Seven Samurai Themes

Samurai live and die by their duty and their code of honor, by the promises they make and their ability to stand by them. When we first meet them in Seven Samurai, they seem to have fallen down on...

The Japanese, as a nation, were losing a sense of who they were after World War II. Everything they had been taught to believe in was gone, and they had to develop a new identity much like the char...

Japan was a very restrictive culture in terms of class and caste. You didn't get to rise through the ranks to become an aristocrat. Farmers were farmers, samurai were samurai, and the family you we...

Sometimes, even when you win, you lose. In Seven Samurai, Kambei and his surviving buddies get to ponder that for a good long time in the cemetery at the end of the movie. They've stopped the bandi...

Seven Samurai takes place in a very dangerous world. There's no order, people make their own rules, and living and dying are usually day-to-day concerns. In that world, morality and ethics may feel...

The samurai spent much of their lives as warriors—real warriors fighting in extended wars. In Seven Samurai, the beleaguered village is kind of like the Mini-Me of wars for them: it's a chance fo...