The legacy of mixed-race samurai in Japan

The action series Blue Eye Samurai’ wraps a delicious vendetta story around the obsession with racial purity’

- Aditya Mani Jha

In one of the most famous lines from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), Japanese mob boss O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) hurls a very pointed insult at the American assassin-protagonist Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman): "Silly little Caucasian girl, playing around with Samurai swords." The fact that O-Ren herself has both Chinese and American blood makes this an ironic line. But it also underlines a common plot point in the jidaigeki (literally, "period drama") films Tarantino was inspired by an obsession with racial "purity". The career of the half-white Japanese 1970s actor Sally Mae is also a case in point. In the 1973 TV series adaptation of the Lone Wolf And Cub manga, she played the mixed-blood concubine Okinu.

Netflix's latest entrant in the "adult animation" segment, the action series Blue Eye Samurai, takes this obsession to its logical endpoint and wraps a delicious vendetta story around it. Blessed with good writing and some of the most lovingly crafted action scenes you will ever see in animation, Blue Eye Samurai is a winner for Netflix, whose animated originals have proven time and again to be superior to their live-action counterparts.

In late 17th century Japan, swordmaster and mixed-race rōnin (an independent samurai) Mizu (Maya Erskine) looks for her Caucasian father, the man who gave her blue eyes and resigned her forever to a life of being called "impure", "monstrous", "mongrel" et al. In the time-honoured tradition of Japanese and Chinese/ Hong Kong cinema, Mizu also dresses up like a man and has bandaged her chest since childhood.