A new adaption of James Clavell’s Shogun series coming to FX/Hulu in February 2024.
This was, hands down, my mother’s favorite mini-series back in the day. She had a huge crush on Richard Chamberlin (which is hilarious in retrospect) as well as Toshiro Mifune.
Whaaaaa?!
The first was, for its time, prestige TV. I wonder if they can top it?
Maybe this time they can come up with a satisfying ending. Clavell couldn’t.
This show was creating weebs before weebs was a word. I’m going to watch the hell out of it. Ohhhhh, Anna Sawai was in Pachinko, that’s where I recognize her from.
I was a sad kid who thought my parents watched a bunch of boring stuff when I was a kid. I never sat through the entire original, but close. This looks gorgeous from the trailer. I’m in.
A tv show based on a novel based on the Infocom game!?!
Watching the DVD collection of this was one of the first box set binges my wife and I ever did. Will certainly be all over this (depending on how and when it comes to my shores)
If definitely sparked something in me back in the day ,but now I realize how off it was.
One of my favorite streamers is an Armenian-Japanese historian/writer/artist, and she goes off when Shogun is referenced.
It’s James Clavell, so there’s a ton of white guy looking at “exotic” culture stuff for sure.
Beyond that, the 80’s was the height of fetishizing Japan.
At least he didnt teach them hiw to play baseball.
I hope this is good; I really liked the original and the book (though the TV series loses out on most of the political intrigue in the novel). Not entirely sold on the trailer, though and while I read and enjoyed the novel, the TV series is horribly cliche. “The Last Samurai” is a good bad example; and IMO the original is primarily saved from being so by the excellent cast (Rhys-Davies, Mifune … and also Chamberlain, in probably his best role) who manage to make the relationships between the characters seem real rather than caricatures. Also, I doubt anyone would dare create a series today in which half the speech is unsubtitled Japanese.
Any word about whether this is a stand-alone miniseries? In the current media landscape, I wouldn’t be very surprised if this ended up a 4-season miniseries that gets cancelled after two.
Also, reviews are popping up for this based on the first few episodes, and they are overwhelmingly positive.
Well I am definitely here for this one! Just watching that video made me want to fire up yet another campaign in Shogun 2.
Welp, after seeing a couple of headlines to the effect of “WAAAAH THIS IS TEH NEW GAEM OF THRONES!!!1!!!” – entertainment media is so superficial – I guess I’ll be watching this with y’all. What I know about the period is pretty much limited to a couple of wargames, and vague recollections of being a kid and Richard Chamberlain in a costume drama being on the ABC affiliate for many many nights in a row. I think I vaguely remember being traumatized by a scene where someone is supposedly boiled to death? I guess to show how Westerners weren’t allowed in Japan?
Anyway, that was then. Bring on the human boiling or whatever! I can handle it!
Right? I was also thinking of this:
Who wants to come over and play?
Yup. I remember this gave me nightmares as a kid.
That should be “Ishido”, the main faction head against “Toronaga”.
Yeah the whole sepukku thing makes more sense when you realize torture is in the cards. Might as well kill yourself relatively cleanly. The “honor” stuff is a bunch of revisionist propaganda, very useful for the colonialist militarist government post second civil war (as shown in Shogun Total War: Fall of the Samurai).
Not that seppuku is all that great of a way to go either. I imagine drawing that blade across the gut is horribly painful.
I guess if the choice is seppuku or boiling, I’ll take seppuku but I’m not going to be happy about it.
The blade across the gut was never the main thing about Seppuku (that came later, IIRC); you stabbed yourself in the stomach, and then one of your retainers chopped off your heard.
It’s not that different from the practice of Roman military leaders (and other military, honor-driven cultures) of “falling on your sword” and it was used in pretty much the same circumstances.
Committing suicide was better than being taken captive and being tortured and humiliated by your enemies (before no doubt being killed anyway). In some cases, the victors would also demand seppuku as a condition for not murdering the entire clan - not dissimilar to how Romans who had fallen into disfavor with the Emperor might commit suicide so that his children might inherit.
Wasn’t it Yabu who liked boiling his enemies alive? I think it was something he learned from his father, IIRC.