About

Hire a Samurai is a notable quote from Bill Wurtz's viral video, History of Japan. The phrase has since been incorporated into remix videos and other jokes online.

Origin

On February 2nd, 2016, musician and animator Bill Wurtz uploaded a video titled "History of Japan", where he briefly summarizes Japan's history. Around two minutes into the video, Wurtz begins discussing people hiring samurai, saying "How are you supposed to protect your shit, from criminals? Hire a Samurai." The video has gained over 31 million views (shown below).^[1]

Spread

After the original video, the line was used in many ways in images and videos. The first image was on Tumblr, by user shitaphbelarusdoes.^[2]

The phrase later was used in replacement remixes. On May 13, 2017, YouTube user Memyselfandpi 2 uploaded a video which replaced each Jingle in Wurtz' original video with "Hire a Samurai." The video has over 164,000 views as of August 4th, 2017 shown below, left).^[3] On May 25, 2017, BionicJohn upload a video on YouTube which replaced each joke on the Emoji Movie trailer with the phrase. This video has over 131,000 views.^[4]

Additionally, a sound button was added to MyInstants.com^[5] which when pressed, will say "Hire a Samurai."

Various Examples

Videos

Images

Search Interest

External References