1600s Japan was a place torn by tension and guaranteed violence. With the ruling taikÅ dead and his heir too young to assume power, five regional warlords known as daimyo, each with an army of fiercely loyal samurai, vied for complete control. That kind of absolute power had an ancient name: ShÅgun. And it was just a question of which daimyo would use his cruelty, cunning, and military power to take him over. But there was also another center of power. A newer one. By the 17th century, Portuguese Catholics had established a monopoly on trade with Japan, essentially keeping the country a secret from their sworn enemies, the Protestant nations of Europe. And in 1600, a cocky, loud-mouthed Englishman appears as the pilot of a ruined Dutch warship. Did fate take you to “The Japanese”? Will her presence and his powerful ship turn the tide of the inevitable war? Or will he be dead before he has a chance to find out?
That’s the setup for FX/Hulu’s vivid new adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel. shÅ gun begins, an adaptation that nominally follows the 1980 Nine Hours mini series starring Richard Chamberlain, although he makes the immediate and important decision to remove the white Western protagonist from the center of the story. This shÅ gun Instead, it focuses on Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and the majestic, brilliant, princely daimyo’s plans to thwart his rivals on the Council of Regents, a group led by the unscrupulous Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira), who rules from the grandiose and impenetrable Osaka Castle.
Toranaga has some dedicated allies in his corner, such as his eager but impulsive son Yoshii Nagakado (Yuki Kura) and the old general Toda Hiromatsu (Tokuma Nishioka). But once brash and brave ship pilot John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) shows up in Japan, Toranaga’s greatest asset becomes Lady Toda Mariko. (Mariko is played by Anna Sawai, who is really on a roll after being the best thing ever Monarch: Legacy of Monsters). As a convert to Catholicism, Mariko speaks fluent Portuguese. And as translator, she will be the vital link that allows communication between Blackthorne the barbarian and Toranaga, the Lord of the KantÅ. And hey, if the cunning daimyo’s long game works, maybe they won’t all die when the armies of the other four regents, and the Portuguese priests, line up against them.
Blackthorne couldn’t be more out of place in Japan. Completely ignorant of his culture and initially committed to his Dutch employers’ edict of plunder and conquest, the pilot soon discovers how powerless he is in this land that any non-Portuguese sailor has been trying to find for decades. Like when he and the few surviving crew members of the Erasmus are sprinkled with offal in their village corral, or when Kashigi Omi (Hiroto Kanai), the ambitious young lord of Ajiro, lops off the head of a nosy Catholic villager right in front of him. Cosmo Jarvis plays off the wild eyes and stubbornness quite well, and even carefully calibrated the growling voice he uses throughout. shÅ gun. But from the visual aesthetics, the meticulous costume design, the stirring music, and the acting that depicts the subtle movements and secret motives of the Japanese characters, it’s everything that happens around Jarvis’s Western barbarian that is so captivating in shÅ gun.TO
With 20 cannons, 200 muskets and shipments of looted gold and silver, the Erasmus It’s a valuable and potentially transformative capture for Toranaga, who quickly confiscates the warship from the hands of Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), his rugged but formidable vassal. And when Toranaga sends Hiromatsu to Ajiro to pick up Blackthorne and take him by ship to Osaka, we also meet Rodrigues (a pleasant, bearded Nestor Carbonell), a Spanish ship pilot who has worked in Japan for years. With the ability to communicate in Portuguese, a language that both speak fluently, while shÅ gun uses subtitles for Japanese speakers, inserts English as a substitute for Portuguese; Just keep going, okay? – Rodrigues tells Blackthorne a lot of quick facts about where he is. As the concept of Shukumei – “it’s like an attitude out here, karma†– and a brilliant little speech that counters Blackthorne’s characterization of the “madness” of Japan. “Zehi mo gozaimasen”Rodrigues tells the English pilot. “One cannot resist the invisible path of nature. The only thing we can do is accept our small part.” TO
Much of what John Blackthorne encounters in Japan is shrouded in mystery, unseen motives, and traditions he neither understands nor respects. At least at the beginning. shÅ gun fits with a lot of character backstory, the setting of the 17th century Japanese political scene, forebodings about the pivotal conflict to come, and the cultural insight of this first episode, and in its conclusion, Blackthorne not only has learned to speak a few words of Japanese, but we have been immersed in this layered world full of metaphors and bursts of righteous violence. “It is said here that every man has three hearts,” Rodrigues tells the pilot. “One in the mouth, so that the world knows. Another on his chest, only for his friends. And a secret heart, buried deep, where no one can find it. That’s a heart a man must keep hidden if he wants to survive. You will understand soon, English.†Us too.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
