Samurai

Samurai presents the warrior class that had been the dominant social force in Japan for seven centuries — and one of the most enduring subjects of Japanese visual culture long after the class's formal abolition in the Meiji period. Mori's samurai was drawn not from historical record but from the theatrical tradition of kabuki and popular fiction that had transformed the historical warrior into a figure of legend and moral example. His bold stencil technique gave the samurai's armor, helmet, and weapons the same graphic directness that the theatrical tradition had always imposed on these figures.