New Books in Military History · Marshall Poe

Rosina Buckland and Oleg Benesch, "Samarai" (British Museum, 2025)

·1 hr 12 min·4 clips

Oleg links Yasuke, Assassin's Creed, and global samurai imagery to current debates over who gets to define the samurai.

Nathan Hobson speaks about samurai reception and the shifting place of samurai in modern popular culture. The focus stays on reception. The discussion follows how samurai-themed works have turned into global products, then uses Ghost of Tsushima, Ghost of Yotei, Shogun, The Last Samurai, and 47 Ronin to show how the same figure can mean different things in different places. Japan is the key test case. The conversation also points out that these projects are often made by global companies, including some outside Japan. Some are set in other historical regions, including the Middle East and Italy. That broader reach helps the discussion frame samurai as almost an international cultural property. A recurring question is what happens when those images travel back to Japan. Sometimes the result is strong local approval. Sometimes it is rejection. The contrast between The Last Samurai and 47 Ronin makes that especially clear. The Tom Cruise film did well in Japan. The Keanu Reeves film did not. Those outcomes become a way to think about recognition, taste, and cultural fit rather than simple historical accuracy. The discussion suggests that audiences often respond to the samurai image they already carry, even when it does not fully match historical reality. As the discussion goes on, it returns to the gap between scholarship and popular memory. Near the end, the conversation makes room for a small revision of judgment about The Last Samurai. That reappraisal gives the episode a reflective close. It never turns into a loud verdict. The exchange ends by pointing listeners toward the catalog and the exhibition itself.

As heard by us

A measured look at samurai as history, image, and global entertainment.

The piece treats samurai less as a fixed historical category than as a global image that moves through games, films, and streaming television.

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Why you'd press play

When samurai travel through games and films, Japan becomes the real test.

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