Consider This from NPR - FX's Shogun Takes A New Approach To An Old Story

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

When Shogun, James Clavell's best selling novel was adapted into a powerhouse NBC miniseries in 1980. The hero of the story was Englishman John Blackthorne.The people he met when he landed in Japan in search of riches, are viewed and portrayed as primitive.In the 2024 Shogun adaptation the Japanese characters are fully formed. The series elevates the stories of the Japanese characters as much as it does Blackthorne's. That was a deliberate decision on the part of Shogun co-creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks.In the 1980 version of Shogun, Japan, its culture and its people were portrayed as foreign and remote. What do we lose when stories are only told from one point of view? And what can be gained when we widen the lens? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Shogun, the staggering saga of feudal Japan. The story of ruling warlords battling for ultimate supremacy. They are challenged by a stranger from across the seas, John Blackthorne. When the James Clavel novel Shogun was adapted for TV for the first time back in 1980, the story centered on the shipwrecked English pilot John Blackthorne. I'm pilot major of the Erasmus out of Rotterdam. Following the death of the leader, the battle for the title in feudal Japan among the Japanese lords gets thrown for

a loop when John Blackthorne washes up on the coast, or as the 1980 trailer put it, the one man with the power to change Japan's destiny for all time. A lot of power for a guy who doesn't even speak the language. And the original show decided the audience would experience Japan the way that Blackthorn did, with no subtitles. It's a choice that leaves the audience entirely in Blackthorn's hands, in his world, with Japan and its people only playing a part in his story. Which I think might have been maybe right for the audiences of 1980 at the time because they didn't really know much about Japanese culture. That's Huai-Chan Bui, entertainment editor at Inverse.

She says a 2024 American audience has a deeper understanding and interest in Japanese culture, signified by the new FX adaptation of Shogun's Choice to reset the story around more of its Japanese characters. It is not about the sort of stranger in a strange land, fish out of water story that we've kind of come to associate with a white man in Japan type of narrative. Consider this. In 1980, Japan, its culture, and its people were portrayed as foreign and remote. What do we lose when stories are only told from one point of view? And what can be gained when we widen the lens?

From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Friday, March 8th. It's Consider This from npr when shogun james clavelle's best-selling novel was adopted into a powerhouse nbc miniseries back in 1980 the hero of the story was englishman john blackthorne the people he met when he landed in japan in search of riches are viewed and portrayed, as he often puts it, as savages. Done them no harm. But the way they all smile and bow. They're not bloodthirsty heathens, are they, pilot? Are they?

In the 2024 adaptation of Shogun, the Japanese characters are fully formed. The show elevates their stories as much as it does the story of Englishman John Blackthorne. And that was a deliberate decision on the part of Shogun co-creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, who have been familiar with the story since childhood. Generationally, the book was kind of the one that we remember as being on our parents' nightstands. You know, and I think that because of that, it has a very long cast silhouette that you can't get out of your head. I talked to Kondo and Marx, who are such close collaborators that they're married, about this gorgeous, sweeping, epic story. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. You know, let's start with that 1980 version and the frame of it and the storytelling devices. You have this looming source material of the book and the original miniseries. You have the fact that you know you want to do this differently. What were the most important factors that you were thinking of as you set about making this show? I think first and foremost, what we were after was a more elevated sense of authenticity for this world. And that started with our star and producer and partner on the project, Hiroyuki Sanada,

sitting down with him at the very outset of our prep process after the scripts had been written. And because he is a veteran, not just of his own film industry since he was a child actor, but the last few decades working in the Hollywood side of things. He really had an amazing number of insights as to what we could try to do, whether it was bringing in costume advisors, hair, makeup advisors,

OB tires, Shosa movement advisors. All of these details began to add up to something, a sense of verisimilitude that we hope brings a deeper layer of the experience. Let's talk about the subtitles for a moment because there are subtitles, but I also feel like within those subtitles, a lot of these characters are talking in these really accessible and relatable ways that is not always the zone of historical fiction to have characters talking in a really relatable way, to put it mildly. Right, right. Well, you know what, Justin, before you dive into that, it's so fun to talk about all of this because it sounds very intentional and very structured and organized in hindsight. I think it's important to mention that what we wanted to do was something new.

What we wanted to do was to present something that people hadn't seen before, but that by nature means there is no template. And so this process was, I would say, quite chaotic and quite daunting. And as Justin has put it in the past, we were building the car as we were driving it. Is there a specific choice you can point to in that process that maybe felt chaotic at the time, but you're really proud of on the back end that you think makes a difference in the show? I mean, so much. To be clear about the language on this show, we wrote this show in English. The dialogue is written in English, and it's adapted from a book that was written in English. And we thought at the outset that it's a very simple process, right?

And what we began to learn as we got deeper into it with Hiro Sonata, Eriko Miyagawa, two of our Japanese producers, was that there are a billion conversations that you need to have over the course of translation, not just from English into Japanese, but from English into period Japanese, the kind of performance style of jidaigeki storytelling, where it almost kind of feels to the Japanese year, maybe more like Shakespeare would feel to the English speaking year. And so when you do that, there are a thousand nuances and things that you have to consider.

We began to see that as we translated it. First, a team of translators just directly translated it into Japanese, but it wasn't quite performable. So then that Japanese was given to a Japanese-speaking playwright who spoke no English, whose expertise was this period piece prose. She would give it back to our producers who would then, Hiro and Eriko, would carefully scan it and make adjustments,

give it to the actors who would add their own flair and their own details, perform it, and then we would, instead of putting the subtitles on screen in post-production that we intended and wrote, we would always make sure that it was translated back by Japanese speaking assistant editors, like a game of telephone to see what had come out on the other side. Very often that was exactly what we intended, uh, cause we hope, you know, there was this trust process that goes through, but then sometimes there were certain ideas that emerged

that just, you know, came about as a bit of the the kismet or magic of translation, and it turned into something greater than we could expect. I think, Rachel, you should sort of tell the best example you can think of. Okay, yeah, the best example of this is Justin and I wrote episode one, the pilot, and at the end of that episode, the character of Mariko is called to Tornaga's quarters to have a discussion with him.

And he is asking Lady Mariko, will your faith system kind of put you at odds when it comes to your duty to me as your liege lord? And her response that we wrote was, if I were just Christian, then yes, but I am more than one thing. And we felt pretty good about ourselves. And years later, it comes back through this monster of a process. And then it comes back to us as, if I were just Christian, yes, but I have more than one heart. And that leapt out at us as so lyrical and so poetic and it just landed so beautifully. And how could we have ever come up with that? Not in a million years, you know? That line stuck with me too in the moment. That's cool to hear that backstory to it. But as we talk about all the choices you made and how you put the show together and its relationship with the original source material and the original miniseries, one thing I do want to directly ask about is the way that

in recent years, I feel like there's been much more criticism and conversation about the white savior narrative that so many movies and books and shows over the years have been told through. How much did that narrative and conversation loom over you as you put this show together? Huge. Yeah. It took a huge role and a huge amount of weight in the writer's room especially very often to me uh and mind you i'm speaking as a white male having this conversation the problem with these white savior narratives these uh you know ideas that have kind of endured in our media and our representations and our storytelling over the decades is, yes, that representational side.

Of course, this sort of idea of agency that we're stripping away from other characters around it, that we're centering the frame of focus or the point of view of a white character, and that is problematic by a modern lens. But in addition to that, the real sin that it commits is that it's just something we've seen before. And we really wanted on this show to take advantage of some of those tropes and cliches and expectations that we have for this genre. And instead of trying to deny it or just invert the gaze, what we were really hoping to do with this show is to subvert that gaze.

To bring the audience in with certain expectations for what kind of story this is going to be because we think we've seen this story before, but then in effect you find that there's something else waiting for you. And I think that that is crucial to not just Shogun, the miniseries in 2024, but it was crucial to James Clavel's book

when you really get down to it at the very end, that the journey of a lot of these characters is sometimes to accept our powerlessness in a much bigger situation, that we may come into these situations thinking we have some agency or right or point of view or voice, and instead find that a lot of this world doesn't care whether

we're there or not and we'll just go about their business regardless. And we think that's kind of a refreshing point of view and way to look at it in a modern day to sort of say what we really need to do, as Rachel said, is to zero ourselves out a lot more and to listen and to experience things with curiosity. That is Rachel Kondo, as well as Justin Marks, co-creators of the new FX miniseries, Shogun. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

This episode was produced by Megan Lim and edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.