TOKYO — FX’s “Shogun” premiered this spring and captivated a wide audience, including Japanese viewers like me.
On Wednesday, the FX series proved it also caught the attention of the Television Academy, receiving 25 Emmy nominations, including outstanding drama series, lead actor and lead actress. The Emmy frontrunner also received 40 nominations overall in the drama categories, making history as only the second non-English language TV series to be recognized in the best drama category.
To be honest, I was surprised by how much I fell in love with Shōgun. I have a love-hate relationship with Western movies and TV shows set in Japan. It’s great that Hollywood has so much interest in foreign cultures and has the budget to attract top actors. But why is there such an obsession with putting white characters in samurai stories? The Last Samurai, starring legendary action star Tom Cruise, has a very obvious “white savior” plot. I don’t think 47 Ronin is too far off. To make a movie about real lordless samurai in the 18th century, Hollywood added a fictional character who is half white to match blockbuster star Keanu Reeves.
I quickly realized that these films were the reason I was initially hesitant to watch “The Shogun.” But just when I was ready to ignore the show, I saw the trailer and videos on social media and decided to watch it. The promotion emphasized how different the series would be from previous Hollywood productions set in Asia.
The series avoids these pitfalls well, and its efforts to show complexity are what make it great. It goes beyond the simple dichotomy of “me” versus “other” and takes a critical approach to the classic “two cultures collide” plot. This dynamic makes it that much more exciting.
The show’s success has reignited a debate about why authenticity matters. The Shogun is based on James Clavell’s 1975 historical novel of the same name. The book is based on historical events, and John Blackthorn (Cosmo Jarvis) was inspired by real-life 16th-century pilot William Adams. Clavell published the novel as part of his Asian Saga series, which tells “the story of the Anglo-Saxons in Asia.”
This framework easily supports the trope of Orientalism, which presents Eastern stories through a narrow Western lens. For Hollywood directors, this can be an unavoidable narrative, since Western audiences tend to identify with Western characters who have a more familiar perspective.
Open Image ModalCosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne in “The Shogun.”
The iconic film Lost in Translation also falls into this trap, portraying Japan’s exotic, incomprehensible and mysterious culture and people from the perspective of two Americans. By setting the film in Tokyo, the protagonists are detached from their surroundings, allowing the audience to feel the loneliness and unreality of a foreign place.
This trick is useful, effective, and often funny — it gives your protagonist “protagonist energy” while also helping you navigate a foreign setting from a familiar perspective — but it can also be overdone, especially in a place like Japan.
The biggest difference between the 2024 version of “Shogun” and the 1980 TV miniseries, aside from the overall visual quality, is that the Japanese dialogue is subtitled. It was a deliberate decision to make the Japanese language in the 1980s series incomprehensible to (most) viewers. The story is told from Blackthorne’s point of view, staying faithful to the original novel. If Blackthorne doesn’t understand it, the viewer shouldn’t be able to understand it either.
Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs employs a similar technique. Set in the fictional city of Megasaki, the dogs speak English and the inhabitants speak Japanese. The film offers little in the way of Japanese-translated subtitles, emphasizing the dichotomy between the two worlds and allowing the audience to naturally empathize with the dogs, since the “bad guys” speak a language they don’t understand. The protagonist is an English-speaking exchange student from the US, adding a white savior plot to a film already loaded with Orientalist linguistic tricks.
Meanwhile, Shogun has a wealth of subtitled dialogue in Japanese that contributes greatly to the overall storyline. Blackthorne remains the central guiding character, but his point of view is more complex than in the original novel or previous film adaptations.
Gender complexities are also well depicted in “Shogun.” The 1600s were not a good time for women around the world, but especially in Japan’s feudal, patriarchal society, which was in the midst of military turmoil. However, misogyny and female participation (or lack thereof) in society do not function or look the same everywhere. In some eras, women of the samurai class are very powerful, yet somehow seem oppressed; expected to be submissive to their husbands, yet sometimes take on more commanding roles. Rather than portraying them as passive, powerless women, the series visualizes them with more nuance and complexity.
A striking scene in episode six sees Lady Mariko (Sawai Anna) and Fuji (Hoshi Moka) haggle with successful businesswoman Gin (Miyamoto Yuko) for the services of a courtesan as a gift for Blackthorn. While the three women waxing eloquent about money and sipping tea with sidelong glances in a tense meeting is not an everyday sight in the world of the 1600s, it is a reminder of the constant male gaze and the commodification of women’s bodies.
Open Image Modal Hoshi Moeka plays Fuji, Sawai Anna plays Toda Mariko, and Miyamoto Yuko plays Gin in Episode 6 of “Shogun.”
Sawai, in particular, delivered a brilliant performance throughout the show, embodying the complexities of life and femininity. Her portrayal of conflicting emotions and contradictory positions of power and powerlessness added depth to the show and contributed to its overall portrayal of the gender landscape of that time and place.
It was refreshing to see a story focused almost entirely on samurai politics. The chemistry between Lady Mariko and Blackthorne is unashamedly portrayed, but the romance never steals the spotlight. Western historical dramas often place more emphasis on the romance of the main characters than traditional jidai-gi (Japanese period dramas).
Of course, Shogun does not ignore the presence of sex and kinship: the prominent presence of courtesans (sex workers catering to wealthy clients), the engineered marriage between Ishidō and Ochiba Goten, and Fuji’s appointment as Blackthorn’s concubine and respectful “friendship” with him are all integral to the story.
In this era of Japan, the concept of “love,” or the lack thereof, is very different from modern-day Western thought.
In fact, it is said that the word “ai,” the modern Japanese equivalent of the English “love,” was not used in that sense for hundreds of years, until the Meiji era. The distinctions between love, lust, sensuality, and sexual desire are arbitrary; there is little to no influence, especially from Christianity. Rather than forcing the trope of a beautiful romance between characters, the show deftly handles historical and cultural differences while complicating the political plot.
Open Image ModalCosmo Jarvis plays John Blackthorne and Anna Sawai plays Mariko Toda in “Shogun.”
In episode 3, the injured Blackthorn appears stressed, so the doctor suggests he “sit on a pillow,” another example of how the Japanese viewed sexual activity.
“Would you prefer a male companion?” Mariko asked, noticing Blackthorn’s hesitation.
“Throughout Japanese history, male-male sexuality has been somewhat normalized and coexisted alongside heterosexual desire. This line is casually added to the context without being foreshadowed or elaborated upon any further. Many Japanese period dramas ignore this crucial piece of information, but it is this moment that makes “Shogun” stand out for its historical accuracy.
Cultural and historical details are complex and therefore difficult to get right, but if they’re not done right it’s easy to see, and FX has emphasized its efforts to maintain authenticity in promoting the series, hiring many experts who have worked on Japanese period films.
This verisimilitude isn’t just a bonus in storytelling: unreliable plot and character details distract from the main story. Although a fictional movie or TV series is not real, it still needs to be compelling to sell the story and keep the audience hooked.
“If something was wrong, the audience wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the drama,” Hiroyuki Sanada, star and producer of “Shogun,” told USA Today in an interview. “That’s not the kind of show the audience wants to watch. It had to be authentic.”
For those interested in watching a Western samurai film, “Shogun” brings a level of attention to detail that other works in the genre will never match, and for fans of Japanese period dramas, the series fills a gap in scale and world-building.
Sure, it’s based on another white samurai story, but at least it understood the challenge. Shogun showed us what’s possible not just with Japanese period dramas, but with Hollywood productions set in foreign cultures: With a sufficient budget, experts hired to ensure cultural authenticity, and a complex story tackled head-on, something truly groundbreaking can happen.