There are now three episodes available on Disney of the ten that make up the Shogun series, released at the end of February. The production promises and seeks political intrigue, war, epic and love affairs. It all starts with the shipwreck of a Dutch ship on the Japanese coast and the adventures of the survivors, who will soon discover that they have arrived in a country at war, in which everyone is suspect, especially foreigners.
The leader of the castaways is John Blackthorne, a skilled man who, to survive, will manage to gain the favor of Yoshi Toranaga, a warlord who will see in him an ally to get rid of his two main enemies: Ishido, who rivals him for power, and the Portuguese.
The series is the adaptation of a best-seller of the same name from 1975, the work of British writer James Clavell (of which some will remember a first translation in the 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune). This is a novel, so how much of what we see on screen is true?
The characters are fictional, but they are based on real people who were protagonists of one of the most critical moments in Japanese history.
In 16th century Japan, the role of the emperor had been relegated to a spiritual position, such that political power fell to the figure of the shogun, originally a commander, and at this point a kind of generalissimo. In theory, the emperor decided who would take the reins of the shogunate (or bakufu), but in practice it was determined by the fights between the daimyos, lords with regional domains who coveted the position.
John Blackthorne, the protagonist, is based on William Adams (1564-1620), an English navigator embarked on a Dutch trading mission and who, in fact, was shipwrecked in Japan, and did so at the worst possible time. It was April 1600, two years had passed since the last shogun had died, and there were a few months left before the Battle of Sekigahara would take place, a definitive confrontation that would decide who would take the title.
Toranaga, in turn, is the fictional alter ego of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), a giant in Japanese history. After winning Sekigahara and taking over the shogunate, he established a political regime that allowed his clan to retain office for the next four centuries, an era known as the Tokugawa shogunate.
The context is very close to the truth, but, as always happens with historical fiction, the truth is lost in the details, in this case, with regard to the protagonist’s adventures. In the series, Blackthorne is involved in all the intrigues that lead to Sekigahara. Yes, Adams was an advisor to Tokugawa, but he acceded to that position after the victory at Sekigahara.
In fiction, Blackthorne appears as a key character in Toranaga’s fight against the Portuguese, whose intrusion, through evangelization and the monopoly of trade, raises the suspicions of local power.
This has a lot of history, since yes, since the arrival of the Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier in 1549, Portugal and then the Hispanic monarchy led Europe in relations with Japan. And yes, we know that Adams was one of those who conspired against the Hispanics in favor of the Dutch. Eventually, in 1639, the Spanish and Portuguese would be expelled from the archipelago.