Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa dir, Toho Films, 1954. Photo the author.
Preface: The big screen
When I was young, movies were big. The Continental Theatre on Austin Street in Forest Hills, Queens, which opened in 1963, was a relatively small movie house, with 300 seats and a screen about 25 feet wide. The Cinemart on Metropolitan Avenue had five times as many seats, and a screen nearly the size of a tennis court. When I saw Saturday Night Fever there in 1977, I flinched with each syncopated strep by John Travolta during the iconic, “Stayin’ Alive” title sequence.
Since moving to Norwich, Harriet and I have made almost weekly pilgrimages to Cinema City, the local art house. As well as new releases, they show classics I’ve seen many times before, mostly on TV or a laptop. Though no theatre seat is as comfortable as your own bed, seeing people, places, and situations larger than life is uniquely pleasurable. Last week, we saw The Seven Samurai (1954), directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film thrilled me when I first saw it in the ‘70s and did again last week in Norwich. It offers lessons in the struggle against Trump and his team of bandits.
Lesson one: “Find hungry samurai.”
In the movie, set in Japan in 1586, poor villagers learn by accident that bandits plan to steal their crop of barley as soon as it’s harvested. Knowing nothing of fighting, they decide to hire some Samurai to protect them. But how will they pay the warriors? Their answer: “Hire hungry Samurai,” and support them with warm beds and rice meals.
The villagers’ first recruit is Kambei, an elder rōnin (displaced or masterless samurai) whose wisdom inspires allegiance. He in turn identifies six other samurai, each of whom has a different, equally admirable trait. The master swordsman Kyūzō, for example, is quiet to the point of taciturnity. He stands at the perimeter of any gathering and his voice is rarely heard. But his acts of skill and daring speak for themselves. The youngest and least experienced samurai, the handsome Katsushirō, models himself after Kyūzō, however his poise is perturbed by his love for Shino, a shy and pretty villager, disguised as a boy for protection.
The seventh samurai, Kikuchiyo, played by the charismatic Toshiro Mifune, is not a samurai at all but a homeless wannabe. His clowning amuses the villagers, but when the battle begins, his fearlessness, inspires them. (Aside: I was so pretentious a teenager that when anybody asked me who was my favorite movie actor, I’d reply “Toshiro Mifune.”) Kikuchiyo is a shifter, a liaison between peasant farmers (that’s his origin) and higher status fighters. After the burial of the first samurai killed by the bandits, Kikuchiyo plants on the tomb a flag painted by fellow fighter, Gorobai. It represents the samurai as circles and Kikuchiyo as a triangle. Below them is the syllable ta in the Hiragana writing system, which represents “rice field” and thus by metonymy, vulnerable peasants. The flag is a symbol of class solidarity between the peasants, the orphaned and placeless Kikuchiyo, and the masterless samurai – all oppose the feudal order that failed to feed or protect them.
Whether in Sengoku era Japan or the contemporary U.S., resistance is born of necessity. Faced with invasion, natural disaster, or economic calamity, people find a way to fight back. But resistance can enable tyranny as much as democracy. Millions of American workers, furious at austerity for the many and largesse for the few, twice rejected capitalist democracy and installed a fascist narcissist as president. They stood mostly silent as he appointed to his cabinet a dirty dozen billionaire bandits including DOGE head, Elon Musk; Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant; Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick; and Education Secretary, Linda McMahon.
If there is to be a broad-based, democratic resistance, Kurosawa’s film suggests, the “hungry Samurai” who lead it must mobilize desire as well as necessity. The seven samurai offered villagers a future of pride, camaraderie, self-reliance and abundance. In the current U.S., Democratic party and civil society leaders must themselves act like “hungry samurai” providing inspiring images of a future in which education and healthcare are treated as natural rights, work and leisure become rewarding and fulfilling for all, old age is secure, and the natural environment cherished and protected. AOC, Bernie and UAW leader Shawn Fain may be hungry samurai. We need four more and better ones. When the seven call an assembly, we (the poor farmers) need to stand beside them, accept their guidance, and pull together to protect our village from the bandits.
Lesson two: “If you only think of yourself, you’ll only destroy yourself.”
The Seven Samurai instruct that greed and self-interest are useless in a fight, while altruism and collaboration are essential. At the start of the movie, the farmers squabble and turn on each other. As the narrative progresses, they gain skills needed to build fortifications, undertake patrols and sentry duty, and use sharpened bamboo poles for self-defense and even attack. By the end, they are a formidable fighting force able to quickly dismount, trap, and kill any bandits who manage to gallop into the village.
Some of the last scenes in the film show villagers planting rice. They are seen in medium shots as well as close-ups, revealing both the collective nature of the activity, and the villagers’ individual satisfaction. The sequence recalls Soviet films, such as Sergei Eisenstein’s The General Line (1929) and Aleksander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) about collective agriculture, but without the Russians’ tendentiousness. Though not usually described as politically radical, The Seven Samurai is indebted to the Marxism Kurosawa learned at the pre-war Proletarian Artists’ League, where the future director enrolled in 1928. Later in life, he wrote:
“There was a fever among young people. They did not know how to use their energies. I would say that almost all the intellectual urban youth in that period were at one time or another Marxists. They were not satisfied with the government and its policies. I was one of them. In reflection, we were also enjoying the thrill of being Marxists.”
The Japanese “Marx boys” [Marukusu bōi] had no shortage of books and magazines to consult, from Kawakami Hajime’s popular Introduction to Marx’s Capital (Shihonron nyūmon, 1919), to the proletarian literature magazines Literary Front (Bungei Sensen) and Battleflag (Senki) which by 1930 had combined circulations of over 50,000. Almost until the invasion of China in 1937, Japan had among the most robust and sophisticated Marxist traditions in the world.
Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai arises from the long history of Japanese Marxist debates over what’s called “the national question”; that is, whether the Meiji Restoration (1868) represented a bourgeois-capitalist transformation of the country that prepared it for socialist revolution; or if the nation, well into the 20th century, remained economically and politically backward, still semi-feudal. If that was the case, a slower, more deliberate revolutionary strategy was called for. Kurosawa’s film, produced two decades after the political repression of the dictatorial Shōwa era, suggests the former — that even as far back as the 16th century, peasant consciousness was moving in the direction of collectivism and solidarity.
The Samurai motto, embraced by the villagers, “if you only think of yourself, you’ll only destroy yourself,” recalls Marx’s “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need” from the Critique of the Gotha Program (1875). Both propose that selfishness is destructive of the individual and collective, while selflessness assures prosperity for both.
Artist unknown, Enroll in the proletarian Art Academy., 1930. Photographer unknown.
Kurosawa’s politics in Samurai was discreet. The Red purges undertaken by Douglas McArthur and the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers in the immediate post-war years prevented anything else. Commercial viability also mandated understatement. Even the title of the film plays down politics. It reminds us of traditional Japanese Buddhist tales of the seven gods of good fortune, illustrated by Katsushika Hokusai in the early 19th century.
Katsushika Hokusai, The Seven Gods of Good Fortune, c. 1808-27, Metropolitan Museum (Public domain).
But the film’s lesson about working class solidarity nevertheless brushed against the grain of the emerging era of rapid economic development and self-enrichment. Its message to Americans today is obvious: That in the face of fascist onslaughts against legal and educational institutions, immigrants, women, students and the environment, no one can afford to think only about themselves or their institution – that way lies destruction. “In a battle,” the six samurai tell the seventh, Kikuchiyo, “you never fight individual actions.”
Lessons three: “A samurai must be able to run fast.”
Among the first lessons the elder Kambei imparts to the young Katsushirō is that a good samurai must be able to run fast. The nugget is surprising because we expect samurai to stand their ground and fight, not run away. However, the proposition was quickly validated. When the samurai first entered the village, they were ignored by the farmers, fearful of their vaunted protectors. That’s when Kikuchiyo sounded an alarm by banging on the end of a thick length of bamboo. Were the bandits coming? Everybody started running, including the samurai, who with their speed and acumen, quickly discovered there was no threat. Kikuchiyo simply wanted to focus the community’s attention on the danger they faced and the seven samurai, poised to help protect them.
Later, after the real battle started, running was key to defending the village. The samurai and villagers sprinted from one lookout post to another to warn defenders of the timing and intensity of the next onslaught. Speed was also of the essence during patrols outside their barricades – the samurai had to be able to sprint away from any bandits they spotted and tuck back behind their fortifications. Kurosawa’s movie might have been titled The Seven Speedy Samurai! Protecting yourself by running away means not just saving your own life, but the community that depends on you.
Protesters and demonstrators in the U.S. today face police and private security forces trained to target, arrest and sometimes deport them. That’s why protesters’ best defense in many cases is their feet. If they see police or other security forces massing nearby – sometimes armed with shields, clubs, and zip ties as well as standard issue guns, tasers and handcuffs – they should speedily run away. University expulsion, imprisonment or deportation don’t advance Palestinian statehood, environmental protection, immigrant rights, or the rule of law. Escape allows protesters to fight another day, and build an even bigger coalition, less likely to be targeted by police. The defeat of fascism requires both speed and the force of numbers.
Lesson four: “A good fort needs a gap.”
Like lesson four, lesson three, is counter intuitive. The best forts are impregnable; a gap is a weakness that an enemy can exploit, or as the saying goes, “a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” But not in all cases: The main element of the samurai’s carefully drawn defensive plan was a barrier around the perimeter of the village composed in some areas of a tight skein of logs, branches and vines, and in others of water deep enough that a horse and rider can’t easily ford. But equally important for the village’s defense is a gap in the barrier, wide enough for two of three horses to pass through, but small enough for defenders to close off with their bodies, swords and bamboo spears. The idea was to let in just a few bandits at a time, close off the opening and then swarm and kill the isolated ones.
The strategy worked brilliantly, even with the heavy rains and rising waters that obscured vision and slowed villagers and samurai during the final battle. After the fighting ended, Kambei crossed off the last of the 40 circles on his tally sheet of bandits. The battle was over, and the village was saved. A similar defensive strategy – absent the swords and sharpened bamboo – can help protect today’s threatened protesters, non-profits and other anti-Trump organizations.
Rallies, campus encampments, and demonstrations today, such as those organized by 50501, need openings in their defenses. A gap encourages police to enter at a single, observable spot, giving protesters a better chance to make their escape through another gap. “Always know your available exits” is among the most important pieces of advice demonstration organizers impart to protesters. A contest between students and police is not a fair fight, and unless getting arrested is a carefully considered tactic, flight is the best response to police calls to disperse, or to the appearance of masses of armed officers. Protesters can always come back!
But the instruction “a good fort needs a gap” is also valuable for organizations not undertaking protests or direct action. The Trump administration’s assault on civil rights, and educational, legal, environmental, and art organizations are so numerous and intrusive, that non-profits and other civil society groups must pick their battles, allowing some bandits to pass through gaps in their defenses, the better to protect the rest of the organization.
In some cases, Trump is his own worst enemy and must be allowed or even encouraged to proceed unhampered. The most obvious example is tariffs. The implementation of broad-based tariffs, especially against China – if they proceed — will increase inflation, decrease consumer spending and reduce business investment. The result will be “stagflation,” the combination of stagnation (low business investment and high unemployment) and inflation, like that which persisted in the mid and late 1970s and doomed the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Such an eventuality will lead to a crushing Republican defeat in the midterms, and the beginning of the end of Trump’s authoritarian rule. Stagflation will also reduce energy use, providing a respite in the rising use of fossil fuels and release of greenhouse gasses. I remember, in the late 1970s, driving across upstate New York and New England, seeing abandoned homes, farms and factories reclaimed by nature. It was both a depressing and wonderful sight; within a decade, development was supercharged and ugliness and waste – worse than ever before — blotted many parts of the landscape.
The goal of any successful Democratic Party must be to seize upon the economic crisis caused by Trump and the Republicans and implement policies that support and protect workers while hobbling multinational corporations – fossil fuel, aerospace, armament, AI, media and financial – that are in the ascendant today. Excess profit taxes are better than tariffs at protecting good paying U.S. jobs; fees charged for every stock, monetary and commodity trade will reduce speculation and unproductive profit seeking; much higher marginal income tax rates will reduce income inequality; a carbon tax (with funds directed for tax rebates to workers and green investment) can reduce the release of greenhouse gases and other pollutants; limiting patent and copyright protection can reduce exploitative, rent-seeking behavior; Medicare for all will lower healthcare costs, reduce illness, and reverse the decline in life expectancy.
Trump and his bandits are running headlong into gaps in the tattered democratic infrastructure. Courts and lawyers are not strong enough to stop them, but villagers and hungry samurai – supported by law — can. That work will require greater effort at organizing and collective action – rallies, boycotts, and strikes — than we have seen so far. The resistance will have to “run fast,” create a “good fort” with a gap, and reject “individual action.” The coming battle – waged without swords or sharpened bamboo poles – will be worth joining and then later watching on a large screen.
