I only just saw this, but try this link and take a look. It’s by the Japan Foundation and well, I can’t draw and I can’t program in Flash by myself, so I don’t want to repeat anything that might be done here.
What I don’t know, being a hardened veteran, is how much this will help people in intermediate levels of learning. By all means, I want to hear how it works out for you. But that may be asking too much.
Still, enjoy the link and the site. It’s there to be used. Use it.
The English translation of this throws me WAY off. When I wrote a rant about this show (link in spoiler section), I got the name wrong. It’s an odd name, and here’s why.
Usually, hero is eiyuu.
A “yuusha” can be thought of as a hero too but, the word brave is used a lot (like Indian braves, etc). So saying “heroes” in the English name just throws me further off. That and I could use an editor, but I’m on my own. Anyway!
For my end of fall 2010 anime season reviews, I will be using spoiler spaces very liberally, even when not actually dealing with actual spoilers. That’s fine – this is for people who want a retrospective where I say what was good and bad with honesty and robustness.
However, I will put some basic facts up front:
The score comes down a couple of pegs for the depressing, incomplete plot. It comes down only a couple of pegs because these characters are fantastic, the production values are really impressive, and one of the knocks is simply that we need more of this so that we can see how it ends.
And now, the rest.
When all is said and done, I do recommend seeing this show. Not for the plot, which saddens me. But for the characters I really have taken to love and care for. I really hate the fact many of them get such a terribly rough ride, but it’s not over yet, in many senses.
The point is, the experience is there. There is a lot of art here, and it should be experienced, enjoyed and treasured for what it is. I trust that you, too, will be wanting to see more when all is said and done.
Seven Samurai is known to students of movie-making for its introduction or popularization of a variety if filming techniques, particularly for the use of visual imagery to represent one aspect of the story without resorting to words. It is known to critics as a masterpiece of renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Finally, it is known to fans of film as one of the greatest samurai films of all time – perhaps the greatest.
From a cultural perspective, Seven Samurai is not only a contribution to Japanese (and global) culture in and of itself; its trappings are thoroughly Japanese, set in historical Japan (the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States Period), but its narrative is steeped in the American western. It is a tale of good, evil, and a great deal of gray.
The introduction to the film’s plot lays out good and evil. On the “evil” side are a band of ronin under a nameless leader that have joined together to plunder villages of their harvests, inflicting yet another hardship upon the village at the heart of the movie. The good people, as they are viewed by Kurosawa himself and by the movie plot, are beset by taxes, forced labor, and now bandits that threaten to destroy them – for that is the price of resistance, and these people naturally want to resist being pillaged.
The Warring States Period saw many villages rebel as part of the Ikko Ikki (一向一揆) movement. The words essentially mean fully fledged insurrection. As a result of the period’s great political and military instability, numerous villages were permitted a wide amount of autonomy so long as they paid their taxes (in rice). And so it is here: a village that acts as a group. It is not so much a democracy as a small tribe, with an elder acting as a chief, but nonetheless, decisions are by the village, for the village.
The peasants mourn their lot and discuss appealing to the magistrate for help, but the whole point of autonomy was so that villages would pay their taxes and stay out of the hair of magistrates who are occupied with bigger problems. Furthermore, in such a difficult time, sending men to defend every village assaulted by bandits would be spreading precious armed men thin. The villagers predict the magistrate will be deaf to their cries for good reason.
So, their elder tells them they will hire samurai.
But what samurai? All that they had was rice for a temporary job. No money. Granted, official retainers were all paid in rice anyway – but money was rising in importance very rapidly, so risking your life for some dinky little village seemed not a good idea without a monetary reward. Or, failing that, so much rice that it could be used for currency – and the villagers didn’t have that level to use here. Certainly not in this time of crisis.
So their elder tells them to go find hungry samurai.
And so it begins.
The search itself is quite a captivating part of the film. Being peasants, they don’t have a clue what is good in a samurai, but they happen upon the film’s chief protagonist, Kambei, cutting off his samurai top knot without hesitation and having his head shaved and his clothing altered to that of a monk. Kambei, a serious Zen practitioner, passes as a monk very well, and uses his guise to trick his way into a hut to rescue a child held hostage by a thief.
This act of selfless charity defines the character, who is a wise veteran “of many losing battles,” so he claims, who eschews all ideas of glory, but who takes pity upon the village when it is pointed out to him that he is being served rice by those who would deny themselves rice and eat coarser millet instead, all for the forlorn hope that someone, anyone, would save their village.
And so, forming a debt of honor, Kambei raises his bowl to the peasants in thanks, and tells them that this rice will not go to waste.
The vast majority of the samurai presented in this part of the film are haughty, vain, prideful, and scornful of weakness, poverty, and unwanted charity. These are not who Kurosawa considers to be heroes whatsoever, and indeed they were not; they were samurai, and that is not the same thing.
Yet out of the samurai passing through the well traveled town where the peasants had gone to search, an unlikely band of seven are formed, led by Kambei himself, who will Fight Bandits For Food, but the food is just a convenient excuse. Really, it is to fight to protect the Good People from the Bad Ronin, because that is right and just, and because when push really comes to shove, it’s a more pure cause than fighting for flag, the dollar coin, or a retainer fee.
Katsushiro is a young samurai, handsome and well dressed, untested by real battle but eager to learn from a courageous and mature master like Kambei. This puts Kambei in a difficult position initially, but Kambei knows a minimum of seven will be needed, and Katsushiro’s sincerity will be a virtue.
Gorohei is an archer of some skill who becomes the second in command of the group. He assists with planning and strategy. What impresses him is Kambei’s character, for while the peasants certainly arouse some sympathy from him, it is that a man of Kambei’s wisdom and stature is willing to go this far to help them that inspires him to assist.
Shichirojo is an old friend and subordinate of Kambei’s who survived one of Kambei’s losing battles, if quite narrowly. Meeting Kambei by chance, he resumes his former role, even though his former commander tells him in all truth, this could be the fight that does them in. But loyalty takes him far, and if you are going to die, you might as well do it beside the people you choose.
Heihachi is introduced to us viewers as a samurai willing to chop wood for food. Gorohei calls his bluff about being better at chopping men… but Heihachi is certainly a samurai who will work for food. He also has a lighthearted and sensible attitude, not wanting to die nobly if there is no necessity to do so.
Kyuzo is a man of great fencing skill who easily earns Kambei’s full respect and admiration as a man devoted to nothing higher than the absolute perfection of his craft. Initially declining Kambei’s offer to join the group, he changes his mind, for if one is truly devoted to mastering his craft, the banner one fights under matters not; it is the battle itself. Or put simply, with someone like Kambei giving it a serious go, why not?
Finally, Kikuchiyo, played by the great Toshiro Mifune. is essentially a SINO – Samurai In Name Only. He has a forged pedigree to “prove” it, too. Bearing an over-sized sword (to compensate for the fact he’s not a samurai), Kambei sees right through him. Nonetheless, he pushes his way into the group, searching for acceptance from real samurai.
Kikuchiyo is a window into this world for us, the viewing audience. He is at once a buffoon, but also a tough and hardy man whose courage under fire proves second to none. It is important to note that during much of this period, samurai hailed from any background; it is only late in the period that all class mobility was rendered illegal, and enforcing this thoroughly required a more stable country that did not yet exist. At any rate, Kikuchiyo may not be a samurai by blood; if he was not born samurai, he certainly died samurai.
A reader wishing to pick up on cultural issues may want to re-read these bios and understand that each character represents an aspect of what Kurosawa believed to be heroic, with the fact they are samurai (or Samurai In Name Only) as a detail, an issue of culture and history but not character and worth as a human being.
The most “gray” part of the film is where Kikuchiyo comes into a house in the village with the samurai lodging, draped in pieces of samurai armor that he says he found by pulling up floorboards. His peasant wisdom held that you can find the most incredible things under the floors of peasants who cling to the image of poverty and having nothing. (This pearl of wisdom actually comes up later, but it is not the point here.)
Kambei and others look at Kikuchiyo like he is wearing human hides cut from dead fellow samurai. Finally, out of a mixture of disgust and understanding that the buffoonish Kikuchiyo simply didn’t know, they explain to him that there is only one way the villagers could have such armor: by murdering traveling samurai.
This does not, however, undermine the perceived goodness of the Good People of the village whatsoever. Their cowardice, their fearfulness, and yes, even their disdain of samurai and the murdering of traveling samurai in the past, these are all absorbed by a filter of understanding and sympathy for their plight: they are weak people, banding together in a group for survival, and they are doing whatever that survival seems to require. Acting in the director’s stead, Kikuchiyo explains precisely these facts to the offended samurai.
In another scene, Kikuchiyo rings the alarm to fake a bandit attack, berating the samurai-hating villagers for running straight to the samurai for salvation. It is through his intervention that both sides come to understand that in a gray world, different people either work together, or all is reduced to ash. Stand together or be divided – with a sword.
When the daughter of one of the main villager characters falls for Katsushiro, it is the villagers, not the samurai, who are the truly outraged ones, but Kambei puts down their anger by saying that in any castle on the eve of a big battle, this is what happens. Love is part of human nature. Applaud rather than sneer. This, a very modern message, was not exactly a common message in Japanese films! But, Kurosawa put it in anyway.
Finally, when the battle is won, four samurai are dead, the villagers sing as they plant their crops, the brief romance is long forgotten, and the surviving samurai leave, reflecting that this was not a winning battle, either. It is the villagers that won, not the samurai.
What is left unsaid is two things.
And so they depart.
The battles that I am glossing over were very well done and very gripping. It’s something like a horror film, except with a lack of cheap tricks like cramped places and flickering electric lighting. Both attackers and defenders suffer setbacks leading up to a climactic final battle, one where the entertainment factor is high indeed.
Those unaccustomed to the period may find the presence of firearms surprising. Although not exactly common in general, the big victors of the era got that way through the skillful adoption of gunpowder weapons from Western contacts and a budding domestic manufacturing industry. This was long forgotten – or made irrelevant – by the time of the Meiji Restoration, where samurai continually renounced the use of firearms to engage the enemy by sword alone, going to their deaths.
In this sense, Seven Samurai presents a much more “real” sense of the era, in microcosm, than modern era popular culture would give credit for. Even though it is not Kambei’s group that uses guns, their use, while some may feel is quite cowardly (an impression not exactly discouraged here), was not historically impossible in the slightest. Rare, yes. Unheard of? Not at all.
Ultimately, Seven Samurai is revered because before being anything else, it is simply a great film, with great acting, great directing, and a great story. Samurai make a great attraction, but the setting is simply the stage: the story is the human heroism at work, heroism that goes unrewarded without any legacy except the survival of the village.
But the village belongs to the villagers, not the samurai. The samurai are as if foreigners in their own country, a transient, temporary group of warriors who, for many different reasons and in many different ways, fought and died in the innumerable, nameless battles of the era, and not just the ones chronicled in the history books.
That is actually the best description of the samurai that I can possibly give you. The advantage of watching the film is that no one has to tell you. You can just see and experience it for yourself.
That is culture.
Now, very serious ninja fanatics may know, or suspect, that the word shinobi, used as a synonym for ninja (even by the Japanese), is derived from the verb shinobu (忍ぶ、しのぶ), meaning to hide (and also, to endure, but that is not the focus here).
Incidentally, ninja is 忍者, so the kanji for ninja is simply an “on reading” of the same kanji, whereas “shinobu” is from the “kun reading” (native Japanese) of the kanji.
Anyway, that’s not really the point.
This compound verb, shinobi komu, is a combination of “shinobu” and “komu.” The latter means, and this is my estimation more than any firm rule, to place / to insert. It is used in the sense of packing.
Combined with the shinobu verb, the dictionary will say that this means to creep in/ to steal in.
I would submit that there are even better ways to think of this: to infiltrate / to embed (oneself).
In other words, to infiltrate the enemy’s camp/ to embed oneself in the enemy’s camp.
This is a good and proper reading of the Japanese intent.
This compound verb is used when someone has entered a place that ought to have been secure, and the occupants of that place are/ were caught unaware. Even if the infiltration is discovered, the term will still be used – in a past tense – to refer to what the intruder did.
This is not the same thing as an “internal spy” betraying; it means an outsider who has somehow managed to evade security.
Thus, this is very much a term that would be used in ninja contexts, as well as special forces, anime villains, and so on and so forth. The term gets around, and has such a nice and special ring to it that I consider it good to know. – J
The word はっきり (hakkiri) exists only in hiragana.This does not mean it is unimportant. Rather, it simply means that its roots are entirely native Japanese.
This word is most often pressed into service as a “suru” (する) verb, which means, adding “to do” (or conjugations thereof) at the end. So, we get this:
hakkiri suru
This means, to make clear, to make plain, to make distinct.
In other words, to make things plain, to make things clear.
Annoyed townsperson: “All I saw at the time was a red hat… ah!! はっきりした!! I know exactly who the thief is now!!”
This uses a past form (“hakkiri shita”) to say, outside of English grammatical order, that it is plain, and clear, what was true in the past.
Put another way:
Random townsperson: “All I saw at the time was a red hat…. ah!! I know exactly who the thief is! I’m sure of it!!”
Now, to hakkiri suru is to make something plain in the present and near future. Other verb conjugations can be used to further refine the use.
If you want to hakkiri sasetai, this is adding saseru + tai. This means, you want something made clear… by someone else.
This isn’t just a phrase used in detective mysteries (though it is). One of the most important themes in Japanese popular culture is sincerity, after all. People want to see others face up to their feelings (because that’s hard) and bring drama to a conclusion.
For example, by having the main heroine confess her love to the main hero. Or something.
Romantic plots are something that the audience wants made hakkiri by the end of a show. They are not always, and audiences are usually disappointed if that is the case.
Following the Genpei War (the subject of The Tale of Genji), which gave rise to the Bafuku (government said to be run out of a general’s tent rather than a palace), the Imperial line was subject to intense internal squabbles.
I’m sure these links will provide great reading to those interested, so please, give the writer some love.
My point in bringing attention to these events is to make plain that the decline of the Emperors’ grip on direct power did not continue by some kind of accident. As summarized in my Concise History of the Samurai, the samurai became influential as central power decayed. Power struggles within the Imperial family did nothing to discourage the notion that the writ of the sword and bow meant a lot more in the here and now, regardless of history or lip service.
After all, when you try to get the attention of “the Emperor,” who are you getting? The actual Emperor? The regent? Is there only one regent? The Emperor’s mother, who is the real power behind the throne (or thinks she is)? Who constitutes “the Emperor” for the purposes of real power?
When it’s like that, with competing factions having allies and enemies strewn across the entire country, it’s easier to understand why loyalty to one’s lord and constant readiness to engage in armed conflict were highly prized features among samurai retainers.
In video game settings (ゲームの設定)…
Sound is サウンド (saundo).
Stereo is ステレオ (sutereo).
Monoaural is モノラル (monoraru).
The last one sounds like “monooral” as it is written in katakana.
I know I’m going to get into some controversial territory here, but it is for a good cause. This is, after all, called The Japanese Culture Blog. It is about appreciation of culture, and Japan has it.
My “people,” the Acadians of Nova Scotia, are said to have a culture. They have customs and traditions dating back hundreds of years; they have folk costumes that have been promoted as cultural legacy since the writing of the poem Evangeline which founded the consciousness of Acadians as a people rather than just a bunch of exiled French colonists, some of whom came crawling back to Nova Scotia, others who did not, and became the Cajuns. They have food specialties, local dialects, and various quirks.
But this is not culture.
Customs and traditions are just that. Crafts and folk costumes and local songs and so on, if there is a word for it, it is art.
Let’s take the Japanese word for culture: 文化 (bunka) . The first part represents the written word, and can refer to sentences, text, or more broadly, literature. (Thus, the written word.) The second part is like -ization in English. In other words, it makes “bunka” into that which is derived from the written word.
In other words, it is the trappings and legacies of civilization.
A bunch of isolated fishing, trapping and logging communities do not constitute civilization.
Consequently, and I do not mean this in any kind of mean way, but it is, to me, the plain truth: my people have no culture.
As a young man, this was greatly distressing to me on a fundamental level. My mind and my very bones cry out for culture, for the trappings of civilization, for things which are greater than houses lining a road running parallel to the coastline with the occasional store, fish processing plant and wood mill to break up the houses.
It is popular, in these “post-modernist” times, to treat every assembly of huts, every place where different customs and traditions and arts take place, no matter how small, as culture equal to well, to put it very bluntly, that which white people believe they hold. (I am French-Canadian and Caucasian, but I don’t have an attitude about it, god. It’s not like it ever helped me in life either. It just didn’t hurt much.)
So to again be blunt…
Of course, culture is more than monuments and landmarks. It is the complex human interaction that forms a civilized society.
Any good anime oozes culture out of every pore, whether this culture be completely fictional or based on Japan… or as often happens, is some kind of mix between the two.
Even just watching characters go to a Japanese high school adds an element of culture for foreign anime fans. It is something different that we do not have access to, so even just the curiosity and the urge to stare and take in all the tiny little details, like chores being assigned to the students according to a schedule (such as cleaning the blackboard) and the existence of “class representatives” to keep all this in line, these things are fundamentally interesting to the culturally inclined.
Now, some rather major parts of Japanese popular culture are actually taken from Chinese culture, such as the legend of Son Gokuu (“Son Goku”), the Monkey King, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. After all, in that part of Asia, China is the regional cultural megalith. Even if Japan has a lot of culture in this day and age, for virtually all of its existence it was deeply in China’s shadow.
Then you have samurai culture, which I have written about in this blog somewhat, and really, all sorts of things that just reflect a sort of detail and appreciation of human interaction, both spontaneous and ritualized within the context of culture.
Beyond this, I’d really need to get into specifics, but if you look at the images I put in my last post on anime, I think you might start to understand what someone like me sees when I look at these images.
I see culture in every tiny detail, things that are not only art, but which are part of something civilized and sophisticated built up from traditions, customs, and knowledge from not just Japan, but from all around the world, brought together in the service of a finer, higher art.
For that is what anime is: art. It is art that is finer and higher than most other forms of entertainment, for the simple reason that it draws on immense culture, often multiple real-world cultures, mixed with fiction and creativity. This is what shines through the music and visual art used in anime.
It simply wouldn’t be what it is without the culture aspect. And we wouldn’t watch it to the degree that we do without the cultural aspect. It’s simply a core part of the charm.
While other nations have no lack of artists, it is Japan’s mix of creativity and visual art involved in the cel (celluloid) animation used for anime. While hard economic times and an improvement in technology have created a great rise in the use of computer-generated graphics to supplement cel art, it is ultimately an issue of highly varied visual styles.
I say highly varied, but detractors will say things like, all anime looks alike! and, all anime characters look alike! They’re separated at birth! This criticism is not one I like to indulge in, because I can see a lot of differences in most characters, but I’m looking for them.
The Japanese style of animation is largely drawn from the rounded looks, including the rounded eyes, used in animation by Walt Disney Studios in its famous films. Certainly, this is augmented by decades of experimentation in manga, styles which are copied to the television or theater screen by hard-working animators diligently working to bring animation to life for the masses.
Still, and this is the issue that I alluded to in my first article in this series, as much as being an animator requires great skill, being a creator requires creativity that simply cannot be acquired by skill alone. This is why a flawless forgery of the work of a master painter is not regarded as equal to the original creation.
