Dec 06 (theconversation.com) - Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai is an anime series set during the opening decades of Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867), also known as the Tokugawa period. Among other subjects, the series addresses the role of samurai, what life was like for women and people of mixed heritage, and violence in Edo-period Japan – with varying degrees of accuracy.
Japanese society was strictly stratified at this time, as the series frequently references. The hierarchy was ranked, in descending order, by: samurai, farmer, artisan and merchant classes.
Even in the early stages of the 1600s Edo period, the entire samurai ruling class centred around the role of the warrior. But by the time the series opens, in the 1650s, the country was unified – a political and economically stable society – and this meant that the role of the samurai was in decline.
However, the samurai still defended the ideals of loyalty, courage and honour. It is these ideals that motivate Blue Eye Samurai’s principal characters, Mizu, Ringo and Taigen.
Mizu (Maya Erskine) is a mixed heritage white and Japanese woman living undercover as a male swordsmaster. She undertakes a quest for vengeance against four British men (one of whom may be her father), who illegally remain hidden in Japan during Sakoku.
Under Sakoku, only Dutch traders were permitted entry to Japan, and were confined to a small man-made island off Nagasaki. The Tokugawa shogunate’s (Japan’s military government during the Edo period) isolationist policy effectively closed the country’s borders to all outside influences through a number of edicts from 1633 to 1639. ...continue reading
