After Years of Development, FX’s Sweeping New Historical Epic Is Here. It’s Exceptional.
How do you approach the challenge of adapting a story from one medium to another? There are hundreds of answers, but two extremes are clear: being as faithful to the source material as possible—think No Country for Old Men—or, on the other end of the spectrum, completely revamping the original, like Seo-kyeong Jeong’s remarkable 2022 retelling of Little Women. The FX historical drama Shōgun, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+ after six years in development, falls somewhere in the middle. The new adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 book of the same name is a true feat. What makes Shōgun the limited series so exceptional is how it transforms a novel laden with lazy stereotypes and Orientalism into a sweeping saga for a modern, global audience, while remaining faithful to the text.
The story beats in both are almost identical. Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) sits on a council of regents left behind by the late Taikō, led by Lord Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira). Outwardly loyal to this dynamic, Toranaga harbors an ambition to assume power as shōgun, and, like his real-world counterpart Tokugawa Ieyasu, must outmaneuver his fellow regents in the hope of reunifying Japan. Into this political mess sails John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), an English pilot and privateer who has been sent to disrupt Catholic interests in Japan and open the country to English influence. Marooned in Kantō, he enters Toranaga’s service and, swept up in the culture shock, struggles to adjust to his new world until he falls into the orbit of Lady Mariko Toda (Anna Sawai).
Clavell’s Shōgun is a primo dad book. It’s a historical novel led by a burly white dude upon whom men can project themselves, over whom women fawn, and who ultimately lands a total babe. Granted, this white dude is based on a real figure—William Adams, also known as Miura Anjin, who became a Western samurai and advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu—but beyond the bare bones of the historical events, Clavell made the tale his own. That’s a nice way of saying he wrapped the story in enough overt racism to make a certain kind of man feel both superior (because they’d never say that kind of thing, honest!) and yet seen (because they absolutely would—and do). Japanese characters stutter through European names—something Clavell seemed to get a kick out of, given how often he styled Blackthorne as some uncomfortable variation of “B’rack’forn” in a phonetic mockery of Japanese people’s accented English. That’s not to mention the book’s fascination with Blackthorne’s enormous white penis (really), just one of many strange ways that the novel reduces Japanese women to exotic, wanton dolls who apparently have no word for “love.”
Shōgun reads, like so much historical fiction of the 20th century, as 1,000 pages of wish fulfillment for those who sincerely believe the past was better and that, given the chance, they would have thrived there. Of course, at the time it was published, the book would have appeared almost progressive to Western readers with no other frame of reference, save for the atrocities of World War II still fresh in their minds. And, to give Clavell some credit, his hero Blackthorne does grow more sensitive to Japan and the Japanese as the novel progresses—perhaps a reflection of Clavell’s own relationship with the Japanese following his internment as a prisoner of war. Yet, even then, Shōgun remains not a product of its time, but a product of the biases and baggage Clavell and his readers bring to it. It is, in many ways, reminiscent of the film Lost in Translation in that, even as it immerses itself in Japanese culture—at least as perceived by its white creator—it is only ever concerned with the differences between East and West.
The question of how to adapt all of that for the modern viewer is a tricky one that FX’s Shōgun navigates with remarkable finesse. By subverting Clavell’s novel without compromising what made it compelling, Shōgun becomes more accessible and more engaging for a more discerning audience that understands and appreciates cultural nuances. Less concerned with what separates East and West in a more globalized world, creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo shift focus to what we share. Blackthorne is still a coarse galoot, and cultural antagonism remains, but Blackthorne is quicker to come to terms with his new surroundings and understand the people around him as just that: people. In this adaptation, the Japanese and their culture are no longer mere props in Clavell’s Eurocentric play, but real human beings with the same motivations, flaws, and needs as Blackthorne’s bumbling Englishman.
In fact, so comprehensive is the shift in perspective that it would be remiss of me to center Blackthorne in this discussion. Clavell’s protagonist, along with the noblewoman Mariko, is ushered to the wings in this rendition, with Sanada’s Toranaga stepping into the role of main character. Blackthorne and Mariko’s romance, so central to the book, is thankfully sidelined; instead, the presence of both characters as pieces on Toranaga’s elaborate chessboard is played up, and his machinations take center stage. FX’s adaptation plays more like a political thriller bundled under the facade of a lavish historical epic, to great effect.
Language also plays a pivotal role in this recentering of the Japanese perspective. The Japanese language in Clavell’s novel is, like his grasp of history, clumsy at best. FX’s Shōgun, by contrast, takes place almost exclusively in Japanese, spoken by an overwhelmingly Japanese cast. For all its Western pomp and big-budget production value—the series was filmed in Vancouver—it is, at its heart, a Japanese series. It’s a dramatic shift, one that feels almost like a reclamation of a story that was only ever Eurocentric in the author’s narrow-minded thinking. All of this coalesces into a story that is both historically and artistically more authentic in time and place than its source material—and even, I would hazard to say, any previous depiction of Japan in Western cinema and television.
Will fans of the book be unhappy? Perhaps—after all, the racism, misogyny, and jingoism that made up so much of the novel are gone. But the story remains the same, and much improved by the shift in perspective. FX’s Shōgun is bold and affecting in ways that Clavell’s novel never was, something it achieves by understanding that looking to the past for material doesn’t limit creativity or authenticity. In so doing, it points the way for future adaptations when dealing with problematic material—and maybe tricks some Clavell-pilled dads into watching a subtitled series, for once.