Shogun S1E1: Anjin

Shogun is FX’s attempt at a Game of Thrones-style swordplay epic, and like that show it’s based on a book; unlike that show the book is actually finished. James Clavell’s 1975 novel Shōgun was a massive hit that gave many American readers their first glimpse into Japanese history, and was almost immediately adapted into a star-studded TV miniseries with Richard Chamberlain, Toshiro Mifune, Yoko Shimada, and Joathan Rhys-Davies.

It’s loosely based on real history — a power struggle that ensued when Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in 1598 — and it’s also loosely based on the true story of William Adams (here John Blackthorne), an Englishman who sailed to Japan before any European power save the Portuguese had made any contact with the island nation, and how Adams eventually became a samurai.

Adams was not the same white-interloper-turned-samurai Tom Cruise played in The Last Samurai, but the story likewise explores Japanese history through a caucasian insert character. That was likely necessary for white audiences in 1975; how it plays in 2024 remains to be seen, but unlike, say, Matt Damon defending the Great Wall of China, the story’s at least rooted in real history.

The opening titles tell us that the Portuguese have dominated Japan and have kept its location hidden from rival European powers. And that the Taikō (supreme leader) has died, his heir is too young to rule, and five rivals compete for the throne. In some sort of metaphorical game. A game involving thrones in some way. We’ll workshop that.

We open on English sailors, lost at sea and desperate to make landfall. They started with five ships and 500 men, and are down to one ship with a dozen on board, and no food or water. The elderly captain despairs to the point of welcoming death, but the ship’s pilot, John Blackthorne, still holds out hope, and few days later, the ship runs aground. An Japanese army unit is waiting to meet them. 

The unit reports to Toranaga, one of the five lords in a tenuous power-sharing agreement. He’s in Osaka to meet with his four rivals. Toranaga is amassing power, and the others aren’t happy about it. He toes the official line — he wants to co-rule with them peacefully until the heir comes of age. But he’s also holding the widowed queen in his castle, and they demand her return. The queen is his only leverage — it’s four against one, and if were to come to war, he’d surely lose.

During the tense exchange, there’s an outburst. Tadayoshi, one of Toranaga’s men, can’t bear to hear his lord insulted and threatened by Ishido, his host in Osaka and chief rival, and curses Ishidol. He apologizes for the outburst and offers to commit seppuku, not just committing suicide, but ending his family line.

It should come as no surprise that his wife is less than enthused about Tadayoshi killing their infant son and then himself. She threatens him with a knife, then when that gambit fails, holds it to her own neck. Another woman, Mariko, intervenes. It’s Ishido’s will that the child dies and she lives. (Whether this is true or not isn’t clear. We don’t actually see their lord respond to Tadayoshi’s offer.)

Mariko is steely and unmerciful in telling this woman her baby has to die, but afterwards, out of sight of everyone else, she breaks down and prays, not to Shinto’s ancestor spirits, but to the Catholic God whose word the Portuguese have spread to the island. 

We learn later that Markio has married into Tonagawa’s family. Her father died 14 years ago, she’s still in mourning, and wanted to die with him. Instead, she’s alive and being kept from her “true purpose” according to Tonagawa. He recruits her as an ally, and hopes to recruit the strange European pirate that washed up on his shores, with her help, as she speaks Portuguese.

We see Tadayoshi later in the episode, preparing to kill his child and himself, and it’s a very dark way of starting the first episode. But does it add anything to the show? We feel like “don’t murder a baby” is the only thing ahead of “don’t kill the dog” on the screenwriter’s list of rules, and yet because we don’t actually see it happen, it also feels anticlimactic. It neither has the shocking violence of Tony Soprano losing his temper, or the slow-burn violence of Walter White plotting against his enemies. It’s an awful situation, to be sure, but we don’t know these characters enough to be emotionally invested, and to both commit suicide and kill a baby over a momentary loss of composure feels absurd, regardless of what the actual Japanese tradition was.

But back to our white insert character. The soldiers who found the ship were Toranaga’s, and they tow the derelict ship while the starving crew wait in the hold. They go over their plan to pose as merchants, lost at sea, which to all appearances they are. But they have some sinister plot to carry out against both the Shogunate and the Portuguese, in what they call their “secret empire to the East.”

When the Japanese soldiers release their new prisoners from the hold, neither can understand each other. Blackthorne speaks Portuguese as well as English, and one Portuguese-speaking Japanese soldier can translate. But in a baffling choice, the Japanese dialogue is in Japanese, but the Portuguese dialogue is in English. He tells his men, in English, that he speaks Portuguese, and he converses, also in English, with the translator who speaks Portuguese (except they both speak it in English.) It ends up being far more confusing than subtitles would have been.

Blackthorne is far less diplomatic than Toranaga; after his first request to release his men is rebuffed, he lashes out and insults his captors, and is literally pissed on for his trouble. Both sides see the other as savages, who deserve whatever savage treatment they can dish out. Except Blackthorne, unshaven and half-starved, yelling and cursing at people who don’t speak his language, does really feel the part.

He’s brought before Lord Yabushige, one of Toranaga’s lieutenants, who uses a Portuguese priest as a translator. Ever-diplomatic (and Protestant) Blackthorne also insults the priest, calling him a “papist prick”. The priest tells Yabushige the strange sailor is an “evil pirate” and recommends a quick death. To his credit, Blackthorne very quickly realizes that not only does the priest have no intention of translating, the Portuguese never told the Japanese that the other European powers even exist. When yelling at Yabushige in Portuguese-in-English doesn’t work, Blackthorne snatches the priest’s cross and stomps it into the mud, hoping “I’m not with that guy” translates across all languages.

Yabushige’s intrigued enough (and cares little enough for the priest’s religion) that he spares Blackthorne’s life, although he does take possession of his ship. And boils one of his men alive, just so there’s no question of who’s in charge. Yabushige is sadistic and obsessed with death, which we know because one of the other characters says so.

Back in Osaka, Toranaga visits the young heir to the throne, promising his mother will return soon. In private, his grandmother speculates that Ishido will kill Toranaga, then the other three rivals, and then the boy. Toranaga in particular is a threat, as his ancestors once sat on the throne, giving him a more legitimate claim. But he humbly says he has no interest. “You are a good man,” the grandmother tells him. “But now is not the time for good men. Now is the time for a Shogun.” Hey, that’s the name of this show!

Just in case you were worried the Game of Thrones comparisons weren’t going to stop at gratuitous naked prostitutes, Kiku, “the most celebrated courtesan in Izu” is presented to Yabushige, but seduces his servant and has sex with him while Yabushige watches. (Unless Kiku has a bigger role to play down the line, there’s no point to the scene at all apart from having an excuse for some nudity.) 

Rodrigues, a Spanish sailor working for the Portuguese, shows up to take Blackthorne to Osaka to meet Toranaga, without much explanation. They get caught in a storm, and Blackthorne knows the safest thing to do is counterintuitive — turn into the swell. He naturally communicates this by shouting at Japanese sailors who don’t speak Portuguese-in-English. Rodrigues is lost at sea, and Blackthorne wants to search for him, which, again, he explains in English to the Japanese, who don’t understand him but still do what he says. We have a real Han-and-Chewie thing going on so far, where no one speaks the same language but everyone kind of gets the gist somehow.

And that’s the first episode of Shogun. Some intriguing setup, some gorgeous period details, landscapes, and storm-tossed ships. But it’s also just a little bit dumber than the shows it’s trying to emulate. It doesn’t help that the episode is largely built around Blackthorne, who does nothing to ingratiate himself to his hosts, and little to ingratiate himself to the audience. He mostly just yells and curses and people he knows full well don’t speak his language, and then inexplicably isn’t murdered. Clever, charming, soulful, self-hating Tyrion Lannister he’s not. At least, not so far. It’s only the first episode, and it’s set up just enough intrigue that we’re willing to see how this all plays out.

Stray thoughts:

• The Japanese dialogue is subtitled, but Hulu also offers an English dub, and we’ll try our best not to judge you for watching it that way.

• “Anjin” means “pilot,” Blackthorne’s job on the ship, which is what his Japanese captors come to call him.

• Hulu released two episodes at once, so look for another review in a few days, and then weekly thereafter.