it’s enough to have the purest swordsman killed by a musket, and hurl his sword as he dies, to tell you that this way of life is on the way out.

Sorry to pedantic, but she samurai era would last more than 250 years after that. The Seven Samurai takes place in 1586 (I guess you can tell this from that genealogy Mifune stole, although I had to read the exact year on Wikipedia), during a period of civil war that ended in 1603 when the Tokugawa Shogunate unified Japan. The Shogunate stayed in power until 1868. The Samurai era didn’t end until the second half of the 19th century. Alot of Japanese swordplay movies take place toward the end of the Tokugawa era, but that isn’t one of them.
Regadless, that’s one of the best movies ever.

I’ve never seen Performance, but I love the version of Memo From Turner on the soundtrack.