You could be forgiven for thinking that the UK has gone samurai mad of late.
Director Michihito Fujii’s Last Samurai Standing remains high up the Netflix UK chart, Penguin Books is enjoying a massive bestseller in Shotaro Ikenami’s multi-volume The Samurai Detectives, and the FX miniseries retelling of James Clavell’s Shogun (originally a 1975 novel) was a surprise hit and won various awards.
The samurai-inspired
Assassin’s Creed Shadows was the fastest-selling video game in Britain in 2025, while Sony’s Crunchyroll, a dedicated streaming platform for anime, is growing rapidly in the UK and now has over 17 million subscribers globally.
Now, with superb timing, we have the British Museum’s latest mega exhibition, “Samurai”, which is on until May 4.
Japan’s cultural stock has arguably never been higher in Britain since Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his eponymous department store in 1875 to capitalise on London’s craze for all things Japan, just before Gilbert and Sullivan stormed the West End stage with The Mikado.