Tools of Characterization

Characterization in Seven Samurai

Social Status

We live in America, where by and large we don't believe in a class system and hold fast to the notion that any man or woman can be a success if they try. Medieval Japan was a much different story, however. The caste system ruled supreme, and which one you were born into pretty much determined your life. If you were the children of farmers, you'd better get used to planting a lot of rice. If you came from samurai, you'd better be ready to learn the noble arts and master the ability to cleave a man in two with a single blow.

The characters here all reflect that hierarchy, both in their skills themselves and in the way they approach the world. The peasants are great big chickens, bemoaning their fate and generally acting like everyone is out to get them (probably because they are). The samurai are noble and dour, combining wicked-mad combat abilities with courtesy and humility the way they're expected to. The bandits are what you'd expect bandits to be: loutish, violent and ready to kill anyone at the drop of a hat. We see who these people are by the social strata they inhabit, and what rank you're born into really does tell us who the heck you are.

But at the same time, it's worth noting that the class system which defined them all so strongly was crashing to a halt during the period in which the film takes place. Peasants were acting like samurai, samurai had to do farm-work, dogs and cats were living together… it was nuts. And so even though we see how caste defines these characters, we also see how their defiance of their caste lends them a distinct personality.

The big example, of course, is Kikuchiyo, the guy born to farmers but who desperately wants to be a samurai. He's a square peg utterly uninterested in being pounded into a round hole, but his very defiance of his caste still tells us who he is. You may break out of your social standing, but you're still defined by it, and the very act of breaking out still leaves it trailing behind you in a sad little heap.

Actions

Samurai have a duty. They need to follow their code, and in fact it was by failing their code that the characters here ended up chopping wood for cold rice. They defend the village as a way of feeling like themselves again, for a chance to forget for a while that they mostly wander aimlessly in search of food. Besides that, they know how to take care of themselves, as Kyuzo shows when he cuts a local loudmouth up into fish bait.

The farmers go much the same route. Manzo's a coward, afraid that his daughter's going to get ravished by a handsome young samurai and happy to throw himself on the bandits' tender mercies to survive. Rikichi's a fighter, so he gets all gung-ho about hiring samurai even though they don't have anything to hire the samurai with. The mob grovels when danger approaches, only to stand up at the end when the samurai teach them how to defend themselves.

And the bandits? The bandits do what movie bandits have done from time immemorial: rape, loot, pillage and burn before getting cut down by the righteous hand of justice.

In every case, what the characters do defines them, and we can see who they are by the actions they take. That's important in a world like this, where the differences between good guys, bad guys, and the hapless civilians caught in the middle gets harder and harder to spot.

Appearance

Speaking of which… times are bad when this movie takes place, and we know exactly what these guys have been through by the clothes they wear. The samurai look pretty much the same as the peasants do. Their clothes are scruffy, their sandals are well-worn and they won't be walking the runway at Milan anytime soon. The only thing separating them from the peasants is the fact that they carry weapons; otherwise, everybody looks like they've been wrestling with a muddy pig for about six days.

That helps emphasize how close these figures are to each other, drawing our attention to the class walls that are suffering some serious foundational damage. But it also tells us a lot about who the samurai are and what they've been through. They're not exactly a chatty bunch, and most of them don't like to talk about what happened to them in the past (we're guessing it was uniformly ugly). But by looking at who they are, we can see the road they've traveled—every sharp stone lodged in their shoe and briar-patch-passing-for-a-bed that gave their robes a few less-than-fetching rips. It's a nice shorthand to building character, all the more important because samurai traditionally didn't go blabbing their mouths off about their background.