Samurai figures have been the subject of theater productions (kabuki and noh), literature, big-budget films, anime, television shows, manga, and video games for years. The samurai were originally members of the warrior class who served as the henchmen for lords in Japan before the Meiji era (first half of the Empire of Japan, when the people morphed from an isolated feudal society to a modern, industrialized nation state). The adoption of modern firearms in the second half of the 19th century rendered the traditional weapons of the samurai obsolete, triggering the decline of the warrior culture.

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