Samurai in Film

From Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai, to the recent box office sensation, The Last Samurai, the famed Japanese warrior, the samurai, has been the subject of hundreds of films. Classically depicted as carrying two swords and sporting a top knot (chonmage), the samurai has been portrayed not only as a warrior and expert swordsman, but as a man of discipline and principles consistent with the bushido.

Samurai films exhibit two basic dramatic styles. The jidai-geki (period drama) which are stories based on characters and how they negotiate a variety of political, personal and romantic situations and the chanbara (sword fighting films) which are action packed with dramatic sword fighting scenes. Films in the samurai genre which deal with 'ronin' (masterless samurai), demonstrate strong elements of both styles as exhibited in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961), as well as the many films about the legendary Musashi Miyamoto.

In addition to Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, Kurosawa's samurai classics, The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Sanjuro (1963) all star 'samurai incarnate,' actor Toshiro Mifune. While Kurosawa's later films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), are not based on the samurai, they are set in feudal times in which the samurai played a significant role.

Kurosawa's films greatly influenced the film industry in both Japan and the West - however during his career he gained greater notoriety and even support for his motion pictures overseas than he did at home. The Seven Samurai was the basis for American film director John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (1960); Yojimbo for A Fist full of Dollars (1964) - the first in a series of 3 'spaghetti westerns' created by Italian film director, Sergio Leone; and The Hidden Fortress which influenced George Lucas' Star Wars (1977). The parallels between the samurai and cowboy archetypes and the influence one had on the other is as evident in Kurosawa's Yojimbo as it is in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992).

During his career, Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997) starred in 134 films and played either a classic samurai or a common man of 'samurai principles' in nearly half of them. Besides his Kurosawa films, Mifune also starred in a number of Hiroshi Inagaki's samurai films including the classic, Musashi Miyamoto (1954). His reputation worldwide