Shogun Review: Rediscovering Japan – The New York Times

New FX Shogun Miniseries Is Coming lots of credit just because he's not Shogun, the 1980 NBC miniseries is also adapted from James Clavell's best-selling novel about the final days of feudal Japan. But the new show rests on the same conditions as the old one: its success as an epic costume soap opera. You can correct wood play, outdated production values, and Eurocentrism, but you can't really correct the fundamental nature of the material.

And on these conditions, this Shogun which comes out Tuesday on FX and Hulu with two of its 10 episodes is perfectly successful. It is sumptuously produced, generally well acted and without excessive sentimentality or sensationalism. If his story seems to stop and start a bit, there are reasons for that, which become clear in a satisfying and moving ending; while there are major characters who don't hold up to scrutiny, there are others who come to life and hold your interest. It may not live up to its hype, and you may wonder why it took so much time (over a decade) and money to revive Clavell's tale. But it keeps its promises.

Created by the husband-and-wife team of Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, the FX Shogun still tells the story of an English navigator, John Blackthorne, who arrives in Japan at the turn of the 17th century and finds himself embroiled to a surprising degree in the political, cultural and romantic life of the country. (Blackthorne, like most important characters, is loosely based on a historical figure.)

Kondo and Marks recalibrated the narrative, however, moving Blackthorne's point of view down into the mix and elevating the roles of many Japanese characters, particularly Toda Mariko, the noblewoman who becomes translator and Blackthorn's love interest, and Yoshii Toranaga, the Lord. who both protects and manipulates him.

It's a notable departure from the original Shogun, but 44 years later, it's not like the series should get a ton of credit, it's an easy win. In today's global television environment, the shows' emphasis on Japanese characters and language is welcome but not exceptional. (Considerable effort also reportedly went into verifying details of period costumes and behavior; few viewers, even in Japan, are likely to know the difference, but what is on screen certainly seems believable to the rest of us.)

While the plot, busy but not that complicated, involves Toranaga and his rival Ishido vying for power, with Blackthorne as a reluctant pawn; With Blackthorne alternately repelled and seduced by his new surroundings, the real difference between the old and new shows has less to do with cultural enlightenment than with a higher level of taste and technique. Although there is also a multicultural dimension here: the Marks and Kondos show draws inspiration from the know-how of classic Japanese samurai films, which were themselves strongly influenced by the attitudes and styles of westerns and swashbucklers Hollywood. This Shogun finds himself in a polyglot comfort zone.

Not everything has been improved. Cosmo Jarvis (Lady Macbeth), replacing Richard Chamberlain as Blackthorne, seems just as lost as his stuck and bewildered character. He works a muted note of dazed petulance for much of the series, eventually morphing into stunned sorrow. As the story builds up Blackthorne, he continually (improbably) saves the day when Jarvis' lack of presence goes against the narrative, making Mariko's attraction to Blackthorne and Toranaga's sympathy for him hard to buy.

We remain engaged, however, because the actors Jarvis is pitted against easily hold our attention. Anna Sawai, who didn't really click as a contemporary action hero in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, is utterly convincing and captivating as Mariko. And Hiroyuki Sanada carries the show as the relentlessly pragmatic and humanely inhumane Toranaga; he's not the most expressive actor, but he has a quiet strength and regality that fits the role.

A number of supporting cast members are also excellent, starting with Japanese cinema stalwart Tadanobu Asano as the scheming daimyo Yabushige and notably Takehiro Hira as Ishido, Moeka Hoshi as Blackthorne's wife and Tokuma Nishioka as Toranaga's most loyal servant.

The roles that these performers play so well are familiar, and if the creators of the show display a heightened sensitivity to stereotypes, this does not prevent this Shogun from displaying the signs of a familiar cinematic Japonism. It is there in the fetishization of death (seppuku returns) and in the central contrast of Blackthorne's Western individualism with the Japanese characters' dedication to duty and sacrifice. Sex is aestheticized; a maid is a member of a secret assassins' guild (although the character is no longer a full-fledged ninja, as in 1980). The dialogue continues to blossom into poetry.

All of these things may be historically and culturally accurate to some extent, but they are also undeniably tropes of Western romanticization of Japan. And ultimately, Shogun, while it remains linked to Clavell's book, remains an excellent example of Westerners' attempt to encapsulate his fascination, or infatuation, with Japanese style and attitude.

So why go to all this trouble to embellish a half-century-old fantasy of British writers about Japanese history? This can only be defensible in commercial terms. But when Toranaga and Yabushige meet on a cliff in the rising sun and explain what the whole story is about, Sanada and Asano rise above all these paltry concerns.