Frock Flicks note: This is a guest post by Lisa Joseph, who’s been a Japanese history nerd for two decades. Known as Saionji no Hana in the Society for Creative Anachronism, she was elevated to the Order of the Laurel for her research into the arts, culture and history of pre-17th century Japan. You can find some of her work online at wodefordhall.com
Lets talk about Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai (2023-), because Sarah asked for more in her preview post. Netflix put this article out in praise of the historicity of the eight-part animated tale of revenge set in 17th-century Japan, complete with a bibliography! So how historical is it?
A bit of background first. Japan’s Edo period lasted from 1603 to 1868. The country was mostly peaceful, at least compared to the preceding Sengoku period, cities were growing, and their populations were certainly exploring the latest fashions trickling down from the pleasure quarters to the point that the shogunate was making sumptuary laws about it.
After nearly a century of interaction with Europeans, primarily missionaries and merchants from Portugal and Spain, along with a few English and Dutch, the shogunate did establish and enforce a policy of isolation, cutting itself off from much of the outside world by the 1630s. Only the Dutch got to stay and trade as long as they did so from an island in Nagasaki harbor, limiting their potential “bad influence” on the local population. Common Japanese could not leave the country, and as we see in the first episode of Blue Eye Samurai, internal travel was heavily regulated by check points on major roads and at city gates.
The series does provide us with a date in episode 8. There was, in fact, a great fire on March 2 and 3, 1657, killing an estimated 100,000 people and destroying much of the wood-built city and Edo castle (for a look at how the shogunate used the aftermath to rebuild and reorganize the city, this article from the Tokyo Metropolitan Library has some interesting maps and drawings).
Blue Eye Samurai gets a lot right, from the unremarkable nudity to the overall look of its commoner characters. Mizu’s look owes something to Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in A Fistful of Dollars, the 1964 remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Her battered straw kasa and cape (a fashion adopted from Europeans in the late 16th c.) over much darned indigo is specifically Japanese.
The human trafficker in episode 1 is flashy in stripes. Ringo’s use of an old soba tray as a hat is clever and not all that odd in a culture that can find endless, inventive ways to wear what is essentially a cotton towel. (It’s a hat. It’s a neck scarf. It’s a sweat band. It’s another hat.)
That said, menswear among the commoner classes had not changed a great deal by the mid 17th century. Where the series plays fast and loose with the timeline is with the hair and costumes of Akemi and the women of the pleasure quarters, much of which harks forward well into the 18th century. After centuries of respectable women wearing their hair tied low and modestly on the nape of the neck, sexy updos ranging from a simple topknot bun to more elaborate styles began appearing in the brothels and tea houses of the pleasure quarters before making their way into mainstream society. Over time, those styles kept evolving. Akemi’s elaborate hair ornaments are reminiscent of the stock kabuki princess wigs worn by male actors.
Having just had a look at Brian Kesinger’s Facebook Page posts about his work on Blue Eye Samurai, you can get an idea of where they were going with it. His post of November 10, 2023, includes copious sources researched by costume designer Suttirat Larlarb and conscious choices inspired by sources that clearly post-date 1657. Compare these two 17th-century paintings of women to the scene where Akemi goes to the pleasure quarters.
And then there’s this direct lift by Mr. Kesinger from a well-known print by Kitagawa Utamaro from about 1802 of a woman blackening her teeth.
Enjoy Blue Eye Samurai for what it is, a fictional adventure with compelling characters, gripping action, and don’t sweat the details too much.
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Hairstyles are interesting here, as they are in Shogun. Modest respectable married women of the samurai class keep their hair down and maybe tied back. Updos, which reveal the nape of the neck, are for courtesans. It’s the opposite of the western model. Although I expect that peasant women would be keeping their hair under some sort of control while they worked.