asks to become Kambei's disciple. The villagers ask for Kambei's help, and he agrees after recognizing their suffering. He then recruits Gorobei as his second-in-command, along with Kambei's old comrade-in-arms Shichirōji, Heihachi—a samurai without much skill but an amiable temperament—and Kyūzō, a master swordsman. Kikuchiyo, a wild, self-proclaimed samurai, is accepted too after attempts to drive him away fail.
Following an initially cold response from the villagers, the samurai and farmers start to trust each other; the samurai survey the village's surroundings and begin training the farmers. In a nearby mountain meadow, Katsushirō meets Shino, Manzō’s daughter, who disguised her as a boy. Katsushirō chastises her for not joining the men for training before realizing she is a woman. Later, the samurai are angered when Kikuchiyo brings them armor and weapons, which the villagers acquired by killing other samurai injured or fleeing from battle. Kikuchiyo retorts that samurai are responsible for much of the suffering farmers endure, revealing that he was born a farmer himself. The samurai's anger turns to shame. Later, Heihachi makes a flag that represents both the seven samurai and the village. Katsushirō shares his rice with Shino and the two form a relationship, though they recognize that they can not be together due to their difference in social class.
When the barley in the village ripens, Kambei organizes the farmers into squads. He tells the villagers that those who live in outlying houses must evacuate, when they dissent he chastises them for thinking only of themselves and not the village as a whole. Three bandit scouts are spotted around the village; two are killed, while the last reveals their camp's location before the villagers execute him. The samurai burn down the camp in a pre-emptive strike. Rikichi, a troubled villager aiding the samurai, breaks down when he sees his wife, who was taken by the bandits during a previous raid. Upon seeing Rikichi, she runs back into the burning barracks to her death. Heihachi is killed by a gunshot while trying to stop Rikichi from pursuing her. At Heihachi's funeral, Kikuchiyo raises the banner Heihachi had made over the village to inspire everyone.
While the village is in mourning, the bandits arrive and burn the village's outlying houses, including Gisaku's mill. Gisaku's family tries to save him when he refuses to abandon it, but all perish except a baby rescued by Kikuchiyo. The village is besieged, with many killed while the defenders thwart every attack. The bandits possess three matchlock muskets. Kyūzō captures one; an envious Kikuchiyo abandons his squad to bring back another. However, Kikuchiyo's absence allows a handful of bandits to infiltrate his post and kill several farmers, and Gorobei is slain defending his position. That night, Kambei predicts that the bandits will make one final assault.
Meanwhile, Katsushirō and Shino's relationship is discovered by Manzō, who beats her when he finds out that his daughter's virginity has been taken. Kambei and the villagers intervene and attempt to persuade him that the couple should be forgiven. The next morning, the defenders allow the remaining bandits to enter the village and ambush them. As the battle nears its end, the bandit chief kills Kyūzō with his musket. An enraged Kikuchiyo charges in and is shot as well, but kills the chief before dying. The remaining bandits are slain. Afterward, Kambei, Katsushirō and Shichirōji stand in front of the funeral mounds of their comrades, watching the villagers sing while planting their crops. Katsushirō and Shino meet, but Shino walks past him to join the others while Katsushirō watches her. Kambei declares to Shichirōji that it is a pyrrhic victory for the samurai and that the real victors are the farmers.

Cast

The seven samurai

  • Takashi Shimura as Kambei Shimada, a war-weary but honorable and strategic rōnin, and the leader of the seven
  • Yoshio Inaba as Gorōbei Katayama, a wise warrior who acts as Kambei's second-in-command and helps create the master-plan for the village's defense
  • Daisuke Katō as Shichirōji, Kambei's old friend and former lieutenant
  • Seiji Miyaguchi as Kyūzō, a serious, stone-faced and supremely skilled swordsman
  • Minoru Chiaki as Heihachi Hayashida, an amiable though less-skilled fighter, whose charm and wit maintain his comrades' morale
  • Isao Kimura as Katsushirō Okamoto, the youngest samurai, whom Kambei reluctantly takes as a disciple
  • Toshirō Mifune as Kikuchiyo, a humorous, mercurial and temperamental rogue who lies about being a samurai but joins the others in defence of the village

    Villagers

  • Yoshio Tsuchiya as Rikichi, a hotheaded villager
  • Bokuzen Hidari as Yohei, a timid old man
  • Yukiko Shimazaki as Rikichi's wife
  • Kamatari Fujiwara as Manzō, a farmer who disguises his daughter as a boy to try to protect her from the samurai
  • Keiko Tsushima as Shino, Manzō's daughter
  • Kokuten Kōdō as Gisaku, the village elder
  • Yoshio Kosugi as Mosuke, one of the farmers sent to town to hire the samurai

    Others

  • Shinpei Takagi as the bandit chief
  • as the bandit second-in-command
  • Haruo Nakajima as a bandit scout killed by Kyūzō
  • Eijirō Tōno as a thief
  • Atsushi Watanabe as a bun seller
  • Shuno Takahara as the bandit with a gun
  • Jun Tatara as a laborer
  • Sachio Sakai as a laborer
  • Takeshi Seki as a laborer
  • Tatsuya Nakadai as a samurai wandering through town

    Production

Development and pre-production

During the occupation of Japan, authorities had deliberately suppressed the production of samurai films as they were seen to embody the anti-democratic, feudal values of Japan's wartime government. When the occupation forces left in the early 1950s, the Japanese public still held an interest in stories about the samurai. After the completion of Ikiru, director Akira Kurosawa and his collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto planned to write a script following the daily routine of a single samurai, who at the end of the film would have to commit seppuku for a mistake made during the day. The project stalled as no records could be found concerning the samurai's everyday activities. Kurosawa next proposed a project adapting the , a collection of stories based on the biography of the Edo period martial artist Hinatsu Shigetaka. Hashimoto wrote a draft script, but Kurosawa abandoned the idea. Continuing to research the period, Kurosawa found an article that detailed the story of a group of samurai who were hired by farmers to protect them from bandits. In November 1952, Hashimoto wrote an informal script that came to 500 pages in length. The individual characters were based on real martial arts masters.
In December, Kurosawa, Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni went to a inn in Atami to write a full screenplay. Kurosawa made detailed notes on the characteristics of each individual samurai, including on the way they would talk and how they tied their shoes. Additionally, he created family trees for the residents of the village and instructed the actors to live together as if they were real families during the shoot. Kurosawa described his and Hashimoto's role as "technical" screenwriters, while Oguni was the humanist "soul". The three screenwriters had developed six samurai, but decided to include the character of Kikuchiyo as they considered the other characters too serious to be entertaining. The script was written over a period of more than six weeks. They wrote the same scene by themselves and would then present their work to the others, whereupon the best ideas would be compiled. Oguni was the screenwriter who had the ultimate decision over a script's readiness; this led to complete rejections that required everybody to re-write their version of a scene. During the writing process Kurosawa suffered from back pain from prolonged sitting on the tatami mats, and became sick with roundworms.
After the script was finished, the film spent three months in preproduction, much of the time used for location scouting. It was decided that the village would be filmed using five separate locations, with the main village scene being a studio set that required twenty three houses to be built. Kurosawa hired Yoshio Inaba because he wanted someone who could play someone both humble and mature. Inaba's relative inexperience on film productions, however, saw Kurosawa single him out for abuse. Seiji Miyaguchi was also primarily a stage actor, he had worked with Kurosawa as a character actor since the director's first film, Sanshiro Sugata, and was cast as Kyuzo—the part that had originally been intended for Mifune before Kikuchiyo was written. Keiko Tsushima was cast as the female love interest for the character Katsushiro without a formal interview. It was her first film working as a freelance actress. Many of the other actors were either people Kurosawa had worked with before, or non-actors. Prior to shooting, there were four weeks of rehearsals, during which cast members were required to maintain character and dress in costume.