William Prado
Professor Solis
HST 301 OL
11/19/2014

The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema
The Golden age of Japanese cinema started in the mid-1940s and lasted approximately 30 years to the end of the 1960s. It was a period marked by the end of the war that saw the defeat of Japan by America and her allies. The destruction that Japan faced with the twin bombings had left the country shaken to the roots and the young men and women wanted to find something useful to keep them busy. They found the cinema. With the advancement in technology, film directors such as Akira Kurosawa took the center stage with films that tried to teach people about harmony and restoration. Most of the films in the golden age focused on the need to prevent war and bring people together as one unique society through the preaching of peaceful coexistence. This research, therefore, focuses on the Seven Samurai film that was directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1953. Through the film, we hope to understand the concepts of the golden age of Japanese Cinema, as well as its characteristics (Tezuka 47).
Seven Samurai is a war film that depicts the struggle that human beings go through in search for freedom and emancipation. It also reveals the post war effects on the society and tries to persuade people to coexist peacefully without causing chaos (Fischer 1-65). The film directed by Akira Kurosawa and produced by Sojiro Motoki, stars Toshiro Mifume, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima and several other individuals who had a vision to produce one of the best action films ever. The story takes place in 1587 when Japan is full of warring communities. A mountain farming village gets attacked by a group of marauding bandits whose aim is to enrich by impoverishing the innocent. The farmers cannot protect themselves and continue to bear the brunt of the bandits who only appear at the harvest time to take all the farm produce away. Three of the farmers, Rikichi, Yohei and Manzo approach the village elder, Gisaku for advice on how to deal with the situation at hand. Gisaku advises them to fight for what is rightfully theirs. They have nothing to offer for protection and Gisaku advises them to look for hungry samurai who can be fed in exchange of their services.
Kambei, one of the greatest ronins of that time, rescues a boy who is about to be killed by a thief. The boy, Katsushiro, gets impressed by Kambei’s experience and wants to become his disciple. The three farmers approach Kambei, and he agrees to help them with their problem. He recruits Shichiroji and three other samurai warriors with the promise of a dollar. Kikuchiyo, another poster man, joins them, and they become a party of seven samurais.
Back in the village, the seven samurai are given a cold reception. The young girls and women are hidden away because the villagers believe the samurai will molest them. With time, the villagers get used to the samurai who build protective walls around the village and even teach them how to fight. In the midst of all the excitement, Katsuhiro captures Manzo’s lovely daughter, and all the women that had been hidden are brought back into the village. Katsushiro and the girl fall in love with each other despite strong objections from Manzo. When the bandits attack the villagers, they encounter strong resistance that they did not expect. Most of the bandits are killed or injured, and the rest escaped with their lives. Later on, it emerges that some of the villagers do not want the samurai to stay among them. One such person decides to betray the whole village and the bandits capture everybody. Kambei and his band of samurai are allowed to leave but without their guns. However, he decides to turn back, and another final battle ensues that leads to the death of all the bandits as well as four of the seven samurai. In the end, it becomes clear that Katsushiro is an orphan from a farming village who has always resented farming because of hard labor. Katsushiro finally agrees to remain in the village with his young love, and the villagers win the battle.
As one of the best action movies in the Japanese Golden cinema age, there are lots of things that capture one’s attention in the film. To begin with, the quality of the pictures is quite amazing despite the fact that everything is in black and white. Akira Kurosawa employs the use of technology to improve the quality of his pictures in a way that reveals total dedication in an age where technology is still poor. Through these pictures, the director presents a three-hour film that depicts the society in the brink of war. The first half of the film creates the setting of the conflict between the villagers and the bandits. It also introduces the seven samurai and gives them important tasks that are supposed to be carried out. The second half of the film then rolls out how the conflict progresses until all the bandits are killed. As had been stated above, one realizes that the golden age of cinema in Japan strongly reveals the destruction that the war creates in the society. It presents the suffering that the innocent women and children must go through as a result of any conflict of a large magnitude.
In the first confrontation between the village farmers and the bandits, I saw an innocent man being gunned down in cold blood in front of the whole village. His distraught wife then ran and threw her arms around his body crying for help without receiving any. In the same scene, I could see helpless villagers staring at the dust in the wake of the bandits with the feeling of shame written on their faces. I believe that the golden age of cinema in Japan has to do with these feelings. In the wake of the twin bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese woke up with shock and helplessness as they gazed at their beloved countrymen and cities lying in rubble. The same feeling is presented in the cinemas of the golden age with each director trying to remind the audience of their history and origins (Tezuka 70).
The romance in the film also signifies a lot. I realized that the young woman, who is Manzo’s daughter, got punished severely because she was in love with the samurai Katsushiro. However, it later emerges that she and Katsushiro end up being together. This is linked to the transformation and change that Akira Kurosawa tries to build in the film. It is also a sign of restoration and a new beginning for the society. In the film, it is apparent that the farmers got rid of their major challenge to peaceful coexistence and progress. They can now plant their crops without fear of being robbed or famished by people who do not want to work for their upkeep. The golden age cinema can also be linked to the arrival of a fresh beginning and a new start in life for many people. In the 1950s, Japan was recovering from its economic collapse brought about by the Second World War (Fischer 35). At the same time, most people and especially the cinema audiences were trying to grapple with the rising cost of living and other social problems that the country was undergoing. In a way, the cinemas of that age were meant to give them strength and encourage them to continue with the struggle.
After watching the film I realized that Akira was trying to focus on the Japanese society at that moment in time. The samurai were being portrayed as the saviors who had come to help in the reconstruction process. They were there to ensure that the society did not lose its hope that it had held for a long time. Just in the same way as Kambei and his team of samurai had stopped the bandits from terrorizing the villagers, the 1950s Japanese society was being informed to look up to their leaders (Philips and Stringer 22). The leaders were then supposed to lead them through the harsh economic times into prosperity. Again, I do believe that the film was meant to initiate and form of radicalism and empowerment among the audience in the Japanese society so as to start thinking positively about their lives. Through such thinking, they were supposed to develop better strategies of survival in the economic hardship.
The cinematography of the film, done by Yoshio Sugino, is quite amazing. I loved the way each scene was short separately and then all of them combined to produce a continuous sequence of motion pictures. This is a job done by professionals in the golden age of cinema in Japan. Akira Korosawa should indeed take credit as one of the masters of cinema production in the golden age of cinema in Japan. When I viewed the film, it occurred to me that the cinematic that was used was endowed with a modernist complexity that might not have been revealed in films of other times before the golden age. The use of ellipsis helps dramatize certain scenes in the plot. For example, the hotel scene where Kambei faces the enraged Katsuhiro at gun point tends to dramatize the bravery of a real samurai warrior. The warrior is then depicted as an individual whose only goal in life is to fight and save multitudes that are being oppressed by the powerful in the society. The use of 360- degree space also got me thinking about the quality of cameras at that period. It looked like Akira Kurosawa wanted the film to move at a leisurely space but still manage to unfold at the speed of life. This was essential in capturing all the essence of life in the film (Chan et al 34-35).
I also loved the fact that the film tried to maintain some of the culture of the Japanese people especially in the combat scenes. Women and children were exempted from the cruelty of massacres. In the film, I did not see any woman or child die at the hands of a gun man or a bandit. Instead, the samurai soldiers encouraged the children to view their fathers in a positive light as the individuals who were ready to sacrifice their lives for the sakes of their children. Perhaps, the director was getting back at the individuals who carried out the attacks on the Japanese soil using bombs that left thousands of children and women dead. In light of all these, I could see that the golden age of cinema in Japan was trying to inform individuals of the true acts of war and how the society can resolve issues without harming innocent children and women (Shipman 12-14).
In conclusion, I must say that the Seven Samurai is a film that touches on the history and the life of people in the society. It gives hope and encourages the audience to survive even during hard times after the collapse of Japanese economy post World War two. With limited resources, the film director was able to give his audience what they needed at the right time when things looked gloomy. Through the film, the Japanese society got to celebrate one of the best action films of all time, thanks to the golden age.

Works Cited
Tezuka, Yoshiharu. ‘Internationalization of Japanese Cinema: How Japan Was Different from the West and above Asia before Globalization.’ Japanese Cinema Goes Global: Film workers' Journeys. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Print.
Chan, Felicia., et al. Genre in Asian film and television new approaches. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print
Philips, Alastair, Stringer, Julian. Japanese cinema: texts and contexts. New York: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Fischer, J. Michael. “Culture and cultural analysis as experimental systems”. Cultural anthropology, v 22n1, 2007. 1-65. Print
Shipman, David. The story of cinema: a complete narrative history, from the beginnings to the present. New York: St Martin Press, 2007. Print.