The result is an inconsistent, exoticizing, and just plain incorrect depiction of life in Japan in 1600 on the eve of war. Clavell appears to have done none of this. An author writing about a culture so different from their own must do a great deal of study and introspection. (Picture: Wikipedia)īut Clavell chose not to go much further in realism. The real shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu examines a severed head at the Osaka Campaign, in a woodblock print by Yoshitoshi. The Spaniards and Portuguese had friars active in Japan during those years. There are cities by names we recognize like Edo, Osaka, Nagasaki, and even smaller towns like Mishima. Clavell has clearly done some research because some of the general things are correct. After that, things only get further muddled. Clavell renamed Adams to John Blackthorne, and Tokugawa Ieyasu to Toranaga Yoshi, daimyo of the Kanto and secretly the would-be shogun. He advised the early Shogunate on international affairs as well as shipbuilding.īut any similarity to real history ends there.

He became a hatamoto in Tokugawa service during the Tokugawa Shogunate’s very early days. Adams was an Englishman from Kent who arrived in Japan aboard a Dutch ship in 1600. James Clavell’s Shogun is a reimagining of the story of Will Adams. It's inconsistent, irresponsible, exoticizing, ahistorical, and long-winded. Limited Historical Legwork In 2021, there's little to commend this book.

I read James Clavell’s Shogun so you don’t have to. It’s inconsistent, irresponsible, exoticizing, ahistorical, and long-winded. He breathes narrative … He writes in the oldest and grandest tradition that fiction knows”īut in my estimation in 2021, there is little to commend this book. It may be something that cannot be taught or earned. Reviewing the book for The New York Times in 1975, Webster Schott wrote “Clavell has a gift. I reread and live-tweeted my re-read as a stretch goal on my Patreon. However, twenty years later, as a published novelist with a doctorate in Japanese history, my opinion has changed. When I was in high school in the early oughts, I read and enjoyed the novel myself. Suffice it to say, the novel’s popularity has been exceptionally long-lived. As of this writing, a remake featuring Cosmo Jarvis and Sanada Hiroyuki is in production. It starred Mifune Toshiro and Richard Chamberlain. Five years later, Paramount Television made a TV miniseries adaptation of the novel.

For many Americans, particularly of a certain age, Australian novelist James Clavell’s Shogun: A Novel of Japan was their pop culture introduction to the world of the samurai.

Shōgun by james clavell