Today, FX released the tenth and final episode of Shōgun. It’s the second miniseries based on James Clavell’s 1975 historical novel of the same name, the first having been a network TV miniseries in 1980 starring Richard Chamberlain. The whole series is now available for streaming (I watched it on Hulu). It’s majestic and compelling and reasonably true to the history of Japan in 1600. I recommend it highly. I can’t speak to whether it faithfully renders Clavell’s novel (which tried to anchor itself in historical figures) or how it differs from the miniseries. But as a standalone piece of Japanese, and to a lesser extent English and Portuguese historical fiction, it is riveting. The eighth and ninth episodes are especially powerful.
The story is built around John Blackthorne, an English sailor based on William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan. Blackthorne is played by Cosmo Jarvis as a bold, headstrong, self-confident adventurer who is nonetheless lost trying to navigate Japanese culture and language while scheming against his real enemies, the Catholic Portuguese. Jarvis’s voice does a lot of his work for him, but he also conveys a real sense of a man of action chafing against a set of social mores he doesn’t understand. But the real stars are veteran Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada (who has been acting in American films as far back as The Last Samurai) as Yoshi Toronaga, Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko, and Tadanobu Asano as Kashigi Yabushige. All three give can’t-take-your-eyes-off-them performances, with Sanada as the grave, masterful, and wily warlord, Sawai as a deeply conflicted Christian convert sworn to avenge her family, and Asano pitch-perfect as a local lord who is gruff, braver than he is wise, fascinated with death, and easily manipulated by those around him. Much of the miniseries is in Japanese with subtitles; the bulk of the rest of the dialogue, supposedly in Portuguese, is in English. That may not be ideal if you struggle with subtitles, but it adds to the sense of authentic immersion in early modern Japanese culture.
I’d say more about how faithfully the story renders the events of 1600, but the series may be more rewarding if you go in knowing less of how the history ends.
