Samurai schools are failing our children. There, I said it. Kyohachi-ryu School, “the origin of swordsmanship” if its brochure is to be believed, has one teacher and eight students — okay, so they’ve ...

Yesterday, I commented that Last Samurai Standing on Netflix had an exceedingly rare double 100% Rotten Tomatoes scores across both critics and audiences. Today, that’s almost still true, albeit the ...

In 1582, the first Japanese diplomatic mission bound for Europe set off from Nagasaki. Conceived of by Jesuit missionaries, the Tenshō embassy was composed of four young Japanese noblemen who over the ...

Last Samurai Standing has now landed on Netflix, a six-episode series which takes place in the post-samurai era in Japan, where 292 fallen samurai find themselves lured into a game of survival, where ...

As the Meiji Era begins, an honorable samurai is forced to fight again, so that his family may live. The six-episode Last Samurai Standing, directed and co-written by Michihito Fujii, and based on the ...

Surrounded by uniformed snipers, a crowd of contestants gather at a secret location. Soon they will be forced to fight to the death, spurred on by the slim chance of winning a colossal cash prize.

Hui-Ying Kerr previously received funding from the AHRC (now UKRI), for her doctorate in History of Design (2010 - 2013) on Japan in the 1980s Bubble Economy, including an AHRC-IPS grant for her ...

Netflix has unveiled a teaser and added new cast members to “Last Samurai Standing,” the Japanese samurai epic that is set to bow in November. The six-episode series is billed as “a tribute to the ...

Netflix confirmed on August 22, 2025, that Blue Eye Samurai season 2 is officially in production. The announcement came with a teaser video featuring co-creators Amber Noizumi and Michael Green, along ...

In Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie Kill Bill: Volume 1, vengeful assassin The Bride (Uma Thurman) seeks a sword from the legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba). “I need Japanese steel,” she ...

The samurai were a preeminent class defending Japan for centuries. But as the Tokugawa shogunate ushered in an era of stability, the need for them faded, forcing these warriors to find a new way of ...