A chance remark from one of my senpai during Aikido practice revealed that he’d never seen “The Seven Samurai.”
Obviously, I began planning a “watch party” to rectify this, inviting both my Aikido classmates and karate students. Starting after class on a Friday, and lasting until almost midnight, a small group of us gathered around my TV with a few pizzas and adult beverages to enjoy Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, “The Seven Samurai” couldn’t help but influence the way movies were made thereafter, but does it have anything to teach us about traditional martial arts training?
Here’s a hint - Of course it does. 😉
First things first: If you haven’t seen it either, stop right now and watch it. It’s black & white, in Japanese (with subtitles), and almost four hours long. If that sounds daunting, ask yourself: In the last week alone, did you spend at least four hours dressed up in black and white and yelling at people in Japanese? Yeah, me too … so pop some popcorn, dim the lights, and buckle up.
Set in 16th-century Japan, the film opens with a poor village learning that bandits plan to raid their settlement at the end of the harvest season and steal their grain. Unable to defend themselves (or so they thought), the villagers send a few of their number into town to recruit a few samurai to mount a defense for them.
Lesson #1 - Ask for help when you need it.
The villagers knew they were out of their depth, requiring skills they did not have, so they looked for experts for assistance. Learning karate is no different.
When speaking of his masters in his autobiography, Funakoshi tells us that his masters, Azato and Itosu “suffered from no petty jealosy of other masters. They would present me to teachers of their acquaintance, urging me to learn from teach the technique at which he excelled.”
If you need help with something, ask your instructors. That’s literally their job. And if they’re any good at their job, they already know you need work on it and will be thrilled that you’re asking for extra help.
The farmers fear that they may be unable to find samurai willing to work for food and gratitude. But times were tough in the Sengoku period, and many samurai had fallen on hard times. The trick, of course, would be knowing how to identify samurai of good character with the skills they’d need to mount an effective defense.
Then, through a stroke of luck, they witness a samurai (Kambei Shimada, played by Takashi Shimura) use a cunning ruse to overcome a bandit who’d taken a seven-year-old hostage. More importantly, he did so for no reward other than seeing justice done.
Before the villagers can recruit Kambei, a young samurai (Katsuhiro) pledges himself to Kambei. Meanwhile, a disrespectful rogue (“Kikuchiyo”, played by Toshiro Mifune) attaches himself to Kambei as well, claiming to be of samurai status, but his behavior leads Kambei is doubt this claim.
(Note: Kikuchiyo is not a samurai, but I’m going to include him when making reference to the group of heroes as “the samurai” because it’s easier than writing “the samurai and Kikuchiyo” every time.)
Kambei decides they’ll need at least seven samurai to defend the village. Though he believes Katsuhiro is too young and inexperienced to join the band, he allows him to assist in recruiting the others. Shichiroji, Kambei’s old associate, is recruited by reputation alone. Heihachi is chosen based on his wood-chopping ability and sense of humor (seriously). Kyuzo is selected for his mastery of the sword.
Then Kambei devises a test to help “interview” applicants. He has Katsuhiro hide behind the door with a club and attack as they enter the room. Kikuchiyo, trying again to join the group, fails the test and is knocked senseless, but a samurai named Gorobei passes the test by sensing the ambush from outside the building, and is invited to join the group.
Lesson #2 - Avoiding violence is the highest form of self defense.
The niju-kun tells us “There is no first strike in karate” and “Do not think of winning; think, rather, of not losing”, both of which encourage us to avoid conflict whenever possible.
This brings to mind the story of Tsukahara Bokuden, a master of the sword who, when challenged by another samurai, claimed to study the “no-sword style.” The bully insisted on a duel, so Bokuden suggested they take a small boat to a nearby island to fight in privacy.
But after the other samurai got in the boat, Bokuden simply pushed the boat away from the dock, avoiding the fight by leaving the other samurai adrift. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it was the inspiration for the “art of fighting without fighting” scene in Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon.”
Kambei’s four recruits then convince him to include Katsuhiro. Though numbering only six, the harvest drew near, so the company begins their journey to the village. Along the way, they notice Kikuchiyo following them, still wanting to join their adventure.
When they reach the village, people are all in hiding, fearful of the samurai they’ve hired for help. They remain hidden until an alarm sounds, indicating the approach of bandits. At this, the villagers come out of hiding and beg the samurai for help, only to learn that there are no bandits. Kikuchyo had sounded a false alarm to lure them out of hiding and, for his cleverness, the samurai finally accept him into the group.
Lesson #3 - Don’t be afraid to trick your students into learning.
Sometimes tricking your students into learning something is the best way to make a lesson “stick.”
My favorite example of this is teaching the 360° turn into the horizontal bottom-fist strike at move #10 in Heian Sandan. This is notoriously difficult for students to learn, because they treat it like something they’ve never done before. But instead of drilling this turn over and over, I “trick” them into realizing they already know how.
First we practice the “long turn” turn near the end of Taikyoku Shodan. I insist that they not step out while turning, but instead fully complete the 270° turn and only then step out into stance … in this case, front stance.
Then we practice the similar turn near the end of Heian Shodan. Again I have them fully complete the 270° turn and only then step out into stance … in this case, back stance.
Next we practice the similar turn turn near the end of Heian Nidan by fully completing the 270° turn and only then stepping out into stance … in this case, a straight-line front stance.
Finally, we come to Heian Sandan and I explain that this is totally different because it’s a 360° turn into kiba-dachi, right?
WRONG! It’s exactly the same! It’s still a 270° turn followed by stepping out into stance … it’s just kiba-dachi this time. Maintaining balance in the 270° turn is the hard part, but at this point they’ve already had three katas teach them how to do that. All they need to do is step in a different direction afterwards.
The next part of the movie deals with training the villagers to defend themselves and two major themes appear:
Most of the samurai begin training the villagers to use makeshift bamboo spears. There’s an interesting sub-plot here where we learn that the villagers have been picking off runaway samurai over the years and keeping their weapons. The samurai are appalled at this, but Kikuchiyo rebukes them for their hypocrisy, claiming that the farmers have been driven to do what they must to survive in the face of the cruelties visited upon them by others, including the samurai, whose wars frequently claimed the homes, crops, and lives of villagers like these.
Meanwhile, Kambei and Gorobei draw up an overall strategy, mapping out the village and planning defensive fortifications. In so doing, they decide that three of houses in the village are too far away from the rest and cannot be defended. They must be abandoned for the good of the others. This causes a minor mutiny among those living in the outlying houses, who throw down their spears and prepare to defend their homes on their own. At this, Kambei forces the mutineers to rejoin the rest of the village, demanding that they must all stand together as one.
Lesson #4 - Sacrifice is unavoidable.
Karate training has an “opportunity cost” - the loss of whatever else you might have done if you hadn’t come to the dojo.
Some people have pretty good reasons for not coming. Maybe they’re sick, maybe they need to focus on school, or maybe they’re bingeing NCIS while snarfing down a bag of chips. In any case, the trick is understanding that “opportunity cost” goes both ways. Whatever your excuse for skipping class, good or bad, it means you didn’t get the training you would have gotten if you had gone.
Getting good at anything means sacrificing other things. That’s why I tell my students, “It’s not my job to judge your reason for being absent, but it is my job to judge the consequences on test day.”
Upon learning the bandits’ hideout is nearby, three of the samurai stage a raid, setting it on fire as the bandits sleep and using the confusion to kill several as they escape. During the battle, we learn that the bandits have three muskets. This is important for two reasons: First, guns were introduced to Japan only forty years before the movie is set, and were somewhat rare in this period, giving the bandits a technological advantage. Second, one of the samurai (Heihachi) is killed by gunfire.
Lesson #5 - Don’t bring a katana to a musket fight.
This is an important lesson because – spoilers – all four of the samurai who die in the movie are killed by gunfire. Even Kyuzo, the master swordsman, was gunned down from a distance that made his skill irrelevant. Know your skills, yes, but also know your limitations.
This will not end well…
Then comes the main bandit attack on the village. Using the fortifications they’ve constructed, and a human wall of spears, the samurai and villagers proceed to whittle away at the bandit’s numbers. They allow only one or two bandits into the village at a time, then surround and eliminate them. Rinse and repeat.
Lesson #6 - There is only one enemy, and he is right in front of you.
This basic rule of kaisai no genri helps us understand what’s going on in kata. In essence, turning to face a new direction in kata does not imply we’re being attacked by a gang of assailants. Rather, it’s like punctuation between suggestions for how to handle different situations with the same assailant.
Now think about that in reverse. If dealing with multiple attackers is hard, and kata already gives you the skills to handle one enemy at a time, you should use any means available to you (footwork, the environment, etc.) to isolate them and “pick them off” one at a time.
This was Kambei’s strategy too. A handful of spearmen couldn’t defend themselves against a several dozen horsemen, but could easily handle one at a time.
By the end of the battle, all of the bandits, a handful of villagers, and three more of the samurai, are killed.
As the movie draws to a close, we see Kambei, Shichiroji, and Katsuhiro standing near the graves of their four fallen comrades, then turning to watch the happy villagers working together to plant their next crop. Kambei remarks, “We’ve lost again. No, the farmers are the winners, not us.” Indeed the villagers have been saved but, in so doing, four of the samurai have died and the rest have lost their purpose.
Lesson #7 - It’s not about you. It’s about others.
It was easy for the samurai to think they were the “main characters”, but they eventually came to learn that the villagers were. Likewise, it’s easy for karate instructors to think it’s their story, but it’s really all about the students (or should be).
None of us teaches karate to get rich, and those who do probably aren’t teaching it right. Students aren’t really “students” without an instructor, but instructors aren’t really “instructors” without students, are they? It’s a symbiotic relationship.
So there you have it: Seven lessons about karate training from Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai.” There are almost certainly more but, like the film, this post is already pretty long.
