Warning: this article includes spoilers for Blue Eye Samurai.
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.
