Preview: Shōgun (Limited Series)

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Shōgun Podcast, We're the Lorehounds, your guides to the political intrigues of feudal Japan. I'm David. I'm Jon, and this is our preseason coverage for Shōgun, the 10-episode limited series produced by FX and available for streaming on February 27th on Hulu.

[00:00:34] On this pod, we're going to set up the series and cover some quick background information about the book and previous television series from the 80s that this new FX version is descended from.

[00:00:46] We have an email set up, so if you have feedback or questions, send those to shogun at thelorehounds.com or head to the contact page on our website and use the contact form or record us a voicemail that we can drop right into the podcast.

[00:00:58] Don't forget we've got a fun and active community on Discord, so join us there. We've got a separate channel set up just for Shōgun as well as channels for all of our affiliates and other shows and projects we've got going on.

[00:01:09] Links for contact details in the Discord are in the show notes below. If you're interested in supporting the Lorehounds community, check us out on Patreon or subscribe using the new Supercast platform. Supercast is just like Patreon but built especially for podcasters.

[00:01:25] Also, subscribers are going to get access to a customized character guide, another Notion special from David, and I'll add the Dunedain are also doing it. Aaron, Brian8063, Adrian, they're all contributing to this crazy little thing you got going on. We've got a Notion army.

[00:01:44] Crazy little thing called Notion. Yeah, that's right. We'll have more information about Supercast, his notes about our upcoming podcast schedule at the end of the podcast. Are you going to make another name for the character guide like the Detective's Journal?

[00:01:58] I think we just had calling it or we're calling it just Show Guide right now. Oh, I feel like you got to use it like maybe like the Scroll of the Shogun. I don't know. That's pretty good. Do something crazy. Write in.

[00:02:08] Let's watch the first episode and see if we can name it. That's right. Somebody can write in. It's what do we call it? It's just Shogun Season Guide at this stage. So all right. All right. Pretty boring. Pretty dry. Dry pie. Let's fight that up.

[00:02:22] Fancy name, let us know. I'm trying to cook up one for Rings of Power when it comes back and I was going to call it the Scroll of Isildur. Oh, okay. Very good. I thought that'd be fun. That would be good. That'd be good. I like it.

[00:02:31] I mean, this whole new notion thing is a cool value add for our subscribers. I think it's pretty nice. I was testing it on my mobile phone too, just the character guide. And it was great because I could just scroll through.

[00:02:44] I could see the image of the character, the name, and then like a couple, two, three words that describes who this person is. So if I'm trying to remember, oh wait, who is that?

[00:02:55] Because this is like one of these big shows where there's a cast of thousands and you're not sure who is who. It'll work great on your phone. You'll just be able to scroll and find the person.

[00:03:04] And then if you click through, you can read a little bit more bio on it, read about the actor, et cetera, et cetera. So it's going to turn out to be a very cool thing. And thank you to our mod team on Discord.

[00:03:17] The guys started jumping in and like, oh yeah, this will be fun. And they started adding and changing and everything. It was great. It's a real community effort for the community, by the community, for the community, I guess we could say. A real democratic institution here.

[00:03:33] As opposed to a feudal, I'm not the feudal lord. I'm not the daimo of the lore hounds of Discord. Well, that's good. That's good. All right. So David, this was your whole deal. This was your pitch. Yes. You wanted to cover this show. I watched the trailers.

[00:03:49] I said, it looks great. Nothing else coming on that's piquing my interest. So let's do this one full coverage. Give me the pitch. The pitch is, this is a modern version of the 1975 book by James Clavell.

[00:04:09] And it is a book that tells sort of an epic story of the political intrigues of feudal Japan just at the turn of the century. So I think it's in the 1600s. And an Englishman washes ashore and he's got enough wits about him that he can survive

[00:04:29] this feudal, political, Game of Thrones-esque situation. And not only survive, but thrive and actually rise within the ranks of feudal society. And he represents this new power dynamic where the Portuguese had a lock on Japan.

[00:04:50] Now he's representing a new potential for the feudal lords to, a particular feudal lord to alter the balance of power in Japan. And so it's a real political intrigue. You're always writing on a knife's edge.

[00:05:11] Is it going to, is he going to say the wrong thing or do the wrong protocol? And it's going to upend the whole thing. I think FX, I don't know what they've spent on the budget, but they have splashed out a lot of cash. It looks beautiful.

[00:05:28] And they, I believe, have brought in a whole team of historians and cultural consultants and obviously the actors to really make it not only a visual feast for the time period, but also as historically accurate as we in the modern time can look back and understand

[00:05:51] what was going on in the feudal, in that particular feudal time. And really take the original novel and center it and really place it with some historical accuracy. And so it's less of a voyeuristic look, but we still have an entry point from a cultural

[00:06:14] outsider, but we're going right into the culture and we're working within the apparatus of the culture as this one powerful Lord vies for control among all the other powerful Lords. Cool. How does that sound? It sounds very Game of Thrones, which is, I guess what they're going for.

[00:06:35] Right. Of course. This sort of political intrigue and yeah, like knife's edge tension and yeah, different cultures coming together. So I'm guessing you have zero background with this show. Yeah. I mean, I have enjoyed other pieces of media that have portrayed samurai culture and, but

[00:06:58] Ghost of Tsushima was great, but that was set a couple of hundred years before. Blue-Eyed Samurai is great, but that's set about a hundred years after it sounds like. And I mean, I'm interested in seeing a fictionalized account of this piece of history. I think that's super cool.

[00:07:15] Right. Now you have picked up the book and have you cracked the digital spine of your new purchase? I just barely started it and I was like, boy, this is a meaty piece of literature and I cannot do this right now.

[00:07:33] So I don't know how much I'm going to do to be honest with you. Sure. That's fair. Because, and also I'm kind of like, yeah, I want to know what happens in the show. I want the show to speak for itself. So we'll see.

[00:07:42] I might catch up, but I doubt I'm going to be able to finish the 1200 page tome before the end of this season. So a lot of people are comparing it to Game of Thrones, which is a fair comparison, but we got to remember that this comes first.

[00:07:57] This is a 1975 novel by this guy, James Clavel. So I know I read the novel at some point in my life and I think I'm pretty sure I read a couple out of the series. And there's certainly the 1980 television miniseries, which is a well-known thing.

[00:08:16] And I absolutely watched that when that was on. So I've got history with this, and so it'll be really interesting to see what they do. And as you sort of picked up the book, I went out onto the internets and I found the original

[00:08:31] 1980s miniseries on digitally available. And I started watching it last night. And thank goodness for variable speed playback. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. Yeah. We'll talk about it a little bit more when we get into it, but I figure we should probably touch on James Clavel really quick.

[00:08:53] Sure. He was an Australian who was later naturalized as a US citizen and he fought in World War II and was a prisoner of war. And unbeknownst to me, he actually wrote the screenplay for a really, of the World War

[00:09:11] II genre films, The Great Escape is one of the greats. And he wrote the screenplay for that, which is amazing. Is that going on your old man movie list? No, I'm not going to subject you to it because you know who won.

[00:09:21] As you've said, you know who won. Because enough war movies. Yes, exactly. We've got some other things that we've got to pick up on a round two watch. But anyway, another interesting little factoid is that he also wrote and directed a movie

[00:09:34] called To Serve With Love, which starred Sydney Poitier and Judy Geason, and there's a great song of the same title. Yeah, I had no idea that he was a big time. So he came out of the military and he just started writing and started getting into film

[00:09:53] and television and a whole bunch of stuff as well as being a prolific, can I say that right? An author who wrote a lot of books. What he's most known for is his six novel series called The Asian Saga.

[00:10:08] He wrote these between 1962 and 1993, and they all center around Europeans who are encountering the peoples and cultures of Asia. So it was as his experience, he had an experience of being over there during World War II and being a prisoner of war.

[00:10:26] But I think he was just generally fascinated with the differences in culture. And so he wrote these series of novels that all center on a West to East point of view. So there's some character or some sort of entry point, so it's us looking at them.

[00:10:48] And I think what the FX series is going to change that point of view so that we're going to be more point of view with the characters and less so from a West to the East kind of thing. Anyway, the Shogun book was the third book that he...

[00:11:05] Well, it was the third book he wrote in the series, but it was the first book in the chronology. So all of the other books take place later. Shogun really starts it off. Then the series jumps ahead in time and then follows a series of characters and centers

[00:11:21] around a particular company that was based on, was modeled on one of the East Asia companies that were set up by the governments at that time to have the official license to trade over there. And as you discovered, yeah, it's a massive tome. So it's 1100 pages printed.

[00:11:42] I got to ask you, the first thing that comes to mind when you mentioned James Clavel is, it is 2024. Yeah. This is a story that is examining Japanese culture written by a white man. Yep. An Australian American white man. Yep.

[00:12:01] How has the work aged over time and how has it been received by the Japanese community? That is a good question, and maybe it warrants a little bit more research from the surface level stuff that I'm aware of.

[00:12:17] The book in the original 1980s miniseries, as far as I know, and I absolutely could be wrong and please write in if you have other information or points of view on this, it wasn't taken badly.

[00:12:34] That the work that he went into, that he put into writing and depicting the factual elements, I think are more accurate than they are not. And now certainly the 1980s television miniseries is a unique experience in and of itself. And is certainly centered on a particular character.

[00:12:58] And that's where I think it's interesting is that FX has brought in a really big team of people to make sure that there is an authentic voice. There are authentic voices and actual historians and actual experts on culture that are able to

[00:13:18] bring all of this to life in a much more three-dimensional way rather than, like I said, from a us to them point of view. And FX, I haven't watched this one yet because FX has put out so much publicity material. It's ridiculous.

[00:13:33] They are going all in on this thing. This is a huge, huge effort that they're putting in. They're putting out a digital companion tool. They've put out five or six different shorts already, extended scene looks. They have a whole background video on what's called honoring the authenticity,

[00:13:58] where they talk about how they've actually gone and re-centered the work. Extended trailers, extended scene cuts, the official trailer. There's one trailer that is so graphic that the YouTube thing actually has one of those warnings like, you have to click through to actually watch this because we're not

[00:14:19] actually going to show you the key frame from this. It's so violent. Yeah. So it's interesting because there are multiple adaptations to the original bodies of works. And obviously, the 1980 miniseries was the thing that most people know.

[00:14:42] Most people know that there was a book, and then most people know that there was this miniseries. And the original miniseries aired over five nights on NBC. And it's about eight hours worth of television without the commercials.

[00:14:58] And it starred Richard Chamberlain, Toshiro Mfume, who's a very famous actor from the Kurosawa film era, and Yoko Shimada. And this was one of the first American produced television shows that was filmed entirely in Japan.

[00:15:22] So they actually just took everybody over there, they hired local actors and production crews and actually filmed this thing there, which is a pretty incredible feat for 1980, I think. Right. And then it was nominated and won a bunch of awards.

[00:15:36] And like I said, I started watching it the other day. It's not bad. I will say that. It's definitely dated in its production values and the pacing. Oh my Lord, John, there's this one scene where the main character, Blackthorn, is going through this castle.

[00:15:56] And he's going to go see, they're taking him to go see one of the other main protagonists for the first time. And there's like two minutes of shots of him being escorted through the castle, into the

[00:16:10] castle, up some stairs around the corner, down the hall, up some more stairs, into an antechamber, into another... You're just like- Wow. You built all these sets and you went to, and you have all these extras in full regalia

[00:16:25] and uniform, like they would be at a Lord's castle of that time period. Right. And you're never going to use that set again. You're never going to use that particular part of the set again. Interesting.

[00:16:38] It just goes on and on, but I have to say it's not all that bad given the time period it was. And I'm playing it mostly at 1.25 and sometimes I speed it up to 1.5 when there's those long scenes of hallway walking. I don't blame you. Yeah.

[00:16:55] But I'm going to try and finish it. I don't know if I'll finish all of it before it starts on Tuesday, but I definitely want to give it a complete watch. Because I think there's going to be a lot...

[00:17:05] A lot of the plot mechanics are going to be pretty similar. And as I understand, if I recall correctly, the mini series wasn't far off from the book either. Obviously you have a bunch of interior monologues in the books or interior with the character

[00:17:21] which we can't do so much with the television show. But I believe mechanically the way that the plot moves, it's going to be pretty similar. I mean, I could see that. I was just checking on the Shogun 2024 Wikipedia page.

[00:17:35] It looks like they did go back to Japan to film this. So that's good. Okay. Does it have the- Japan and the UK. Does it have the budget numbers listed there? Ooh, budget numbers. Let's see. No. Okay. It does not. Right. Alas. We'll find out. Yeah.

[00:17:50] So this thing's going to be a mini series. So this is limited series. This is it. This 10 episodes and they're done. I kind of like that though. We're going to know what happens. I'm going to learn who won the war. This is great.

[00:18:02] This is great because I don't know who won this war. And we don't have to be on pins and needles for, are they going to green light a second season or not or anything like that? Oh, don't even get me started on Foundation right now. Oh yeah.

[00:18:13] I saw that news. Yeah. I read. Interesting. I think there's more to that. But anyway. I have some thoughts about that, but this is not a Foundation podcast. Why don't we quickly do a wrap up of this episode?

[00:18:25] I know you want to just talk about the three principal characters. Our three principal characters are Hiroyuki Sanada, who's playing Lord Yoshi Toranaga. And the thing that Clavel did was that he based all of his fictional characters on real historical figures.

[00:18:43] And so you can actually overlay the fictional and the historical and they line up pretty close. And that is analogous to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who lived from 1543 to 1616. And you might recognize Sanada from Lost. He played Dogen for five episodes. Okay. And he was Musashi in Westworld.

[00:19:11] And apparently he was also in Hawkeye. Okay. I recognize it from Westworld more than Lost. It's been a long time since I watched Lost. Sure. Yeah. It goes back. It was a guy in a temple. He was in a number of, I think. Yeah.

[00:19:25] Well, I'm not going to spoil a 20-year-old. You're going to spoil Lost for us? Exactly. All right. So the next main character is Cosmo Jarvis. That's the name of the actor who's playing Pilot Major John Blackthorne, who's an Englishman who

[00:19:43] is the pilot for some Dutch ships that are trying to figure out how to create a route to Japan. And that character, Blackthorne, is based on a real historical figure, William Adams, who lived from 1564 to 1620.

[00:20:03] And I don't know Cosmo Jarvis, his prior work, but apparently he was in Peaky Blinders for season five. And then he was also in Raised by Wolves season one for about three episodes. He was the guy that created Mother, one of the characters called Mother and that.

[00:20:23] So he's relatively new. Never watched it. Yeah. Yeah. And you're not missing anything. Yeah. We had great hopes for it, but it was sadly not to be. And then lastly, we have Anna Soi as Toda Mariko. And she is representative of Hosokawa Garasia from 1563 to 1600.

[00:20:47] And I apologize for pronunciations on these. You will probably recognize her from Monarch Legacy of Monsters. She was just in a lead role in that. She was also in Pachinko season one, playing Naomi.

[00:21:04] And then she even goes back to a great television show that was on a few years ago called Geary Hodge, which I really recommend if you ever get around to it. Can I tell you a funny thing about Monarch quickly? Yes. My in-laws visited our house today.

[00:21:18] And for the second time, my father-in-law complained to me about Monarch. He said, they told us there would be Godzilla. There's no Godzilla. He's barely there. And it's been the same complaint twice. And it just kind of makes me laugh. Where's Godzilla? What am I watching this for?

[00:21:36] Did he ask you if you were podcasting about it? He just asked me if I knew it because I did some Apple stuff, but it's just funny. That's pretty. Yeah. Well, that's telling. So all right. Well, this is going to be a 10 episode series.

[00:21:50] It's going to drop two initial episodes on the 27th, and it will wrap up April 23rd. And so I think we're going to do week to week coverage. Yeah. We're doing it. We're doing it. What else are we going to do? Well, you look around. Yeah.

[00:22:06] And yeah, we'll have the character guide for subscribers, for Patreon subscribers and Super Chat subscribers and Super Chat, Super Cast, whatever it's called. And yeah, we've got the Discord set up. And so if you've got feedback, if you have insights into memories of reading the book,

[00:22:28] or if you have some insights into the cultural reception of the original works, we definitely want to hear those and unpack it a little bit. And go on YouTube there and just put in Shogun, and there are a ton of videos that FX has put

[00:22:44] out that can give you a real taste for what this is going to look like. All right, David, if people want the character guide, they've got to go to Patreon or Supercast. Yes. Shall we talk more about our Patreon quickly on this outro? Absolutely. Why not?

[00:23:04] We've got it. We've got our new Supercast. It's the same thing, except you can do a little bit more. What I mean by that is we're going to we're going to we got to figure this out, but we're

[00:23:13] going to start doing season passes where people can come in just for a season of premium content. For now, it's the standard monthly subscription that you could come in and out of if you need to. But it's really cool. It lets us.

[00:23:28] Yeah, yeah, it just gives us a little bit more flexibility. It's nice. It's built for podcasters. So if you are not a patron right now and you want to get in, feel free to sign up for either service.

[00:23:38] If you are a patron and you want to switch to Supercast, feel free. I think we get a little bit better upside on it too, right? I think so. I think so. And regardless, all of your support goes into propping up the infrastructure of our community.

[00:23:51] And we make sure that we take care of our co-hosts. We keep the lights on. We keep the software legally licensed and all of that kind of stuff. So your support is going to creating a rich and inviting place.

[00:24:07] Oh, and I should add the Patreon is not going away. We're not getting rid of the Patreon. If you're happy there, just stick where you are. Our affiliates, should we talk about those folks? I was actually just podcasting with Alicia today. Oh, good.

[00:24:20] She had a rough start to the year. She's trying to get herself. Life is, you know, we don't do this as a full-time thing. So she's trying to manage through a few things. She's still committed to doing the Dune stuff.

[00:24:34] So it's just going to be after the movie instead of before the movie. And she and I are doing a three-part Oscar prep series. And so we just recorded our main episode today. And I've got to get that edited and get that out.

[00:24:48] But that's going to be kind of fun because we've actually got voicemails and interviews with different people among the community. And I know she's got some other plans. Meanwhile, I believe Anthony and Steve over at Properly Howard Movie Review

[00:25:01] are on a little bit of break because Anthony's busy with some stuff. But we've been chatting with him. And of course, we'll do Severance with them as soon as we get a date on that. And then, of course, we have our newest podcast family member.

[00:25:15] Well, she's not new, but her podcast is new. It's called Rings and Rituals. And it is co-hosted by our favorite Tolkien scholar, Marilyn R. Kiela and Dr. Sarah Brown, who is a Tolkien scholar as well.

[00:25:28] And they are going episode by episode of season one of Rings of Power and examining all the rituals that we see that are present there. And then in good lore and fashion, they sort of invert that. And then they start to look at ritual in our daily lives

[00:25:45] and what ritual means to us as people and all the different little rituals and big rituals that we have and then sort of connecting those to the show. So very cool podcast. That first episode should be dropping probably this week.

[00:25:59] We got to check with them to see what we're going to do. Yeah, I scheduled it. So perfect. That's great. What else are we up to, John? What's our programming schedule? Oh, we just finished True Detective.

[00:26:09] I think we have just the wrap up or the feedback coming out after this. That was a really good season. Hope you'll join us for the ending of that coverage. I know in March, Brendan and I are going to cover Halo, the video games.

[00:26:22] Okay, because we want to get everyone prepped to watch the rest of the season two. And then we're going to do a one shot on the full season two. I've been actually catching up.

[00:26:31] So and I got to tell you guys, I don't hate it as much as I did the first time. So it's growing on me the more I go through it. So I'm looking forward to talking about it. And it sounds like season two is a lot better, too.

[00:26:45] I just haven't gotten to it yet. Right. And you and I still need to record our Star Wars A New Hope. Yep. So that we can talk about that. That'll be a lot of fun. I think we'll do a live watch in March. Yep.

[00:27:00] We are recording a new Earthly episode this Tuesday after we record. So that should be out early March as well. Yep. On Dragonfly and chapter one of the other wind. Yeah, that'll be great.

[00:27:12] You and I still need to record of men because life has been getting on the way of that. But that's going to be a short podcast anyway, because that's a short chapter. Right.

[00:27:20] And I know you and Brandon are going to do a part two of your coverage of Masters of the Air at some point in March. Yeah. And I think we're going to try and get Matt Kavanaugh back on as well. We just did an interview with him.

[00:27:33] He's a military historian and teacher, and he just retired from 25 years active service. And he had a lot of interesting things to say about Rogue One. So check that out in our feed. And we're looking forward to having him back on some other future projects where we've been

[00:27:48] kicking around. Also, I think we're going to get some Mr. And Mrs. Smith coverage with Ron Dawson. Right. We had on the podcast the other day. Who's going to be in our True Detective feedback. So he was great. He was really great on that podcast.

[00:28:01] And I look forward to hearing more from him. Yeah, should be fun. All right. Our Patreon shout outs. We got to do them. Always, always. Shall we do that, David? Yes. Quick shout out to our Discord server boosters because we have those now too.

[00:28:21] Opus the Machine, Narls, Aaron K and Tiller the Thriller. Thank you all so very much. I should also say thank you to you, John, because you also boost the server. If you don't know what this is, by the way, because some people were asking about this

[00:28:34] the other day. And it's not even something we ask people to do because we just ask people to do Patreon if they want to support us. But if you really want the Discord to get a little better, if you boost the server,

[00:28:45] that means that you've paid some money to Discord and they give you a boost for the server that allows us to have a few more features. So I think we're on level two right now.

[00:28:56] If we get to level three, then we can have a custom Discord link, which will be cool. But that's the thing I most look forward to. But right now we're at like higher quality sound and video streaming, which is good for what we do too. Right.

[00:29:08] And lots of emojis and other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. And then to our lore masters who are our top tier supporters, Samartian, Mark H, Michael G, Michelle E, David W, Brian P, Nick W, SC, Peter OH, Bettina W, Adam S, Nancy M, Dove

[00:29:27] 71, Brian 8063, Frederick H, Sarah L, Gareth C, Eric F, Matthew M, Sarah M, DJ Miwa, Andra B, Kuang Yu, DeadEyeJediBob, Nathan T, Alex V, Aaron T, Subzero, Aaron K, DallyV21, Gnarls, and last but never least, Adrian. Thank you all so very much.

[00:29:52] As we said before, we appreciate you and it means a lot to our community that we have your support. Well, I guess I will see you for the premiere of Shogun David. Two episode premiere. Looking forward to it. See you then.

[00:30:07] The Lorehounds Podcast is produced and published by the Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the lorehounds.

[00:30:21] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening.