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Director: Akira Kurosawa

Starring: Toshiro Mifune/Takashi Shimura/Daisuke Katō/Isao Kimura/Minoru Chiaki/etc.

Genre: Drama/action/adventure

Producer country/region: Japan

Language: Japanese

Release Date: 1954-04-26(Japan)

Running time: 207 mins / 160 mins (international) / 150 mins (UK first release) / 190 mins (UK first release) / 141 mins (US first release) / 203 mins (US first release)

The story is set at the end of the Warring States period in Japan, when many samurai become mountain thieves who plunder homes.
 * Synopsis

A village is often robbed by wild samurai. When the villagers learn that wild samurai plan to attack after the autumn harvest, they are fed up and decide to go outside to find samurai to help them resist the bandits.

The village was so poor that the samurai were paid only white rice every day. The elders said that they would invite "hungry samurai", but how could a hungry samurai fight a bandit? However, the villagers actually moved six warriors without walls, chivalry and benevolence, plus the chrysanthemum of the self-described warrior, seven people decided to defend the village. Seven samurai led the peasants to prepare for war, building defenses, digging trenches, and clearing the troops. During this period, various conflicts between samurai and peasants emerged and reconciled one by one. At last, the samurai and the peasants fought against the bandit and paid a heavy price. Only three of the seven samurai survived.

When the warriors left the village after the war, Shimada Kanbei, the leader of the warriors, couldn't help lamenting: "This is also a defeat... it's not the warriors who won, it's the peasants."

The story takes place during the Warring States period in Japan, around 1587, when Hideyoshi comes to power. At that time, Japan had been fighting a civil war for more than 100 years. The society was in chaos and there were a lot of bandits and banditry. Although samurai were also nobles, they had no property and could only live on their salaries. If the protected lords were killed or fired, they could only become ronin. The ronin will either find a new master, become a bodyguard for money, or become a bandit. In the film, the leader of the mountain thieves the villagers have to deal with must be a samurai. And as the war continued, the small vassal town fell, so there were more ronin.
 * Related history

Although the Samurai class is not rich, they are all noble elites. While practicing martial arts since childhood, cultural learning is also indispensable, including calligraphy, painting, tea ceremony, chess and so on. This was not until the Meiji Restoration 300 years later, when the hierarchy was eliminated, that peasants had surnames. As a result, many strange surnames appeared in Japan, which were all made up by themselves.

The idea of using warriors to protect the peasants is one of the oddities of the film, which is different from the Chinese warrior who fights the strong and helps the weak. The core of the bushido spirit is to use their lives to protect people who are worth protecting. They may never have thought of protecting inferior peasants, or they may just be angry that noble warriors are reduced to bandits.

1. The Seven Samurai As Shimada Kanbei, the leader of the Seven Samurai, said, they had no fame or fortune in helping the peasants fight against the bandits. Certainly not for the purpose of "filling the stomach during the meal". Except that Kikuchihiro is a fake warrior because he is the son of a peasant to fight, others simply believe in Bushido and sympathize with the peasants. They defend the honor of the samurai sword with their lives, and in the age of the film, they are a group of people in decline, they are the last ideal of Bushido.
 * Appreciation

Shimada Kanbei said to Katsushirō, "When I was young, I was just like you. You wanted to practice your martial arts skills, go into battle, and finally become the Lord of a city and a land. But just thinking like that, your hair turned white. My father and mother are gone, and I have no land on which to rest."

This was the fate of the samurai. This is every age without ideals, to idealists the greatest irony.

At that time, Bushido was gradually being forgotten, and some samurai could not even eat food. As the musket gradually took the place of the samurai sword, the lofty and lonely ideals handed down from the era of cold weapons had become obsolete, and they were still clinging to them needlessly. Like the wind, they leave the land and the peasants who gave them birth to pursue the righteousness of the world, so elegant yet so ethereal.

The Times abandoned them mercilessly, they are also in the solar terms and ideal departure from The Times.

2. The era and the musket The warriors are like the wind, but they blow and sweep through the land, never moving. The peasants are always with the land and live forever.

They just blew past, they raised flags and dust. Only after that, no one remembers.

Wind and rain appear in many places in the film, and also represent the irresistible fate of the irreversible changes of The Times.

Another symbol is the musket. All four samurai were killed by muskets. In the face of hot weapons that could kill people from a few hundred meters away, the sword was so far behind The Times that even the warriors themselves had to snatch the enemy's muskets for their own use.

The musket is a sign of advancing times. In the overbearing, such as easy to walk in front of the musket, the aesthetic classic Bushido seems so fragile. No one can stop the wheel of history at a time when noble classical heroism has been destroyed by The Times. Four of the seven samurai who tried to hold on have been ruthlessly crushed by the wheels of history and destiny.

It was not the bandit, nor the peasant, nor the musket that defeated the seven warriors. But helpless times and destiny.