#shogun 2024

[pathetic-gamer]

sometimes you watch a show and go yeah that was pretty good but then after it marinates subconsciously for a month you are having a coffee and remember one of the side characters out of nowhere and go FUCK THAT WAS REALLY GOOD

anyway, Usami Fuji is so special to me

[jynjackets]

Shōgun makes Emmy history

[signalburst]

Shōgun writers on Blackthorne's journey, A Dream of a Dream's theme of letting go

Emily Yoshida (writer): "Blackthorne's fate is so interesting, and totally unexpected. People are going to see in it what they wanna see, because there's a lot of ways you can read it. It could be somehow worse than death, like a purgatory of some sort. And then there's a way in which you can read it as a life of devotion to something beyond him, which has been something that has been a struggle for him. How do you view Blackthorne's fate?"

Justin Marks (co-creator): "I think Blackthorne's journey in this episode to the place where it lands, in such a beautiful and powerful scene between Blackthorne and Toranaga - on that hill where he offers up his own life. That's the journey that I hope all of us are on, if we're trying to understand how we interact with cultures we don't know. We want to forge relationships with people that go on, but we don't necessarily speak the same cultural or spiritual - or literal - language.

Which is to say, Blackthorne has been a prisoner of his own ambition. Which one might call the disease of colonialism - or capitalism, too. This idea of a man who is so bound by his ambition and where he belongs in this world, and what is owed to him, that he is the worst prisoner of all. So is Yabushige. They're both like this. And Yabushige never comes to that awakening, and finds himself dying here.

But for Blackthorne, it revolves crucially on this idea of what we call the 'false dream'. We wanted to open this episode on what feels like the beginning of a flashback structure, where we jump forward into the future, and we meet Blackthorne as an old man, and we tell the story of an old man looking back. And looking back with regret on the life that he led.

Only to realise that that was not the dream of an old man looking back - it was the dream of a young man looking forward to one possible version of his life. A version of his life that he has to draw to an end by killing that path. What Blackthorne is trying to kill there isn't himself, it's the version of himself that he's always been.

When Toranaga knocks that knife out of his hand and looks down at him, he's looking at a man reborn now, to a completely different life.

What is powerful is the idea of a man finally, spiritually, letting go. And this is something that we talked about from the very beginning, Cosmo and I. This whole story for Blackthorne is really just a story of a man learning to let go."

Shōgun official podcast Episode 10: A Dream of a Dream

[dailyflicks]

ANNA SAWAI as TODA MARIKO SHŌGUN — 1x09: "Crimson Sky" (2024)

[lafiametta]

As much as I'd like Shōgun to return to the dynamic pacing that characterized the first part of the show (have we really spent the last four episodes in Ajiro?), slowing the action down has allowed for some fascinating explorations of character and theme.

One that featured heavily in this week's episode (as well as in the previous one) is the idea of myth-making and story.

Toranaga, of course, is the center of one such myth. The “boy warlord,” he won his first battle at age twelve and then served as second to his defeated enemy, taking off his head with one blow. This is the story that Saeki Nobutatsu tells at dinner, a tale that delights his young, impressionable nephew. Nagakato, who wants to prove himself to his father, takes such story as truth and wants to emulate him by riding off to battle, where he will likely be killed, but as a glorious end that will be told and retold. (“Will we die with blood on our swords?” he asks, which is the only honorable way to die.)

Lady Ochiba is surrounded by her own legends. Whereas Toranaga's exploits are the stuff of dinner party entertainment, she literally watches her own life be made into drama. The play performed at the Noh theater depicts her courtship by the Taikō, a courteous affair where her character does not speak, an frozen mask covering any expression she might make. (“Dear Lady Ochiba,” the fictionalized Taikō tells her, “if we have a son, prestige will spread in every direction...”)

(Mariko is also haunted by a story, that of her father's actions against Kuroda. But unlike Toranaga and Ochiba, she has no desire to disillusion herself. In her mind, her father died a hero, the man he killed a tyrant, and for fourteen years she has suffered by not being able to fulfill her duty to him by joining him in death.)

But what Shōgun is also trying to tell us is that life is nothing like the myth. A glorious death, the honor of one's family, the prestige of bearing the Taikō's only son, these require far more of us that we can ever imagine, pain and horror laced through every act.

The true story is one we never want to tell. It is being drugged and assaulted on a nightly basis by your consort and his wife, all in the hopes that you will give them a child. It is hacking at the bloody neck of your defeated enemy, until the ninth blow finally severs his head. It is attempting to kill your uncle in the darkened garden of a tea house, only to slip on a wet stone and dash your brains against the rocks, not a single drop of blood on your sword.

[ariadnethedragon]

Blackthorne x Mariko

SHŌGUN (2024)

[redsamuraiii]

Me, watching Feudal Japan genre resurgence in Hollywood:

[lousolversons]

Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga in Shōgun (2024)

[beatrixacs]

Catholic tragedy in three parts - by FX Shogun 😂

[radawaycunt]

Shōgun BTS photos via Anna Sawai, Tokuma Nishioka, and Moeka Hoshi’s instagrams // @annasawai @moekappa382 @tokuma_nishioka 🤍

[yuanzhous]

Give the guns to Fuji-sama.

[ofqueensandwitches]

The thing about watching K-dramas, C-dramas, or J-dramas is that when I want more about my favourite ships from fanfictions, 90% of the time that means I have to write the stories myself.

[eastern-lights]

Yeah the political intrigue is amazing, the cinematography is excellent and putting Hiroyuki Sanada in the general vicinity of a sword is always bound to result in epicness, but have you seen the scene where Toranaga tricks his resident filthy European into finally taking a bath by asking him to show him how to dive into the sea like 6 times?

Comedy gold.

[inafieldofdaisies]

[theblindninja]

Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Toranaga in Shogun

[lafiametta]

The fact that Blackthorne turned out to be a total red herring may be my favorite way that Shōgun subverted expectations.

Because the show followed his journey, we assumed he would have some greater importance as part of Toranaga's eventual victory. Maybe he would have come to the rescue, heroically using his ship and the guns to attack Osaka castle, giving him prime of place as an ally and as a vital part of Toranaga's plan.

In the end, though, Toranaga had Blackthorne's ship destroyed — and was prepared to destroy any others he might build. Blackthorne himself turned out to be a funny foreign distraction, unimportant to the cause beyond just making headaches for Toranaga's enemies, kept around simply because he made Toranaga laugh.