It’s a well-recognized scene from many Hollywood movies and TV series set in feudal Japan: a white foreigner is given a katana and a samurai teaches him find out how to use it, often in an inspiring montage set to rising music. He uses traditional weapons and begins to master them, maybe even outshining his humble Japanese teacher. It’s that sort of scene Shogun showrunners Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo were cautious about using this trope of their FX samurai epic.
“One of the clichés we wanted to avoid is the classic scene of putting a stranger in a strange land and putting a gun in the character’s hand. We are fed up with this scene,” says Marks Reciprocal.
“I turned to him and asked, ‘How many times in your career have you shot this scene?’ And he said, “So many times.”
No one is more familiar with this scene than Shogun star and producer Hiroyuki Sanada. Though his career in Hollywood stretches back more than twenty years, and his career in Japan and Hong Kong stretches back even further, Sanada has spent most of that time dressed in a kimono and playing second fiddle to white heroes wielding samurai swords. But in Shogun, Sanada is both main and manufacturer. It was to Sanada that Marx and Kondo, fully aware that they were dealing with a history unknown to them, most often turned to for advice. So when they started filming that dreaded training montage, they asked Sanada about it.
“We shot this movie with Hiro as producer,” says Marks. “I turned to him and asked, ‘How many times in your career have you shot this scene?’ And he said, “So again and again.”
Result, v Shogun, it’s a scene that doesn’t stick to stereotypes. Instead, the training sequence is comedic in nature, centering around the show’s white protagonist, John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). “Our actors were really funny, and it just felt like futility. Nobody can master anything in editing,” says Marks.
This is one of many small changes that Marx and Kondo made in their adaptation Shogun, based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell. Set around 1600 and loosely based on the historical exploits of English navigator William Adams, the novel was the blueprint for the “stranger in a wierd land” story that spread across Hollywood. The plot follows Blackthorne (Jarvis), who crashes in Japan and becomes embroiled in a treacherous conspiracy centered around Lord Toranaga (Sanada), a powerful daimyo whose political rivals want to destroy him.
Based on Clavell’s 1980 novel, a miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune was created, which was said to have helped popularize sushi in the United States, and the book’s iconic cover of a white man in a kimono has become a staple on many parents’ bedside tables. “Speaking for myself, I knew the outline of the book. And the silhouette of that cover was something that evoked complicated feelings in me,” says Marks.
Kondo, Marks’ wife and producing partner, had the same hesitation when the project came to them as part of Marx’s television deal with FX. “I saw the book on our coffee table and said, ‘Oh, it’s perfect. As a person of Japanese descent, this is an opportunity for me. I would love to talk to my culture,” says Kondo Reciprocal.
Marx and Kondo realized their limitations as people who did not grow up surrounded by Japanese culture and history. “Both Justin and I had to learn to just say, ‘OK, if this isn’t our history, if this culture isn’t ours, how do we approach it?’ Who do we invite into this process, who knows best how to speak to this culture?” – says Kondo.
The answer was Hiroyuki Sanada. Sanada had been working as a child actor since the 1960s, but was best known to international audiences for his roles in Hollywood films such as The last Samurai, Lost, Westworld, Avengers: Endgameand recently John Wick: Chapter 4. Sanada was the first to board Shogun as a star, but quickly also became a producer. It wasn’t an empty title; Marx and Kondo wanted to make him a real collaborator. “You’re talking about an actor who has been a kind of surrogate or default ambassador for his own culture for the last 25 years in the United States,” Marks says.
“I thought it would be a great opportunity to make an authentic samurai drama in Hollywood.”
Authenticity was the most important thing for Sanada, who willingly used her knowledge and experience in the production. “I wanted to present our culture correctly to the world,” says Sanada Reciprocal. “So when they asked me to do it [produce]”I believed it was a fantastic opportunity to make an authentic samurai drama in Hollywood.”
Sanada assured Shogun was created with the participation of a Japanese team who were experts in historically faithful wigs, costumes, props, and even “masters of gestures”. Each department had a consultant who was an expert in samurai films. Sanada even brought in young actors from the Japanese film and television industry, many of whom had never acted in an English-language production before.
“It’s largely intended, in his opinion, for the younger generation,” Kondo says. “All the younger actors, many of them, agreed to work with him. His journey has been 25 years of building, building, building quietly.”
Despite all the work he had to do behind the scenes, Sanada managed to deliver one of his best and most fully realized performances in Shogun. As Lord Toranaga, he is both cunning and compassionate, guarded and vulnerable. Although Blackthorne is the de facto main character, Toranago of Sanada feels like a true hero, a respected noble around whom the entire story revolves. Sanada has the easy charisma of someone who knows he’s a star, and maybe because he knows how much work went into making the show authentic, he can relax in front of the camera. “I felt relaxed and free in front of the camera,” says Sanada. “Right now I can concentrate on acting and just have fun.”
Part of this is a rich stable of Japanese characters, each with their own agendas and motivations Shogun appeal. Tadanobu Asano, very rarely used as Hogun in Marvel’s Thor movies, he can flex his muscles as the dim-witted, brutal warlord Kashigi Yabushige. Anna Sawai, last seen on Apple TV+ Monarch, plays an enigmatic noblewoman who Sawai was happy to see not reduced to docile stereotypes. “For me, Mariko really looked like a character I hadn’t seen in the past,” Sawai says Reciprocal.
“The audience can follow Blackthorne [in] observing Japanese culture and learning with him.”
Marx and Kondo’s goal was adaptation Shogun with a contemporary brush that would soften the exoticism of the original story and enhance the Japanese perspective. “I think the Western eye watching this series might have certain expectations, and then we can just say, ‘No, we’re going to hit you with a series of characters that are very different from what we’ve seen in these shows.’ these types of stories,” Marks says.
With these rich, complex characters and a deep commitment to authenticity, the team is behind it Shogun more than justifies retelling a story that has been told before. More than Game of Thrones comparisons that flattered Marx and Kondo, that’s the hope Shogun will immerse viewers in this time and place in Japanese history.
“The audience can follow Blackthorne [in] I observe Japanese culture and learn with him,” says Sanada. “I feel it is also a fantastic journey for the audience.”
Shogun premieres its first two episodes today on FX and Hulu. New episodes will appear weekly, on Tuesdays.
Credit : www.inverse.com
