Seven Samurai – What wisdom is stored in the stories of masters…

Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a movie that I have long wanted to see.  It was the well spring for an American knock-off, The Magnificent Seven, which I saw not too long ago, but I was hungry to see the "original".  When the reluctant wife and I were looking at a list of 100 films recommended by Rotten Tomatoes, The Seven Samurai jumped out.  It is a movie that I have so much wanted to see that I imagined I had – but then the images started rolling and I realized this was not the case.  It is another long film – even longer than Kenneth Branagh's unedited Hamlet we saw recently, but at least 10 minutes of the almost 3 and ½ hour viewing time is an intermission.  It is also paced in such a way that it doesn’t seem as long as its running time.  Perhaps because it was made into a Western in its Hollywood incarnation, it had the feel of being in the saddle of a horse that was not going anywhere fast, but it didn’t matter because the scenery was great.

Before going much further, I should caution you that this movie was made in 1954, was shot in Black and White on a square screen, and it is in Japanese with surprisingly modern language in the subtitles, at least on the criterion version that we saw (is “slut” a word that the Japanese used in the 1500s when this film is set?).   The plot is simple and familiar from the Magnificent Seven – but also I had somehow known it even before then – perhaps by osmosis – perhaps from a well-meaning friend who gave a particularly animated description of it way back in college.  There is a small village of farmers that is regularly attacked by bandits.  The bandits show up right after each crop is harvested and they demand the lion’s share of the crop.  The farmers don’t have enough rice after the bandits steal the rice harvest, so must survive on millet until the next crop – barley – comes in.  A village member overhears the bandits planning to come back after the barley harvest to take that crop as well.  The farmers, in a panic, consult with the village elder about what to do.  The elder remembers a time when a village hired samurai to defend it against bandits and this particular village survived because of that.  There is much discussion of the merits of hiring samurai, but there is agreement that something needs to be done, so four villagers are sent to secure the services of five samurai.

It is important to note that the samurai were essentially Japanese knights errant.  The villagers are actually sent after rōnin, who are masterless samurai – knights for hire.  The samurai are known for the long, tempered steel swords that they carry.  These swords, as I remember from reading The Ascent of Man in high school, were particularly strong because when they were forged, the steel was folded in half-length ways and then beaten to the same size, then that process was repeated numerous times.  This was used as an example of the power of exponential growth – the number of layers was equal to the number of folds squared.  The samurai are also known for being the models of the Jedi in the Star Wars franchise – they are warriors who have done more than secure strong sabers – they are well trained in the art and psychology of warfare.  They are also, like the Jedi, determined by birth – they are royalty and have much more class power than the lowly farmers they serve in this film.  So when the farmers are tasked with hiring them, they need to look for warriors who are down on their luck – and will work for meager wages for low caste employers – not a hopeful mission.

In town, when they approach the most down and out samurai, they are shamed by him.  But they do find a wise and grizzled old Samurai named Kambei (Takashi Shimura) who uses subtle subterfuge to save a child from a robber who is holding the child hostage.  In these scenes – and many throughout the film – there are masses of people who follow the leads around, watching, commenting, and interacting with the leads and with each other.  They function as a kind of Greek chorus, but also as a window into the culture, first of the town and then of the village.  They are a kind of mass of people.  It would be easy in this age of reducing cultural differences to catchphrases to see them as representing the collectivist culture – and there may be more than a grain of truth to that – but I think there is something else at work here.  Especially in the midst of watching so many western dramas – especially historical dramas – that focus on lead the four characters that are recognized by the Oscars, I have become tired of the idea that history is made by heroes.  As far back as War and Peace, Tolstoy was arguing that history turns not exclusively on the brilliance of Napoleon, but on whether this soldier picks up the flag at just the right instance to turn the skirmish that is at the center of the war – and the flag ignites the group to perform at a level that it otherwise wouldn’t – the flag bearer is less a hero than a catalyst.  And in this movie, a movie that we know will focus on seven heroes, it is useful to know that there is a larger cast at work.  That this is a story of a community.  And we are introduced both to the larger culture and to the local one through these mass scenes, but also through seeing the villagers interact with other patrons of the inn they are staying in and other chance scenes that are also facilitated by the length of this film.  It takes time to get to know the context in which the action will take place.

And the action in this story turns on the a story of a community of samurai that is built after the kindly and smart samurai is convinced to take on a quixotic mission of saving a village all to get a bit of rice.  Because this film is so long, we are given the chance to get to know the seven characters (as well as the village members) in detail.  As each one is brought into the fold, we see that they have particular assets.  Though the villages have been sent to procure five samurai, the wise leader, Kambei, decides, after hearing a description of the layout of the village and that there are forty bandits, that they will need seven.  After a total of six have been recruited, a seventh begs to be on board.  This samurai, Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune), has been rejected by Kambei multiple times as inappropriate to the group, and is revealed to be lying about being a samurai, but he simply won’t go away and he follows the group back to the village, making a fool of himself along the way, and the group takes him in to make seven (though on the battle flag they draw up, the samurai are represented by six circles – with Kikuchiyo represented by a triangle).

As the samurai are headed back to the village, two of the villagers race ahead to tell the village that they are coming.  One of them cuts his daughter’s hair off and dresses her in men’s clothing to protect her from the samurai.  This causes a stir in the village, and when the samurai arrive, the villagers have all hidden from them.  Kikuchiyo begins to display his worth here as he bangs the alarm drum and the villagers appear as if from nowhere begging the Samurai to protect them from the bandits.  Kikuchiyo, whom we come to know and appreciate in spite of his boorish and unbridled character, is revealed over time to have come from a village like this.  He is able to understand the villagers in a way that the samurai cannot – and he is able to act as a comic go-between, respecting both cultures and presenting each to the other.  In this instance, Kikuchiyo is able to help the samurai realize that, for the villagers, they are making a deal with the devil – with a force that, like the bandits, is stronger than they are, but that they are therefore at the mercy of, just as they are at the mercy of the bandits.  Kikuchiyo is able to ferret out the stockpiles that the wily villagers have set aside, both the grain and sake they keep hidden – so hidden that they themselves believe themselves to be more impoverished than they are (I think), as well as the armor that they have taken from samurai vanquished by them in the past.  Kikuchiyo helps the samurai recognize their role in past atrocities and realize that the theft of the armor and the duplicity of the villagers is necessary, from their perspective, for their survival in a world that doesn’t value the importance of their humble but essential function.   Kikuchiyo helps them (and us) see the other’s perspective – a hallmark of the Kurosawa film Roshoman.  That short film has been used to name the psychological effect having only our viewpoint from which to see the world – and reminds us of the problems that ensue when we do that.  

Kikuchiyo, in his role as perspective taker, is the bridge that allows the samurai and the villagers to come together and to work towards vanquishing a common enemy.  Of course, this enemy is not a foreign contingent for the samurai, but actually a version of themselves.  As a result, the tragic form of this drama is constructed – it is not the villagers that we pity – not the people who are at the bottom of the food chain – it is the samurai – whose work – so exquisitely on display here as they prepare for battle, prepare the village to fight with them, and then function as the fine warriors that they are – is ultimately destructive, not constructive, in the way that the villagers joyful planting, so merrily portrayed at the end to the film, ultimately is.  Kambei is able to realize this tragic element, as are we.  We revel in the battle – in the wonderful craftsmanship that goes into planning the fight and executing it (and filming it – this film is dated in some areas, but the action sequences are spectacular), but we also realize the toll that it takes.  And the final shot, if we haven’t gotten it yet, underscores that toll. 

Of course, there is another toll.  The villager who has tried to protect his daughter does so for a reason – one that is tragically portrayed as the plot unfolds – and he ultimately is not able to prevent the thing that he fears the most.  And even though it happens in the loveliest of ways – love between castes proves as problematic in Japan as anywhere else in the world.  And, of course, this film portrays, in part by the absence of significant actresses except for the star crossed lover, the disempowered status of women.  Were it shot today, that might have been portrayed differently, but I don’t know that this isn’t a veridical portrayal of gender roles at the historical time portrayed and probably more certainly at the time of filming.

Central to this film, though, is a deeply anti-violent message.  But it delivers this message without shaming those who would engage in war.  It honors them every bit as much as Kikuchiyo helps the samurai realize the honor of the villagers and their own complicity.  We revel in the noble samurai and their protection of the village – but we also see that war is ultimately not a productive undertaking.  Made as this was less than ten years after the war, in a country that was deeply reflecting on the costs of that war and the nuclear peril that it unleashed, being the only country ever to have felt the destruction of nuclear weapons used against them, this movie seems to me to be a very deep reflection on the costs of war. 

Kurosawa is rightly praised for creating a film that introduces all kinds of important tropes into the movie maker’s arsenal – including the forming of a team that seems to be part of every action film up to and including our current Avengers series – but I think his technical skill as a moviemaker should be seen as merely a support of his functioning as a hero – a comic hero - Kikuchiyo - or a psychoanalyst - someone who sees and appreciates the lure of war – of terror – of the costs of aggression (and he does put this firmly in the hands of men in this film – the gendered references give men the destructive power that they misuse so egregiously), and heroically urges us to recognize that, as much as we have organized our culture to glorify and honor those whom we place at the top of the cultural hierarchy because of their ability to engage in it, that this is an abomination that ultimately does us no good. 

Given that this film’s imitators have, I think, used the tropes to glorify the good guys and their triumph over evil – rather than to help us see, as this film does, that we are all complicit in the bad stuff, I am tempted to see Kurosawa as having failed.  But I think, by that metric, we are all failing, psychoanalysts maybe more than anyone, to help us learn to acknowledge, live with, but not to act primarily on baser instincts that we have glorified out of deeply held, essentially instinctual fears.  The task of becoming human – in the sense that many of us use the word – as the base of humane, and humanistic – as the exemplar of all that we can do that is great, gets overshadowed by our preoccupation will all things dangerous – and our delusional belief that hiring a monster that is bigger than the feared monster, the belief that the hired monster will save us, rather than realizing that it is our connection with each other – including those who are foreign and appear to be allied against us – trying to find out how to genuinely connect along the lines that will help us all – is our true calling.

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