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- [00:01]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body.
- [00:03]
Oleg Benesch
Relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry.
- [00:09]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
That I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [00:16]
Oleg Benesch
And breathe.
- [00:17]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.
- [00:25]
Interviewer/Moderator
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts new year, new me.
- [00:32]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
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- [00:55]
Interviewer/Moderator
Credit check which may impact your credit scores.
- [00:56]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Offers not available in all states. See experian.com for details. Experian welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:06]
Nathan Hobson
Hi, my name is Nathan Hobson. I'm a host for the New Books in Japanese Studies podcast, a member of the New Books Network. Today I'm joined by co host Ron Zwigenberg of Pennsylvania State University and we'll be doing a roundtable discussion of Samurai, which is out from the British Museum Press in 2026. This is a richly illustrated volume co authored by exhibition curators Rosina Buckland of the British Museum and Oleg Benesh of York University, and it was produced to accompany the special exhibition Samurai, which is at the British Museum 3rd of February to 4th of May 2026. More than just a catalog, the book Samurai uses the exhibit to explore the overlapping and diverging myths and histories of the samurai, from medieval warriors to bureaucrats to global pop culture phenomena. As the exhibition website puts it, the samurai is an iconic figure, evoking images of formidable fighters possessing ideals of courage, honor and self sacrifice. Yet much of what we think we know about Samurai is invented tradition, end quote. Samurai is the kind of book that epitomizes how rigorous academic work can be transformed into effective public communication. Okay, thank you all for joining us today and welcome to the podcast. Oleg and Rosina, could you introduce yourselves please for our audience?
- [02:24]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Hello, I'm Dr. Rosina Buckland, Asahi Shimbun, Curator of the Japanese Collections at the British Museum.
- [02:30]
Oleg Benesch
Hi there, I'm Oleg Benesch. I'm a professor of history at the University of York in the uk.
- [02:35]
Nathan Hobson
Yeah. And so it's wonderful to have you here. I know this is a very busy time for you. We had some excitement with getting you all scheduled and we really do appreciate it. So this is pretty momentous. We have you here as the exhibition is opening up and the first question I'd like to ask you is sort of how this exhibition actually came about. What was the inspiration? How did the two of you become involved together?
- [03:02]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
I started thinking about a project to present samurai history and samurai images some years ago, and then was caught up with other projects along the way, Changed museum along the way, and really got going with this back in 2021 at the British Museum after I'd returned here. And I always wanted it to be more than just a straight history. There's so much imagery, so much awareness of the visual appearance of the samurai. So that's been there from the beginning. I'm sure we'll get to that later. And I met Oleg at a conference where he was presenting on the Wonderful Castles book and was immediately interested and thought, this is somebody who has a critical take on the history of Japan, the history of samurai. So I think sometime back in 2022, something like that, we started talking about this and developing ideas about where we could take it.
- [04:01]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah, no, it was. It's been really just amazing to think that, yeah, we've been working on this for so many years now. For myself, coming to this, I mean, I. My kind of MA, PhD, kind of in the first book were focused on, more specifically on kind of bushido, the way of the samurai, the way of the warrior, and how that was invented kind of the late 19th century, that was more kind of intellectual history. And then Ron and I started working on castles and wrote a book on kind of the modern history of castles. And that's where I was getting much more interested in. In, I think also the later memories and representations of the samurai and going beyond just texts and kind of textual, intellectual history, getting into material culture objects. And so, yeah, when Rosina got in touch about this, it was just an amazing opportunity. And, yeah, we've had a lot of fun working on it.
- [04:54]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
It started right at the beginning as the idea was Six and a Half Samurai. You may see where we were coming from with that title. And we had six full suits of armor in the collection, the museum I was working at at the time, and then six adult suits and one child suit of armor. So we thought that would be Six and a Half Samurai. And it was going to be just the military equipment to begin with, which I never really felt that enthusiastic about. I'm much more of my research is in paintings and prints, in visual art. And then the museum was very interested in expanding that. And so the idea that the obvious approach, the easy approach, was to bring in the imagery as well, particularly the warrior prints, because huge numbers, thousands and thousands of woodblock prints being produced in the 19th century. So that was where the image part of it came in alongside the more three dimensional objects. And that immediately opens up so many questions about representation from the historical periods when the samurai still existed. And then, as Oleg said, so much manifestation of that in the modern period. Yeah.
- [05:58]
Nathan Hobson
Rosina, you touched on Oleg's critical take, as I think you put it, and that gets to a question that I wanted to ask the two of you, which is essentially, what was it that you wanted to communicate through this mix of the 3D and 2D materials and this sort of multimedia approach that you've taken? Were you working for something against something, a mixture of both? What is it that you want people to take away from this, or is it more open ended than that?
- [06:26]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
I think it's always open ended. People will make their own interpretations. But fundamentally, as a museum curator, I'm not trying to dictate the way that people receive the material. We have wonderful collections, we do the research on those collections and all of the historical context, and we present our interpretation the way that we configure those objects in an exhibition space or in a permanent gallery. But to suggest to people. My fundamental motivation was to suggest to people that there's a lot more to samurai history than they understand to the reality, historical reality. It's much more than just the warrior, this image of the male warrior holding a sword, and that you have to, I hope, to encourage people to be more critical themselves, that they won't receive this imagery, take it at face value, believe everything that it's projecting. I think I still remember the moment when I was doing my masters at soas, University of London, and I did a course on semiotics and that moment of realization. We were looking at advertising imagery and that there's so much manipulation of images, so much that you can understand about the direction that you're being pushed in by the person producing that image. And I've never forgotten that moment. And thinking we should all be studying this in grade school, in secondary school. This is fundamental to going out into society and being a thoughtful person, critical in some sense, self aware. So that's motivated me for a Long time.
- [08:02]
Oleg Benesch
Right. And I think one of the things here, and as Rosina says, is, you know, it's getting beyond kind of, I think often, you know, this kind of focus on swords and armor, which is often kind of decontextualized and we might not see a lot of the other aspects of this. And it's about wanting to show that kind of great diversity of not just kind of the historical samurai, but things that are kind of, you know, samurai adjacent or maybe kind of coded as samurai, so to speak, in various places and not just Japan, but kind of around the world. And one of the things that goes along this is. I mean, there's obviously the exhibition and kind of the displays and things like that, but behind this, there's also a large research project we've been doing and actually doing original research that feeds into the exhibition, also into the book. And I mean, there are a few columns in there by. We have a team of about 20 overseas scholars around the world here who are working on various aspects of the samurai across time. And that all kind of feeds into this. And I think one of the big things we want to look at, I mean, as Rosina mentions, there's around the representations of the samurai which, you know, from the very earliest periods, the samurai are kind of crafting their own image in various ways, whether it's through the armors they're commissioning and designing, whether it's through paintings, whether it's through various things like that, stories are being told. And then it's also the other kind of. I think one of the really big themes we wanted to bring out is these kind of international connections or the global connections of the samurai that, you know, as. As Rosina mentioned, you know, there's this image of the samurai as, you know, the male warrior in armor with a sword and that. It's this kind of really purely Japanese thing. But actually, from the very start, you know, there are these influences first from, like, China, things like the Mongol invasions coming in, but then also kind of Japan outwardly kind of invading Korea and so. And that going all the way to the modern period. So just putting the samurai into the context of that, more kind of those global connections. So I think that's one of the things we're also trying to kind of argue and contribute with the book and exhibition.
- [10:18]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
We had issues or long conversations during the design of the exhibition over the past year about image and reality, reality and myth. And right from the beginning of this project, my opening slide in the presentations I had to do when an Exhibition program board was considering this to put it on the program was the armor that was given by Tokugawa Hidetada was sent by him to King James VI and first in Great Britain, and that was juxtaposed with Darth Vader. So that's the spoiler. Darth Vader's in the exhibition. You can keep that till later if you want. But. And I always said that the armor, the real physical armor, the historical armor, is both reality and image, because it was being sent by Japan in 1613, arrived a couple of years later, projecting this image of martial Japan at a time when they're worried about Western powers expanding their control in East Southeast Asia, saying, we can fight back, basically. So a lot of the historical material, as Oleg just said, it's about image, self image, even if it's armor, it's projecting an image of strength to your allies or internationally. And then you have the pure myth, the pure fiction of something like Darth Vader and George Lucas taking inspiration from samurai armor in that, and then this huge manifestation or rich variety of popular culture use of the samurai imagery in the 20th century, 21st century. So image and myth are totally, excuse me, Reality and myth are totally intertwined. It's impossible to separate the two. So we hope to convey that to visitors in the exhibition and readers of the book.
- [12:07]
Interviewer/Moderator
This armor, actually, this story that you just told about the armor sent by Tokugawa to the uk, even in Japan, this armor was not an armor that was made for war at all. I mean, it was made for. Also to protect image. Right. So there's all theory. Right.
- [12:25]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
My understanding is all armor is made for battle and that there is no such thing as ceremonial armor. And this armor supposedly was used in battle in the late 1500s during the warring States period. So it was battle tested. Suppose I haven't examined it on the inside and the surface of it, but supposedly it has marks from having been used in battle and then was used as a diplomatic gift. So it was transformed.
- [12:52]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah, I think maybe what you're hitting at is, I think once we get a bit later to the Hokugawa period especially, then some of the armors do end up being a little more decorative rather than practical in their functionality and various other things. One of the things that's quite interesting is difficult to determine is when and where these things would have actually been worn after the beginning of the Tokugawa period. Because, you know, you wouldn't. You wouldn't wear an armor when you go meet the Shogun. You know, you're not going into battle, you're not going to wear it when you're going on a procession as part of like the sunken kotai, alternate attendance, Daredo. And these things are quite unwieldy. So, you know, why are people kind of buying these? When would they actually wear them? Would they actually wear them? And so these are some of the questions, but you look at some of them and. And yeah, the construction, I mean, they're heavy, they're maybe not very flexible. There's various things going on there which suggest that, you know, they weren't really built, you know, for combat, but. And oftentimes they're also. And this kind of goes in with representations is they're often being built in styles or made in styles of famous armors from centuries earlier. Right. And from combat from centuries earlier. So, you know, one of the things we see in late 16th century, and this gets on the international connections, is kind of armours using metal, kind of giant metal plates to essentially protect the wearer from guns, from bullets, which is not something you would have before that. But then in the Tokugawa period, people kind of often go back and make earlier armors which, you know, are back to lamellar things which would not protect you from bullets and therefore probably wouldn't be all that useful in the 18th, you know, 19th centuries.
- [14:39]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
But I think it still holds that these arms are supposed to be battle ready. You can have more ostentatious helmets swapped in or the huge standards that we've got in the exhibition and illustrated in the book. But it is still supposed to be functional, robust, wearable, usable armor. And there was. I've spoken to specialists in Japan about this because it was quite surprising to find out there weren't many occasions to wear armor and there was a ceremony when a young man came of age, so the first donning of armor, the Oyoroi Kizomi Shiki. So that's one occasion, perhaps, where the son of a daimyo becomes the official heir or that kind of ceremony, and he puts on the armor to assume the martial image.
- [15:26]
Nathan Hobson
So we've been talking about the sort of interplay, the tension between image and reality, so to speak. And Rossina, you've already brought up the fact that this is very much a part of the sort of global image of the samurai in the 20th and 21st centuries. And that's the final chapter of the book. And it's because the exhibition sort of stretches over time and shows the changes in both reality and image over time. So I thought maybe we could start with part three, which is divided into two halves that chapter, there's one that is 1850s to 1945, and there's 1945 to the present. So you have the end of the sort of samurai as reality, so to speak, the final samurai century in the first half, and then the sort of global history of the reimagination of the samurai after that. So there's also the sort of spatial differences in sort of imagery about the samurai, of course, because the controversial nature of sort of Bushido, as Oleg has written about, and the sort of samurai image. Can you tell us a little bit about this chapter in particular, what the samurai meant to whom and where over the course of the end of the 19th century up to the present, and how that's playing out in the exhibition?
- [16:59]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah, it's a really good question. I've learned a lot in the course of this. I mean, listen to the book I wrote on Bushido in 20, came down in 2014. Here's over 10 years to go now, which is a bit of a shock when I realized that. And I've really learned a lot in the course of this from all the other kind of contributors to the project. And also this has made me think about a lot more things and look, think about this global context. And I think, I mean, the samurai, when we're getting into, you know, right after the meiji Restoration, after 1868, you know, there is this rejection broadly of the samurai. They're no longer fit for purpose. We're moving to a modern imperial army culturally as well. There's broadly a kind of rejection, but there are some. There are some things. And this could be something we talk about the columns where we do see celebration of samurai already in the 1870s and kind of a nostalgia for this. And Ron and I encountered a bit of that when we were working on castles already and kind of celebration of castles from the 1870s. But we're also seeing it in various woodblock prints and things like that. So there's a little bit of nostalgia there already in the 1870s, but ultimately it's only around the 1890s, I think, after the Sino Japanese War, that the samurai really kind of rehabilitated symbolically and start becoming a national symbol. And then 1904, 05, the Russo Japanese War, when, you know, Japan defeats Russia as the first. I'm an Asian nation, or really a non Western nation, supposedly defeats one of the great European empires, and the whole world stands like, takes notice. And the samurai arc spirit essentially is credited for this, both within Japan and outside. And I think in a lot of ways this is the first moment of where the samurai really go global, so to speak. But, I mean, I think in 1905-1910, if you mention the word Bushido to just about anyone in the world, they will know what you're talking about, which is not the case today. I mean, I ask for a show of hands when I'm giving talks and it's probably about a third of people who've heard of that word, but, you know, start of the 20th century, it's everywhere. And then it's obviously kind of that imagery and everything is used around the world in relation to Japan. That's how Japan is being seen. Especially as we get up to the 1930s and the Second World War. It's used in very different ways by Japan's allies and Germany and Italy than it is by, say, the enemies in the United States and the uk. And then the way it's kind of rehabilitated after the war, gradually in different areas as well, both within Japan and other countries. And these things are constantly kind of influencing one another, these kind of flows of, of kind of information around the samurai and how this, this figure is constructed. So anything we encounter today, and there's. There's so much samurai content now at the. In the early, you know, 21st century. All of that is feeding on, you know, these many layers of kind of. Yeah, reinterpretation from, you know, the last 150 years and beyond.
- [20:00]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
I think I would add on that point that we're trying to broaden the definition of samurai because today the post war use of samurai motifs, samurai imageries in popular culture, tends to narrow it to this male figure in armor with a sword. And the exhibition and the book are trying to say that samurai doesn't just mean the warrior, that there's other roles throughout history, there's a wide variety of roles. It's harder to pin down what it might mean in the earlier periods up to around 1600, but then after 1600, once you're into the Tokugawa Shogunate, it's a social class. It has half of that class composed of women. There are samurai children. And the word itself is problematic because it's not generally used in Japan. And we can unpack that as well, obviously. So it's not just that narrow. We want to broaden from that narrow perception that post war culture has established in people's minds.
- [21:01]
Oleg Benesch
That's what I would just want to add there, as Rosina mentions, around the word samurai. That's something I've been looking into a bit more the last few years. And it's interesting because samurais in English, certainly in most other languages, is just so widely understood. We seem to know what we're talking about, this kind of adult male warrior with a sword. And that exists for six centuries or however long, and we're problematizing that. But what's interesting is, I think, how that term samurai and samurai is being used in Japanese and in Japan, something we touch on in the book as well. Because I think samurai in Japanese now, when it's used, it does tend to have that sense of. This is kind of a global concept, the global icon that we're referring to here, rather than like historical warriors. Because most historians of Japan working in Japanese and also languages tend to, you know, use the word bushi, you know, the warrior from bushido, the way of the warrior as well. But bushi, there's a lot of different terms we have kind of before the 19th century that people use to describe warriors in Japan. Oftentimes they'll speak about specific classes. They'll speak about the buke, like the warrior houses. There's so many different terms of which samurai is one of those terms, but it's never used as kind of a catch all the way. We use it in English today. And I think one of the ways we can really see this transformation is those people familiar with Japanese writing system will know we have Chinese characters, kanji, we have a Japanese syllabary that's used for Japanese words in niragana. And then we have katakana used for foreign loan words. And what we've seen, especially since 1945, but really over the 20th century, is a shift from writing samurai in either the Chinese character or in the Japanese syllabary to writing it using katakana. So the foreign syllabary, essentially suggesting that this is almost an alien term, that this is kind of a foreign term. And so if we think about something like the. The Japanese men's national football soccer team, samurai bru. You know, the blue samurai or samurai blue. You know, they're writing that in katakana. And a lot of the books we see even written by historians, if they're using samurai in the title, it'll probably be written in katakana. So there is a certain kind of almost othering of samurai within Japan as well. That it is. It's not a bushi, that's a historical warrior, but it's actually like this kind of global icon, like a European knight or something like that.
- [23:45]
Interviewer/Moderator
It's even written in English a lot of times. The Baseball, I think almost always in English.
- [23:50]
Oleg Benesch
Right.
- [23:51]
Interviewer/Moderator
When they write about a baseball team.
- [23:53]
Oleg Benesch
In Japanese, you mean the like.
- [23:57]
Interviewer/Moderator
In Japan. When I see like, you know, ads for the baseball team, like, I think they say Samurai Japan in English and the rest is in Japanese. I mean, I might be wrong about this. I think I sent you a couple of examples at one point. Or was it.
- [24:13]
Oleg Benesch
That's a really interesting one, actually. Samurai Japan, which is what it's called in Japanese, you know, Japan using the English word for it. The interesting thing with that one with the baseball, though, is they write samurai in kanji. They use a Chinese character. But I think that is tied to baseball being seen as a more traditional sport and that you do also want to tie baseball to kind of Japanese tradition. So you do hear all these things about bushido baseball or samurai baseball. So I think there's something political kind of going on there by writing it in the traditional character. So you have the English word for Japan, but then you have the traditional Chinese character. And in that way it kind of unites kind of the foreign and the ancient tradition in a way that baseball seems to uniquely do in Japan.
- [25:02]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Were they not just trying to differentiate themselves from the football team? Also possible we do it one day. Why you do it the other way?
- [25:10]
Interviewer/Moderator
I just checked and it's the emblem on the shirt say Samurai Japan in English.
- [25:15]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Yeah, we have some clappers in the exhibition for the Samurai Japan.
- [25:22]
Interviewer/Moderator
I want to stay with this popular culture, sport games and talk about video games and again, setting up borders, what samurai means samurai belongs to. And I want to talk about something which is quite controversial in our circles, which is about the Assassin's Creed game and the use of an African warrior in a video game and a woman ninja, God forbid. Right. And this, it's actually connected to a whole full blown academic culture war that we had in within the five. I have people that work on this. Maybe Ole can tell us more about this. What is this controversy over? Like, can you have a samurai who is African and why people are so angry? What is it about the political stakes of social imagery? Because it's samurai imagery. Because there is a lot in stake in terms of who gets to say who and what samurais are. Right. And in a way it's also connected to waves, the waves of nostalgia you talked about before, because none of it connect to any kind. Well, maybe it is in a very tangential way to any kind of samurai reality. I mean, there were no women ninja. There were no ninja, period. So how does this relate? What are the political and cultural stakes of talking about samurai now?
- [26:47]
Oleg Benesch
Well, I think that's a really interesting kind of case study and it speaks to a few different things. I mean, as you'd be familiar, recently there's been kind of a lot of discussion of this apparently historical figure, Yasuke's book, African Samurai, out on this. And so there's a historical figure there. And then this video game kind of, I think, draws on that and it's fictionalized essentially, and kind of creates a whole narrative around that, which then speaks to maybe debates that are happening also in Japan, but maybe a bit more at that point in North America or Europe around this. But I think one of the things that this is quite significant here is obviously the company Assassin's Creed Ubisoft, that's I think a Franco Canadian company, I believe, but they're creating. They've created things on various different historical regions in the Middle East, I believe there's Italian one in Italy and this one is set in Japan. And so it's these kind of global companies that are using this kind of the samurai as a setting or as a vehicle for various things. And we also see this in the Ghost of Tsushima Goes to the Ote series, which are really highly rated games. Both of those, again, these are, I think, done by a US studio. We also see it in films and television streaming services like the recent Shogun series, things like that. And so the samurai is this kind of global property almost. It's not anyone can kind of come in and create kind of samurai content. And then oftentimes the kind of discussions that are going on within those will often reflect more the concerns kind of of those kind of societies and rather than what they do in Japan. And it's interesting when these kind of global properties are then created, what happens when they. They kind of go back to Japan, so to speak, you know, when they're. It's produced elsewhere and then it, it goes to Japan and you know, maybe it does really well, in which case that's going to help it around the world, or maybe it won't. I'm. I'm Some good examples here would be. One would be the Last Samurai, the film with Tom Cruise, which is a huge hit in Japan, because essentially what's kind of produced there, I mean, first of all, I think a lot of people like Tom Cruise, but it's also the fact that the image of the samurai that's being presented there is very much how many people in Japan imagine the samurai themselves. Imagine that imagery kind of meshes with that Whether or not there's any historical high to historical reality, it kind of reflects that the counterpart to that would be.
- [29:32]
Interviewer/Moderator
Yeah, I think imagine is the.
- [29:35]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah. And the counterpart to that would be something like the 47 Ronin film with Keanu Reeves, you know, came out a little over 10 years ago now, which that did very badly in Japan when it went there. And that really kind of then hit its kind of global reception as well. And so, you know, it's really interesting to see how the samurai are being used by all these kind of different parts of the world. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff being created in China and other places as well that we might not be aware of, but is coming out.
- [30:06]
Nathan Hobson
So we've been talking primarily about these sort of modern history and reception, but it would behoove us to jump back all the way to the beginning and ask, so how did this samurai, even if that we've already talked about, that's not exactly the right label. But like, where. Where does. Where does this group of people, this class of people that come to be the buke, the bushi, the samurai, where do they come from initially? This is something that you take up obviously in part one, because the collection catalog is organized essentially chronologically. So we're jumping back to part one. I mean, when does this group that we've come to call the samurai emerge as a distinct group in history in Japan?
- [30:52]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
I think it's difficult. I always find it difficult to give anything like a precise date for this even precise period. There have been warriors from pre history, and we have a few objects in the book showing those very early stages, haniwa, that represent a warrior and an early sword, beautifully decorated sword pommel. You've obviously got battles between different regions, different power holders in Japan over a long period of hundreds of years. And then in the 9th, 10th centuries, with the imperial court using these warriors or using these men as proxy warriors, they accrue more autonomy, perhaps you could say more independence, more power. And they are a lot of younger sons of families that are sent out into the countryside. They're becoming rural gentry, establishing power bases there gradually. And it's a very vociferous situation in Japan that there is no central control of the country. But then by the 1100s, you've really got very powerful clans exerting power, exercising power in the capital in Kyoto. And we talk about the two major clans, the Taira and the Minamoto, that come to these spectacular clashes in the 1150s. I should also say there have been significant battles going on up in the north of Japan as well, through the ten hundreds. And we talk about some of those in the book and some of the legendary representations or representations of the legendary warriors from those 11th century battles. But by the 1150s, you've got this clash between the Taira and the Minamota, which are in themselves are groupings of various clans under the banners of either one of these controlling clans. And then in the 1180s, the series of wars that are known as the Genpei, the wars between the Minamoto and the Taira that have the kind of trifecta of Ichinotani, Battle of Ichino Tani, Battle of Yashima, and then Battle of Dan no Ura. And after that, you have the establishment of the first samurai government, the Shogunate, the Kamakura Bakufu. And at that point they are holding power, but they never usurp the power of the imperial court. There's always this parallel situation and the parallel centers in Kyoto. And because of the presence of the imperial court in Kyoto, the Minamoto, the victorious Minamoto clan, choose to establish their government in the east, in Kamakura, but they operate alongside each other. So it's this gradual process over several hundred years that they build their way up to actually accruing or obtaining power. But the interesting corollary for that is the corollary for the continued existence of the imperial court is that to transmute brute force, the force that has won them the battles, this emerging samurai class or class that is establishing itself as power holders has to find legitimacy. And it does that through emulating many of the practices of the imperial court and of literally joining the court by being given court rank. So the title of Shogun is Seiitai. Shogun, officially in Japanese, is granted by the emperor by this imperial figure. And they dress like courtiers. They have themselves represented like courtiers. They will be engaging in the pursuits of courtiers. They aspire to that elegance and the political legitimacy that that can confer or reinforce them in their positions.
- [34:50]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah, I mean, and I think just one thing to emphasize is how important this period is for kind of the later imagery and mythologization and kind of nostalgia when people are kind of going back and many of kind of the great heroes, I mean, Nathan from, you'll remember, he'll know from your excellent work on Tohoku, around, like Oto no Yoshitsune is this kind of great kind of failed hero there and what happens with him later. And that's also where we get some of these global connections through that, you know, Even Tatiana Linkuevo is one of the contributors here. You know, she's written excellent work on how, you know, Yoshitsune, supposedly this myth that he goes and becomes Genghis Khan, like he goes to continent and, and comes back. But then, you know, as Regina mentioned, after Kamakura kind of Shogunate is established, then you get into the 13th century and kind of the Mongol invasions and, you know, this is. You start getting these different types of kind of global connections. And, you know, there is, I think, through the Mongol invasion is also one of the first times where Japan starts being seen as a martial country elsewhere that on the continent people are saying, well, actually Japan is a country of warriors and you probably should leave it alone if you can. After the Mongols are repulsed twice, there's this kind of mythical stories about storms destroying the Mongol fleets. But as Tom Codlin and others have shown, they were pretty capable of defending themselves, the samurai, at that point.
- [36:21]
Nathan Hobson
So one of the things that this conversation has gotten to is the ways in which the reality and image of the samurai clash, both in some of the ways we've been talking about in terms of the banners, the video games, the post war, all that stuff. But also right from the very beginning, Oleg, you've just brought up the whole, you know, kamikaze myth of repulsing the Mongols, which gets to this question about the sort of the myth of the samurai as warrior and the myths that have surrounded the legends, the tales that have been at the core of what it is to be samurai sort of from the very beginning. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of that and about how it might be reflected in the exhibition itself? Rosina?
- [37:19]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Yeah, I think there's also even in the reality of the samurai as warriors or of these warrior figures, there's misunderstandings, possibly a projection backwards of the Bushido understandings at the beginning of the 20th century. So these assumptions that all warriors were loyal, they were fighting for their lord, they were motivated by honor, duty, fueled with courage, that there's this nobility on the battlefield. And so we want to peel away some of that myth and examine medieval warfare in all of its bloody brutality. And often, I won't say self interest, but men who are trying to survive and who are trying to support their families. And I was reading interesting work about the material benefits of the battlefield. That the battlefield can be a place to earn a living was the phrase that was being used by the Japanese scholar Fujiki Hisashi, and that these are seasonal warriors. Very often they're farmers during the farming season, battles can't happen when the harvests have to come in, have to be brought in. And then you go back to the battlefield and there's the taking of human captives for sale. Many of them are being shipped overseas. There are edicts coming from Hideyoshi in the late 1500s about trying to stop this traffic and ordering people to be sent home to where they'd been captured from. And even earlier than that, the record of the Mongol invasion that we have was created. The pictorial scroll that is a national treasure in the Museum of the Imperial Collections was created for that warrior Takezaki, to claim his rewards. So these medieval warriors are motivated by the material rewards that they will be given by their lord, as well as what they can plunder on the battlefield. And we have a hand scroll in the book from the latter three year war that was happening in the 1080s in the north of Japan where we're trying to show the brutality of battle. We've got lots of heads being decapitated. It's very bloody, it's very painful, it's gruesome. And then later on in the scroll, there's the scene of the heads that have been captured because it's important for a combatant to take the head of the enemy. The higher the rank of the enemy that you've captured or the head that you've taken, the more rewards you will get. And there's a scene of all of these heads which have been prepared and dressed and they're lined up with tags on them. So you document and then you get the rewards. And there's plenty of instances of warriors changing side. I'm not saying it was totally self interested by any means, but it's about survival and helping your family as well, supporting your family, those who are dependent on you, whether that's actual kin or retainers. Yeah.
- [40:13]
Nathan Hobson
I have at times described, particularly up in through the Warring States period, the samurai as being kind of gangsta in that sense. But there's an irony to that, which is of course that, you know, a gangsta is its own sort of set of images created around a reality which is often not nearly as romantic as it's portrayed to be, but also that, you know, I think one of the things that sort of got that in my head was there's a film that comes out around 2000, maybe somebody remembers it's Forest Whitaker is in Ghost the Way of the Samurai, which is basically a. So this in the same way that you have that connection with Darth Vader and the inspiration there, I mean that kind of generalized image of the samurai comes, comes out in, in sort of strange, you know, overlaps with various parts of, of culture through, through, you know, foreign media.
- [41:07]
Interviewer/Moderator
And you have the same thing with, in Japan yakuza films, right? And yakuza themselves. I mean myth and reality is throughout history, right? I mean it's been a game of, you know, mutual, mutual in reinforcement. But I want to just go off a little bit of script and ask about the warfare itself because you have a lot of objects, a lot of weapons, right? We talked about the armory before and what was used and what wasn't used. Maybe we can talk a lot about some of those objects because it's just so fascinating to see so many objects and very different what people usually think about semi warfare, what kind of weapons they used. The sword for example. We can, me and Oleg have a very long conversation about swords, has been going on for years. Maybe we can talk a little bit about swords versus like yanigata, like spears and all this stuff. What kind of weapons they used and what was the importance of each of these. And maybe you can give us maybe one or two examples from.
- [42:11]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Yeah, sure. We are emphasizing that the primary combat technique was the bow and arrow, that mounted archers were the most important. And it's small skirmishes, skirmishes among small groups rather than massed armies. That's what we should be imagining in the earlier centuries and 1100s, 1200s. And then warfare changes significantly over the long period of battles in the 1300s, which Tom Conlon has described in detail. And you get a shift from then through to 1500s into the larger armies of infantry. And that's when you see more of the bladed weapons being used. So going back to that latter three year war scroll, it's primarily archers on horseback who are taking out their enemies and then they're leaping down, they're using the long bladed polearms, the naginata to chop off the heads and they have swords on their belt, but they're not actually being used in combat that much. In later centuries perhaps you're seeing more of the dismounting and then the hand to hand combat with swords. But the polearms, the naginata and nagamaki as well, which are similar but they have much longer blades, similarly curved blades, but much longer, greater proportion of the whole. That's the way that the combat is being carried out. And then these items become ceremonial in subsequent centuries because they've had this tremendous importance in the actual years of combat. I think the sword right from the beginning is Much more of a symbol. We have some court swords in the exhibition and the book. So again this is the emulation of the imperial court that they have been wearing these very long ceremonial swords in quite elaborate mounts. So you have to have that as a symbol of who you are, but you might not actually. And there's tremendous sophistication in the forging of these blades. It's very important to acknowledge that they are spectacular pieces of technology or results of spectacular technology, but they're not being used so centrally in the warfare.
- [44:32]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah, just echo that around stories. And I think it's really after, especially 1600 after, you know, you have the sword hunts by Hideyoshi first in the 1590s and then into the Tokugawa kind of continuing that sort of policy where they're gathering other types of weapons. But then when they actually make kind of the warriors their own distinct class in the Tokugawa period, you know, the symbol of that class is the two swords. You know, they're no longer allowed to carry guns because you know, those things are really dangerous. But they are allowed to carry their swords. And I think when people then project that backwards, that kind of symbolism from that Tokugawa period and you know, the big, the big symbol of kind of the abolition of the samurai almost is the sword edict in 1876. And you know, that's the end seen as kind of the end of the samurai in a lot of ways that they're no longer allowed to carry those swords. And so I think it's, it's retrospectively kind of putting that on there. And then we see that in the 20th century is that, you know, we've kind of got this rejection of a lot of things around the samurai. They're no longer, people can't carry swords after 1876, except for, you know, police and military who generally are now kind of carrying European style sabers, if anything at that, because it's kind of part of this westernization process. But then in the 1930s the military starts reproducing samurai style swords now, you know, generally machine forged and such. But that's what people are then carrying in the Second World War. And what we see in, in kind of regimental and other military museums in, you know, the US or Canada or the UK and so a lot of this stuff kind of gets projected back. And another thing kind of one of the material aspects here which is quite significant is obviously, you know, these swords as you know, Rosina mentions, they're incredible works of art. They're taken care of very carefully. You know, they're family Heirlooms. And so, you know, we have many of these things that exist from, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, whereas bows and arrows, you know, those things are made of wood and leather and other things that, you know, just decay and disappear. So we might not have many of these objects left. And if we do, then, then they're probably much more, more recent. But we also see that, I think the, the kind of significance of the bow and arrow on the battlefield is really kind of emphasized in the 16th century when we have the arrival of firearms from Europe via Southeast Asia. That, that transition from one type of projectile weapon to another type of projectile weapon, from bow and arrow to firearms. You know, that's not in a sense as dramatic as going like if everyone were running around with swords and suddenly had guns. You know, it's not, that's, that's not the sort of shift that we're talking about.
- [47:13]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
And there's an element of training and the exclusivity of training as well. For the mounted archers in the medieval period, you have to have the horse, small, more pony type horse. I should add, it was only much later that the Arabian breeds were introduced, but you have to have the time to acquire that skill in archery. So you do have the foot soldiers who are using the long bladed weapons and that's the balance shift. So it's not erratically different or radical development of combat just shifts in proportion over those centuries of warfare.
- [47:47]
Nathan Hobson
Yeah, I just wanted to footnote something, Rosina, that you said there, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the sort of native Japanese, that sort of pony style horse is attested to as far back as at least the second or third century. And so that's probably the horse that most warriors throughout most of Japanese history were actually involved with. And yet we have again this sort of backward projection of the Arabian that arrives much later. And I think that's something that even for people who are relatively well informed about the sort of mythology and imagery of the samurai are often taken aback by the rather diminutive size of the mounts. It changes very much the way you think about the samurai to see them on ponies.
- [48:34]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
I think we should get some films remade with them on these little short legged ponies.
- [48:39]
Interviewer/Moderator
Yeah. I wrote a paper on the date Masamune sculpture in Sendai and there is this big debate when I'm making it like some historian really insistent about the horse being the real horse that he would have said, but he get ruled.
- [48:52]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
And how tall was he in proportion to the horse? Because these warriors were not particularly tall.
- [48:59]
Interviewer/Moderator
No. They basically modeled him on Napoleon. Like the famous picture of Napoleon. They wanted to do like look on Datimo Simone basically looked like on the famous picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps. I forgot about. Who is it? It's pretty famous. Everybody knows this. They wanted to initially they want the horse to. Yeah. But this didn't work. But they want to make it more martial.
- [49:24]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
The image. The image is everything.
- [49:26]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah.
- [49:26]
Interviewer/Moderator
He didn't get the horse deserve. I want to talk keep. I mean, of course. Image is everything. And we talk about exhibition. And a book. And a book is so full of pictures. I was a bit frustrated because I got it as a PDF, not as a real book, which didn't allow me to. I always have to like focus in and out to shoot the sold images. Yeah, the real book is. Yeah, you can't. It's a podcast. You can't see it at. Nathan just showed the book and the. I was really. And of course, as we go from times of war to times of peace, the image multiply. Because when you go to the Edo period. Right. So the book has three big parts. Warriors samurai is. Warriors samurai is. Did he say bureaucrats or functionaries. And samurai as myth and legend in a way you can't really separate. Right. Because samurai will always. Since Kamakura, always already bureaucrats. And there's always myth from like the first time they arrive on the city. Because as we talked about how they would legitimize not just brute force, as you said, Rosina, but they want their own legends from the very beginning. Right. But all this kind of the bureaucrats and the legend part is getting much more important as we go to the end of the period. Right. When they stop to actually fight. And also another thing that is getting much more, at least for me, at least much more noticeable, is the role of women in samurai, because samurai become a class. So I want to talk about. There's a lot to talk about in the Edo period, but maybe I just want to start with talking about women's samurai because of this being like a dude's history most of the time. You know, I mean, when I teach this stuff, I have 95% males in the class. When I teach my samurai class, which I always. Could you talk a little bit about the role of samurai women?
- [51:19]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Sure. I wanted to say before that this is. This chat we're having is to make people aware of the book. But as a museum curator, I also want to promote our database, our online database, because even if you get the book and you've got that printed picture a little bit larger. You can't zoom in on some of the fantastic detail in these objects. So a lot of the material in the book is from the British Museum's collection and there are photographs online where you can really zoom in. So I encourage people to browse on our website as well. The women part of it was really important. Obviously I'm not a dude, so I'm not coming to it from that motivation. It doesn't. The warrior side of it just, it's not what drew me to it. It's more about the richness, the complexity of the history. And then when you start to understand where the samurai, whatever that means, fit into history and society, you understand that half of that class, and even in the Middle Ages, the whole thing is being supported by the women folk who are at home, who are running the households, who are sometimes defending those households. We have some imagery in the book of women who were trained in martial techniques and that varied from clan to clan, from domain to domain across history. But they do sometimes have fighting roles or defensive roles. But then by the time you get to the Edo period or in the Edo period, as you just said, this is an established social class. You have the rules for the military houses, the bukkeishohato, that are issued by the Shogunate in parallel with the rules for the imperial families. So we have quite a strictly defined class. Even though it's got many ranks within that and even though at the bottom it's getting a little bit fuzzy, sometimes you don't have enough money to make a living as a samurai, so you're having to do some cottage industry type crafts, embroidery, basketry, weaving, to help your family get by. But these women are playing an equally important role in society. The men folk of the samurai class are the government officials from the ministers of the realm, the ministers of the domain, depending on which chain of retainership you're in, right down to the functionaries who are doing guard duty in the gate of a castle. And we try to represent material or introduce material across those classes in the book. And then the women are running the households and raising the children. And these households can be substantial operations like a small company with hundreds of retainers that you're having to keep track of and wrangle and feed and clothe. Obviously, again, that all depends on rank. If you're a high ranking woman, you have a whole army of servants looking after you and you're for a lower ranking samurai, you're doing a lot of the work yourself. But it's an absolutely key part of how society keeps going and how the class regenerates itself, because it's not going to be around for long without any women.
- [54:29]
Oleg Benesch
And I think one of the really interesting things, which also ties into that earlier question about video games indirectly and. And Rosina will be able to say a bit more about this. But what's interesting is what we see in the Edo period is the celebration of women warriors in woodblock prints and kind of other media that especially there's some of these very famous figures like Tomoe Gozen, especially, who, you know, I don't know if we actually know whether this is a figure that actually existed, but we see so many kind of renderings of her and other kind of women warriors. And even if we get into the kind of end of the Tokugawa period, like we look at kind of the defense of Aizawakamatsu, for example, is quite a famous one. There's all sorts of images. We have some of these in the exhibition of kind of troops of women warriors. And this kind of continues on beyond that. And so celebrations of the samurai in the late 19th, early 20th century, this kind of image of the woman warrior is something that just kind of continues on. So this is a much longer kind of tradition of people really being interested in and celebrating this sort of thing. And later we do. Have I mentioned this defense of Aizu Akamatsu there in the Meiji Restoration wars. And, you know, we have figures like Niijima Yai. There was the big taiga drama Yae no Sakura a few years ago, who, you know, she's. She's there with a gun kind of defending Aizu Wakamatsu. You know, that's one of the big narratives around her that's often portrayed. So, you know, we do have also kind of these historical figures who have been fighting at various times, but it's really this kind of celebration and fascination with the woman warrior which is there from. From a very early period.
- [56:14]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Itomo Egozen. We use a quote in the book from Azuma Kagami, and that made me think it's useful for listeners to know how some of these stories, the legendary warriors, got transmitted. Because those Genpei wars we mentioned earlier on of the 1180s are immortalized, they're recorded well, the stories are transmitted by itinerant lute players, these entertainers who wander around the country and regale people with the stories of the legendary warriors of yore. And gradually, by the 1400s, that's getting written down in manuscript form which is transmitted, copied repeatedly and transmitted across the centuries. And then early 1600s, you're getting printed versions of that. And Azama Kagami is one of those, the Mirror of the East. So we don't know how much is historical reality, we don't know how much is myth. But there are some documentary sources for some of these figures, however much that's been embellished. But it also makes me think about the non competent women as well, whose stories are being transmitted in things like Heike Monogatari from various periods as well. And that we have these represented in the book, that there are the women who protect their children, like Tokiwa Gozen. She risks her own life to make sure that her three sons are kept alive when their family is exiled, when her husband is defeated. And one of those grows up to be the superhero legendary warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune. We have other figures like Taira Masako, who is staying at home, but she's commanding the troops. She's taking control of the situation while her husband's away. So it's not all about the women who are fighting.
- [57:57]
Interviewer/Moderator
And we stay a little bit more with like the transmission and the stories and the Yukio because there's so much of it. And again, the images from the Edo are just magnificent, like the colors and it's just really, really beautiful images. And I have a feeling that samurai exists way more in imagery, especially from the Edo period, than I mean, of course the real. But it seems that even when samurai start fighting, like either in the 47 Ronin or you know, 47 Ronin or like Bakmatsuit, but Aizu before, there's like this famous like story of those young boys that kill themselves, like the Byaktai. They all perform what they think samurai should be. But does it confer it relates to the legends? I mean, you can trace it from again, 47, running all the way to Mishima Yukio standing on the roof with his loyal. It's all. There's this play between performance and imagery, performance and imagery. And to what extent all those ideas, loyalty, you know, what samurai is supposed to be, to what extent Is it basically an Edo period invention? Or does it reflect anything that relates to those real warriors?
- [59:17]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Yeah, the image becomes hugely important and prevalent during the Edo period. And you alluded to this earlier, that the status as warrior is inversely important to your actual fighting experience. That when you no longer have an opportunity to fight, it's even more important to present yourself as a warrior or to assert your status as a warrior. Even if you're not physically presenting yourself in armor. So when they are in this long period of peace and their superior social position is justified by being a warrior, it's this substitution into the social hierarchy that basically comes from Neo Confucian thought. In China, it was the scholar official, and in Japan that's replaced by the bushi under the Tokugawa Shogunate. So they have to promote their own status as warriors. They keep all of the armor, they keep the weapons. The processions that are happening in this alternate attendance system are like military duty turning up for military duty. And in parallel to this, you have this huge publishing industry. This is a very commercially driven operation. We should never think of artists being inspired to create pictures that publishers then pick up on. The publishers are driving this thing and they're creating this set of Marvel superheroes, as somebody described them recently, these fantasies. And I think you're right that those do fuel later actual events.
- [60:55]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah. And I think just want to pick up and re emphasize that, as that is one of the kind of big themes we have in the exhibition on and the book is the significance of these representations rather than just looking at what samurai actually did. You know, these representations, I think, often like, really kind of steered people and motivated people to do certain things or to, you know, behave in certain ways, dress in certain ways, you know. Yeah. Carry certain objects, own, collect certain things. And so these representations are really important. And I think, as Brzee just pointed out, for various reasons. Yeah, they really do kind of reach certainly a temporary peak in the Edo period. Whether we're going to reach another peak, samurai in the next few years, here is another question.
- [61:44]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
I would also mention Kabuki theatre. These aren't just the books and the sheet prints, but there's the sheet prints representing the Kabuki performances, and the performances themselves are the main deal, and the prints are just souvenirs. But there's huge consumption of samurai themes on the stage. A lot of it's vicarious drama, excitement, catharsis through living out these dramatic tales, most of which are from the historical periods many centuries before. But some of them are more contemporary and Chushungura being the main one. But I think whenever we talk about Chushing Guru, we have to emphasize that it's the exception. It's not setting the standard for anything. It's not the norm.
- [62:26]
Interviewer/Moderator
Can I just ask very briefly about. We're pushing the one hour even beyond one hour now. I guess I just want to ask very briefly about style, because I don't know why I was surprised. I know about it to see all those little objects that you have in. I forgot which chapter it is, but it seems that a lot of about what a samurai was about being seen, about prestige, about being stylish, basically that samurai were just very stylish from hairstyle, armor. Everything was about creating a certain image. And when I teach the Hagakure, I don't start with the first famous line. I start with a chapter about makeup, which always floored the dudes because they have this sense they all read the Hagakure. I mean, Odok probably can tell me exactly what translation. But was being a samurai in the other period, maybe before even was about being cool? I mean, that's why they have those elaborate helmets and all those little kind of accessories.
- [63:30]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Hashtag samurai looks maxing. Yeah, definitely. It's very much about image because as I said, your status is everything in Edo period society. And if you're a bushy, you differentiate yourself visually by the clothes you wear, the crests on your robes, the two swords, particularly as Oleg was describing. And I think that need to differentiate yourself is even more powerful at the bottom of the ranks of the samurai, because what sets you apart from the merchants is what matters. So maybe there's less security about social position. The further down the ranks of the samurai you go, they're not the ones who have got the fancy accessories. It's the. The samurai with money and they're demonstrating their superior rank within the samurai class. So, yeah, status differentiation is common to many societies, and luxury goods are how you demonstrate that.
- [64:26]
Nathan Hobson
I wanted to just wrap up with one question, which is not about the collection, the exhibition itself, but about the catalog and the way that it's put together and how much, I guess this is reflected in the exhibition, having not had the chance to see it yet myself. So there's a number of columns by various scholars, as Oleg, I think you mentioned sort of early on in today's recording, and I wanted to know a little bit more about that, about how these different scholars came together and how you chose the themes that they would be writing on and if at all, how that is incorporated into the exhibition itself.
- [65:10]
Oleg Benesch
Yeah, no, great. There's a. Yeah, there has been a kind of long, ongoing research project. We're just kind of at the heart of this, has been feeding into the exhibition. And we're really fortunate to be able to bring together quite a large team of people. I think just in addition to us, we've got about, I think about 22 people kind of working on this. And there will Be a couple of special issues coming out this year with kind of full research articles on a lot of different topics dealing with the samurai. And many of these people are people I've been speaking to for, you know, 10, 15 years or so about these topics. And there's finally an opportunity to bring people together working on a lot of different things. Roughly half of the contribution they're looking at kind of samurai in other countries, how they're looked at in different regions, whether it's kind of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the United States, the uk, but also looking kind of in some pre modern Southeast Asia, for example. And the other kind of selection are looking at how the evolution of the samurai within Japan. A lot of those columns are looking at how that is influenced by overseas influences, again going from kind of the medieval to the modern. And just as a couple of the examples, I mean, I learned a great deal through this. But the things we wanted to definitely incorporate here and get the experts on these topics is one column I would maybe mention in that context is Nam Lin Hur's on Korean tea bowls, or tea bowls in kind of late 16th century and beyond. And essentially the story of the Korean potters who are essentially kidnapped and brought back to Japan by Hideyoshi and his armies during the Korean invasions of the 1590s. And a lot of his work, Nam Lin Hur's work there focuses on these invasions and the absolute devastation of Korea by these samurai armies. And we think that that's one of the really important things to get across here is we have all these beautiful objects and there's all this kind of the cool things and the style and all of that stuff. But there's a lot of brutality here. And this is one. And not just within Japan, but going out as well. And so we really want to talk about those things. And you know, something like Namlin Hur's column is a good, a good example of that. I mean, one. Another one. Just because these columns do cover the kind of range, just because I talked a little bit about it earlier, we have a column, for example, by Mark Kavina looking at the Satsuma Rebellion. And this was something where, you know, I learned a great deal. This really surprised me was, you know, we have this narrative from the Last Samurai that, you know, when that came out, I think as historians, we kind of smirked at that because it's like this narrative of like these modern. The modern Imperial army with their guns versus the samurai with their swords. And, you know, both sides had guns. And you know, this is, this is a bit silly and nostalgic, but actually Mark Ravina looks at woodblock prints from that time to see that actually that's how people started depicting this during the rebellion itself. That initially both sides were depicted with guns, but once it became clear that the samurai were on the losing side or the rebels were on the losing side, then this kind of nostalgic attempt to treat them as these sword carrying underdogs really kind of comes through. So in a sense, you know, I feel like the Last Samurai was perhaps a lot more accurate of views in Japan at that time than I'd given it credit for. So, yeah, a bit of a mea culpa there.
- [68:54]
Nathan Hobson
Okay, well. Yeah. Well, we're gonna thank you for your time and for the rehabilitation of everybody's favorite samurai film right there at the end. We know you could have been spending that time with either the forklifts full of objects or the BBC reporters who also want your to hear from you. So we do very much appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and very much encourage everybody to A, get your hands on the catalog itself and B, if you are able to make it to the exhibition. Thank you both.
- [69:31]
Oleg Benesch
Thanks so much.
- [69:33]
Dr. Rosina Buckland
Thank you.
- [69:33]
Interviewer/Moderator
Thank you. Thank you everybody.
- [69:35]
Oleg Benesch
It.