Book Report: Shōgun by (1975, 1980)

After I read the first of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet), I thought I would pick up something short as a palate-cleanser. Brother, did I go wrong: This 1200+ page book, which I just bought in June (not long before I started reading it), took the better part of a month to read.

This particular volume is the tie-in to the original television miniseries and has a picture of Richard Chamberlain on the back (what, he was more than Allan Quatermain?). As you might know, gentle reader, a new miniseries was released last year, so strangely enough, if I get down verbally with the kids these days about Shōgun these days, they’ll know it from the recent television experience, whereas I read the doorstop book (see also Dune).

So:

An English pilot/navigator is aboard a ship, the Erasmus, the only remaining vessel from a small contingent set to circumnavigate the globe circa 1600 is shipwrecked on the coast of Japan with a small number of his crew. They’re captured and are going to be killed, but the local warlord, Toranaga, takes an interest in him. He, Blackthorne, the pilot, is called Anjin-san (“Anjin” is nihongo for pilot). He falls in love with a married woman, Mariko, vows revenge on a brutal samurai (that’s redundant, but Yabu is extra brutal and does not like Blackthorne), and, after saving the life of Toranaga (twice) is made hatamoto and samurai. Meanwhile, above and beyond all this, the last military leader died, leaving a council of regents. A rival on the council, Ishido, is maneuvering to ostracize/expel Toranaga. And the Jesuits have started making inroads into Japan, converting a number of people, including some provincial leaders, but they think Blackthorne, as an Englishman and Protestant, is a heretic and must be eliminated. So we’ve got a bit of a fish-out-of-water story as Blackthorne comes to appreciate the Japanese way of life–or elements thereof; a love story between Blackthorne and Mariko; and a hella lotta political intrigue. And it has 1200 pages in which to do it.

The narrative has an interesting bit of flashbackery to it; often, we get an action or situation, and then the story flashes back to the events leading up to the action or situation. Which turns out to be almost how the whole story is laid out (spoiler alert?) We do get some chatty spots where characters discuss events or situations for a couple of pages to set up context or intrigue, and these spots are a bit boggy. And although he is the Western readers’ intro into the story and the one we’re supposed to root for, ultimately, at the end, Blackthorne’s real importance kind of falls off (the book is not entitled An Englishman in Japan or Anjin-San). And the climax comes around page 1000, runs a relatively long time, and then we have a bit of a dénouement for over one hundred pages with an ending that leads not to the great battle between the rivals for the shogunate–the book ends with preparations for the war. So a bit underwhelming to a modernish reader who expects more of a payoff at the end.

So it’s very similar to The Last Samurai, although set at opposite ends of the shogunate: A Western Larry Sue comes to Japan and ends up at the domicile of a samurai, falls in love with a Japanese woman with complications, and comes to appreciate the samurai way of life. Both are a bit hagiographic on the samurai way of life with living in the moment and composing poems and whatnot, but this book does show its inherent brutality and disdain for peasants, merchants, and Christians whereas the film did not (as I have not seen either filmed rendition of this book, I cannot say how brutal they were depicted, although the Wikipedia entry for the 1980 miniseries indicates it broke many network television taboos).

At any rate, I felt a little smart reading it as I was already familiar with some of Japan’s history, Buddhism (c’mon, I know who the Amida Buddha is), and geography, but at times I was a little annoyed with the exposition until I realized that most people were not.

It’s a long book. And I definitely finished it. But I’m not eager to run out and gather Clavell’s other work.

Although I did make an allusion to the film The Fly while reading this book, and in looking into Clavell’s career (reading Wikipedia), I discovered he wrote the screenplay for the original 1958 film. So, clearly, the books published in 1980 are listening to me. Be careful! Think and say nothing!