A Wargaming Gallimaufry: Samurai at the British Museum

Saturday, 2 May 2026

Samurai at the British Museum

I finally managed to make it to the Samurai exhibition which has been on for a while at the British Museum. I have a bad habit of failing to remember when exhibitions are due to close and end up missing them (The recent Hiroshige exhibition at the BM was a case in point)... the other day I checked the details of this on thinking it had ages to run and discovered it closes at the beginning of May! So I sneaked off work for the afternoon and popped along, nabbing one of the few remaining tickets.

It's a great exhibition charting the rise and changing nature of the Samurai, from the early middle ages (in European terms) through the late 19thC decline of the Class and the opening up of Japan to the West. The end of the exhibition looks at the impact and depiction of Samurai largely from the end of WW2 both in Japan and in other countries. From a wargamey perspective there's a lot to see with numerous suits of armour, swords and other weapons etc. I'm always reminded when I see 'proper' Japanese armour that the colourful variants that you often see on the table are less common and a lot of it is black or very dark shades... certainly from a distance it would be hard to make out the fine detail.

To be honest while I always enjoy looking at militaria, it was the art and more mundane objects that I really enjoyed... lots of embroidered or printed scrolls, ceramics, small items like tobacco pouches etc. These were really interesting and well presented. The last section on Samurai in more recent art and media was also fascinating.

So here's a selection of photos from the exhibition. There are also a few from the Assyrian galleries at the BM. Although this is a period I know very little about, I'm always drawn to it whenever I visit the museum. I've just ordered a (hopefully) accessible introduction to this period to try and educate myself

(Google decided to upload the photos in reverse order and I can't be bothered re-doing it, so these are going from the most modern to the oldest historical periods!)