I am listening to the audiobook and I am utterly loving it! I haven’t read a book this good in years. Years I tell you! And I’ve read a lot of good books.
The rhythm of the narrative, the characters’ inner thougts, the seemless translations between them. No cheap tricks or patronizing anywhere in sight. And the scene with the duck! Remember the scene with the duck? It’s comical genius! Truly, this is a masterpiece. I urge those of you who still haven’t read it to try it. I just can’t rave enough about this book.
It’s insanely good! Make yourself happy and read it (or listen to it). If you don’t like it, I will commit seppuku!
You should do a search, as I recall some good threads on the book.
I loved the book when I read it in high school, but I’m a little afraid to go back to it now since I know so much more about the period. I think things like the Japanese mistakes might drive me up the wall.
Man, Shogun was the first real book I read. That was one wild journey. If you are only at the duck :eek: , then you have quite a few twists and turns coming up. There is a T.V. miniseries that was created for it that you might want to check out. It can’t go wrong with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune playing the leads. Hell, Chamberlain even won a Golden Globe for it.
As for Clavell’s other works, King Rat is an amazing book. It’s gotten me as close to tears at the end as any other book I’ve read. And any of his other books are really quite absorbing. You will start slowly, learning the characters, reading a few chapters a day, and then, suddenly, you will start having withdrawl symptoms if you put it down.
I’ve been meaning to read this book for a while now. But, since I’m researching Japanese history for another project I’m working on, I don’t want to get too wrapped up in something that gets something major wrong.
By all means read it, but keep in mind that Clavell often sacrificed accuracy for storytelling. The biggest one, right offhand, is the presence of flintlocks. Flintlocks had been invented in Europe during the timeframe of the book, but just barely, towards the end Ieyasu Tokugawa’s shogunate. There wouldn’t have been any flintlocks in Japan, but there would have been matchlocks, and plenty of them. The book makes a big deal out of Pilot being a possible source of firearms from the west, but that wouldn’t have been necessary, as there was a booming gunsmith industry by the Tokugawa shogunate. One of Tokugawa’s predecessors, Oda Nobunaga, won a decisive battle using a peasant army armed with thousands of matchlocks. Noel Perrin in his book Giving up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 states that records of the time indicate that prior to the banning of firearms there were more guns in Japan that all of Europe combined.
Another funny one I ran across somewhere concerns a scene whre a big deal is made where a man has no name other than his occupation, “porter.” Apparently the Japanese word Clavell used actually means “railroad porter.”
Hmmm, I may have to see if my library can get the audio book. I really enjoyed the book when it came out years ago and remember actually having to “reorient” myself to twentieth century USA when I finished a reading session.
Some of the biggest are matters of emphasis. Not to decry his success, but Clavell’s depiction of Japan is pretty skin-deep. He emphasized an awful lot of things which were not that common. Hari Kiri, for example, wasn’t something Samurai did every day. At the rate Clavell’s warriors off themselve, there’d be no one left to fight within a month. It’s not per se, that he was wrong. But the things he focused on were the things the Japanese might not had they written the book. For a contrast, see Musashi, a book written by a Japanese man about the time era as Shogun (a little afterward, actually). The emphasis is much different, and the characters emerge as less one-dimensional. What they value is wildly different.
For a more focussed example, take the ocean scene, where Toranaga is mesmerized by the coming tide, which would drown him shortly. His warriors try to get his attention, and eventually one jumps to his death to get his master out of the funk, so the fool Toranaga can climb up a rope. Now, this is something a Samurai might do. They also might conclude Toranaga was an idiot and laugh as he drowned.
However, his depiction of the ninja was actually fairly accurate.
I think that because of Clavell’s World War II experiences, especially as a POW, he developed this image of the Japanese as the “other”…with values that are totally foreign to western eyes, and I think his depiction of the Japanese in his books reflected that.
I think that was Yabu not Toranaga and he wasn’t mesmerized so much as meditating on his coming death because he couldn’t see the small ledge that Blackhorn spotted from the top of the cliff. He wasn’t just sitting there like an idiot he was trapped (as far as he knew).
That was Yabu, not Toranaga. I found Toranaga very Machiavellian, and I loved this book. The mini-series did an excellent job.
The next one to read is Tai-Pan, followed by Gai-jin, then King Rat. A lot of the descendents of the Struan, Toranaga, and Gornt families show up in the 1960s era Noble House. The last one of the series (but not the last one Clavell wrote) was Whirlwind, and I didn’t like it. I found his more “modern” books (Noble House, Whirlwind) complicated and hard to follow, and I wasn’t as invested in the characters.
I was always hesistant of picking this up. I see it often in used book sales which is usually a warning sign in itself. But it’s also very long and I already saw the tv series (which I did enjoy, by the way). But this thread is making me reconcider it.
I love how Clavell paints pictures with words, and can make you feel two different ways. One way, told from the English point of view, that described a feast, made me salivate. That same feast, seen from the Japanese point of view, made me want to vomit. And it was the same food!