SHOGUN
THE ULTIMATE SAMURAI EPIC
WORDS JAMES DYER
Clockwise from main:
The warlord: Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada);
SEPPUKU,
POETRY, WEAPONISED etiquette, and sacrificing your life for the sake of a decomposing pheasant —such are the unlikely elements of this year’s breakout TV hit. A largely subtitled, 90 per cent Japanese-language series about subtle politicking for control of 17th-century Japan,
Shōgun
took the building blocks of James Clavell’s 1975 novel and, shaking off the memory of Richard Chamberlain’s 1980s miniseries, constructed an enthralling, labyrinthine and yet surprisingly accessible ten-part drama charting the dawn of the country’s Edo period.
With its complex codes of conduct and delicate, knotty political manoeuvrings, Shōgun feels entirely alien to modern, Western audiences, dropping viewers into the cultural deep-end as surely as it does Cosmo Jarvis’ cocksure English sailor, John Blackthorne. But, like Blackthorne, we’re swiftly drawn in by the Byzantine machinations of proud daimyo Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), and his determined, yet tragic vassal Mariko (Anna Sawai) as they navigate the country’s traditional isolationism, the spread of Portuguese Catholicism, and the dangerous power-struggle brewing among the country’s council of regents.