2024-02-29 21:41:18
by Francesca Scorcucchi
«Shogun», story of an English castaway in seventeenth-century Japan. Ten episodes exclusively on Disney+
Before «Game of Thrones» there was «Shogun». The older ones will remember it. In 1980 the TV series about an English castaway who becomes a Samurai was broadcast by both networks of the duopoly of the time, Rai and Mediaset, and was so successful that it was later condensed into a film for cinemas. The castaway, John Blackthorne, was played by Richard Chamberlain who only three years later would become Father Ralph in “The Bramble Birds”.
Now “Shogun” is back with a ten-episode miniseries on Disney+, whose producers include Michaela Clavell, daughter of James Clavell, author of the 1975 novel of the same name capable of selling 15 million copies. «My father’s book is a very complex set of thoughts and stories from medieval Japan – explains Clavell -. Today’s audience is more sophisticated than what the “Shogun” saw in the 1980s. It was therefore necessary to deliver a story that was worthy of those complexities, and that also represented the Japanese point of view well.”
The comparison with “Game of Thrones” comes naturally due to the richness of the settings, the epic tale, the political intrigues and the sumptuousness of the costumes but there is a big difference between the series based on George RR Martin’s novels and this one. There are no dragons in «Shogun» but the reality of the historical facts of 17th century Japan. Blackthorne, the English sailor who landed on the Japanese coast, is a real-life character. His name was William Adams and thanks to his knowledge of the Portuguese language, and therefore through the Jesuits already present in those lands, he managed to speak with the powerful local lord, gain his trust and become a Samurai.
James Clavell’s story is naturally fictionalized, but Adams’ adventures must not have differed so much from those of John Blackthorne, now played by Cosmo Jarvis, who the television audience met in «Peaky Blinders». Jarvis talks about his personal difficulties and those of his character in arriving in such a distant world: «We learned together, Blackthorne and I, to move in that remote and therefore fascinating dimension. I believe this is the secret of stories like “Shogun”: their remoteness, in time and place, makes them comparable to the best of fantasy.”
Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada are the other protagonists. The first is the interpreter Toda Mariko, the second is the local gentleman Yoshii Toranaga. Sanada, also an executive producer, arrived in Hollywood in 2003 to star alongside Tom Cruise in “The Last Samurai”. «Cruise insisted that we use real weapons in a sword scene, so ever since then I have tried to make sure that the Japan depicted in the films was as similar as possible to the real one. This time, as a producer, I was able to hire a Japanese team that had deep knowledge of samurai culture. Finally in this series the white man is only one of the protagonists.”
However, Sanada recognizes the merit of the first «Shogun», which still holds the audience record in America. «People may have started watching the series for Richard Chamberlain, but many then read the book. It was the West’s first mass contact with Japanese culture. Now every corner of the planet has a sushi restaurant.”
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February 29, 2024 (modified February 29, 2024 | 10.40 pm)
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