THE WEAPONS OF a samurai are many. There’s the classic katana blade. The naginata, a long-bladed pole. Akabutowari, for close-quarters slicing. Or, if a warrior finds themselves separated from their armoury, they could always use a copy of James Clavell’s 1975 novel Shōgun to bludgeon their enemy. After all, it’s a 1,152-page tome, hefty enough to stun an ox —but a daunting prospect to adapt into aTV series. It has been attempted once before, with a 1980 serial starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune, so popular that almost a third of Americans tuned in. And now Shōgun is being tackled again, by showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, a wife-and-husband team. They tell Empire how their new ten-episode saga seeks to do justice to its source.
Jarvis’ Blackthorne was played by Richard Chamberlain in the hugely popular 1980 American TV series.
THE HERO
John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) is an English sailor who in 1600 finds himself shipwrecked on the shores of Japan. His ensuing adventure among fearsome samurai is gargantuan: “You set aside three weeks of your life, and you read for eight hours a day,” laughs Kondo of tackling the breezeblock saga. But it was Blackthorne’s undimming fascination with this alien world that proved the key to unlocking him. “Early on in our process, Michaela Clavell, James Clavell’s daughter and a producer on this project, said something which became the kernel of not just Blackthorne but the whole process of Shōgun,” says Marks. “She said, ‘The thing about my father was that he was more curious than anyone else.’ That felt like true north in chasing this story.”