Gripping London samurai exhibition explores Japan’s warrior class and cuts through myths

You could be forgiven for thinking that the UK has gone samurai mad of late. Director Michihito Fujii’s Last Samurai Standing remains high up the Netflix UK chart, Penguin Books is enjoying a massive bestseller in Shotaro Ikenami’s multi-volume The Samurai Detectives, and the FX miniseries retelling of James Clavell’s Shogun (originally a 1975 novel) was a surprise hit and won various awards. The samurai-inspired Assassin’s Creed Shadows was the fastest-selling video game in Britain in 2025, while Sony’s Crunchyroll, a dedicated streaming platform for anime, is growing rapidly in the UK and now has over 17 million subscribers globally. Now, with superb timing, we have the British Museum’s latest mega exhibition, “Samurai”, which is on until May 4. Japan’s cultural stock has arguably never been higher in Britain since Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his eponymous department store in 1875 to capitalise on London’s craze for all things Japan, just before Gilbert and Sullivan stormed the West End stage with The Mikado. But now Brits, like so many others in recent years, have discovered Japan as a mass-tourism destination, and kids are seeking out East Asian culture, from boy bands to manga, Korean fried chicken to kawaii plush toys. “Samurai” is extensive, with more than 280 objects from the British Museum’s collection, including a newly acquired samurai suit of armour and many pieces never before seen in the UK from 29 international lenders. The exhibition starts with the samurai of the popular imagination: a warrior elite. There is armour – including an amazing child’s ceremonial suit of armour – and katana swords, while yumi and ya (bows and arrows) remind us that the samurai were as expert as bowmen on horseback as they were wielding their super-sharp blades. Later, as the exhibition examines the contemporary cultural impact of the samurai, we return to the warrior image with clips of Akira Kurosawa’s epic movie Seven Samurai (1954), the multiple PlayStation samurai games and even a full-size samurai-inspired Darth Vader costume from Star Wars (1977). Of course, the samurai story is more complex than simply fighting. Samurai emerged in the medieval period between the 1100s and the early 1600s, as wealthy households needed to hire protection – warriors – to fortify their lands and families. But from 1603, with the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, or Edo period, Japan experienced 250 years of peace. The capital shifted to Edo, modern-day Tokyo, and the samurai morphed from a warrior caste into a scholar-bureaucrat class of government officials, diplomats, artists, writers and cultural patrons of the arts. These contributions during the so-called Long Peace form a major component of the exhibition: exploring samurai’s roles as practitioners and sponsors of the arts, and as craftsmen and statesmen. The samurai in the 1600s began their self-mythification as a warrior gentry. They painted themselves in battle dress and in full fight mode in the 17th and 18th centuries. They wrote fictional accounts glorifying samurai warriors and retold folklore of warrior goblin kings in samurai-style armour. Their literature and equally self-promoting poetry invariably praised and mythologised the author’s daimyo (feudal lord) sponsors. The literature and poetic compositions were overtly theatrical, almost magical realist in style. Other tracts, texts and scrolls show the samurai class’ links to Buddhism and neo-Confucianism, emphasising stability, order and morality. The exhibition includes examples of novels, calligraphic poems and paintings depicting samurai daimyo posed cross-legged, almost as if they were Buddhist deities. The exhibition is also keen to show the various interactions samurai had with the outside world. One of the most fascinating displays is that of the samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga, a Christian convert. In 1613, Hasekura led a Japanese mission to Madrid and Rome to see Pope Paul V. They arrived in 1615, and Hasekura had his portrait painted in silk clothing by the Urbino artist Archita Ricci. Hasekura returned to Japan in 1620, by which time Christianity had been banned by the shogunate. Blockbuster exhibitions these days are also keen to do a little myth-busting. As well as showing the samurai during their Long Peace, there is an emphasis on samurai women. This has, of course, led some to complain that the museum is “shoehorning” gender into the exhibition. But “samurai” is not a term simply meaning “warrior”; it denotes a hereditary class. Naturally, half of that section of society was female. This is not to say that women warriors did not exist. Perhaps the best-known female samurai warrior was Tomoe Gozen, who died in 1247. She appears in the early 14th-century epic The Tale of the Heike, ripping the heads off her enemies. She has been celebrated in various classical Noh – the form of traditional Japanese theatre favoured by the samurai. At the British Museum, women of the samurai class are also celebrated through textile exhibits, which include long robes intricately embroidered with natural motifs and references to classical literature. Demure behaviour and strict etiquette became part of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s social doctrine for samurai women. There is also the erotica – painted scrolls and ukiyo-e woodblock prints – depicting the “floating world”, the pleasure-seeking urban lifestyle that became elevated in the Edo period. Chobunsai Eishi’s 1790s shunga handscroll, Twelve Erotic Scenes in Edo, shows a silhouette of a samurai making love to a courtesan behind a screen as his servants wait outside for their master. The Tokugawa Shogunate ended with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. A few years later, the samurai were abolished, destined to linger only as myths and legends. The British Museum does not ignore that we also need to look at the dark side of the samurai legacy, such as the use of samurai imagery to promote militarism in Japan in the 1930s, along with the perversion of the samurai moral code of bushido. Wartime propaganda posters urging the invasion and occupation of China show samurai warriors in traditional armour alongside soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army in occupied Manchuria. Finally, the exhibition looks at the reinvention of the samurai warrior for historical entertainment – the movies, TV shows, anime, manga and video games that we know today and that spawned the current craze for the samurai. The exhibition ends with a specially commissioned work – Samurai Escapism – by the Japanese artist Noguchi Tetsuya. By the end of the exhibition, we see the men and women of the samurai class as cultural patrons, statesmen, global travellers and creators of a civilisation across nearly 800 years. But, it has to be admitted, it is the armour and the weaponry that linger in the imagination, fuelled by one large wall-screen video of an early morning samurai charge with the snorting of horses, the cries of commanders, the slash of exceptionally sharp katana swords and the hiss of arrows raining down on the battlefield. That will be the image of the samurai that continues to fascinate new generations of audiences.

Gripping London samurai exhibition explores Japan’s warrior class and cuts through myths

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}From armour to art, ‘Samurai’ at the British Museum traces the Japanese elite class’ evolution and cultural impact, from anime to Star Wars

From armour to art, ‘Samurai’ at the British Museum traces the Japanese elite class’ evolution and cultural impact, from anime to Star Wars