
seven samurai posters
Inspired by: Seven Samurai (1954) directed by Akira Kurosawa
Watching Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”(1954), I was struck by the film’s focus on violence stemming from imperialism and inherited social hierarchies. The film uses visual culture and symbolism to communicate social divides and intersectionality. The film defines an honorable man separate from his inherited class or fortune. Instead it defines true honor through just sacrifice rather than pride. The death of an honorable samurai is visually represented through the grave which is a tall mound of dirt struck through vertically by his tall blade.
In the first poster(from the left) I depict an honorable samurai’s grave integrated into the back of the main character, Kikuchiyo, whose character grew through just sacrifice into a righteous man worthy of the samurai title.
In the second poster I depict a turning point in Kikuchiyo’s character when he is clutching a child who has just violently lost their parents. He cries out “This baby is me” and the audience quite chillingly finally understands his background. The cloud-like upper background is directly appropriated from the print Kyûzô, an established honorable samurai character wears throughout the film. He is the type of man Kikuchiyo aspires to become. The pattern also doubles as a reference to the visual of samurai graves acting as spoiler indicating four of the seven samurai pass away.
In the third poster(from the left) I depict a scene where a woman who had been taken from her home and raped choses to stay inside of a burning building rather than return home with her husband. I designed the building shape to represent the triangle shape from the flag symbolizing the seven samurai. The triangle represents Kikuchiyo who was not born in the right socio-economic class to be an accepted samurai with the other six circles representing the more conventional samurai.







