By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS, Rafu Arts & Entertainment
When “Shōgun” hit TV screens in 1980, there was relatively little common knowledge in the U.S. about Japan and its history. Most people were perhaps familiar with the nameplates on their cars or cameras, or maybe they knew the characters in “Speed Racer.” Terms like “sushi” had yet to become part of the American lexicon.
The nine-hour miniseries, based on James Clavell’s 1975 historical fiction novel, was a revelation. In the years that followed, sushi restaurants popped up in towns across the country, songs about being Japanese hit the pop charts and school nationwide began adding the language to their curricula.
I can remember my Chicago-born mother being so very proud of her sharp pronunciation of “Hai!”
The aware world is much smaller now, and the borders of nations have blurred, thanks mostly to the Internet. So in 2024, is a re-envisioning of “Shōgun” even necessary?
“It’s very different now than it was in 1980,” said Hiroyuki Sanada, who stars in the new iteration of “Shōgun,” the 10-part series that debuts Feb. 27 on FX and Hulu. “Then, Americans had no idea about Japan, but the knowledge is so much more widespread now.”
Sanada, whose career has spanned some 50 films, stars as Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who faces a bleak future among the Council of Regents following the recent death of the clan-unifying shogun in the year 1600. The expected order of events is turned upside-down when a wayward ship with its starving European crew crashes into the shore on the Izu Peninsula.
The ship’s English pilot is John Blackthorne, played by Cosmo Jarvis, and he carries knowledge and secrets that will upset the delicate – and lucrative – arrangemens of local lords and Portuguese traders and Catholic priests.
Initially marked for execution, Blackthorne forges an unlikely bond with Toranaga, helped along in no small part by their unwilling translator, Mariko Toda (Anna Sawai.) A recently converted Christian, she becomes entangled in the political, psychological and emotional web that finds this region of Japan on a headlong course toward civil war.
“Growing up, I watched BBC productions, historical romances, and I was always drawn to period dramas,” explained series co-creator and writer Rachel Kondo. The native of Hawaii said she was naive in first assuming her Japanese heritage made her perfectly suited to take on the task of telling this story.
“We’re of the generation that just missed the book and the original miniseries,” Kondo said of herself and co-creator Justin Marks, noting how only three major TV networks existed at the time. “We were aware of it and its outsized success, and we realize that we live in the aftermath of its impact.
“It had my interest right away, and it was clear, with so many other shows available now, the only thing we could do is pour into it every ounce of care and consideration we could.”
Marks, whose credits include “The Jungle Book” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” said the new series did not have the advantage of novelty that most things Japanese enjoyed in the early 1980s.
“Awareness is far more diffused now than at that time; we weren’t going to teach anything new,” he said. “We’ve seen that story before – the stranger in a strange land – mostly because of this book, but were looking for a new way to tell this story.”
The creators also needed to present “Shōgun” through a modern lens, in a way that diddn’t feel like cultural appropriation. In 1980, the story was told mainly through the eyes of its strapping star, Richard Chamberlain.
“Our version has more Japanese ‘eyes,’ not just Blackthorne’s blue eyes,” said Sanada, who also serves as one of the show’s producers. “We tried very hard to include more detail from a Japanese perspective.”
Sawai, who was born in New Zealand and raised in Japan, was at first cautious about a project about Japan that would be produced by a Western company.
“When this came along, I was a little iffy, because wasn’t sure if they were just trying to remake the same story, from the same perspective. I was afraid I would feel like I wouldn’t been seen,” she said. “But to have this platform and a global audience is a huge thing, and being able to tell our story to a worldwide audience is something that’s huge for me. It’s like a dream to have those worlds come together.”
The visuals of the modern “Shōgun” are made even more spectacular by the realization that not one minute of it was shot in Japan. The sets, personnel and locations are all in present-day Vancouver, Canada.
Sanada said it was prohibitively difficult to find suitable areas to shoot a samurai movie in Japan that weren’t littered with the trappings of 21st-century living.
“Every place has power poles, wires, modern buildings,” he explained. “Vancouver had everything, just 30 minutes’ drive form the studio: forests, harbor, beaches perfectly available, nothing needed to be created with CGI.”
However, with the emphasis on detail and authenticity being paramount, Sanada said crews with decades of experience in creating period dramas in Japan were brought onto the series.
“We hired costumers, masters of gestures, consultants for set design,” he said. “We were constantly checking monitors. It was basically the same as a Japanese production. This was the mission for 2024.”
Part of re-creating 1600 Japan even involved removing plants such as ferns, that would not have existed in Japan at the time.
Producer Eriko Miyagawa said undertaking the project was a daunting task, but that she has long had tremendous respect for the novel, what it accomplished and what it has meant to people around the world.
“I had been living in the U.S. for more than 10 years, and after watching the series, many people I knew living here were inspired to study Japanese or travel to Japan,” she said.
Sawai said she hopes the show’s sense of humanity will be the key to drawing a large audience.
“It’s about real-life issues – it’s about politics and war, and love and loss, so I hope the audience will relate to what the characters are going through,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing how you meet this character who is also being introduced to our culture, and you get to explore Japan along with him. Once you get into it, I hope it will be intriguing enough for you to stay.”