150 years after the abolition of the samurai, the Japanese warrior has become a global icon and a staple of popular culture produced not only in Japan but around the world. This is a significant departure from how the samurai class was viewed in the 1870s, as a rapidly modernising Japan sought to leave them behind along with other relics of the "feudal" past. Around the turn of the twentieth century, however, the samurai image was rehabilitated and reinvented into a symbol of a new Japanese national identity that quickly became known around the world. This process was heavily influenced by Britain, especially the Victorian chivalric revival that celebrated knights and other medieval symbols as sources of national virtues and identity. In this lecture Oleg Benesch will explore how Britain and Japan became close allies in the early twentieth century, celebrating one another’s Middle Ages and leading to the globalisation of the idealised samurai image that has such an iconic status today.

Oleg Benesch is Professor and Head of the Department of History at the University of York. His publications include Samurai (British Museum Press 2026), Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan (Brill 2023), Japan’s Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace (Cambridge 2019), Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth Century Asia and Europe (Oxford 2015), Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan (Oxford 2014). For more on Oleg’s research and publications, please see www.olegbenesch.com. 

If you have any questions, please call The Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

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