Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in SHOGUN miniseries | ©2024 FX Networks/Kurt Iswarienko
The miniseries SHŌGUN, now running Tuesday nights on FX and available for streaming on Hulu, is the second adaptation of James Clavell’s epic 1975 bestseller. The first adaptation was an NBC miniseries in 1980. All concern a power struggle in 1600s Japan that comes to involve an English ship’s navigator, who is folded into the retinue of shrewd Lord Toranaga. However, both the NBC edition and the book itself are primarily from the Western point of view.
The new version is told more from the Japanese perspective. Executive producers (who are also married to one another) Rachel Kondo & Justin Marks co-created and are writers on the adaptation for FX (Marks is also showrunner).
This interview is a combination of comments Kondo made on the SHŌGUN Q&A panel held by FX for the Winter 2024 Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour, and a one-on-one follow-up conversation.
Kondo explains that she and Marks don’t “ordinarily” write and produce together. “We came together for this project specifically.”
In fact, this is Kondo’s first time being this involved with a television production. “I come from the fiction world, the glitzy world of short story-telling,” she laughs. “Justin was asked by FX to review the book, and to consider the project. At first, he was very hesitant, thinking that the silhouette of the main character, a guy who looks like him, wearing clothes that don’t belong to him or his culture, was problematic for him, and he came to this with a lot of humility.
“And I just kind of barreled through and said, ‘This is an awesome project for me to participate in, and this is my heritage, my culture, I can’t wait to tell this story.’ How wrong I was. I’m Japanese-American, born in Hawaii. This is completely different from being a Japanese national. We had to learn how to zero out. This is a whole new process of learning how to approach another culture’s story with, a) humility, but also, b) knowing we don’t have the answers, they have the answers, right? Bringing on the right teammates.”
Tadanobu Asano as Kashigi Yabushige in SHOGUN miniseries | ©2024 FX Networks/Kurt Iswarienko
Hiroyuki Sanada not only portrays Lord Toranaga, but is also one of SHŌGUN’s producers. With his vast experience in doing Japanese dramas, a number of which are set in the SHŌGUN era, Sanada was instrumental in bringing on essential Japanese cast and crew.
“I believe that he was on the project before we came on,” Kondo relates. “There was a long pause, and we had our stab at it, and I believe he came on in earnest again once he had heard the new take and whatnot. It’s hard to even remember a time when he wasn’t part of this. He’s always been part of it.”
Kondo feels that being able to depict SHŌGUN largely through the eyes of the Japanese characters is made possible because, “We’re able to ask ourselves new questions, because of the book, and because of the ripple effect of its legacy up until now.”
Much of SHŌGUN is performed in Japanese, with English subtitles. The process, Kondo says, began in the writers’ room, in English.
Producer Eriko Miyagawa explains that the English-language scripts would normally first go to a historical researcher, then to Japanese translators, then to dialogue polisher Kyoko Moriwaki. Sometimes the actors would have strong feelings about what their characters would or would not say.
SHOGUN miniseries Key Art | ©2024 FX Networks
“And then,” Kondo elaborates, “once it was performed, it was retranslated back to us in post[-production] in English, so that we could try to bridge the gap between the performance and the viewer’s experience of that performance and close that gap.”
The SHŌGUN limited series is being touted as the biggest, most ambitious venture in FX’s history. Was there anything the production wanted but couldn’t do? Kondo laughs again. “A shorter shoot, maybe.”
Some viewers have been upset by SHŌGUN’s brutal, albeit historically accurate, violence. “We were just speaking with somebody earlier about this very subject,” Kondo notes. “It was stunning to her, and she was not expecting it. She was talking about it being shocking, or it felt violent, because it felt real. It felt true.
“And that was something that was very important to us, that we weren’t going to shy away from the fact that it exists, and it happens much too often. It’s never going to be something that we celebrate. Our first instinct is that we go to it as a means of telling story. But it’s going to flow from story, and from the truth that we’re after in that story.
What would Kondo most like people to know about SHŌGUN?
“I would most like people to sense the level of effort and care that went into language, language depiction, that went into subtitles, that went into bringing on teammates we had with the right answers. I want them to sense that care. That’s what I would like audiences to feel.”
Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X
Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Exclusive Interview with SHOGUN co-creator and executive producer on new FX/HULU mini-series
Related Posts:
Loading ...
