---
title: 'Seven Samurai (1954)'
type: 'film'
director: 'Akira Kurosawa'
released: '1954-01-01'
runtime_minutes: 207
genres:
  - 'Drama'
  - 'Action'
  - 'Adventure'
  - 'History'
countries:
  - 'Japan'
themes:
  - 'Order and Chaos'
  - 'The Rehearsal Room'
canonical: 'https://cinepixo.com/movies/seven-samurai-1954'
review_count: 1
fandom_rating: '9.50/10'
fandom_stars: '4.75/5'
imdb: 'https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047478/'
publisher: 'CinePixo'
---

# Seven Samurai (1954)

1954 · 207 min · Drama, Action, Adventure, History · Japan

Original title: 七人の侍

## Synopsis

Seven Samurai  is a 1954 Japanese epic jidaigeki film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. Starring Toshirō Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima and Yukiko Shimazaki, it tells the story of a village of farmers who hire seven samurai to help defend their village from bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. Influential in world cinema, Seven Samurai is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.

## Credits

- **Director:** [Akira Kurosawa](https://cinepixo.com/people/akira-kurosawa)
- **Screenplay:** [Akira Kurosawa](https://cinepixo.com/people/akira-kurosawa), [Shinobu Hashimoto](https://cinepixo.com/people/shinobu-hashimoto), [Hideo Oguni](https://cinepixo.com/people/hideo-oguni)
- **Editor:** [Akira Kurosawa](https://cinepixo.com/people/akira-kurosawa)
- **Original Music Composer:** [Fumio Hayasaka](https://cinepixo.com/people/fumio-hayasaka)
- **Producer:** [Sōjirō Motoki](https://cinepixo.com/people/sojiro-motoki)
- **Director of Photography:** [Asakazu Nakai](https://cinepixo.com/people/asakazu-nakai)

## Cast

- [Daisuke Katō](https://cinepixo.com/people/daisuke-kato) as Shichirōji
- [Isao Kimura](https://cinepixo.com/people/isao-kimura) as Katsushirō Okamoto
- [Minoru Chiaki](https://cinepixo.com/people/minoru-chiaki) as Heihachi Hayashida
- [Sachio Sakai](https://cinepixo.com/people/sachio-sakai) as a coolie
- [Yoshio Kosugi](https://cinepixo.com/people/yoshio-kosugi) as Mosuke
- [Haruo Nakajima](https://cinepixo.com/people/haruo-nakajima) as a bandit scout
- [Shinpei Takagi](https://cinepixo.com/people/shinpei-takagi) as the bandit chief
- [Isao Yamagata](https://cinepixo.com/people/isao-yamagata)
- [Seiji Miyaguchi](https://cinepixo.com/people/seiji-miyaguchi) as Kyūzō
- [Keiko Tsushima](https://cinepixo.com/people/keiko-tsushima) as Shino
- [Takashi Shimura](https://cinepixo.com/people/takashi-shimura) as Kambei Shimada
- [Atsushi Watanabe](https://cinepixo.com/people/atsushi-watanabe) as a bun seller
- [Yukiko Shimazaki](https://cinepixo.com/people/yukiko-shimazaki) as Rikichi's wife
- [Toshirō Mifune](https://cinepixo.com/people/toshiro-mifune) as Kikuchiyo
- [Tatsuya Nakadai](https://cinepixo.com/people/tatsuya-nakadai) as a samurai

## Themes & motifs

- [Order and Chaos](https://cinepixo.com/topics/order-and-chaos) (theme) — The plan is the film: a village fortified, a battle rehearsed to the last fence post, and then rain and mud in which the plan's own authors are killed.
- [The Rehearsal Room](https://cinepixo.com/topics/the-rehearsal-room) (motif) — Kambei drills farmers into a defence, and Kurosawa gives the training as much screen time as the battle, because the training is the argument.

Editorial, not imported: every axis and every sentence above was written here.

## Criticism on CinePixo

Fandom rating: **9.50/10** (4.75 of 5) from 1 review — the plain average of every published rating.

- **9.5/10** — [A Village Worth Three and a Half Hours](https://cinepixo.com/reviews/a-village-worth-three-and-a-half-hours) by Marcus Reid, 2026-08-14
  > Seven Samurai earns its epic length one face and one practical decision at a time, until defending a village feels less like legend than the exhausting work of learning to belong to other people.

Source: https://cinepixo.com/movies/seven-samurai-1954
Film facts: Wikidata (Q189540); synopsis from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Reviews, themes and notes are the work of this site's members.