Shogun: The First Two Episodes

Don’t worry, I’m not here to tell you that the series is as good as the book, because James Clavell’s Shogun could never be done full justice on screen. But the hype (99%/92% on RT) suggests a series as grand as we can reasonably expect, and so far it looks like it will, for the most part, be pretty good. I’m not on board with all the rhapsody though: it’s not that good, and there are certainly things to criticize. The first two episodes covered a lot of ground, and by the end, Blackthorne has barely evaded an assassination in the bed chamber of Lord Toranaga. I found most of the changes to be fine, though some rankled me, and I’ll go through the highlights.

Changes for the worse

My biggest annoyance comes at the very beginning, with the intertitle’s explanation (click on the right image) that all five members of the Council of Regents — Toranaga, Ishido, Sugiyama, Kiyama, and Ohno — are trying to become shogun. Not only is this is a significant change from the book, it’s unhistorical and frankly silly. As Clavell wrote it, not even Ishido (Toranaga’s main rival) wants the shogunate — indeed, Ishido cannot be shogun because of his peasant lineage — and the idea that every council member is overambitious and unrealistic to aim for the shogunate (especially the feeble leper Ohno) is too absurd to take seriously. The show writers should have stuck with the book, and with history, and left Toranaga the one daimyo having the balls to go after the untouchable prize.

[For gurus, the historical names of the five are Tokugawa (Toranaga), Ishida (Ishido), Maeda (Sugiyama), Konishi (Kiyama), and Otani (Ohno).]

Also at the start, Toranaga decides to manipulate Blackthorne before he even meets him — as soon as he learns of the arrival of the ship in Ajiro. In the book it’s only after Blackthorne comes to Osaka that Toranaga sees potential in the English pilot, which obviously makes sense. A daimyo like Toranaga wouldn’t have taken interest in a Christian barbarian until learning the full implications of the Protestant-Catholic divide, and seeing the degree to which Blackthorne, as a Protestant, despises the Catholics who are plaguing Japan.

Changes for the better

On the other hand, the series also admirably corrects the book’s historical inaccuracies. In episode one we see the Japanese carrying rifles as they come to investigate Blackthrone’s ship. In the book, firearms are portrayed as dishonorable; samurai disdain them and avoid them, which wasn’t true, or at least not by the year 1600. Here in the series, the use of guns is non-controversial, and the Japanese seem more interested in the cannons aboard Blackthorne’s ship rather than the guns. Indeed historically, Tokugawa used the cannons from Will Adams’ ship to win his military victories in becoming shogun.

In episode two we get the assassination attempt on Blackthorne in Osaka Castle. In the book the assassin is from the fictional Amida Tong. But Clavell’s assassins — not to mention ninjas, in the attack on the castle at the end of the story — while dramatically effective, are unhistorical. There were no tong groups or hyper-acrobatic ninjas in medieval Japan. The tongs were actually Chinese secret societies; in Japan the closest thing were the Ikkō-ikki who opposed daimyo power, but they weren’t assassins, nor were they given to clandestine activity. Here in the miniseries, the assassin is a woman skilled in killing, but nothing out of a modern ninja film. It will be interesting to see the attack on the castle, which in the book was a massive ninja onslaught, and truthfully — however historically bogus — one of my favorite scenes in fiction literature.

The cast

On whole the casting is terrific, with one glaring exception: the most important character, shogun-to-be, Toranaga. Hiroyuki Sanada is a good actor but he’s not Toranaga. He was obviously cast because he’s famous, but there are plenty of less renowned Japanese actors who would have been well suited for the role. In the book Toranaga is bold and outspoken, and full of caustic wit. Sanada is too grim and soft-spoken, not to mention physically too thin. Not at all the Toranaga we love from Clavell’s imagination. This is my biggest complaint about the series so far, and I’m hoping that Sanada’s performance will become more lively.

The rest is much better. Cosmo Jarvis is a compelling Blackthorne. Néstor Carbonell does fine as Rodriguez, though obviously not on the level of John Rhys-Davies from the 1980 series (frankly, Rhys-Davies was the only good thing about that series). Omi, Yabu, and Hiro-matsu are very well portrayed. Unlike Toranaga, his rival Ishido is perfectly cast, played by Takehiro Hira. And though we only have a glimpse of her so far, the Lady Ochiba (the mother of the Heir) looks much as I imagined her from the book. Martin Alvito is also superb. I’m on the fence about Mariko; she’s a bit icy. Anna Sawai is a fine enough actress but the character of Mariko should be less glacial.

Seppuku and savagery

Shogun is renowned, of course, for its depiction of murder, beheading and disembowelment, both homicidal and suicidal (see my post on the Japanese view of death in an honor-shame context), particularly suicide as release from the abyss of life. (Episode eight of the series is called just that: “The Abyss of Life”.) The series wastes no time going there. In the early part of episode one, a young samurai named Tadayoshi oversteps his bounds during a meeting of the five regents. He’s furious at the way Ishido is insulting Toranaga, and so lashes out in defense of his liege. But that’s grievously insulting to Ishido and causes Toranaga to lose face. Instantly ashamed of his loss of self-control, Tadayoshi apologizes and vows to Toranaga that he will commit seppuku and to end his line, which means killing his baby, which in turn later causes his poor wife to try killing herself (Mariko barely intervenes to keep mom alive). In the book Tadayoshi’s punishment is quite different: he offers to commit seppuku, yes, but Toranaga denies him that honor. Instead, Tadayoshi is made to crawl on all fours out into the streets where he is crucified like a common criminal. The Toranaga of the book is wholly without mercy to his wayward samurai, saying that seppuku is an honor, and that Tadayoshi’s shameful outburst during a meeting where only daimyos talk earns him the most dishonorable death possible. I wish the show writers had remained true to the book here, but it’s a small quibble, because they made up for it by showing Tadayoshi and his wife’s anguish as Tadayoshi prepares to slay their infant child before he kills himself. Either version gets the harsh point across, though the book is better.

Then there’s the infamous cauldron scene, where Yabu demands that one of Blackthorne’s crew be boiled alive in a cauldron. (And yes, for the curious, prior to this, Omi pisses in Blackthorne’s face. Though in the book, the face-pissing happens after the man dies in the cauldron, not before.) The man’s screams go on for hours, from afternoon into night, and some of the villagers are so distressed they must cover their ears. But not Yabu. The screams put him on a plane of ecstasy. There is beauty in death, on this view, and the more agony involved, the more transcendence involved. As in the book, over supper he commands his nephew Omi to write a poem about the dead man. As in the book, Omi replies: “His eyes were just the end of Hell; all pain; articulate.” However, in the book, Yabu replies to Omi with a poem of his own: “If you allow their chill to reach into the great, great deep, you become one with them; inarticulate.” In the series Yabu simply grins at Omi and then begins feeding his face. I don’t know why the show writers omitted his rejoinder poem.

Nor do I care for the way Yabu is reluctant to kill the man to begin with. In the book there is no Pontius Pilate behavior on the part of Yabu, requiring the strenuous persuasion of the Catholic priest to execute the Protestant heretics. In the book it is Yabu’s intent right from the get to kill one of Blackthorne’s men, and so he has Omi (using a village translator) explain to Blackthorne and his men in the pit that one of them is to die for Yabu’s pleasure. They can choose the man who is to die (except that it can’t be Blackthorne), and they end up drawing straws, but it doesn’t matter, because Omi’s men end up taking the easiest man to grab in the pit. In making Yabu reluctant to kill the man, the show writers undercut the clear undiluted joy Yabu gets from killing people — the meditative trance he goes into from the victim screaming, and the poetry he revels in after the event.

I hope that characters like Toranaga and Yabu aren’t going to be repeatedly sanitized like this in future episodes. I’m smelling a bit of wokeness (not much, granted: just a whiff), as if the show writers fear accusations of racism and have toned down Clavell’s samurai accordingly. That’s a shame because it diminishes the jarring intercultural experience you’re supposed to have while being immersed in Shogun.

Verdict

Overall I’m pleased enough by the new series. The first episode get a rating of 8 out of 10 from me, and the second a little better even, 8 ½ out of 10.

Update: see my review of episode 3.