{"id":800823,"date":"2026-03-03T08:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T08:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/800823\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T08:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T08:35:13","slug":"gripping-london-samurai-exhibition-explores-japans-warrior-class-and-cuts-through-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/800823\/","title":{"rendered":"Gripping London samurai exhibition explores Japan\u2019s warrior class and cuts through myths"},"content":{"rendered":"

You could be forgiven for thinking that the UK has gone samurai mad of late.<\/p>\n

Director Michihito Fujii\u2019s Last Samurai Standing remains high up the Netflix UK chart, Penguin Books is enjoying a massive bestseller in Shotaro Ikenami\u2019s multi-volume The Samurai Detectives, and the FX miniseries retelling of James Clavell\u2019s Shogun (originally a 1975 novel) was a surprise hit and won various awards.<\/p>\n

The samurai-inspired Assassin\u2019s Creed Shadows<\/a> was the fastest-selling video game in Britain in 2025, while Sony\u2019s Crunchyroll<\/a>, a dedicated streaming platform for anime, is growing rapidly in the UK and now has over 17 million subscribers globally.<\/p>\n

Now, with superb timing, we have the British Museum\u2019s latest mega exhibition, \u201cSamurai\u201d, which is on until May 4.<\/p>\n

\"ExhibitsExhibits on display at the \u201cSamurai\u201d exhibition. Photo: The Trustees of the British Museum<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s cultural stock has arguably never been higher in Britain since Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his eponymous department store in 1875 to capitalise on London\u2019s craze for all things Japan, just before Gilbert and Sullivan stormed the West End stage with The Mikado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You could be forgiven for thinking that the UK has gone samurai mad of late. Director Michihito Fujii\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[232142,32016,232136,748,18097,232157,232155,92130,232147,232138,232146,393,232152,6968,4884,232149,232134,2122,232137,232128,232158,232140,232141,232130,257,232156,232131,451,190733,232160,179100,232159,232139,232145,230708,232144,232129,232161,232143,232135,232132,341,232133,232151,232148,7808,232150,232154,16,232153,15],"class_list":["post-800823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-akira-kurosawa","tag-anime","tag-assassins-creed-shadows","tag-britain","tag-british-museum","tag-bushido","tag-chobunsai-eishi","tag-crunchyroll","tag-daimyo","tag-east-asian-culture","tag-edo-period","tag-england","tag-erotica","tag-exhibition","tag-great-britain","tag-hasekura-tsunenaga","tag-james-clavell","tag-japan","tag-japanese-culture","tag-japanese-history","tag-japanese-imperial-army","tag-katanakatana","tag-kawaii","tag-last-samurai-standing","tag-london","tag-meiji-restoration","tag-michihito-fujii","tag-netflix","tag-netflix-uk","tag-noguchi-tetsuya","tag-samurai","tag-samurai-escapism","tag-samurai-exhibition","tag-samurai-movies","tag-samurai-sword","tag-samurai-video-games","tag-samurai-warrior","tag-samurai-weapons","tag-seven-samurai","tag-shogun","tag-shotaro-ikenami","tag-sony","tag-the-samurai-detectives","tag-the-tale-of-the-heike","tag-tokugawa-shogunate","tag-tokyo","tag-tomoe-gozen","tag-twelve-erotic-scenes-in-edo","tag-uk","tag-ukiyo-e","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}