Kuopio museum to host exclusive samurai exhibition

Kuopio will host an international samurai exhibition next May, Yle reports.

The exhibition at the Kuopio Cultural History Museum will feature about 60 carefully selected objects from the Samurai Museum Berlin, including armour, helmets and swords.

Heta Pekkarinen, chief curator at the Kuopio museum, said it is the first time another museum has received exclusive access to such an extensive selection from the Berlin museum’s collections.

The exhibition is being produced in cooperation with Expona, an Italian company that creates touring exhibitions, and the Samurai Museum Berlin. The Berlin museum is responsible for the exhibition’s content and curating.

“Expona’s exhibitions usually travel from one country to another, but this exhibition was created specifically for us,” Pekkarinen said.

She described the exhibition as the Kuopio museum’s major investment for next year and said she expects it to attract visitors from beyond the Kuopio region.

The exhibition will explore the history and culture of Japan’s samurai warriors, as well as the significance of Japanese traditions and myths connected to the objects.

The objects come from the collection of German collector Peter Janssen, considered one of the world’s largest and most prestigious collections of samurai artefacts. It contains 4,000 objects and began more than 40 years ago, when Janssen bought his first samurai sword at a flea market in Berlin.