“It’s moving around and [made] on a huge scale and it looks real.
I was so happy to act on that kind of set.
It was easy to jump into the world.”
Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in ‘Shogun’.Credit:Kurt Iswarienko/FX
“All of those preparations were veryofficiallycoordinated.
I guess that was an indicator that they had some resources.”
Clavell’s novel, considered the first in his so-called Asian Saga, is more than 1,100 pages long.
Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) in ‘Shogun’.Katie Yu/FX
Fortunately, Blackthorne finds salvation in one particular lord before losing his head.
Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Sanada) is currently fighting for his life in Osaka.
If they successfully oust him, it would mean the death of him and his family.
Cosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne, Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko, Tadanobu Asano as Kashigi Yabushige, Hiroto Kanai as Kashigi Omi in ‘Shogun’.Katie Yu/FX
Toranaga, however, sees Blackthorne as a means of keeping the council divided in his favor.
“I felt that to imitate the Japanese style of jidaigeki” i.e.
Kondo, coming in as a fiction writer, brought a deeper knowledge of palace intrigue dramas.
Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko, Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in ‘Shogun’.Katie Yu/FX
“I’m a devoted BBC viewer.
That cadence sticks with you.
Growing up, none of these characters looked like me.
It never even occurred to me that that could happen someday.
Just now they look like me.”
Toranaga is a fictionalized version of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
“And then I played so many other samurai characters in this period,” he adds.
“He’s seen all the mistakes that we’ve [collectively] made for 25 years.”
“I hired the crew from Japan, some of them,” Sanada elaborates.
“We worked together over 40 years and brought an expert for each department.
It was important to make [the show] authentic.”
Everyone started eating sushi and Japanese restaurants [were on] every corner.
The drama didn’t even use subtitles, which were not yet a common element of television.
Not so with 2024’sShogun.
“Within those characters there are armies, and within those armies there are territories.”
Physicality became a key component.
When Blackthorne first finds himself in Japan, every molecule feels out of place.
Sawai’s Mariko comes into the picture as the last member of a disgraced family.
“Rachel constructed the scene where it’s Mariko who has to persuade her to do it.
“Technically, she’s convincing a friend of hers to sacrifice her child,” Kondo says.
“At the outset, you would think, ‘Oh my God!
Who is this person?’
“That performance speaks to the humanity at the core of the moment.”
Ultimately, both Marks and Kondo believe the story ofShogunis a story about agency.
“All three of those characters start the story in one way or another as prisoners.
