Samurai: the making of a global icon

The samurai is an iconic figure, evoking images of formidable fighters possessing ideals of courage, honour and self-sacrifice. Yet much of what we think we know about samurai is invented tradition.
 
Join chair Satona Suzuki, Senior Lecturer in Japanese and Modern Japanese History at SOAS, and experts Oleg Benesch and Matt Alt to explore the origin story of the samurai.
 
Samurai have been important cultural figures in Japan for centuries – and today the image of the samurai is iconic, shaping blockbuster films, anime, fashion and video games around the world.
 
Co-author (with exhibition curator Rosina Buckland) of the Samurai exhibition book(Opens in new window), Benesch will discuss the construction and reinvention of the samurai image over centuries of Japanese history, a process that laid a foundation for the popular conceptions of the samurai in Japan and across the globe today.
 
Discover the origins of Japanese pop culture with Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World (2021). During the Edo period when Japan first developed sophisticated urban centres, samurai became superstars, prominently featured in kabuki theatre, books and woodblock prints.
 
 
Photo credit: Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), Yada Gorozaemon Suketake from Seichu gishi shozo (Portraits of Loyal and Righteous Samurai). Colour woodblock print, 1852. Photo © 2025 The Trustees of the British Museum.