Oh, I know about the direct links between Seven Samurai and Magnificent Seven (and Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars/Last Man Standing/Sukiyaki Western Django), I just thought it was worth mentioning that Kurosawa didn’t operate in a cultural vacuum and had his own influences.
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/131926-west-by-east-by-west/
During the 1950s, Japanese critics often denigrated Kurosawa for creating films that were too Western in style and narrative. In 1959, he responded by making a film based off the most typically American genre, the gun-slinging western. While a western in form, Kurosawa actually borrowed the idea for Yojimbo from a 1929 Dashiel Hammet novel, Red Harvest.
