Samurai review: Japan’s lethal warrior class are shown in all their sexy, demonic glory

2026-01-29 - 17:21

British Museum, London Extraordinary battle armour, complete with moustachioed masks, enlivens this scintillating show, which brilliantly captures the theatrical side of a chivalrous epoch Japan’s pre-modern warrior elite can’t still be alive inside the suits of armour that hold you awed and scared in this scintillating journey through their world of gore, power and artistic beauty. But they surely seem to be: samurai armour is so vital, so electric, with its grimacing, moustached, black face masks and full-body metal and fabric plating. The crests of their helmets incorporate eagles, dragons, goblins, even a clenched fist of metal emerging from one warrior’s head. It’s so intense you feel a presence. Then again, the samurai always were ghosts in their suits. The metal mask became their face to the world, their carapaces transformed them into someone else. This idea that in battle the warrior becomes other, a bloody demon, is not unique to Japan: Viking “berserkers” lost themselves in a ritualised frenzy and may have believed they changed into bears. Armour in medieval Europe, too, was never just practical but a second skin, a full metal jacket suppressing softness and symbolising the steely transfiguration of normal souls into killers. But no culture has ever put quite as much creativity into blood-lust as Japan did from the 13th century – when samurai courage saw off Mongol invaders – until the abolition of this class in the 1800s. Continue reading...