Shogun

[CooterBrown 18012]

In.

 

I wonder how many old 70s & 80s mini series are now going to be remade.

 

[52-80 19158]

When I was little, my father was famous. He was the greatest Samurai in the empire, and he was the Shogun's decapitator. He cut off the heads of 131 lords for the Shogun. It was a bad time for the empire. The Shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out. People said his brain was infected by devils, and that he was rotting with evil. The Shogun said the people were not loyal. He said he had a lot of enemies, but he killed more people than that. It was a bad time. Everybody living in fear, but still we were happy. My father would come home to mother, and when he had seen her, he would forget about the killings. He wasn't scared of the Shogun, but the Shogun was scared of him. Maybe that was the problem. At night, mother would sing for us, while father would go into his temple and pray for peace. He'd pray for things to get better. Then, one night the Shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father, but they didn't. That was the night everything changed, forever.

[atomheartbevo 89668]

Looks amazing.  I notice they don't mention "James Clavell" until you dig into the description.

Also somebody had the perfect comment for once:

Quote

I have spent a lifetime wondering how Hiroyuki Sanada hasn't been a consistent leading man. The man has the cool, the calm, the presence to absolutely kill whatever he's in.

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89668]

6 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

I wonder how many old 70s & 80s mini series are now going to be remade.

I dare them to do Centennial and make it as big (nearly 24 hours) and as epic as the original.  

Barbara Carrera, Sally Kellerman, Stephanie Zimbalist, Merle Haggard, Cristina Raines, Mark Harmon, Gregory Harrison, and Lynn Redgrave were probably at their peak hotness.

• Michael Ansara – Lame Beaver
• William Atherton – Jim Lloyd
• Raymond Burr – Herman Bockweiss
• Barbara Carrera – Clay Basket
• Richard Chamberlain – Alexander McKeag
• Robert Conrad – Pasquinel
• Richard Crenna – Col. Frank Skimmerhorn
• Timothy Dalton – Oliver Seccombe
• Cliff De Young – John Skimmerhorn
• Chad Everett – Major Maxwell Mercy
• Sharon Gless – Sidney Endermann
• Andy Griffith – Prof. Lewis Vernor
• Merle Haggard – Cisco Calendar
• Mark Harmon – Captain John McIntosh
• Gregory Harrison – Levi Zendt
• David Janssen – Paul Garrett (Narrator)
• Alex Karras – Hans Brumbaugh
• Brian Keith – Sheriff Axel Dumire
• Sally Kellerman – Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel
• A Martinez – Tranquilino Marquez
• Stephen McHattie – Jacques Pasquinel (adult)
• Lois Nettleton – Maude Wendell
• Donald Pleasence – Sam Purchas
• Cristina Raines – Lucinda McKeag Zendt
• Lynn Redgrave – Charlotte Buckland Seccombe Lloyd
• Clive Revill – Finlay Perkin
• Kario Salem – Marcel Pasquinel (adult)
• Clint Walker – Joe Bean
• Dennis Weaver – R. J. Poteet
• Robert Vaughn – Morgan Wendell
• Anthony Zerbe – Mervin Wendell
• Stephanie Zimbalist – Elly Zahm Zendt

[LCHorn 2620]

23 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I have spent a lifetime wondering how Hiroyuki Sanada hasn't been a consistent leading man.

He’s also such perfect casting for Toranaga.

I tried to watch the Richard Chamberlain miniseries a few months back and got through the first hour-it’s a pretty straight adaptation (and well done if dated).  

I’m excited to see an update that places the women in more central roles.  I hadn’t considered that until seeing the trailer-it looks like there’s more perspective given to Mariko’s story.  

[tx 3 putt 76958]

23 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I dare them to do Centennial and make it as big (nearly 24 hours) and as epic as the original.  

Barbara Carrera, Sally Kellerman, Stephanie Zimbalist, Merle Haggard, Cristina Raines, Mark Harmon, Gregory Harrison, and Lynn Redgrave were probably at their peak hotness.

• Michael Ansara – Lame Beaver
• William Atherton – Jim Lloyd
• Raymond Burr – Herman Bockweiss
• Barbara Carrera – Clay Basket
• Richard Chamberlain – Alexander McKeag
• Robert Conrad – Pasquinel
• Richard Crenna – Col. Frank Skimmerhorn
• Timothy Dalton – Oliver Seccombe
• Cliff De Young – John Skimmerhorn
• Chad Everett – Major Maxwell Mercy
• Sharon Gless – Sidney Endermann
• Andy Griffith – Prof. Lewis Vernor
• Merle Haggard – Cisco Calendar
• Mark Harmon – Captain John McIntosh
• Gregory Harrison – Levi Zendt
• David Janssen – Paul Garrett (Narrator)
• Alex Karras – Hans Brumbaugh
• Brian Keith – Sheriff Axel Dumire
• Sally Kellerman – Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel
• A Martinez – Tranquilino Marquez
• Stephen McHattie – Jacques Pasquinel (adult)
• Lois Nettleton – Maude Wendell
• Donald Pleasence – Sam Purchas
• Cristina Raines – Lucinda McKeag Zendt
• Lynn Redgrave – Charlotte Buckland Seccombe Lloyd
• Clive Revill – Finlay Perkin
• Kario Salem – Marcel Pasquinel (adult)
• Clint Walker – Joe Bean
• Dennis Weaver – R. J. Poteet
• Robert Vaughn – Morgan Wendell
• Anthony Zerbe – Mervin Wendell
• Stephanie Zimbalist – Elly Zahm Zendt

Very solid watch

 

[atomheartbevo 89668]

9 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I’m excited to see an update that places the women in more central roles.  I hadn’t considered that until seeing the trailer-it looks like there’s more perspective given to Mariko’s story.  

It's been a few decades since I've seen the 1980 series or read the book, but given how important she was in the book/series, it'll be interesting

Spoiler

her death played such a major part in moving the whole story along, both because of her sacrifice as well as the money she left to him

You should finish the series - it's actually pretty decent (I think it runs close to 10 hours).

[Post Oak 20213]

How's the book?  I have it on my list but haven't read it yet.

[atomheartbevo 89668]

14 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

How's the book?  I have it on my list but haven't read it yet.

Do you like books about Japan in the early 1600s that run 1,300 - 1,600 pages depending on format, and that are basically hundreds of thousands of words about actual Japanese history with some fictionalized things/conversations about a real-life Westerner who lived there??

Because it's the book for you.

If you have read any of James Michener's longer books, you'll probably like it.

[Post Oak 20213]

13 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Do you like books about Japan in the early 1600s that run 1,300 - 1,600 pages depending on format, and that are basically hundreds of thousands of words about actual Japanese history with some fictionalized things/conversations about a real-life Westerner who lived there??

Because it's the book for you.

If you have read any of James Michener's longer books, you'll probably like it.

Ok. I'll watch the movie. Thanks

[PRONG HORN 3146]

 

The new Mariko's accent sucks.  It should be cute and Japanesey.  Not from New Zealand.    

 

 

 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89668]

4 minutes ago, PRONG HORN said:

The new Mariko's accent sucks.  It should be cute and Japanesey.  Not from New Zealand.    

Counterpoint: new Mariko doesn't have Elvis sideburns.

 

[PRONG HORN 3146]

6 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Counterpoint: new Mariko doesn't have Elvis sideburns.

 

Those are period correct sideburns

 

[atomheartbevo 89668]

4 hours ago, PRONG HORN said:

Those are period correct sideburns

Armybrat sock found.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13512]

Are they getting Orson Welles to narrate the story again? Seriously there is plenty of context and explanation of culture and history in the book that is difficult to put to film. Welles’ narration helped the 1980 viewer understand more. Or maybe the 2023 version is made as an action miniseries more than the book and ‘80 series.

i recommend anyone read the book before watching any shogun adaption. Several of Clavells book are a good read. Tai Pan is my second favorite of his after shogun. 

 

[Spoetzl 181]

Really looking forward to this.  I re-read Shogun, Tai Pan, Noble House, and Whirlwind (skip King Rat and Gaijin) every few years.  I hope the production company follows up with more.

[gsoda3 3262]

Are they getting Orson Welles to narrate the story again? Seriously there is plenty of context and explanation of culture and history in the book that is difficult to put to film. Welles’ narration helped the 1980 viewer understand more. Or maybe the 2023 version is made as an action miniseries more than the book and ‘80 series.
i recommend anyone read the book before watching any shogun adaption. Several of Clavells book are a good read. Tai Pan is my second favorite of his after shogun. 
 

Really looking forward to this.  I re-read Shogun, Tai Pan, Noble House, and Whirlwind (skip King Rat and Gaijin) every few years.  I hope the production company follows up with more.

I read all of clavell's books for the first time about this time last year. Loved them all. The Tai Pan series is fascinating as my family have both British and HK roots. There were lots of cultural touchstones. King Rat was really interesting to me. All of his books have a movie adaptation of some sort (except the WW2 series). And they all stay loyal to the original storylines.

[hayden_horn 11362]

21 hours ago, LCHorn said:

He’s also such perfect casting for Toranaga.

I tried to watch the Richard Chamberlain miniseries a few months back and got through the first hour-it’s a pretty straight adaptation (and well done if dated).  

I’m excited to see an update that places the women in more central roles.  I hadn’t considered that until seeing the trailer-it looks like there’s more perspective given to Mariko’s story.  

the book is visionary because it recognizes women as people. 

master of fact, while blackthorne is the ostensible protagonist, or arguably toranaga, I've always thought clavell had the story centered around mariko. she's the hero. for me at least. there's one line that sticks out to me when clavell introduces mariko. "She was eighteen years old"

[LCHorn 2620]

1 hour ago, hayden_horn said:

the book is visionary because it recognizes women as people. 

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but now that you mention it women play fully fleshed our roles in Tai-Pan and Noble House, too.  When I first the books I just presumed it was in keeping with a late 60’s/early 70’s motif of heros and heroines possessing almost supernatural talents (think Fleming’s Bond novels), but I think you’re right, I think Clavelle wants to recognize that you cannot tell those stories well purely from the worldview of the central character.  

[atomheartbevo 89668]

2 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

I read all of clavell's books for the first time about this time last year. Loved them all. The Tai Pan series is fascinating as my family have both British and HK roots. There were lots of cultural touchstones. King Rat was really interesting to me. All of his books have a movie adaptation of some sort (except the WW2 series). And they all stay loyal to the original storylines.

Which is extremely rare and makes me wonder if Clavell negotiated a lot more pull with the TV networks.  James Michener - the only adaptations of his that I think did the books justice are The Bridges at Toko-Ri (which was a smaller book of his and had a very narrow focus) and Centennial, which ran 20+ hours and was Ted Turner's obsession or something

Herman Wouk (who just died a few years ago at 103) had solid adaptations with The Cain Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.

Clavell's adaptations seemed to all have solid directors behind them which helped, especially Shogun.

Edited November 5, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[gsoda3 3262]

23 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Which is extremely rare and makes me wonder if Clavell negotiated a lot more pull with the TV networks.  James Michener - the only adaptations of his that I think did the books justice are The Bridges at Toko-Ri (which was a smaller book of his and had a very narrow focus) and Centennial, which ran 20+ hours and was Ted Turner's obsession or something

Herman Wouk (who just died a few years ago at 103) had solid adaptations with The Cain Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.

Clavell's adaptations seemed to all have solid directors behind them which helped, especially Shogun.

i don't know about the rest, but i remember with tai pan clavell didn't like how it turned out and i don't think he was involved.  

 

a couple other series that stayed true to the source material are the Sharpe's.... series and the Hornblower series.  The Hornblower series was better produced.  The Sharpe's series is quite hard to watch despite featuring a young Sean Bean. 

[kevwun 15788]

Shogun is definitely worth reading if you like historical fiction and want to learn more about Japanese history.  It's very detailed, but damn good.

[Brandywine 1316]

I remember when Richard Chamberlain's Shogun came out in 1980. Everyone was watching it and It dominated television. People were scheduling their lives and having watch parties I think before there were watch parties. Eating Japanese food, even dressing up in kimonos. My love for Japan started with James Bond's You Only Live Twice, but Shogun just made me want to go there even more. I finally did go several years ago and it was more beautiful than I could imagine. Looking forward to this version, it looks amazing.

[PittsburghTiger 6186]

On 11/4/2023 at 2:20 PM, tx 3 putt said:

Very solid watch

 

 

On 11/4/2023 at 1:56 PM, atomheartbevo said:

I dare them to do Centennial and make it as big (nearly 24 hours) and as epic as the original.  

Barbara Carrera, Sally Kellerman, Stephanie Zimbalist, Merle Haggard, Cristina Raines, Mark Harmon, Gregory Harrison, and Lynn Redgrave were probably at their peak hotness.

• Michael Ansara – Lame Beaver
• William Atherton – Jim Lloyd
• Raymond Burr – Herman Bockweiss
• Barbara Carrera – Clay Basket
• Richard Chamberlain – Alexander McKeag
• Robert Conrad – Pasquinel
• Richard Crenna – Col. Frank Skimmerhorn
• Timothy Dalton – Oliver Seccombe
• Cliff De Young – John Skimmerhorn
• Chad Everett – Major Maxwell Mercy
• Sharon Gless – Sidney Endermann
• Andy Griffith – Prof. Lewis Vernor
• Merle Haggard – Cisco Calendar
• Mark Harmon – Captain John McIntosh
• Gregory Harrison – Levi Zendt
• David Janssen – Paul Garrett (Narrator)
• Alex Karras – Hans Brumbaugh
• Brian Keith – Sheriff Axel Dumire
• Sally Kellerman – Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel
• A Martinez – Tranquilino Marquez
• Stephen McHattie – Jacques Pasquinel (adult)
• Lois Nettleton – Maude Wendell
• Donald Pleasence – Sam Purchas
• Cristina Raines – Lucinda McKeag Zendt
• Lynn Redgrave – Charlotte Buckland Seccombe Lloyd
• Clive Revill – Finlay Perkin
• Kario Salem – Marcel Pasquinel (adult)
• Clint Walker – Joe Bean
• Dennis Weaver – R. J. Poteet
• Robert Vaughn – Morgan Wendell
• Anthony Zerbe – Mervin Wendell
• Stephanie Zimbalist – Elly Zahm Zendt

It’s available for free on YouTube. Watched it about nine months ago.

[Storm the Field 5294]

Final trailer released a few days ago. This looks great, albeit brutally graphic.

 

[kevwun 15788]

This might be the tv show I am looking forward to most in 2024.

Edited January 30 by kevwun

[utee94 15823]

On 11/5/2023 at 6:20 AM, Spoetzl said:

Really looking forward to this.  I re-read Shogun, Tai Pan, Noble House, and Whirlwind (skip King Rat and Gaijin) every few years.  I hope the production company follows up with more.

Exactly the same for me.

This adaptation looks like it'll be good, I'd love to see them do Tai Pan and Noble House next.

Edited January 30 by utee94

[mrlasky 28]

On 1/30/2024 at 12:54 PM, utee94 said:

Exactly the same for me.

This adaptation looks like it'll be good, I'd love to see them do Tai Pan and Noble House next.

Same here, but I did re-read Gaijin once because it gives some background on what happened after Shogun...but that is mainly a Struan story-arc.

BTW first 6 episodes titles are well titled  

S1 E1 · Anjin

PREMIERE

Feb 27, 2024

S1 E2 · Servants of Two Masters

Feb 27, 2024

S1 E3 · Tomorrow Is Tomorrow

Mar 5, 2024

S1 E4 · The Eightfold Fence

Mar 12, 2024

S1 E5 · Broken to the Fist

Mar 19, 2024

S1 E6 · Ladies of the Willow World

Mar 26, 2024

 

[Michael Knight 12978]

Getting very good reviews

[Radical Larry 28620]

I’m looking forward to this. 

[Hornius Emeritus 12462]

As long as they don't remake the Thorn Birds, nobody gets hurt.

[locodos 5387]

On 11/5/2023 at 10:10 AM, gsoda3 said:

I read all of clavell's books for the first time about this time last year. Loved them all. The Tai Pan series is fascinating as my family have both British and HK roots. There were lots of cultural touchstones. King Rat was really interesting to me. All of his books have a movie adaptation of some sort (except the WW2 series). And they all stay loyal to the original storylines.

I also read all of Clavell's books.  King Rat remains the worst book I've ever read.  I only finished it because I had read all the others.  I hate that book.

[TonyTexas 10513]

1 hour ago, locodos said:

I also read all of Clavell's books.  King Rat remains the worst book I've ever read.  I only finished it because I had read all the others.  I hate that book.

With that opinion, my guess is that you haven’t read many books. 

[locodos 5387]

I read plenty, just not as much as I'd like.

I didn't enjoy or connect with it at all.  I'm glad you enjoyed it, perhaps try not being an asshole?

Edited February 14 by locodos

[Nice Guy Eddie 13512]

11 hours ago, Hornius Emeritus said:

As long as they don't remake the Thorn Birds, nobody gets hurt.

A bit creepy when the old priest sleeps the young lady that he helped raise.  The 80s were just different.

[Herpa Derpa 6126]

1 minute ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

A bit creepy when the old priest sleeps the young lady that he helped raise.  The 80s were just different.

Can confirm:

[RomaVicta 29907]

I read the entire novel before the series aired originally. Fantatastic read and great series. I love the look of the new series. 

King Rat is great in my opinion. I read it a long time ago and it made me think of the difference between fiction and literature. I thought King Rat is literature. The movie with George Segal is also very good IMHO.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this series.

[TonyTexas 10513]

13 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

 

Edited February 16 by TonyTexas

[TonyTexas 10513]

On 2/14/2024 at 8:35 AM, locodos said:

I read plenty, just not as much as I'd like.

I didn't enjoy or connect with it at all.  I'm glad you enjoyed it, perhaps try not being an asshole?

Nice edit. 😂

Edited February 16 by TonyTexas

[BHMCruiser 1813]

I cannot remember the last time I was stoked to see something. This looks incredible. 

[kingkoopa6 8350]

Hot chick from Godzilla in it? Noice 

[kingkoopa6 8350]

Her acting left something to be desired tho. Hopefully it don’t matter here. 
 

Just slice foos up and look hot doing it 

[LCHorn 2620]

19 minutes ago, kingkoopa6 said:

Her acting left something to be desired tho. Hopefully it don’t matter here. 
 

Just slice foos up and look hot doing it 

The, I think, Variety review said she’s a highlight in this.  In agreement that after Godzilla I am a little skeptical.

[bolverk 29672]

‘Shogun’ Remake: This Time, the White Man Is Only One of the Stars
A 1980 adaptation of the best-selling novel cast it as the tale of a white hero in an exotic Japan. A new version tells a more kaleidoscopic story.

Gina Balian, a television executive who had worked on the hit series “Game of Thrones” for HBO, had just left to help FX start a new limited series division when an agent sent her a nearly 1,200-page novel.

It was “Shogun,” James Clavell’s 1975 best-selling chronicle of a hardened English sailor who lands in Japan at the dawn of the 17th century looking for riches and ends up adopting the ways of the samurai. Balian’s first reaction was that she had already seen this book on television — back in 1980, when NBC had turned the novel into a mini-series that earned the network its highest Nielsen ratings to date.

Most of what she remembered about the first adaptation was Richard Chamberlain — its white, male star. But as she started reading, she discovered the novel had a much more kaleidoscopic point of view, devoting considerable pages to getting inside the heads of the Japanese characters.

“I thought that there was a story to be told that was much wider and deeper,” said Balian, who is co-president of FX Entertainment. It didn’t hurt that something about it also reminded her of “Game of Thrones,” in terms of the “richness of so many characters’ lives.”

It took 11 years, two different teams of showrunners and a major relocation to bring “Shogun” back to the screen. The 10-part series debuts on Hulu on Feb. 27 with the first two episodes, followed by new ones weekly, and will premiere on Disney+ outside of the United States and Latin America.

cont'd

Spoiler

Both Hollywood and Western audiences largely have moved beyond viewing the world as a playground where (mostly) white protagonists prove their mettle in exotic lands. Shows and films like “Squid Game” and “Parasite” have shown that audiences can handle Asian characters speaking their own languages.

“Shogun” — which includes a romantic story line between the Englishman and his Japanese interpreter — does not entirely forsake the genre of white characters encountering an alien Japan that was popularized in such films as “The Last Samurai” or “Lost in Translation,” or going back even further, in star vehicles like “Sayonara” (Marlon Brando) or “The Barbarian and the Geisha” (John Wayne).

So we see John Blackthorne, the ship’s pilot, played by Cosmo Jarvis, perplexed by Japanese bathing rituals and their habit of removing shoes inside the home, and he is horrified by swift acts of seemingly unprovoked violence. Japanese characters explain their cultural psychology in aphorisms like, “We live, and we die. We control nothing beyond that.”

Yet the new series, like the novel before it, gives ample time to Japanese characters in scenes where Blackthorne does not appear. In the 1980 mini-series, the Japanese characters played subsidiary roles in Chamberlain’s journey. The intermittent Japanese dialogue was not even translated. In large stretches of the new version, by contrast, the Japanese is subtitled, and significant plot lines revolve exclusively around the Japanese principals.

The first actor whose name appears in the credits is Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Toranaga, a Japanese lord modeled on Tokugawa Ieyasu, the military ruler who helped to unite Japan, introducing a period of peace that lasted for more than 200 years. Sanada, who is also a producer, said he remembers his disappointment that the original series gave short shrift to historical accuracy. “As a Japanese, I wanted to see something more real at the time, to be honest,” he said.

Sanada advised the cast and crew on period authenticity, given his experience acting in historical dramas in Japan. He helped teach Anna Sawai, who plays Toda Mariko, a samurai’s wife and Blackthorne’s interpreter, to speak in classical Japanese locutions.

But as an actor who appeared in “The Last Samurai” as well as, more recently, “Bullet Train,” which recast a Japanese novel with many non-Japanese actors, Sanada understood the allure of the Blackthorne character, whom Clavell based loosely on William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan.

“To have a blue-eyed character, who existed in real history, will help more international audiences watch it,” Sanada said.

As Blackthorne, Jarvis did not have to pretend to learn a foreign culture; he knew little about Japan when he signed on to play the part. At first, he studied some Japanese history and woodblock paintings for inspiration. “But after a while I realized that it was better if I just learned whatever I needed to learn at the same pace that Blackthorne learned it,” he said.

Scholars who teach Japanese history say the framing of “Shogun” made more sense when the novel was first published.

“In the 1970s — for a lot of white people, anyway — the idea of getting on a plane and going to Japan still felt like a big deal,” said Daniel Botsman, a professor of Japanese history at Yale University who previously taught the novel in his classes.

Amy Stanley, a professor of Japanese social history at Northwestern University and author of “Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World,” said blue-eyed audience stand-ins like Blackthorne aren’t as important for a younger generation of fans who have watched plenty of shows in Japanese online. “They don’t necessarily need the mediating figure like ‘Shogun’ or ‘The Last Samurai,’” she said. Still, she added, characters who serve as cross-cultural brokers “can be an attractive introduction to a different time and place.”

Balian said the project hit early snags when the producers struggled to find enough open land to shoot in Japan. She also decided she wanted a different narrative sensibility from what the original showrunner, Ronan Bennett, brought to his script. (Balian did not go into further detail.) FX eventually decided to bring in new showrunners and move the filming to British Columbia.

In 2018, Justin Marks, who had written a live-action screenplay of Disney’s “The Jungle Book,” took over as showrunner with his wife, the writer Rachel Kondo, who is ethnically part Japanese.

“I said, ‘Oh wow, look at my chance to connect with the culture I identify with and how I was raised,’” Kondo, who was born in Hawaii, said in a joint video interview with Marks. “Very quickly in the process I came to understand that not only am I not Japanese, I’m Japanese American, which is completely different.”

For the writers’ room, the couple selected mostly Asian American women.

“I looked at it as, ‘See, this is doing right by it,’” Marks said. But “we really started to see that Asian American wasn’t quite enough of a point of view for what this story was.”

To ensure that the Japanese scenes rang true — or at least truer — the pair worked with Mako Kamitsuna, a film editor raised in Hiroshima, and Eriko Miyagawa, who has consulted for other Western-made films set in Japan, including Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” and Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.”

Kamitsuna and Miyagawa helped translate the scripts into classical Japanese leavened by contemporary diction. “We went for a classical authentic feel,” Miyagawa said, although sometimes they fudged and modernized “just for the sake of clarity.”

To create a sense of historical fidelity, the producers obsessed over kimono color schemes and how to carry katana swords. Even a detail as prosaic as how the women should sit became a topic of fervent debate.

Marks had talked to a scholar who said women of the period would kneel in a position known as “tatehiza,” but Miyagawa argued that most Japanese audiences would expect the women to sit in “seiza” — their knees folded and feet tucked underneath. Staging the high-ranking women with a knee raised “might distract people or take people out” of the scenes, Miyagawa said.

In the end, Marks agreed. “What we were really chasing, I think, was this idea of spiritual authenticity,” he said.

The producers waived historical accuracy in other ways to avoid alienating audiences. Sawai said that none of the actresses shaved their eyebrows or painted their teeth black, as would have been the case for women of the samurai class.

And despite the frank portrayal of sexuality in the novel, Sawai refused to film any nude scenes.

“I don’t want to end up being in ‘Shogun’ and going full nude and putting myself into that pigeonhole, or the stereotype of the Asian woman taking her clothes off and seducing a white guy,” Sawai said during an interview at a cafe in Tokyo.

She appreciated that the women had textured scenes that showed them as more than accessories to the men. “Women were feeling these emotions that we’re seeing in ‘Shogun,’” she said. Before, “they weren’t allowed to show it.”

Michaela Clavell, a daughter of the author and chief executive of a company that manages Clavell’s literary estate, said her father, who died in 1994, was proud of the original mini-series. But she recognized that it was of its time and wanted to update it.

“We only can do what we can do at any given real time moment, right?” she said. “In 20 years, we may look back on this and say, ‘Well, that was …’ fill in the blank.”

 

[bolverk 29672]

For those who haven't seen it since you were a kid or never saw it in the first place, here's the 1980s adaptation if you'd like a refresher or a comparison before the new one comes out. Full series so far as I can tell: https://archive.org/details/Shogun_Miniseries

[Storm the Field 5294]

First 2 episodes air tomorrow night. 10 total episodes releasing weekly on Tuesdays through the final week of April. 

I'll probably wait until April to dive in. Doesn't seem like the kind of show I will want to take a week off between each episode. 

[PRONG HORN 3146]

6 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

Doesn't seem like the kind of show I will want to take a week off between each episode. 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21907]

Wax on wax off

- Mr. Miyagi

[jeevsie 3734]

It's up already!

[Deej 76791]