Samurai Soothsayer Speaks of The Game

Samurai the White

He lifts the tiles from the Scrabble board with a careful mouth, square by square:

GSLAC

The Game will rise again, he says. As the Sports Academy.

That dogs will jump in October.

Or not.

Origin of the Seventh Samurai

Samurai contemplates his next move.

Samurai's registered name is Wingssong The Seventh Samurai. He was named after Kikuchiyo, the seventh samurai played by Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's classic film, The Seven Samurai. Kikuchiyo starts out as a farmer, and is the roughest and least cultured of the samurai. He is brash and impulsive and has stolen most of his samurai regalia from other samurai who have been defeated or killed. This is viewed by the other samurai as a dishonorable thing to do.

As the film goes on, Kikuchiyo proves himself and becomes a hero, abeit in unconventional ways. In the end, he is the one who kills the leader of the band of marauding bandits who has been terrorizing the village.

I gave Samurai this name because he shares that quality of walking a razor's edge of craziness that is also next to brilliance. Because of his mad martial art skilz. But most importantly because I hope that someday, he will become my own agility hero.