WEEKLY Dose of Art

The British Museum is running a new exhibition, called Samurai and it's open until May 4, 2026.

You think samurai were just sword guys who died with honor? NOPE. That's what Hollywood shows you.

Artist spotlight of the week

So who were they, really?

A samurai was a warrior in Japan

They existed for about a thousand years, from around 800 CE to the late 1800s.

They started out as hired bodyguards. 

Rich landowners in Japan lived far from the capital city, so the government couldn't protect them. So they started paying warriors to do it instead. 

The word samurai literally comes from a Japanese verb that means "to serve.”

Then they got ambitious.

He has zero control over how it looks. That's the point.

The result is these incredible textured abstract works, ridges, blobs, drips, that look almost alive. Like the painting is growing out of the fabric.

He's one of the founders of Dansaekhwa, the Korean monochrome movement, which is basically Korea's answer to Abstract Expressionism. Three different galleries brought his work to Hong Kong this year just to flex on everyone. 

Most samurai never even fought a war

Japan had a 250-year stretch of total peace, from 1603 to 1868. No wars. Nothing. 

So what do you do with an entire class of warriors when there's nothing to fight?

You make them sit at desks apparently.

Most samurai during this time became government workers, teachers, or artists. Many of them never fought a single battle their entire lives. 

The fearless warrior you see in movies? A lot of them were basically office workers.

Have you heard of bushido?

It's the samurai "code of honor," the idea that samurai lived by strict rules, never surrendered, and died with pride rather than give up.

And the word "bushido" itself? If you'd said it to an actual samurai before the 1600s, they'd have had no idea what you were talking about. The whole thing was basically invented. The book wasn't even translated into Japanese for years. When it finally was, Japanese readers called it "too American."

The most famous line from the Hagakure, the so-called samurai bible, is "the way of the samurai is found in death." A warrior monk wrote that during 250 years of total peace.

The myth was built by people who weren't there, for audiences who wanted the myth.

People think Japan was isolated for 400 years. NOPE.

You might have heard that Japan completely closed itself off from the world for centuries. Not exactly. 

Japan controlled who could come in and trade, mainly to keep Western countries from colonizing it. But Japanese samurai were still traveling the world.

Imagine coming home to that news after years abroad.

Japan also gifted a full suit of samurai armor to King James I of England. That suit is in the exhibition too. It was basically Japan's way of saying, we are powerful, don't try anything.

What's actually in the show

The exhibition pulls together around 280 objects from 29 lenders across the world, some never shown publicly before.

The one story that IS as dramatic as the movies

Their lord, Asano Naganori, had been forced into ritual suicide (seppuku) for attacking a corrupt court official.

So, they spent two full years secretly planning, then executed their revenge in one night. Private vendettas were illegal, so this was a crime. 

Japan had a massive public debate about whether they were heroes or criminals. 

But public opinion was so torn that authorities let them commit ritual suicide instead of treating them as common criminals.

Were they rebels against the state or the ultimate example of loyalty? Woodblock prints of that night are on display, including a stunning piece by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from 1851.

Women were samurai too

When the lord of the house was away at war, the woman of the house was in charge of everything, including commanding troops to defend their home if needed.

The exhibition has a red ceremonial jacket worn by women who led samurai firefighting brigades inside Edo Castle, decorated with anchors and waves

Fires were so common in wooden Edo that locals had a nickname for them: "the flowers of Edo." The women running those firefighting brigades were genuinely powerful figures.

You absolutely did not see that in Ghost of Tsushima.

How it all ended

In 1853, American warships sailed into Japanese waters and demanded trade. Japan had spent 250 years in deliberately managed isolation, until it didn't work.

The new Meiji government abolished samurai privileges through the 1860s and 70s, transferred power from the shogun to the emperor, and began electing officials on merit rather than family ties.

The same mythology that Hollywood later turned into heroes.

A story built on a story built on a story.

So what was the samurai, really?

A warrior sometimes. 

A bureaucrat mostly. 

A poet occasionally. 

BUT, a person, always.

Samurai is at the British Museum, London, until May 4, 2026.

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