No, I didn’t stay up until midnight to watch all twelve hours on 7/20, but I have read the book many times. Ah, a twelve hour miniseries. Done back in the day when network tv knew that to do justice to a book, you had to devote at least eight hours to it.
Some questions and observations:
Any Emmys for this event?
The Japanese actors…are they as well known in Japan? What other work have they done?
Did anyone ever get the sneaking suspicion the Japanese actors weren’t talking about the movie when they were speaking Japanes? “This production schedule is killing me!” “Yeah, and this wig is making my head itch.” “Do you want to go to McDonald’s when we’re done here?” “I can’t. We have to reshoot the fight scene on the ship.”
I think a viewer fluent in Japanese and English would have gotten more out of the movie. Since so little of the Japanese was translated or subtitled, there were a lot of missed nuances.
I appreciated how well they covered the book. Hardly any details were left out, and the ones that were didn’t detract from the story. For instance, omitting Omi’s wife made it a lot easier to explain that he was in love with Kiku.
I tried to record it, but my VCR messed up. Is it available on DVD?
Oh, I know everything in Japanese was true to the movie. It’s just when there’s no subtitles or translations, and you don’t know what they’re saying, your mind starts to wander…
I taped it, but since I can’t stand having commercials on my tapes, I had to watch THE WHOLE DAMN THING, hitting Pause whenever they went to a break. Longest taping session in my life, I think. The series was fascinating and engrossing, but 12 hours of feudal Japan is a wee bit much to take in at once. I only really paid attention to the first 4½ hours or so.
They did say it was “digitally remastered”, if it hasn’t come out on DVD yet, expect one soon!
I don’t know much about feudal Japan, but I understand it’s based on real-life events…Will Adams did show up during the brink of civil war.
I enjoyed all of Clavell’s Asian saga books, but I liked the earlier ones better than the ones set in more modern times. Whirlwind was too much to follow, and Noble House is okay, but I like Tai-Pan, Shogun, Gai-jin, and King Rat better.
Well, not really. The upperclass women portrayed would have had their teeth blacked out and names with -ko at the end didn’t really exist until the 20th century in Japan. However, it was pretty entertainiing. Clavell basically stole the story of Will Adams, who English and spent many years in Japan during that time period.
More famous than Pat Morita?
I ended up staying up til midnight to see the end (which I found anticlimactic esp after 12 hours. It’s nice having a movie you could watch, go out for a couple of hours, watch another movie come back, and so on.
When it first aired I was beginning to think that Sho-gun was Japanese for Safe-Way because every single time they showed the Shogun teaser clip a Safeway commercial was sure to follow.
Of course I’m probably being whooshed, but Morita is not Japanese, he’s American.
With Mifune, if one put “Japanese actor” in a dictionary, it would have his picture with it. He had a fifty-year career and his association with director Akira Kurosawa(they did sixteen films) was legendary.
Miriko, the courtesan that Richard (gayboy) Chamberlain woos, does not speak English at all fluently, if even that. She had to learn “broadcaster’s” phonetic English and read out her script that way.
I find that to be a rather stunning and worthy achievement.
PS: I agree, Baker. A memorable scene involving Mifune (Yojimbo?) has him dining at a rural country inn. The local toughs all surround his table as he is eating. Obviously, a fight is in the brewing.
Mifune casually begins to pluck flies out of the air with his chopsticks.
Shogun is actually far more enjoyable if you know a little history of that period of Japan \before you watch it ( or read it ). Then you can pick out the major players and enjoy it as a entertaining piece of historical fiction, without having to worry about the numerous muffed or fudged details.
It’s not a great way to learn Japanese history. But it’s a good bit of storytelling nonetheless and a lot more fun if you go into it knowing a little background.
Zenster, a minor nitpick. Mariko noh Buntaro Todamatsu was a wife, not a courtesan. Of course, she wasn’t Blackthorne’s wife, although he did ask Toranaga for that.
Also, in the book, she was fluent in Portuguese and Latin, not English. Which would make sense, because Blackthorne was the first Englishman and the Jesuits were Portuguese. On occassion Blackthorne would swear in English and Mariko would not know what he was saying. They used Latin as their “love” language, which is why it hurt him to hear the Japanese acolyte speak to him in Latin after Mariko’s death.
