The full armour
Face masks and helmets shaped as mythical creatures.
Shisma โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Roy Zuo โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Kitex2002 โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Kitex2002 โ CC BY-SA 4.0
It depends what you value. The collection itself is unquestionably exceptional and the objects are in excellent condition, and the museum design is among Berlin's best. But if you prefer quiet museums of display cases and written labels, you may find the heavy reliance on screens and projections excessive for the price โ and Berlin holds free museums with greater collections.
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Berlin's Samurai Museum displays what is described as the largest private collection of samurai artefacts outside Japan: over a thousand objects gathered by the German businessman Peter Janssen across decades, opened in its present form in 2022. The holdings cover roughly a thousand years of Japanese military culture: complete armour with its fearsome face masks, katana blades made by the folding technique that gives the steel its distinctive layering, helmets carved into the shapes of animals and mythical creatures, alongside manuscripts, woodblock prints and tea ceremony implements. The presentation is strikingly modern and technical: screens, projections, audio stations and a theatrical projection room on samurai ritual โ which is what justifies the relatively high price. It sits in the Scheunenviertel quarter in the city centre, and it is among Berlin's newest and most polished private museums in design terms.
Face masks and helmets shaped as mythical creatures.
Folded steel with its distinctive layering.
Auguststrasse 68, 10117 Berlin