There have been two adaptations of James Clavellβs 1975 novel ShΕgunβa 1980 miniseries and a new one from this year, currently showing on Hulu and Disney+. This short essay focuses on the 1980 adaptation.
Set in the year 1600, on the eve of the Tokugawa Period of Japanese history, ShΕgun is based on the life of William Adams, the first British person to land in Japan. Adamsβs fictional avatar is John Blackthorne, a British pilot of a Dutch trading vessel. The TV miniseries is set in Japan with an almost completely Japanese cast, and most of the dialogue is in Japanese, which is untranslated, with no subtitles.
Itβs a bold choice with huge ramifications for the audience, a stylistic sledgehammer that immerses us deeply into John Blackthorneβs experiences in Japan.
One of the first people he meets after arriving in Japan is a Portuguese Jesuit who takes a strong dislike to him, viewing him as an infidel. Again, the year is 1600, an age of imperial and religious contention in the wake of the Reformation. The Spanish and English thrones are imperial rivals (and Portugal has been under Spanish rule for twenty years) and Englandβs queen is the daughter of Henry VIII, the man who drove the Church of Englandβs schism from Rome.
And so Catholic priests are immediately pinned by the audience as enemies of Blackthorne. We also understand from the priestβs use of Japanese, that the Jesuits have established themselves in the power structure of Japan.
Blackthorne and Mariko fall in love
Through the twists and turns of fate, driven by the internal politics of Japan and Portugal, Blackthorne comes to meet the daimyo Toranaga (ToshirΕ Mifune), who takes a liking to Blackthorne. He also provides Blackthorne with a female interpreter named Mariko, who is also a Catholic. As time goes on, Blackthorne and Mariko fall in love, and Toranaga must flee his enemies, who wish him dead. The Portuguese want him alive and so they begin assisting Blackthorne, who saves Toranagaβs life and is thus made a samurai.
Throughout the entire series, we understand the political situation through Blackthorneβs eyes. Occasionally we come to know things he doesnβt know, but we are largely living with his knowledge of whatβs going on. And this is incomplete, to say the least. He learns more and more Japanese, yet the subtitles never arrive to give us more clarity. We must learn as he learns. His vocabulary is very limited and so we understand what heβs asking, what heβs saying to the Japanese, but then we and he must go by inflection, tone, body language, and hope that the person speaking to him uses the words heβand weβknow.
Every now and then, a narrator allows the viewer to understand whatβs being spoken in Japanese. The narrator is Orson Welles, of all people, but he is used so infrequently that we remain largely in the dark about the specific plans, unless Mariko or one of the Jesuits explains them to Blackthorne. At the same time, we are never really confused. Which brings me to another stylistic choice that highlights how miserable filmmaking has become in the forty years since this was made.
In modern filmmaking, whenever we see dialogue, we do a close-up of the speakerβs face while they speak and then we cut to a close-up of another person as they respond. We ping back and forth like this through the entire scene, until something breaks us out of this. We rarely, if ever, get a wide shot of both people speaking at the same time, and so we never really see body language or even how people respond to whatβs being said in the moment.
Along with that, any scene of movement is full of so many cuts that we are constantly jumping around, seeing a scene from a dozen angles. Visually, the camera must always be in motion for fear the audience might get bored.
But what we see when we watch movies and TV from the past is a steadier eye and hand. When characters are talking, we get a view of both of them. And we linger on them together, seeing one actor deliver lines and the other receive those lines simultaneously. We see actors move around. They stand, they walk or pace. In a word, they act.
They embody their characters, and we are allowed to inhabit that embodiment by seeing them fully and uninterruptedly. When cuts happen, they are usually for a practical or deliberate reason rather than fear of boredom.
But it is fascinating to see how different this looks and feels. There was a moment when the camera observes Blackthorne, surrounded by samurai, walk from prison to a palace. What my wife noticed is that all the samurai seemed to be walking in sync. Such a little detail. Never does the show draw attention to it or even highlight it. But itβs there. You can see it. And that tells us something about the samurai, about the rigidity of their society.
If that scene was shown today, it would be handled very differently. Even if the actors were told to walk in sync like that, the camera would cut so often that weβd never really get a chance to just observe this peculiar bit of worldbuilding. Or the camera would fixate tightly on this to ensure the viewer saw what the director wanted them to see.
And I think that leads to a very boring visual language. Thereβs a joy in discovery, even if all youβre doing is noticing a minor detail that has no impact on anything but your own understanding of the world.
The 1980 adaptation of ShΕgun is full of these choices, large and small, that pull us deeper into the world of 1600 Japan. By keeping us close to Blackthorne, Toranagaβs wily plotting also takes us off guard and surprises us. We understand how shrewd he is, yet we only see his hand at the very end, when he is revealing it to the world, establishing the Tokugawa Shogunate.
And while some might wish that weβd been on the inside of his plotting, of his political jockeying, I think seeing it from this remove allows Mifuneβs Toranaga to grow in stature.
We see and feel, bone deep, the power of this figure and while he often seems imperilled, his success, by the end, feels destined. Like it must always be this way. An inevitability to his rise.
It gave me chills when he reveals the man he truly is.
But what Iβll remember most about Toranaga, the character, is the ways the show reveals him in all his complications and messiness. Iβll especially remember him dancing with Blackthorne in a private moment of levity.
I cannot recommend this miniseries enough, and while you canβt easily stream it, the Blu-ray comes with all kinds of special features. And itβs nice to own physical media. Especially ones that make bold directorial choices.
I cannot wait to watch the new adaptation, which promises to be a very different one, with more perspective given to the Japanese players, and it is reportedly truer to Clavellβs novel.
I just hope it remains bold.
To be continuedβ¦
How to cite: rathke, e. βBold Directorial Choices: ShΕgun (1980).β Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 16 Mar. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/03/16/shogun-1980.
e rathke writes about books and games at radicaledward.substack.com. A finalist for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, he is the author of Glossolalia, Howl, and several other forthcoming novellas. His short fiction appears in Queer Tales of Monumental Invention, Mysterion Magazine, Shoreline of Infinity, and elsewhere. [All contributions by e rathke.]
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