The 2024 version of the classic Shogun entered StarPlus at a great time: a large part of the current audience has never heard of the series or the book. The olders? Well, they hardly have an exact memory of what they saw on TV more than 40 years ago. And the best part: due to the delay in recording several series in 2023, there is practically no competition. It’s time to enjoy!

And the delivery does not disappoint. The first two episodes were released together and yes, you may get tired of hearing it but fans of Vikings and Game Of Thrones will be delighted with the structure of Shogun: there is adventure, there is politics, there is drama and it is inspired by a true story. And with updated context, it got even better. Beware of spoilers below.

In the British narrative, the villains of colonization, the Portuguese and Spanish

If you don’t know the history of feudal Japan you will be covered with what you need to know in the opening, don’t worry. The rhythm of the narrative, presenting each local character with what we need to know about them at the moment helps a lot. There is no one without some layers of complexity and mystery. No one is 100% disinterested and that keeps us on our toes.

There is an advantage for Brazilians: if you are a diligent student and remember the classes about how the Treaty of Tordesillas was established, you will thank your teachers because it is essential to enjoy the Xógun drama. We will talk more about this little by little.

The series opens with our “hero”, John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), the navigator of the Erasmus ship, adrift, with the crew suffering from hunger and thirst. Blackthorne is confident that they are close to the mainland, which would save them, but still, the despair is great. We quickly realize that he is a rational and often right man. The English’s intention was to reach Japan, a land that sailors knew but which was isolated and controlled by the Portuguese, but they were soon captured by local soldiers as pirates.

This is because the worn-out crew arrives at the worst possible time: the country is on the brink of a civil war, with five powerful houses vying for the title of Shogun, the general of all military forces and the most powerful man in the country, even more so than the Emperor. The British are taken prisoner, humiliated, and gradually executed, in a sadistic way (one of them is boiled alive for hours) and we are soon expecting the worst.

It becomes even more dangerous for them because the Japanese are under the rule of Portuguese Jesuits, that is, Catholic fanatics who persecute and torture infidels, especially Protestants. It is a cauldron of conflicts fueled by intolerance, prejudice, and greed on all sides.

Blackthorne manages to be considered a valuable prisoner for the Japanese, precisely because he is feared by the Portuguese. We’ll get back to all of this by the end of the episode.

They speak English when it’s Portuguese, but is that ok?

Although the production highlights the fact that one of the qualities of Shogun 24 is to correct the fact that the 1980 series had everyone speaking English and, in the scenes in Japanese, didn’t even have subtitles, the series here is more than 50% spoken in the language local, which certainly brings richness to the interpretations of Hiroyuki Sanada, Takehiro Hira, and Anna Sawai, but “when they speak in Portuguese”, they switch to English. It’s confusing for those of us who don’t see our language represented on the rare occasion where it would be justified. Not even the presence of Joaquim de Almeida on one wing helps as he also speaks in English. He needed to get this off his chest before moving on.

The days leading up to Japanese unification

The shogun of the title is the powerful, principled, and strategist Yoshii Toranaga (Sanada) who is our Ned Stark in the series. At the moment he is weakened in the face of his enemies in the Council of Regents, who are one step away from eliminating him, led by Ishido Kazunari (Hira). It’s a complex chess game, but one that Toranaga doesn’t stop playing.

Several forces are influencing the crisis: Japanese conversion to Catholicism, done in some cases through bribery on the side of the Church; the intolerance of traditionalists towards other faiths and, obviously, fortunes. Toranaga is tolerant of Catholics even though he is Buddhist, and he doesn’t want power out of ego, on the contrary, he would avoid taking it if he could, but he knows that if Ishido wins, his rival won’t stop there. To save his family, Japanese honor, and the Emperor’s life, he organizes himself for the inevitable confrontation.

There are dissatisfied traitors on both sides, but not all masks have been revealed right away. On his family’s side, Toranaga counts on the help of Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), a mysterious noblewoman converted to Christianity, sold into an unhappy marriage when she was still a teenager and a perceptive woman. She speaks “Portuguese” and is therefore the least compromised source between him and Blackhorne, a trio that will be the heart of the series.

Anjin

Blackthorne only wants one thing: to be released to sail far away from Japan, but he has in his hands the strategic secret of the Portuguese and Spanish about the Treaty of Tordesillas, the agreement between the two countries that dominated global naval exploration in which they drew an imaginary line that served as a reference for the division of lands. The agreement stipulated that the lands discovered in the west of the line would belong to Spain, while the territory discovered in the east would belong to Portugal. In other words, Japan was not an “independent” country and with a military base in Macau, the Portuguese were ready to make the country official as their colony.

This information is only revealed in the second episode, but we who are Brazilians understood what it was about in the first mention, which was supposed to be to create suspense. Obviously, the Englishman, who to make matters worse was a Protestant, was seen as a threat, and for this reason, the Portuguese strived to fuel the distrust of the Japanese – enchanted by a man with blue eyes, whom they had never seen – and want him to be killed. His luck only works because Toranaga used him as a divider in the Council: for him to be convicted, the votes needed to be unanimous and the Catholic lords differed from the traditional ones, giving him precious time to organize himself.

When they meet, Toranaga has some curiosity about Blackthorne, but it is information about international politics that unites them: in an attack against the Englishman, Toranaga’s men are killed, and even he is attacked. We leave with an unlikely alliance formed that puts two powerful enemies at risk: the Portuguese and the ambitious Ishido. And we’ve only begun!

A good start

Shogun has everything to be one of the biggest hits of 2024. It is not trying to reinvent the wheel in the narrative, it is clear, firm, and with interesting surprises used to advance the plot. What did you think of the episodes?

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