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By James BalmontFeatures Correspondent
foreign exchangeCosmo Jarvis and Hiroyuki Sanada star in Hulu/FX/Disney+’s new hit series Shōgun, bringing Japan’s violent feudal past to life in all its terrifying splendor.
There’s a stomach-churning moment in the debut episode of FX/Disney+’s Shōgun that sets the standard for the kind of brutality that’s sure to follow. Having endured starvation, scurvy, and a captain’s suicide aboard a devastated Dutch merchant ship, pilot Major John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) and his surviving crew are shipwrecked off the coast of Anjiro, only to be washed ashore. a pit by captors armed with swords to await their fate. Although Blackthorne avoids execution, a member of his entourage is less fortunate: he is tied up and placed in a cauldron, where he is slowly boiled to death.
No, this is not Westdespite what very good reviews For the show, comparing it to Game of Thrones may suggest. This is Japan in the year 1600, a time of great turmoil after two centuries of civil wars. Here, Blackthorne – based on the real-life navigator William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan – must assimilate into a foreign and brutal reality, as a weak government of five regents threatens to split into warring factions after the demise of the Taiko (retired imperial regent). Since Catholic missionaries provide an additional antagonistic presence to the Protestant Blackthorne, his survival may depend on an alliance with Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), who has apparently been marked for elimination by his political rivals.
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Originally a world-famous bestseller (James Clavell’s 1975 historical fiction had sold 15 million copies by 1990), Shōgun has proven his potential on the small screen before. In 1980, the original nine-hour NBC miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain, John Rhys-Davies, Japanese icon Toshirô Mifune and Orson Welles as narrator, won three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes. after reaching the second highest ratings in American television history; his popularity contributed to The rise of sushi restaurants. in the United States that decade. Set in 2024, Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks’ new series largely eschews big names, instead foregrounding even more vivid historical context and ultimately offering a rich depiction of feudal Japan in all its terrifying splendor. .
In 1600, global power dynamics were very different from today: Protestant England had been forced to defend Elizabeth I’s throne from invasion in 1588, while the Spanish Armada attempted to reestablish Catholicism and end English support for Dutch independence from Spain. The latter country would, at that time, be in a dynastic union with Portugal; The two powerful Iberian states had previously divided the oceanic domains beyond Europe between their vast empires with the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. Portugal, a vanguard of global exploration, discovered Japan in 1543 and began trading with them Western goods, such as matchlock firearms, while spreading the Catholic faith through the introduction of Jesuit missionaries. This context serves as the backdrop for Blackthorne’s treacherous journey at the beginning of Shōgun.
“The Portuguese (and the Spanish) had two objectives,” explains Thomas D. Conlan, professor of history and East Asian studies at Princeton University and author of The samurai and the warrior culture of Japan, 471–1877: a reference book. “The first was to convert Japan to Christianity. The second was to finally conquer Japan (by) converting high-ranking lords to Christianity. But they had to tread carefully… militarily, the Portuguese simply could not compete with Japanese power.” . In fact, such caution was recorded as early as 1552 by one of the first Western visitors to Japan. “They are very polite to each other, but not to foreigners, whom they completely despise,” Catholic missionary Francis Xavier said of the local population. in a letter to the Society of Jesus in Europe. “They are, in short, a very warlike people and they are in continuous wars among themselves.”
‘Brutal times’
Japan at the time was in the midst of a long and chaotic turmoil, hence the tensions that seemed ready to erupt under Shōgun. Known as the Sengoku Jidai or “Warring States period” (approximately 1467-1615), this was an era defined by almost constant civil wars, as feudal lords fought for complete control of the country. The goals of three successive warlords – including Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the recently deceased Taikō of Shōgun’s narrative, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, his eventual successor – would be achieved with the unification of the country in the early 17th century, but not without considerable violence. and strength in the hands of bushi Class (samurai warrior).
foreign exchangeSword-wielding samurai conformed to a strict moral code pertaining to the ideals of the cultivated warrior. As Danny Chaplin, author of Sengoku Jidai. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu: three unifiers of Japanexplains, their beliefs came from various religious traditions: “From Buddhism, the samurai learned not to fear death, since the self was an illusion anyway. From Shintoism, the samurai learned to venerate their ancestors, imparting to them a “deep sense of loyalty and continuity. From Confucianism he learned the rudiments of behavior towards others within a strictly hierarchical society.” But despite these virtues, they were also ruthless when it came to maintaining order. For example, to maintain honor, samurai allowed an immediate reaction in response to a perceived sleight of hand by a member of the lower classes; kiri-sute gomen or “authorization to cut and go” is demonstrated at the beginning of the brutal new series when a peasant loses his mind (both literally and figuratively) in the street.
Furthermore, loyalty to the lordship was paramount in samurai values, and dying in that service was considered an honor. Falling into the hands of the enemy – or succumbing to an unmanly fate – was once considered a shame. These ideals (which prevailed into the modern era, with the kamikaze pilots of World War II) would be best embodied by the act of seppukuor suicide by self-evisceration, a ritual suggested by the Shōgun’s Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) when he draws his sword after falling into the ocean, facing a shameful death by drowning.
“Those were brutal times,” says Chaplin; katana swords were frequently “tested” on condemned prisoners, and the taking of up to thousands of heads as trophies during battle “was widespread among samurai.” He echoes the arrival of Blackthorne’s crew to Japan in Shōgun: The Taikō gave an example after the pilot of a shipwrecked galleon suggested that the Spanish intended to conquer Japan by infiltrating missionaries. Hideyoshi had 26 Christians crucified and impaled with spears in response. And just as the Tudors in England beheaded their wives and burned Catholics at the stake, the Japanese used cruel methods such as those applied to Blackthorne’s unfortunate crewmate: the legendary bandit Ishikawa Goemon, a kind of Japanese Robin Hood, was boiled alive on the banks of the Kamo River in Kyoto in 1594.
foreign exchange“Violence as punishment had to be spectacular and terrifying to ensure compliance with the laws,” says Conlan. Maybe seppuku So in itself (often offered as a “privilege” to samurai defeated in battle, but also favored as a method of capital punishment since the victim’s family was less likely to seek revenge for a self-inflicted death) it typified this spectacle more than anything else. In one famous incident, the Taikō even ordered his exiled nephew to commit suicide in 1595 to avoid a possible challenge to the succession from his heir. Such cruelty (Hideyoshi also executed his entire family, a total of 39 men, women and children) contributed to Western perceptions of the Japanese: “Europeans were shocked that Hideyoshi would do this to a close relative,” he says. Conlan.
The Sengoku period would reach its climax with the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the largest and possibly most important in Japanese feudal history, which left up to 36,000 dead or seriously wounded in a single day. It’s an event that seems to be lurking on the horizon in Shōgun. In its wake, Japan would enter a new era, Edo, defined by more than 250 years of relative peace, an isolationist foreign policy (which attempted to eliminate the colonial and religious influences of Spain and Portugal), and the prohibition and persecution of Christians. With any luck, Blackthorne might make it to this period; What is more certain, however, is that first there will be grave horrors to face.
Shōgun is now streaming on FX/Hulu/Disney+ internationally.
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