I’ve been waiting for two years to watch the debut of the re-imagined Shōgun, one of my all-time favorite novels, and I’m happy to report that its first two episodes are a very happy reimagining. To say that the new Hulu series does justice to the story is not going far enough. It absolutely carries the spirit of everything that made the 1975 novel and the 1980 miniseries great, but it also goes much deeper into the hearts and souls of its Japanese characters—where, relieved of exoticism and orientalism, the story becomes truly universal.
For its first readers, James Clavell’s novel was an eye-opener, a just-for-Americans summation of Japanese history and culture. All those weighty lessons went down easier because Clavell chose to write it as a blockbuster—one of those porterhouse-thick tomes of greed, sex, and ambition like Hailey’s Hotel and Puzo’s The Godfather, with multiple narrators and densely interwoven plots that would make A Song of Ice and Fire look like a Bazooka Joe comic. Our family’s copy was a second-hand paperback that was passed around my family, and being the youngest I got it last. All summer long my sisters and I were chatting about karma and samurai and the Eightfold Fence like we knew what the hell we were talking about. Three years later, our excitement was reignited by rumors that it was about to become a miniseries starring Dr. Kildare.
The 1980 Shōgun had a lot of plot to cover in nine hours, so it’s no wonder that some of the book’s lesser plotlines got katana’d. Still, the producers managed to pack in a lot of the story’s historic texture, not to mention a few snippets of the Japanese language.
Even some the novel’s grimmer scenes scraped past the network censors. We got to see a man beheaded, a Dutch crewman boiled to death, and Richard Chamberlain’s Pilot-Captain John Blackthorne get urinated on by the village’s head samurai, Kashigi Obi: and that was all in the first episode. Not to mention that the cast was fantastic.
Backing up Chamberlain was only the Toshiro Mifune as the stoically ambitious Lord Torunaga, not to mention a scenery-chrewing, pre-Sallah John Rhys-Davies as the Portuguese captain Rodrigues. Less well-known to American audiences were Frankie Sakai (a comedian and Mothra veteran) as the scheming Lord Yabu with amused menace, and Yoko Shimada, who was nothing short of perfection as Lady Mariko.
Hovering over them all was the disembodied narrative voice of Orson Welles.
As majestic as the 1980 Shōgun was, it had one narrative problem it couldn’t completely solve: namely, how to adapt a novel set in Japan whose cast is mainly made up of people who only speak their own language.
Even in 1980, the filmmakers knew that it would be awkward to have its samurai speaking English, and Americans don’t really do subtitles. Their solution was to have the majority of scenes told from Blackthorne’s perspective. We would see only what he saw and know only what was revealed to him, usually through other characters serving as translators. Japanese would be spoken only to add texture and authenticity, a kind of white noise.
On the rare occasions when we needed to understand what Japanese characters were saying to each other, Orson Welles would provide a voice-of-God summary of the conversation (which got weird when his deep, rolling voice was speaking for one of the female characters).
Unsurprisingly, this Anglophone (and Anglo-centric) Shōgun did not play well in Japan. Bad enough that Clavell’s novel had already made a hash of Japanese history: turning a major figure like Tokugawa Ieyasu into “Yoshi Toranaga” is like making an epic drama of the American Revolution where our first president is named Greg Whippingtown. Righting at least a few of these wrongs appears to have been a primary goal of the new Shōgun, produced and co-scripted by award-winning short story writer Rachel Kondo and her husband Justin Marks (Top Gun: Maverick).
The choice to re-center the story’s Japanese characters is central to the genius of the 2024 Shōgun.
If Clavell’s novel was an introduction to an unknown culture—and the 1980 miniseries was a filtering of that culture through a single English-speaking character—then the new Shōgun is a meeting of cultures on equal terms. Feudal Japan is not explained to us but revealed, and we discover it by listening to the characters speak in their own voices. That is, speaking in Japanese: yes, there are subtitles (you can also switch to a dubbed track if that’s your thing), but for me this was a strength. Nothing is being dumbed-down for us: we’re being treated like insiders.
Take for example how we’re introduced to Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), essentially the series’ title character. In the novel and 1980 miniseries, there’s a lot of buildup to Toranaga: he’s talked about long before he appears. When Blackthorne is finally brought into his presence, the daimyo says little, only stares down with those glowering Mifune eyes. The effect is to make him seem remote, unknowable, as if we’ve climbed a long way up a mountain to stand beneath a very large statue. In the 2024 reworking, we meet Lord Toranaga on much more familiar ground: he’s out falconing with his son, playing dad. He chats with his retainers about court politics and the high-stakes game he’s playing. We may not know everything he’s thinking—that would be unwise for a leader to reveal—but we know a lot more about what’s going on than poor John Blackthorne does at that point.
Shōgun covers a critical period in Japanese history, a transformation as complete as the religious wars that were sweeping Europe at the same time. It was the first time in history when events in Europe really began to matter in Japan, and vice versa. There really had been a de factor ruler of Japan known as the Taikō, and his death triggered a series of events leading to a massive civil war in which Tokugawa (our “Toranaga”) was a key player. In the 1980 miniseries, the Taikō is only spoken of. In the new series, we’re allowed to witness his passing. We also get a firsthand look at how the arrival of Portuguese Jesuit missionaries complicated internal politics, particularly since those missionaries were accompanied by warships. The arrival of Blackthorne, a Protestant and enemy to the Portuguese, is not insigificant to Toranaga, and in the new series we get to hear him tell us exactly how he wants this Englishman dealt with. It’s his actions, not Blackthorne’s, that send out ripples.
There are also character nuances that come out more sharply now that they’re speaking for themselves. We know from the start that Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai, a New Zealander of Japanese descent) was forced to marry the brutish son of Toranaga’s most trusted general, and that his recognition of her talents is both unprecedented and potentially destabilizng. In the novel, we were told that Lady Usami Fuji (Moeka Hoshi) had to endure the ritual deaths of her dishonored husband and son, but this time we’re with her when it happens.
Then there’s Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), one of the book’s most complex characters: the new retelling not only shows his cruel sense of humor, but his deep certainty that death reveals a man’s true nature. When he orders one of Blackthorne’s crew to be tortured to death, he’s disappointed that the “barbarian” didn’t say anything interesting at the end.
This word “barbarian” gets used a lot, and both the European and Japanese characters lay equal claim to it. In the first episode, “Anjin” (a nice meta-reference, since the word literally translates as “pilot” and we’re watching the pilot), Blackthorne has been forced to his knees before Kashigi Obi, moments after Obi beheaded a villager for a light infraction. Both Blackthorne and Obi refer to each other as savages—Obi because he kills without cause, Blackthorne because he shows no respect—and while they say it in different languages, they understand each other perfectly. The whole history of East-West relations is summed up in a single exchange.
Two episodes in (I’ll review future episodes as they air), Shōgun is shaping up to be an excellent retelling of an epic narrative. All the principal characters are on the table, the three-way conflict of Japanese, Catholics, and Protestants is sharply defined, and Tokunaga is almost certainly about to lose his head to rival Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira). Into this mix is thrown Pilot-Captain Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), who at this early point is mainly concerned with establishing that he comes in peace. He’s stubborn. His stubbornness has kept him alive on a long and arduous journey to what he calls “The Japans,” but it also nearly gets him and his crew killed on several occasions.
What makes him remarkable, though, is his willingness to learn from his captors. In the book and 1980 miniseries, there’s a moment that I wish had survived into the new series. Blackthorne learns that he is to be called “Anjin” since his real name is too difficult to pronounce. He’s also learned that his survival depends both on demanding and showing respect… and so, when Obi introduces him as “Anjin,” he corrects it to “Anjin-san.” That’s Mister Pilot to you, pal. Obi accepts the correction: the beginning of respect between the two.
But this is a detail, and honestly there’s no need for new viewers to compare this Shōgun to any of the versions that preceded it. This is a Shōgun for the way the world works today. One where no culture is “normal” or “exotic,” where the Europeans are not “discoverers” or “explorers” but spoilers and invaders, where no attempt is made to excuse a code of honor and obedience that demands the deaths of children, and where a romance between Mariko and Blackthorne doesn’t get the Madame Butterfly treatment.
It’s a promising beginning for a series that might just be the definitive Shōgun for a long time to come.
