Re: [PMJS] Article in The Conversation SHOGUN
Charles De Wolf
Thanks for an interesting article.
I was approaching middle age and living in Japan at the time of the first film version of Shogun. I confess that I was by no means “glued to the television,” for although I normally have no difficulty in suspending disbelief, I am nonetheless at least somewhat selective in that suspension, and I had read enough of the novel to be wary. Still, I must have watched parts of a few episodes.
“Of course, authenticity has its limits. The producers of both television series decided to adhere closely to the original novel. In doing so, they’re perhaps unwittingly reproducing certain stereotypes about Japan.
Most strikingly, there’s the fetishization of death, as several characters have a penchant for violence and sadism, while many others commit ritual suicide, or seppuku.”
If memory serves: When in the first version the Richard Chamberlain character expresses dismay over suicide committed in response to what to him is a trivial matter, the Shimada Yōko character, supposedly Catholic, “explains”: “Ah, batto yuu masuto andaasutando, Anjin-san. Foa asu Japaniizu, raifu ando desu ah za seemu shingu.” She later fools Anjin-san into thinking that she’s sleeping with him, when, in fact, she’s sent in one of her maids. More than a bit disgusted, I stopped watching. Shogun seems to me an example of the West’s penchant for misrepresenting (romanticizing, yet somehow maligning) exotic cultures in order to bash its own: Dances with Tanuki.
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