Rethinking the Samurai at the British Museum: A Conversation with Curator Rosina Buckland

You’ve heard of samurai, perhaps the most quintessential symbol of Japan, but how well do you really know these famed, so-called warriors? Did you know the term “samurai” actually refers to the samuraiclassand that half of that class were women? Perhaps you’ve heard ofbushidō, the “way of the warrior,” yet were you aware that this concept was manufactured in the nineteenth century, after the samurai class ceased to exist? Curators Rosina Buckland and Joe Nickols, along with historian Oleg Benesch, set out to topple everything that people think they know about samurai in the British Museum’sSamuraiexhibition (February 3 – May 4, 2026). The show brought together more than 280 objects, with loans from twenty-nine different lenders, and traces nearly 1,200 years of Japanese history. I spoke with Buckland about her vision forSamurai, her favorite artworks, and how the landmark exhibition came together. Before turning to that conversation, it is worth looking at how the exhibition frames the history and legacy of the Samurai. To tell this story, the exhibition is organized into three chapters. “Rise of the Samurai” traces the development of the samurai as an elite fighting force during the Muromachi and Warring States periods (ca. 1336–1573). Samurai gradually transitioned from using bows and arrows in battle to wielding the well-knownkatanaandwakizashiswords so closely associated with their image today. The show’s next chapter, “The Long Peace,” follows samurai’s development from warriors to an administrative class during the two hundred and fifty years of stability ushered in by the Tokugawa regime (1600–1868). During this era, samurai acted as bureaucrats, political strategists, and public safety officers, ensuring that the government ran smoothly. They were also connoisseurs of the arts and artists in their own right. The exhibition’s final chapter, “After the Samurai,” traces how samurai identity remained popular and relevant long after the class was abolished in 1871. In the 1880s,bushidō(the “way of the samurai”) was created and billed as a centuries-old code of honor that reflected the morality and ethics shared among samurai. In actuality,bushidōwas largely based on a mythologized version of medieval samurai culture, partly influenced by nineteenth-century Europe’s idealization of its own medieval past. After 1945, the figure of the samurai was slowly demilitarized and became an integral part of pop culture, featured in films, video games, manga, anime, novels, and costumes. Swords, suits of armor, and scenes of the stereotypical, valiant samurai abound in the exhibition—after all, as Buckland notes, samurai armor is so well-known that one can have it “in a silhouette form, and people will recognize it”—yetSamuraihopes that viewers will also empathize with the men and women behind themenpō(face mask). Viewers can relate to samurai bureaucrats, much as they might sympathize with a modern-day office worker facing a computer full of monotonous spreadsheets. The two artworks commissioned for the exhibit, Noguchi Tetsuya’sDuck and Manand Peter Copping’s clothing ensembleSoftening the Samurai, both play on the idea of the samurai administrator. Copping’s samurai-inspired outfit is decorated with paper clips, a humorous nod to today’s office worker, while Noguchi’s samurai looks particularly haggard as he sits upon his rubber duck, a charming combination of whimsy and realism. Noguchi Tetsuya,Duck and Man, 2025. Commissioned by the Trustees of the British Museum. © Noguchi Tetsuya. Photography © The Trustees of the British Museum. Buckland, Nickols, and Benesch also take great care in telling the story of how Japan’s “warrior spirit” was evoked to encourage fighting for imperialism. The exhibition unflinchingly acknowledges howbushidōand tales of legendary samurai like Kusunoki Masashige (1294–1336) were used to recruit and motivate soldiers. Every officer was given a military sword,guntō, to remind him of a supposed samurai ethos that he possessed. After 1945, heirloom samurai swords carried by high-ranking military personnel were claimed as war booty and found their way into collections across the world, often with their twentieth-century wartime history conveniently hidden. The British Museum’s exhibition features the many, diverse faces of samurai throughout Japanese and global history. In the interview that follows, Rosina Buckland takes us behind the scenes of the exhibition’s making, the ideas that shaped it, the process of bringing it together, and some of the objects that stand out to her most. The interview has been edited for length and clarity while preserving Buckland’s original voice as closely as possible. Isabel Schmidt: How does the exhibitSamuraichallenge standard myths of who the samurai were and what they did? Rosina Buckland:I knew from the beginning that the samurai image was very widely recognized and enjoyed. It was played with and consumed, but people had quite a narrow understanding of the samurai, which people understand to mean “a man in armor.” Our exhibition challenges that assumption. I even stopped saying “the samurai” because I found that was quite problematic or complicated. Instead, I say “the class of people who we call the samurai.” “Samurai” isn’t even a word that is commonly used in Japan, so already you’re on quicksand trying to use that term. Warriors in the medieval period weremononofuortsuwamono, and then you get thebushiclass (bukei), so a big chunk of the exhibition’s Section Two was looking at the samurai as a social class, doing social history. This just messed with visitors’ heads. They could not believe that “samurai” just meant a social class, and therefore half the class is women. It kind of upset people, almost, that samurai are not these idealized warriors. People know the word “samurai,” because it’s out there in popular culture. It has been played with and used creatively for six hundred years now in a relatively unproblematic way. IS: Why do you think that samurai, or the samurai class, have had such a hold on the global imagination for the last 150 years, perhaps even longer? What has made them such a lasting idea? RB:They are very recognizable. I think the Japanese armor is very recognizable. Maybe it’s the armor lacing, the shoulder guards, and the colorfulness that make it instantly recognizable. You can do a samurai armor silhouette, and people will recognize it. I think that makes it very effective and powerful. But the mythologization of samurai also started early. It has deep roots. The first suit of armor in the West was given by Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada to King James I in 1613. So there was a consciousness of samurai armor in Western Europe hundreds of years ago. I’m going to qualify that, because the English actually forgot that it was Japanese, so there wasn’t a great consciousness of it being Japanese. But of course there were other suits of armor across Europe. There was some awareness of what the Japanese warrior looked like hundreds of years ago, but then from the late nineteenth century, when there was a boom for anything Japanese, there’s a lot of imagery, a lot of photography, of men dressed up as warriors, and the suits of armor themselves were being exported. So, I think the fictionalization of “the samurai” was very much underway beginning in the late nineteenth century. Suit of armour with bullet-proof cuirass embossed with crest, Japan, 1600–1700. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Two things to add. First, I think, the concept of “samurai” becomes a free-floating fiction when the samurai class is abolished. People are no longer wearing that armor, so it becomes available for everybody to play with. And then, of course, the samurai myth gets promoted by Japan itself in the first half of the twentieth century in a problematic way, when the Japanese are idealizing the medieval warrior. But this ideal is also very malleable. For example, in Section 3.1 of the exhibition, wh