Kurosawa Akira’s Seven Samurai: The Locas of Drama

Kurosawa Akira, whose influence on Japanese cinema remains absolute, once spoke these words: “Drama must be so true that everyone can recognize the elements of that drama within their own hearts.” Indeed, from the very beginning, his films were frequently discussed in the world of film criticism through the lens of the pursuit of realism. This issue of realism emerged with particular strength after the Second World War; it was a question actively interrogated not only by filmmakers but by photographers as well.

Seven Samurai (1954), often cited as Kurosawa’s masterpiece, is the archetypal example. What made this film revolutionary compared to conventional Japanese cinema was its introduction, for the first time, of rigorous historical verification. Japanese cinema originally possessed a unique lineage, slightly divergent from Western film history: the tradition of Kabuki. It is no exaggeration to say that early Japanese cinema was essentially the filming of Kabuki; in fact, the producers of early Japanese film grappled with the emancipation from Kabuki as a central theme, a history of tireless refinement. Consequently, the subjects and atmospheres treated in Kabuki were transplanted directly into film. There was a significant stage where the medium had to deviate from that grammar to gradually reach a pursuit of realism. particularly during the Second World War, narratives of the Samurai were heavily emphasized for the purpose of elevating national fighting spirit, yet these remained strictly within the domain of “period pieces”—films that merely used the era as subject matter. Broadly speaking, they lacked the power to press directly upon, and question, the hearts of human beings living in the present.

Until the pre-war era, due to the influence of Confucianism in Japan, there was a very strong tendency for films to center on themes of duty (giri [義理]) and human feeling (ninjo [人情]). Rather than adopting an attitude of creating works that confronted the hearts of people living through the war era within the real, there was a tendency to emphasize indescribable cultural issues. To put it simply, this was “sentiment” (jocho [情緒]). In pre-war Japanese cinema, the delicate movements of this sentiment were intense; the sentiment in Japanese films of the late 1930s, as the nation moved toward the Second World War, was more vivid and moving than even literature. However, after the defeat and into the post-war period, these sentimental aspects were mercilessly identified with the national spirit and were denied and discarded; Japan entered an oppressive era where possessing such a spirit was internationally impermissible. At this juncture, due to the existence of ambiguous concepts unilaterally defined as “Japanese spirit,” the cultural source of sentiment, nurtured throughout the Edo period, was cast away.

I believe that realism is what emerged reactively against this process of losing the unquantifiable historical capital of sentiment. Particularly symbolic was Kurosawa’s attempt to introduce the academic basis of historical verification into film for the first time. In pre-war Japanese cinema, historical accuracy was never an issue; rather, it was considered alien to the medium. Indeed, no matter how superior the historical verification, without substance, it is mere form and will never move people. In other words, Kurosawa’s magnificence lay in the fact that he did not pander to the intellectuals of the time who disguised a new era’s realism movement by simply applying historical verification to declare realism. Instead, he positioned the sentiment—the residue of the pre-war era—as his foundation, and became a pioneer in constructing a visual world where the details were forged through historical verification.

In the world of photography, this realism was led by the renowned Domon Ken, yet his realism was mere form, lacking substance. I position him as a photographer who, typically trapped by style, lost the essence; however, as Domon Ken was a heavyweight in the photography world at the time, his influence was tremendous. On the other hand, inside the intersecting worlds of Nara and Yamato, Irie Taikichi continued to take photographs earnestly, swaying neither to the left nor right by the trends of the photography world, and he magnificently expressed sentiment within the climate and landscape. It can be said that in the 1950s, this problem of realism arose in both film and photography, yet Kurosawa was able to execute a realism that did not fall into the empty forms of men like Domon.