“Clavell planned to cover far more of Japan’s history,” Historian Dr. Adam Clulow explained during an interview I had with him as FX’s series adaptation of Shōgun concluded. As the author of The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan and a number of other works on Japanese history in this period, Adam Clulow is well qualified to discuss the true stories that inspired James Clavell’s novel, how series creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo paired Clavell’s work with history, the role of the 1975 novel and 1980 miniseries in invigorating massive interest in Japanese culture, and what effect this new series adaptation could have. But like anyone who is mourning the loss of Toranaga Tuesdays (a fan-branded name for the show’s episodic release schedule), what I really wanted to know was: could there be more Shōgun? I don’t feel ready to say goodbye to this story, and it turns out James Clavell may not have been finished with it either.
(Dr. Adam Clulow/FX)
James Clavell’s original vision for the story was to continue following Toranaga and Blackthorne from 1600 and the Battle of Sekigahara to the Siege of Osaka in 1615 and the dawning of a new era of peace. So why didn’t he follow through with that plan? “Clavell was an acclaimed novelist, but he was also a brilliant promotor, and he knew that he couldn't go for another thousand pages, so he stopped halfway,” Adam Clulow explained. At over 1,200 pages, Shōgun has two distinct but very different parts. “The first half has a lot of action organized around Blackthorne and his initial encounter with Japan. In the second half of the book, very little actually happens, although Clavell maintains the drama. It's a lot of intrigue. Are we going to do Crimson Sky? Are we not going to do Crimson Sky? There's no big battles, there's no climactic moments in the way you expect. The first part of the book, I think, is much easier to film, but the second half is really quite difficult. And then suddenly, it just speeds up, and Toranaga, as he does in the miniseries, just turns around and says, ‘You don't know, but I've already won.’ It's a bit anticlimactic. The book is creeping along very slowly and then suddenly Clavell runs out of time, and he just rushes through everything. Five pages sum up the final outcome of a massive power struggle. It works because he’s a great writer, but you can see he wanted to do more.”
If FX wants to keep the story going, they have several options, starting with following James Clavell’s original road map. “I'd be delighted if they said, ‘Okay, the next season is going to explore what happens in 1615 when Toranaga has massive power, and all of this power gets used to further his ambitions to extinguish his last rivals,’” Clulow said. While the 1980 miniseries focused primarily on John Blackthorne, a character inspired by English mariner William Adams, Clavell’s book revolves around three lead characters, with Toda Mariko (inspired by Hosokawa Gracia) and Yoshii Toranaga (inspired by Tokugawa Ieyasu) equally as important as Blackthorne, if not more so. FX’s series adaptation went a step further, diminishing Blackthorne’s role and augmenting that of Mariko and Toranaga. And if that’s the case, what comes next could be largely focused on Toranaga.
“I think Toranaga is probably the hero of the show,” Clulow shared. “He's the only one who doesn't want people to die unnecessarily. He moves people around. He understands what motivates them, and he's incredibly astute. It would be fascinating to take that forward and see what happens when he's not the underdog facing off against four regents. So exploring the period when he is incredibly powerful and look at how he deals with those rivals turned allies who enabled him to rise to power and then become threats.”
A Toranaga-centric continuation of Shōgun set closer to 1615 would pit him against a familiar foe. “The Lady Ochiba figure, she's actually in some ways the most powerful figure in the whole show,” Clulow explained. “She's the equivalent of Toranaga, which the show does a wonderful job of demonstrating. It's not Ishido who's pulling the strings, but rather Lady Ochiba as the Heir’s mother.” Carrying forward one of the themes of the FX series, particularly Mariko’s line about how “A woman is simply at war,” Lady Ochiba’s future is grim. “Jump forward fifteen years, Toranaga/Tokugawa basically erases the Taikó, Hideyoshi’s line. Hideyoshi’s son, Hideyori, dies by suicide. He burns Osaka Castle down. And you realize, of course, he is a hero, he's a remarkable figure, but just like the show reveals, he's also a ruthless figure.”
There’s already precedent for this type of storytelling. “In Dune, the Frank Herbert bestseller, the first volume is basically focused on Paul Atreides as a messianic figure, and he leads the Freman out of slavery,” Clulow shared. “And then, in book number two, he becomes something closer to a villain. Frank Herbert turns around and makes him into a villain and says: this is what happens when you have power.” Denis Villeneuve’s recent film adaptation of both of Frank Herbert’s Dune books have done well for Warner Bros., so a second season of Shōgun in this vein could be a triumphant success.
Naturally, since Shōgun introduces readers and viewers to this time and place through the figure of John Blackthorne, it’s hard to imagine any continuation that doesn’t feature him. What would Blackthorne’s role look like in a potential second season? “By 1615, the Dutch are in Japan, the English have arrived in Japan, and they think that William Adams is going to be their key advisor, but actually they have an incredibly difficult relationship with him,” Clulow revealed. And about that old man Blackthorne flash forward in the finale, while Blackthorne appeared to be in a Western-style room, a mid-episode panning shot indicated that the homestead was in Edo, which would be true to William Adams’ true story. “In reality, Adams trades across Southeast Asia and he lives for another twenty years, but he never actually makes it out of Japan back to Europe.”
Of course, FX has other options. The network is famous for its anthology series, such as Fargo and American Horror Story, and it could adapt James Clavell’s other novels, collectively known as The Asian Saga. Or they could look beyond Clavell’s world. There are plenty of options to do this with Shōgun. “Once Tokugawa Ieyasu comes to power, there are tens of thousands of unemployed samurai. They have nothing to do anymore, so they start flooding into Southeast Asia, and they end up in really interesting places. And they follow the same path as William Adams. They arrive, they don't really speak the language, they immerse themselves in new cultures, and they rise to positions of power.” Adam Clulow has one particular samurai in mind. “His name is Yamada Nagamasa. He's born in the same period, and he arrives in Ayutthaya (modern-day Thailand) in essentially the same period as William Adams. He rises to the very top of Thai society. He becomes an adviser to the king. He gets involved in very brutal succession struggles. He leads an army of hundreds of Japanese mercenaries that are employed by the King of Ayutthaya [Songtham]. It's all happening in the same period, and it's all the same themes: samurai, military technology, violence, court intrigue, and betrayal.”
Clulow’s book, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan , tells the story of the Dutch East India Company, whose predecessor organization owned the ship that William Adams was a pilot on, the Liefde (the historical inspiration for the Erasmus). As a history professor who specializes in Europe’s first encounters with Japan, Clulow was delighted by FX’s adaptation and the changes made for the sake of historical accuracy, such as reducing the significance of the European-style muskets carried aboard the ship. But based on his research, there was another change he would’ve liked to have seen. “The Dutch are depicted almost uniformly negatively,” he shared, explaining that, in reality, William Adams wasn’t the only member of the crew to assimilate into Japanese culture and become a prominent figure. “Joosten van Lodensteijn, who's one of the Dutch survivors of the Liefde, had an equally impressive career and became an adviser to Ieyasu. He's less famous than William Adams because there was no concerted attempt to promote him as a historical figure, but looking at Joosten shows some of the problems with the novel and the show … What actually happens is that a number of mariners from the Liefde prosper in Japan. They‘re more successful than William Adams in some ways. They establish careers, they marry, they learn the language. We always focus on William Adams, but in fact, he's not exceptional. Other members of Adams’ crews figure out that Japan is a very wealthy country in this period where they can do very well. But Clavell erases these incredibly interesting histories by focusing on only the Blackthorne character.”
Whether or not FX decides to give us more Shōgun remains to be seen. But in an era where popular limited series often transform into multi-season sagas or anthology arcs, anything is possible when a network or a streaming service has a hit on their hands. But for Clulow, who spent five years studying history at Japanese universities and teaches courses about it at the University of Austin, the success of the FX series promises something of a new beginning. “I'm already thinking about taking the miniseries as the focus of a class and really trying to dig into it,” he revealed. “Because Blackthorne is interesting, so is Toranaga, and of course, Toda Mariko, perhaps the strongest character, is absolutely fascinating. There are others like Lady Ochiba (Yodo-dono) who is an incredible figure that hasn’t been analyzed as much as she merits. I think students would probably, as opposed to just talking about William Adams, be really excited to dig into these characters. Who was Ishido? What was he trying to achieve? Who's Yabushige? Because everyone's based on someone, and all of them are so interesting.”
We can’t all join Clulow’s future course about the stories behind Shōgun, but he did share his enthusiasm for another book on the subject coming out in the near future, one that has the endorsement of showrunner Justin Marks and comes from one of the historical advisors to the FX series, Frederick Cryns. “This is going to be a great and really important book,” Clulow said of In the Service of the Shogun: The Real Story of William Adams while sharing his hope that FX’s Shōgun inspires viewers to learn more.
James Clavell’s 1975 novel and its 1980 miniseries ushered in an era of pop culture infused with Japanese influences, from the rise of sushi restaurants in the U.S. to its impact on visual media like Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While it did help promote the white samurai trope and, along with it, renewed interest in William Adams, Clulow is hoping that the 2024 adaptation has a similar yet different effect. “It would not surprise me if ten years down the line, we look at this miniseries and say this was not another revival of interest in William Adams, but rather the trigger for a mini-boom in Japanese history that focuses on different parts of Japan’s incredible 17th-century transformation from a land of war to a land of peace.” And with Toranaga emerging as the hero of the FX series, he hopes fans will want to learn more about Tokugawa Ieyasu. Those interested are advised to check out Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan by Luke S. Roberts. It addresses a key question: “How does Japan go from arguably the most warlike place in the world at the end of the 16th century to the most peaceful place in the world by 1620? Roberts’ book is all about the creative frictions that are needed, how you manipulate all these daimyos who are trying to maneuver just like Yabushige and seize power for themselves. I would be especially delighted if viewers of Shōgun said: ‘William Adams is interesting, but I’m far more curious about Ieyasu or Hosokawa Gracia or Yodo-dono. Let's learn about them.’”
All ten episodes of FX’s Shōgun are now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
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