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108-473: Seven Samurai ( Japanese : 七人の侍 , Hepburn : Shichinin no Samurai ) is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai action film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni . Taking place in 1586 in the Sengoku period of Japanese history , it follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who seek to hire samurai to combat bandits who will return after

216-409: A Pyrrhic victory. It is not intended to be complete but to illustrate the concept. The term is used as an analogy in business, politics and sport to describe struggles that end up ruining the victor. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr commented on the necessity of coercion in preserving the course of justice by warning, Moral reason must learn how to make coercion its ally without running the risk of

324-463: A baby rescued by Kikuchiyo. The bandits then besiege the village, but many are killed as the defenders thwart every attack. The bandits possess three matchlock muskets . Kyūzō ventures out alone and 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

432-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down

540-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )

648-504: A film specifically adapted from Seven Samurai . Director John Sturges took Seven Samurai and adapted it to the Old West, with the samurai replaced by gunslingers . Many of The Magnificent Seven ' s scenes mirror those of Seven Samurai . The film's title itself comes from the US localized title of Seven Samurai , which was initially released under the title The Magnificent Seven in

756-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as

864-639: A limited HDR10 home video release by the British Film Institute in October 2024. Seven Samurai was well received by Japanese audiences, earning a distribution rental income of ¥268 million , within the first twelve months of its release. It was Japan's third- highest-grossing film of 1954, out-grossing Godzilla , which had sold 9.7 million tickets and grossed an inflation-adjusted equivalent of ¥13.7 billion or $ 105,000,000 (equivalent to $ 196,000,000 in 2023) by 1998. Overseas,

972-726: A list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker." It was also listed by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky as one of his top ten favorite films. Kurosawa both directed and edited many of his films, including Seven Samurai . In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed Seven Samurai as the 33rd-best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its members. It was voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC 's 2018 poll of 209 critics in 43 countries. In 2019, when Time Out polled film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors, Seven Samurai

1080-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it

1188-590: A much larger pool of replacements, so the casualties had less impact on the Roman war effort than the losses had on the campaign of King Pyrrhus. The report is often quoted as: Ne ego si iterum eodem modo vicero, sine ullo milite Epirum revertar. If I achieve such a victory again, I shall return to Epirus without any soldier. or If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined. This list comprises examples of battles that ended in

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1296-572: A quote from Pyrrhus of Epirus , whose triumph against the Romans in the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC destroyed much of his forces, forcing the end of his campaign. A "Pyrrhic victory" is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus , whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC and the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC, during the Pyrrhic War . After

1404-466: A reputation with his crew as the "world's greatest editor" because of his practice of editing late at night throughout the shooting. He described this as a practical necessity that is incomprehensible to most directors, who on major productions spent at least several months with their editors assembling and cutting the film after shooting is completed. Kurosawa had a heightened interest in the soundtracks of his films. For Seven Samurai , he collaborated for

1512-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),

1620-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate

1728-619: A six-month-long 4K restoration, along with Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952). As the whereabouts of Seven Samurai' s original negative are unknown, second-generation fine-grain positive and third-generation duplicate negative elements were used. It is available as a Digital Cinema Package from the British Film Institute . This version was first released on 4K Blu-ray in Japan as standard-dynamic-range video in June 2023 and will have

1836-452: A taciturn master swordsman whom Katsushirō regards with awe. Kikuchiyo, a wild and eccentric samurai-poser, is eventually accepted as well after attempts to drive him away fail. Arriving at the village, the samurai and farmers slowly begin to trust each other. Katsushirō meets Shino, a farmer's daughter disguised as a boy by her father, and begins a relationship with her despite knowing the difference in their social classes prohibits it. Later,

1944-425: A team of warriors to defend their farming settlement. Snyder has described the movie as "Seven Samurai in space." Seven Swords (2005), a Hong Kong wuxia film produced and directed by Tsui Hark , has a plot revolving around seven warriors helping villagers to defend against mercenaries in homage to Seven Samurai . Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )

2052-736: A third camera "as a kind of guerrilla unit". This method made for very complicated shoots, for which Kurosawa choreographed the movement of all three cameras by using diagrams. The martial arts choreography for the film was led by Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū . Initially Junzo Sasamori of the Ono-ha Itto-ryu worked with Sugino, but he was asked by the Ministry of Education to teach in Europe during production. During filming, Kurosawa quickly earned

2160-680: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of

2268-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of

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2376-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,

2484-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing

2592-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number

2700-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider

2808-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto

2916-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to

3024-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through

3132-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey

3240-439: Is now considered one of the greatest films in history. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , the film holds a perfect approval rating of 100% based on 95 reviews, with an average rating of 9.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Arguably Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, The Seven Samurai is an epic adventure classic with an engrossing story, memorable characters, and stunning action sequences that make it one of

3348-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of

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3456-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and

3564-665: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as

3672-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and

3780-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have

3888-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns

3996-486: The Star Wars Anthology film Rogue One (2016). The Clone Wars episode "Bounty Hunters" (2008) pays direct homage to Akira Kurosawa by adapting the film's plot, as does The Mandalorian episode " Chapter 4: Sanctuary " (2019). Director Zack Snyder credited Seven Samurai as being an inspiration for his 2023 space opera film Rebel Moon , which shares the plot element of villagers assembling

4104-563: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered

4212-710: The Akira . Released in 1975 Indian movie Sholay was also inspired from same genre. The plot of Seven Samurai was re-worked for The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983), an Italian sword-and-sandal film. The 2004 video game Seven Samurai 20XX is a re-telling of Seven Samurai in a futuristic setting. The steampunk anime series Samurai 7 (2004) is based on Seven Samurai . Some film critics have noted similarities between Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998) and Seven Samurai . Several elements from Seven Samurai are also argued to have been adapted for Star Wars (1977). Plot elements of Seven Samurai are also used in

4320-492: The BFI 's Sight & Sound and Rotten Tomatoes polls. It was also voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC 's 2018 international critics' poll. It is regarded as one of the most "remade, reworked, and referenced" films in cinema. In 1586, a bandit gang discusses raiding a mountain village, but their chief decides to wait until after the harvest for a better haul. The villagers overhear this and turn to Gisaku,

4428-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in

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4536-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than

4644-567: The Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven genre set in 1960s Iran." Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) is an American science fiction film directed by Jimmy T. Murakami and produced by Roger Corman . The film, intended as a " Magnificent Seven in outer space", is based on the plots of The Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai . The movie acknowledges its debt to Seven Samurai by calling the protagonist's homeworld Akir and its inhabitants

4752-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of

4860-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to

4968-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),

5076-564: The 12th greatest film of all time in 1999. In 2000, the film was ranked at No.23 in The Village Voice ' s 100 Greatest Films list. In January 2002, the film was voted at No. 81 on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics . In 2007, the film was ranked at No. 3 by The Guardian ' s readers' poll on its list of "40 greatest foreign films of all time". The film

5184-407: The 1950s and 60s, many of the village conditions depicted in the movie were still familiar to audiences in 1954. At 207 minutes, including a five-minute intermission with music, Seven Samurai was the longest film of Kurosawa's career. Fearing that international audiences would be unwilling to sit through the entire picture, Toho Studios, alongside Kurosawa himself, originally removed 50 minutes from

5292-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,

5400-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently

5508-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand

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5616-723: The United States in 1955. However, in an interview with R. B. Gadi, Kurosawa expressed how "the American copy of The Magnificent Seven is a disappointment, although entertaining. It is not a version of Seven Samurai ". Stephen Prince argues that considering samurai films and Westerns respond to different cultures and contexts, what Kurosawa found useful was not their content but rather he was inspired by their levels of syntactic movement, framing, form and grammar. The Invincible Six (1970), an American action film directed by Jean Negulesco , has been described as "a knockoff of

5724-572: The United States. Prior to the advent of DVD, various edited versions were distributed on video, but most DVDs and Blu-rays contain Kurosawa's complete original version, including its five-minute intermission. Since 2006, the Criterion Collection 's US releases have featured their own exclusive 2K restoration, whereas most others, including all non-US Blu-rays, have an older HD transfer from Toho in Japan. In 2016, Toho carried out

5832-432: The action to fill the screen and place the audience right in the middle of it. "If I had filmed it in the traditional shot-by-shot method, there was no guarantee that any action could be repeated in exactly the same way twice." He found it to be very effective and he later used it in movies that were less action-oriented. His method was to put one camera in the most orthodox shooting position, another camera for quick shots and

5940-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which

6048-416: The bandits will make one final assault due to their dwindling numbers. Meanwhile, Katsushirō and Shino's relationship is discovered by her father, who is enraged that her virginity has been taken and beats her. Kambei and the villagers intervene; Shichirōji reasons that such behavior is normal before battle and that they should be forgiven. The next morning, the defenders allow the remaining bandits to enter

6156-529: The box-office income for the film's 1956 North American release is currently unknown. The film's 2002 re-release grossed $ 271,841 in the United States and $ 4,124 in France. At the 2002 Kurosawa & Mifune Festival in the United States, the film grossed $ 561,692. This adds up to at least $ 833,533 grossed in the United States. Other European re-releases between 1997-2018 sold 27,627 tickets. While it initially received mixed reviews from Western critics, Seven Samurai

6264-458: The confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war. In both Epirote victories, the Romans suffered greater casualties, but they had

6372-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there

6480-440: The film for international distribution & reshowing in Japan. This "General Release" cut distributed around the world until the 1990s; since then, the complete version is usually seen. The film was released in the United States in 1955, initially under the title The Magnificent Seven . Following the 1960 release of the American remake The Magnificent Seven , the Japanese film's title reverted to its original Seven Samurai in

6588-487: The film in New York Daily News and rated it four stars. She noted it was very different from Kurosawa's previous film Rashomon (1950) in that it was "an action picture" but Kurosawa "has exceeded himself". She praised Kurosawa's storytelling for "his deep perception of human nature" and "awareness that no two people are alike," his "sensitive, knowing direction" that "never lets audiences lose interest" in

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6696-410: The film was originally going to be called Six Samurai , with Mifune playing the role of Kyūzō. During the six-week scriptwriting process, Kurosawa and his screenwriters realized that "six sober samurai were a bore—they needed a character that was more off-the-wall". Kurosawa recast Mifune as Kikuchiyo and gave him creative license to improvise in his performance. During the six-week scriptwriting process,

6804-538: The film was ranked 11th. In the Sight & Sound directors' poll, it was voted 10th in 1992 and number nine in 2002. It ranked 17th on the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll , in both cases being tied with Kurosawa's own Rashomon (1950). It ranked 17th in 2012 Sight & Sound directors' poll. In 1998, the film was ranked 5th in Time Out magazine's Top 100 Films (Centenary). Entertainment Weekly voted it

6912-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure

7020-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had

7128-465: The harvest to steal their crops. At the time, the film was the most expensive film made in Japan. It took a year to shoot and faced many difficulties. It was the second-highest-grossing domestic film in Japan in 1954. Many reviews compared the film to westerns . Seven Samurai is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films in cinema history. Since its release, it has consistently ranked highly in critics' lists of greatest films, such as

7236-524: The industry. It has remained highly influential, often seen as one of the most "remade, reworked, referenced" films in cinema. There have been pachinko machines based on Seven Samurai in Japan. Seven Samurai pachinko machines have sold 94,000 units in Japan as of March 2018, equivalent to an estimated $ 470 million in gross revenue. Its influence can be most strongly felt in the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960),

7344-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,

7452-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system

7560-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of

7668-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,

7776-450: 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 kidnapped and made a concubine during a previous raid. Upon seeing Rikichi, she runs back into a burning hut to her death. Heihachi is killed by a gunshot while trying to stop Rikichi from pursuing her. At Heihachi's funeral,

7884-402: The latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius : The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him . For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found

7992-501: The main hero with an undertaking unrelated to the main plot. Other plot devices such as the reluctant hero, romance between a local woman and the youngest hero, and the nervousness of the common citizenry, had appeared in other films before this, but were combined in this film. Kurosawa refused to shoot the peasant village at Toho Studios and had a complete set constructed at Tagata on the Izu Peninsula , Shizuoka . Although

8100-401: The most influential films ever made". It currently ranks 18th on their action / adventure voting list, and third on their top 100 art house and international films. On Metacritic, it received a 98 out of 100 based on 7 critic reviews. On Sensacine, the film received a 4.3 out of 5 based on 3 critic reviews. Upon its initial US release as The Magnificent Seven , film critic Wanda Hale reviewed

8208-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by

8316-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with

8424-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,

8532-427: The planting as Katsushiro contemplates whether to stay or go. Kambei declares to Shichirōji that it is another pyrrhic victory for the samurai: "The victory belongs to those peasants. Not to us." Akira Kurosawa had originally wanted to direct a film about a single day in the life of a samurai. Later, in the course of his research, he discovered a story about samurai defending farmers. According to actor Toshiro Mifune,

8640-675: The plot, his talent for making the battle scenes and violent action "terrifically exciting to audiences" and his ability to naturally weave humor and romance between the serious action. She praised the "inspired performances" of the cast, including Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune, among other actors. Many critics outside of Japan have compared the film to westerns . Bosley Crowther , writing for The New York Times , compared it to High Noon Film historian Peter Cowie quoted Kurosawa as saying, "Good westerns are liked by everyone. Since humans are weak, they want to see good people and great heroes. Westerns have been done over and over again, and in

8748-465: The process, a kind of grammar has evolved. I have learned from this grammar of the western." Cowie continues this thought by saying, "That Seven Samurai can be so seamlessly transposed to an American setting underlines how carefully Kurosawa had assimilated this grammar." In 1982, it was voted third in the Sight & Sound critics' poll of greatest films . In the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' poll

8856-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as

8964-423: The saddened villagers are inspired by Kikuchiyo, who raises a banner Heihachi made to represent the six samurai, Kikuchiyo, and the village. When the bandits finally arrive, they are confounded by the new fortifications, which include a moat and high wooden fences. They 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

9072-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning

9180-480: 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 angrily retorts that samurai are responsible for much of the suffering farmers endure, revealing he is an orphaned farmer's son. The samurai's anger turns to shame. Kambei arms the villagers with bamboo spears, organizes them into squads, and trains them. Three bandit scouts are spotted; two are killed, while

9288-466: The screenwriters were not allowed visitors or phone calls. Kurosawa and the writers were innovative in refining the theme of the assembly of heroic characters to perform a mission. According to Michael Jeck's DVD commentary , Seven Samurai was among the first films to use the now-common plot element of the recruiting and gathering of heroes into a team to accomplish a specific goal, a device used in later films such as The Guns of Navarone , Sholay ,

9396-478: The seventh and penultimate time with friend and composer Fumio Hayasaka . Hayasaka was already seriously ill when Kurosawa visited him during the filming of Seven Samurai and he died of tuberculosis on October 15, 1955, at the age of 41, while Kurosawa was filming I Live in Fear , his next film, which Hayasaka was unable to complete. In analyzing the film's accuracy to sixteenth century Japan, Philip Kemp discusses

9504-476: The similarities between the samurai and the bandits. Kenneth Turan notes that the long runtime "reflects the entirety of the agricultural year, from planting to gorgeous blossoming to harvesting." Historian David Conrad notes that at the time of the movie's release, nearly half of the Japanese population was still employed in agriculture. Although farm incomes were already rising as part of the Japanese economic miracle that would transform rural and urban lives in

9612-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )

9720-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this

9828-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This

9936-526: The studio had already heavily invested in the production and would allow him to complete the picture. The film's final battle scene, originally scheduled to be shot at the end of summer, was shot in February in near-freezing temperatures. Mifune later recalled that he had never been so cold in his life. Through the creative freedom provided by the studio, Kurosawa made use of telephoto lenses , which were rare in 1954, as well as multiple cameras which allowed

10044-419: The studio protested against the increased production costs, Kurosawa was adamant that "the quality of the set influences the quality of the actors' performances... For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting but encourages that feeling of authenticity." He also spoke of the "intense labour" of making the film: "It rained all the time; we didn't have enough horses. It

10152-564: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Pyrrhic victory The phrase originates from

10260-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,

10368-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of

10476-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It

10584-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending

10692-501: The village and ambush them. As the battle nears its end, the bandit chief hides in the women's hut and shoots Kyūzō dead with his musket. An enraged Kikuchiyo charges in and is shot as well, but kills the chief before dying. The remaining outlaws are slain. Afterward, Kambei, Katsushirō and Shichirōji stand in front of the funeral mounds of their comrades, watching the joyful villagers sing while planting their crops. Katsushirō and Shino meet one last time, but Shino walks past him to join in

10800-565: The village elder and miller. Gisaku plans to hire samurai to protect the village. Since they have no money and can only offer food as payment, Gisaku advises the villagers to find hungry samurai. Traveling to a nearby town, the villagers find Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin , whom they see rescuing 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 reluctantly agrees. He then recruits his old comrade-in-arms Shichirōji, along with Gorobei, Heihachi, and Kyūzō,

10908-407: The western remake The Magnificent Seven , and Pixar's animated film A Bug's Life . Film critic Roger Ebert speculates in his review that the sequence introducing the leader Kambei (in which the samurai shaves off his topknot, a sign of honor among samurai, in order to pose as a monk to rescue a boy from a kidnapper) could be the origin of the practice, now common in action movies, of introducing

11016-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or

11124-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular

11232-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,

11340-462: Was just the kind of picture that is impossible to make in this country." Long before it was released, the film had already become a topic of wide discussion. After three months of pre-production, it had 148 shooting days spread out over a year—four times the span covered in the original budget, which eventually came to almost half a million dollars. Toho Studios closed down production at least twice. Each time, Kurosawa calmly went fishing, reasoning that

11448-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )

11556-536: Was voted at No. 57 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008. In 2009 the film was voted at No. 2 on the list of The Greatest Japanese Films of All Time by Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo . Seven Samurai was ranked number one on Empire magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. Film critic Roger Ebert added it to his list of Great Movies in 2001. Martin Scorsese included it on

11664-406: Was voted the second-best action film of all time. In 2021, the film was ranked at number 7 on Time Out magazine's list of "The 100 Best Movies of All Time". As of 2017, Seven Samurai is the best-selling home video title ever released by the British Film Institute . Seven Samurai was a technical and creative watershed that became Japan's highest-grossing movie and set a new standard for

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