instead of talking about the history of the Samurai's facial armour,
the happuri,(3D-printed "black-lacquered iron" cheek and chin guard),
I'll focus on the Samurai, Kikuchiyo, from the famous 1954 Japanese samurai adventure drama,
The Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(The Magnificent Seven, 1960, was specifically adapted from The Seven Samurai.
Many of The Magnificent Seven's scenes mirror those of Seven Samurai.
Battle Beyond the Stars, 1980, produced by Roger Corman,
was partly based on the plots of The Seven Samurai too.
Some film critics have noted similarities between Pixar's A Bug's Life and Seven Samurai!
)
The story takes place in 1586 during the Sengoku Period about a village of farmers that hire seven ronin (masterless samurai)
to fight off bandits.
The famous Toshiro Mifune starred as Kikuchiyo(our subject matter), the humorous character who initially claims to be a samurai.
Mercurial and temperamental, he identifies with the villagers and their plight,
and eventually revealed to his group that he is in fact not a samurai, but a peasant
and also proved his worth in the end, before dying for the cause.
(Only three of the other samurai survived; "In the end we lost this battle too. The victory belongs to the farmers, not to us.")
