Shogun / Shogun | Review of the Star+ and Disney+ series

“If a bird doesn’t sing, I kill it.” The phrase historically attributed to Oda Nobunagathe great unifier of Japan, serves perfectly to define the relationships in Shogun – The Glorious Saga of Japan. The remake of the miniseries originally adapted in 1980 shows the extent to which the characters are defined by their roles, in a network of twists and turns that, in terms of glory, have very little in store for them. Here, betrayal, lies and murder are the ingredients that make the palace intrigues of 1600s Japan an end in itself.

In this place of ambition and distrust, the fate of Lord Yoshi Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), her servant Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) and the alien Anjin/Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) are intertwined. In the plot, inspired by the book of the same name by James Clavell Published in 1975, Toranaga fights for his life as his enemies on the Japanese Board of Regents unite against him. It is at this moment that the Englishman Blackthorne arrives on a Dutch ship to confront the undertaking of Portuguese Catholics in this potential new eastern colony. Their lives are connected thanks to the translator Mariko, a noble Christian from a disgraced Japanese lineage. While faithfully serving Toranaga, she finds herself torn between duty and feelings for the stranger.

Although it incorporates many of the emotional fluctuations of a novelistic nature that mark the work, the relationship between the characters is basically guided by loyalty – just like the relationship between a feudal lord and his samurai. Devotion to the lords sets the tone for the climactic moments of self-sacrifice, and also for the expectations created around the palace intrigues – whose alliances, announced and secret, old and new, have the responsibility of maintaining the spectator’s interest until the end. last of ten episodes. This relationship of subservience (or simply of honor and word, in the Japanese view) is only questioned to the extent that Anjin suffers the cultural shocks of landing in feudal Japan, and this shock is part of the stew of exoticism and orientalism conceived by the British Clavell also with his foreign look.

It is from exoticism, from this gaze dazzled by difference, that Shogun demonstrates an interest in the details of Japanese culture – an interest that the series materializes in its careful care with the scenography, costumes, and production design details. In this context where the development of the series can very well be monothematic or telegraphed, the moments of tension and twist require a certain juggling act. An unexpected death, a sudden attack or even an earthquake (or two) serve to give the story a value of surprise and unpredictability that, in practice, it does not prove to have.

Sometimes compared to game of Thrones, a series with which it shares thematic and visual similarities since its opening credits, Xógum shows that it is beyond the mere repetition usual on American TV and that, despite playing with conventions of orientalist and soap opera narratives, it still maintains its specificities. The discussion surrounding a possible continuation – whether as an anthology or continuing Yoshi Toranaga’s story – highlights the potential that Xógun has and that it hasn’t even scratched the surface yet.