Trivia / Seven Samurai

• Actor-Inspired Element/Method Acting: Toshiro Mifune stayed in character the entire time he was on set, and even improvised various comedic bits for his character. Kurosawa allowed it as apology for recasting Mifune on such short notice.
• Actor-Shared Background: Takashi Shimura was reportedly a descendant of samurai.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Toshiro Mifune would have played Kyûzô when there were just six samurai, but when Kikuchiyo was created as a last-minute addition to the script, the part of Kyûzô went to Seiji Miyaguchi while Mifune was recast as Kikuchiyo.
• The Cast Showoff: Kamatari Fujiwara displays some fantastic reed flute playing at the end of the film.
• Creator's Favorite: Kikuchiyo. Toshiro Mifune said that this was his favourite role to play, and he's well liked by the fans as well.
• Dueling Movies: With Godzilla (1954), another high-budget Toho epic released around the same time. Despite this, the directors of both movies were close friends.
• Executive Meddling: Toho Studios originally cut 50 minutes off the film when screening it for American distributors for fear that no American audience would be willing to sit through the entire picture. The uncut version ultimately had its American premiere on PBS in 1972 as part of the Film Odyssey series of international film classics from the Janus Films collection.
• Fatal Method Acting: A near-fatal example. Yoshio Tsuchiya, who played Rikichi, was hospitalized after filming the scene where Rikichi, Heihachi and Kikuchiyo burn down the bandits' hideout.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Akira Kurosawa did not get along well with Yoshio Inaba (Gorōbei), deriding him and yelling at him for most of the shoot. Although Inaba appeared in a minor role in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, he apparently found the experience of shooting this film so stressful that he limited the amount of film work he did after it.
  • Filming was so stressful that one point, Toshiro Mifune threatened Kurosawa with a gun.
• Inspiration for the Work: Akira Kurosawa had originally wanted to direct a film about a single day in the life of a samurai. Later, in the course of his research, he discovered a story about samurai defending farmers.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Seiji Miyaguchi, who played the taciturn samurai Kyûzô, had not touched a sword at all before this movie. Editing and careful cinematography were both used to give the impression that he was a master. Miyaguchi had been given a crash course and was so exhausted he could hardly move by the time filming started.
  • Toshiro Mifune was the best trained of all the actors on all the necessary skills, and yet was cast as the one Samurai who had no training, and had to instead act like a bumbling clown.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The only releases of the 160-minute cut on home video took place on DVD in Germany, and that's hard to come by, let alone acquire.
• Production Posse: All the Akira Kurosawa regulars are here: Toshiro Mifune, Daisuke Kato, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Eijiro Tono, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and even a young Tatsuya Nakadai in an uncredited cameo.
• Throw It In!: In one scene in which a mounted bandit is riding through town hacking at the villagers, one of the extras was hurled violently to the ground by an impact with the horse. It helped sell the scene, so it stayed.
• Troubled Production: The film was tough to make because of Akira Kurosawa's demanding directing style and disputes with the actors. Almost all the actors except for Toshiro Mifune, who got into arguments with Kurosawa constantly, were scared of him; poor Yoshio Inaba (Gorōbei) was yelled at constantly for blowing his lines. Kamatari Fujiwara insisted on playing Manzo comically when Kurosawa wanted him to play the part more seriously, until he realized later that Fujiwara had the right idea and allowed him to play the character how he wanted.
  • Filming had to be stopped several times due to a shortage of horses for the final battle sequences.
  • Yoshio Tsuchiya (Rikichi) got badly scorched and blistered by fire in the scene where Rikichi, Heihachi and Kikuchiyo were setting fire to the bandits' camp, and fainted from a blast of flame during filming. Yukiko Shimazaki, who played Rikichi's wife, also got her face covered in blisters while filming that scene as well. Shooting for the scene was considerably delayed due to a long wait for firefighters, which meant Kurosawa passed the time occasionally adding more and more fuel to the camp. When it came time to set it on fire, it grew far faster than expected, causing difficulties shooting and burning up an expensive prop.
  • Toho pulled the plug on the project several times when it ran over budget, forcing Kurosawa to go back and personally argue with the board of directors, which was convinced that Toho was making a flop.
  • The film wound up going more than four times over budget, with production stretched out to 148 days of shooting.
  • The film's final battle scene, originally scheduled to be shot at the end of summer, was shot in February in near-freezing temperatures. Mifune later recalled that he had never been so cold in his life.
  • The simultaneous production of this and Godzilla (1954) nearly forced Toho into bankruptcy.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Shinobu Hashimoto, the film originally started with the same bandits attacking another village, and the ultimate opening shot was what happened after that attack. Akira Kurosawa decided to cut the attack sequence, believing an "unassuming" start was the best way to open the film.
  • Kurosawa's original idea for the film was to make it about a day in the life of a samurai, beginning with him rising from bed, eating breakfast, going to his master's castle and ending with him making some mistake that required him to go home and kill himself to save face. Despite a good deal of research, he did not feel he had enough solid factual information to make the movie.
  • The original plan was for six samurai, but Kurosawa and the scriptwriters felt that the six serious characters they had were "a bore", so they introduced the hammy, comedic Kikuchiyo to contrast with them and cast Toshiro Mifune in the role (Mifune having originally been cast as Kyûzô).
• Working Title: According to Toshiro Mifune, the film was originally going to be called Six Samurai before the character of Kikuchiyo was added at the last minute.
• Write What You Know: Akira Kurosawa is a descendant of a samurai family with his mother's side and he was raised on stories of them, including ones that weren't very flattering.

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