Long before the days of prestige TV, the miniseries was the closest network television came to the kind of serialized storytelling now familiar from The Sopranos and Game of Thrones. The greatest of all the miniseries was Shōgun, which attracted 30 million viewers per night over the course of five episodes in 1980. Shōgun was adapted from a 1,200-page doorstop of a novel by James Clavell, and starred bearded heartthrob Richard Chamberlain and legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Clavell’s hero John Blackthorne’s story was loosely based on the life of William Adams, who, in 1600, became the first Englishman to reach Japan.
With networks searching for the next Game of Thrones, Shōgun seems to fit the bill nicely for FX. It’s a period costume drama with lots of political intrigue, violence, and sex. While the Japan of the feudal Edo period didn’t have actual dragons, it’s been a source of fascination for anime and live action stories alike for decades. Plus, it’s got ninjas! What’s not to love?
The action starts onboard the Erasmus, a Dutch trading ship that is the last survivor of what was once a fleet of five. Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) is the pilot and navigator whose job it is to find Japan, but things have gotten so out of hand on this two-year voyage that the captain kills himself in the first scene. The Erasmus does eventually find Japan, but instead of sailing triumphantly into port, it kind of washes up on the beach. The crew who haven’t starved to death are so weak with scurvy they barely even notice when a squad of samurai board the vessel. The Erasmus is full of South American silver, various trade goods, and most importantly, hundreds of muskets and twenty heavy cannon.
The cache weapons are of great interest to the five competing daimyo, lords who were left in charge of Japan after the death of the former ruler. They are to share power until the crown prince comes of age — unless one of them can maneuver the others out of the way and install himself as shogun, or military dictator. At first, the scheming Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) tries to quietly confiscate the ship’s cargo so he can expand his coastal fiefdom. But his machinations are easily detected by Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), the old ruler’s former confidante who swoops in and brings Blackthorne to Osaka Castle, where he is attending a meeting of the five houses called by Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira). It’s an open secret that Ishido intends to use this meeting to turn the other regents against Toranaga, so the old warrior plays for time while trying to find a way to wiggle out of his bind and keep his word to his dead emperor.
Meanwhile, Blackthorn quickly comes to realize that while he’s the first Englishman to reach Japan, other Europeans have been there for a while. Namely, Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who are building churches in the major cities and converting the Japanese to Christianity. Among the converts is Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), the cultured courtier of Toranga who serves as translator between her master and the European barbarians.
The language barrier is the source of much confusion for Blackstone, and humor for the viewers. By 1600, the Portuguese Catholics and English Protestants had been at war on and off for decades. But the Jesuits have conveniently neglected to tell their Japanese hosts that there is more than one country in Europe and more than one flavor of Christianity. As long as the European money keeps flowing in from the church, the daimyo tolerate the annoying missionaries —until Blackthorne tells Toranaga that the Portuguese intend to colonize Japan and install a Christian ruler of their own.
If nothing else, Shōgun is well cast. Jarvis has Richard Chamberlain’s look down pat, and lends scenes an expressive and often baffled presence. This is in contrast to the outstanding Japanese cast, led by the stoic Sandara, who excel at expressing complex emotion with subtlety. Yoriko Doguchi is particularly great as Lady Kiri No Kata, Toranga’s sharp-tongued consort.
Showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks retool the tone of the original, which tended towards Orientalist exoticism, by exploring the complexities of Japanese society and making it clear that Blackthorn, while a quick learner, is mostly bluffing his way through things. The first two episodes are tight plotting engines in the Game of Thrones tradition, but it gets fuzzier in the third, when an elaborate naval battle and chase scene falls flat. But thanks to the excellent cast, if you’re looking for a post-GoT, castle-drama fix, you could do a lot worse.