“Seven Samurai” (七人の侍), Original Japanese Toho Video Rental Promotional Poster 1990, Rare B3 Landscape Size (c. 51.5 × 36.4 cm) S223
This is an original Japanese Toho Video promotional poster produced in 1990 for the Japanese home-video rental release of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (七人の侍).
Importantly, this is not a theatrical-release poster. It was created for Toho Video’s landmark 1990 home-video campaign, when Kurosawa’s celebrated body of Toho films was finally made available on video in Japan.
Printed in the compact Japanese B3 landscape format of approximately 51.5 × 36.4 cm, the poster was ideally suited to video-rental counters, shop windows and in-store promotional displays, where wall space was substantially more limited than in cinemas.
Historical significance
The poster records an important moment in the Japanese home-video history of Akira Kurosawa.
Running vertically down the left side is the announcement:
「黒澤明監督21作品
ついにビデオ化完結！」
— approximately:
“21 films directed by Akira Kurosawa — at last, the video release is complete!”
Alongside it appears the exact rental announcement:
「11月13日 ビデオ・レンタル開始」
— “Video rental begins November 13.”
The campaign therefore represented far more than the release of a single famous film. It celebrated the culmination of a major effort to make Kurosawa’s Toho catalogue accessible to Japanese viewers on home video.
For film collectors today, this makes the poster an appealing document of the moment when one of the most important bodies of work in Japanese cinema entered the domestic VHS era.
Poster design
The composition is wonderfully direct and monumental.
A large sepia-toned photograph of the seven samurai standing amid tall grass fills almost the entire sheet, giving the image the visual character of an archival photograph rather than conventional commercial advertising.
At the centre stands Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo, carrying his enormous sword across his shoulder. His restless, defiant presence dominates the group, while Takashi Shimura as Kambei and the remaining samurai stand around him in a deliberately balanced ensemble composition.
Across the centre, Kurosawa’s title appears in forceful black brush calligraphy:
七人の侍
— Seven Samurai.
The stark black lettering against the pale sepia photograph has tremendous authority, recalling the expressive brush typography associated with classic Japanese period-film advertising while remaining exceptionally clean and modern.
On the right appears the vertical credit:
黒澤明監督作品
— “A film directed by Akira Kurosawa.”
Immediately beside it is the restrained campaign statement:
「すべての感動、
すべての美しさが
ここにある——」
— approximately:
“All the emotion, all the beauty — is here.”
The combination of the restrained sepia image, black calligraphy and sparse vertical copy gives the poster a surprisingly elegant, almost museum-like quality.
“Have you seen this?”
The strongest graphic interruption comes across the entire lower edge.
In enormous red characters outlined in white:
「君は、これを見たか!!」
— “Have you seen this?!”
The phrase transforms the reverential image above into a wonderfully assertive piece of video-store marketing.
Rather than treating Seven Samurai merely as an established classic, the campaign challenges a new generation of viewers to finally experience it for themselves at home.
At lower right appear the original Toho, Hankyu-Toho Group and TOHO VIDEO marks, clearly identifying the sheet as official Japanese home-video promotional material.
Film background
Originally released in 1954, Seven Samurai is one of the towering achievements of world cinema.
Set in sixteenth-century Japan, the film follows an impoverished farming village repeatedly terrorised by bandits. Unable to defend themselves, the villagers decide to hire masterless samurai, offering little more than food in payment.
Veteran warrior Kambei Shimada, played by Takashi Shimura, gradually assembles a group of seven very different men to train the villagers and prepare the settlement for the inevitable attack.
Among them is Kikuchiyo, played with extraordinary physical energy by Toshiro Mifune — a volatile outsider whose ambiguous relationship with both the samurai and the peasantry becomes one of the film’s emotional centres.
Kurosawa combines action, humour, tragedy, social observation and character drama on an extraordinary scale. The film’s battle sequences, ensemble structure and narrative rhythms became profoundly influential, helping establish a template subsequently echoed across Westerns, war films, adventure cinema and modern blockbusters.
The 1990 Toho Video campaign
This poster belongs specifically to the moment when Kurosawa’s Toho films became widely available through the Japanese home-video market.
That makes it fundamentally different from an original 1954 theatrical sheet or a later cinema revival poster.
It is an original period promotional object from the first major Japanese video-release era of Kurosawa’s Toho catalogue, and the wording printed directly on the sheet makes that historical purpose unusually explicit.
The B3 size was particularly practical for this purpose: substantial enough to attract attention inside a rental shop, but considerably easier to display than the B2 and B1 formats used for theatrical promotion.
Original rental-era advertising material was inherently temporary commercial ephemera, intended to remain on display only while a new title was being promoted. Surviving examples in strong condition therefore make fascinating companions to traditional cinema posters.
Condition
Excellent+ condition overall.
This is an exceptionally well-preserved example retaining superb photographic definition, clean cream margins and strong black and red typography.
The sepia-toned central image remains beautifully even and well defined, while the enormous red 「君は、これを見たか!!」 slogan retains excellent saturation and contrast.
The compact landscape composition is particularly effective for framing, and once professionally framed it will display superbly.
Please review all photographs carefully; they show the exact poster for sale, front and back.
This is an original Japanese Toho Video promotional poster from the 1990 home-video rental campaign for Seven Samurai.
It is not a theatrical poster, reproduction or modern reprint.
It is approximately 36 years old.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
