SHOGUN

By James Clavell

Shogun is a remarkable book in many ways. It was published in 1975  and started an enormous  revival of interest in Japanese history, culture and art all over the world.

By 1990 Shogun had sold 15 million copies, according to Time magazine, and it’s one of those books that its fans read again and again.

The ‘Shogun’ of medieval Japan were warlords who were the most powerful rulers on earth. They ruled a bloodthirsty society that was closed to the rest of the world. Human life – even their own life – meant little to them; honor and power were everything in ancient Japan.

The Japanese culture and way of life in those days is shown to us through the eyes of John Blackthorne, an English merchant ship  captain, who is shipwrecked  on the coast of Japan . He and his savage European crew are imprisoned by the local warlord.

Photo: Shogun book cover

Blackthorne starts out as a typical buccaneer of the era, but he is an educated man. Apart from being a skilled mariner he speaks Latin and knows Dutch – both were dominant languages of that time. To the Japanese he is a strange, facinatiing – and dangerous – creature.

His crude, ignorant and drunken crew are shown in disgusting detail. They are all so low – class and awful that the Japanese don’t consider them to be human at all and keep them locked up in a hole in the ground.

Blackthorne is given some freedom to move around the area and he becomes fascinated by the Japanese way of life. The Shogun and his aristocratic relations, officers and soldiers are equally interested in Blackthorne.

He forms a deep friendship with the Lady Mariko, who is married to a Shogun officer, and she teaches him to speak Japanese. Eventually they fall in love, which endangers both their lives.

Basically it is a simple story of love, hate, war, murder, treason and unbelievable torture. The story is told on an epic scale but the force of the book is in the details; the conflict  between the protestant Blackthorne and the Jesuit priests who were previously the only Europeans allowed into Japan, the Englishman’s struggles with murderous pirates, and his problems with the Dutch, who had the greatest merchant navy in the orient.

Photo: Shogun video game

The contrast between the extreme  ‘chivalrous’ beliefs of the Japanese Shogun families and their total disregard for human life – and pain – is described with restraint and skill, although it is difficult to give a restrained description of a man being boiled alive.

It is a big book, of course, but the writing is exciting and easy to understand. It presents a dramatic picture of a feudal system that seems incomprehensible to us now, with characters who are well-formed and who seem real to the reader.

This is a book that will affect you and stay in your mind long after you have read the last chapter. It will – or might – provoke your interest in all things Japanese, as it has stimulated interest through various Japanese art exhibitions all over the world since 1975. It will also do wonders for your English.

SHOGUN

THE MOVIE:

To be honest, there wasn’t a movie. What we had instead was a mini-series on television made in 1980. This was one of the first really good productions in this format and it won many prizes.

The series was shown in ten episodes and it was very faithful to the book. Richard Chamberlain, a talented actor who had not then become a star, gave the performance of his life as John Blackthorne. He was supported by a cast of outstanding Japanese and British actors who also gave wonderful performances.

DVDs  of this miniseries are  available on the internet. I have seen some quoted at US$49.95. I look forward to sitting down to watch all nine hours of it at some time in the future!

Although there wasn’t an independent movie of Shogun, the mini series was chopped up and edited down to a cinema ‘movie’ with a running time of around two hours. This is not a good way to make a good movie and the version that went into cinemas was not highly praised.

From the point of view of a student of English there is a bonus aspect to the miniseries:  because all the principal characters are of different  nationalities,  they have to speak carefully to each other in English. This makes it easier for all of us  to understand what they are saying.

The book is written in excellent narrative English, as we would expect from James Clavell, and the miniseries is of a very high standard, which is not always the case with TV adaptations.

Have you read our article Strange British Surnames?

You can now hear the correct pronunciation of these names,

and some places, in my video Strange British Surnames on YouTube

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