Of all the samurai in Akira Kurosawa's great film, Seven Samurai, my favorite is Kyuzo, the master swordsman, played by one of his regular actors, Seiji Miyaguchi. He is the most skilled of the samurai, but also the leastegotistical and seldf-serving. In many ways, with my website, Cosmoetica, I know what it's like to be Kyuzo- overlooked, but the best at what you do, but also not really giving a damn what others think.
In my review, I describe the most telling scene in the film for the character:
Almost as good an acting job as Shimura’s is done by Ko Kimura as Katsushiro. Watch the scene where he confronts the great swordsman Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi)- in yet another bravura performance that shows less is more, after Kyuzo has singlehandedly killed two bandits and returned with a needed gun. Katsushiro says little, save to tell his hero he is ‘great’. Kyuzo restrains a smile of satisfaction. Then, when Kyuzo is later killed by a gunshot, by a craven bandit hiding in a house during the rainstorm, look at the utter devastation on Kimura’s character’s face. Similarly, look at his reaction to killing a bandit- the first man he has ever killed, or even to some of the earlier shots that show him ruminating on the fact that a life as a samurai is not all glamour. Let a Mark Hamill try to act like that!
It's an interesting thing that the best of the samurai is the one who seeks the least glory. He persists for a higher purpose, one even his samurai mates do not understand. But that is part of what greatness is. It is persisting, despite the naysayers, despite even friends and family not truly getting what the reasons are, or why they are right.
This sort of demeanor is exacerbated by the fact that there are many delusional people, with no talent, who boast of their skills in assorted fields, and delude themselves, and often a few others (see Bukowski, Charles), into thinking they are great, merely because they get celebrity, for some reason.
But, often the really great people get the most nasty harassers and foes. This is because there is something in the makeup of the average that fears and hates greatness, for it highlights their own failings, even to themselves. But, like Kyuzo, the truly great do not care, which only enrages their detractors further.
Early in the film, when Kyuzo makes his introduction, he is in a fake swordfight with a bad swordsman. The lesser man declares their fight a draw, while Kyuzo states that if the blades were real, he'd be dead. The loser persists in antagonizing Kyuzo until he is forced to kill him. Similarly, I get hundreds of email threats and harassment every month, and do not reply to any, save for occasional essays that highlight the silliest of them. Again, this only makes the harassers persist.
But, the Kyuzo in me will persist longer. Only the new technology of guns can bring him down, and only the inevitability of death will do me in, but, there, the game is rigged. Excelsior!
