Duty Trumps Freedom in Shogun

James Clavell led one of those truly adventurous lives, equally harrowing and triumphant, a life that doesn’t quite seem possible nowadays. The son of a British naval officer, Clavell was born and raised in Australia while his father was stationed there. He joined the navy himself as a young man, just as World War II broke out. He was stationed in Singapore to fight the Japanese forces, but after getting shot, he was captured by the enemy. For three years, he was a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese in various camps. When the war ended, he was released, eventually moving to England and then New York in an effort to break into the film industry. Yet, like so many others of his generation, he never spoke to anyone about his experiences in prison.

That began to change in the 1960s, as Clavell began to write and publish a series of novels about Japan, in the past and the present. For all the hardships he endured in prison, he emerged from the experience with a deep appreciation of Japanese history and culture. That was on full display in Shogun, published in 1975. A thoroughly researched epic about feudal Japan, Shogun became a legitimate phenomenon, sitting atop the bestseller lists for months, then getting adapted for television as a highly rated mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain in 1980. Shogun told a story the whole world, it seemed, wanted to hear.

And now, almost fifty years later, Shogun is back on the small screen in a ten-episode season on FX, and proving successful enough to warrant a second season. This is surprising, in a way. Shogun is a novel about Japan written by a white Western man, a fact that could be met with skepticism in today’s cultural climate. But the story itself, and the care with which it is adapted, managed to overcome preemptive skepticism. It is strangely appropriate, for Shogun is about learning how to live in another place, even if you never quite feel at home.

It’s been said that, throughout all of literature, there are essentially two plots: someone leaves home, or a stranger comes to town. Shogun is an example of the latter. The show opens at sea, where John Blackthorne, pilot of the ship Erasmus, has been searching in vain for a passage to Japan. Blackthorne is English; the Erasmus is a Dutch ship. These nuances of nationality and alliance will grow increasingly important. Blackthorne does manage to reach land, but is immediately captured by a Japanese lord. For Blackthorne, as an Englishman and a Protestant to boot, is an anomaly, and quite possibly a threat.

Shogun takes place in the year 1600, a transitional and volatile period for Japan. There has been no supreme leader, no shogun, of the country for three decades. The five royal houses are constantly jockeying for position. Contact with the outside world is also strained. The royal houses have been conducting trade with the Portuguese Catholic Church for several decades, the only European power that has managed to establish such relations. (The relationship between the Catholic Church and Japan would soon become strained, as told in Silence, the novel by Shusaku Endo, later adapted for film by Martin Scorsese. Historically, Silence takes place several decades after the events of Shogun.) But Protestant England also wants access to the lucrative Japanese trade market, which is why Blackthorne was sent there.

Photo courtesy of Shogun/FX.

I fear I’m making Shogun sound like a series-length Wikipedia entry. Yes, there is a lot of information to process, as befits a story of court intrigue. But the story is also abundant with humanity, romance, and humor. Early on, Blackthorne and a Portuguese Catholic are brought before Yabushige, the vassal lord who commandeered the Erasmus. Growing tired of these Westerners insulting each other’s respective doctrines of salvation, Yabushige says, “I don’t have time for this Christian nonsense!” – a perfect line for next time you’re stuck in an endless deacons’ meeting.

Yabushige delivers Blackthorne to Toronaga, the leader of one of the five royal houses. Others are dismissive of Blackthorne, calling him “anjin,” meaning pilot. But Toronaga sees a potential advantage. Speaking through an interpreter, Blackthorne tells Toronaga that the Portuguese Catholics are far more ambitious than they have let on, having constructed a secret fortress on the Chinese mainland, without telling Toronaga or anyone else. Blackthorne offers, on behalf of England, to assist Toronaga in standing up to the Portuguese. And not just the Portuguese: the other royal houses are trying to usurp the power Toronaga holds, in a bid to claim that power for themselves.

Toronaga enlists Blackthorne to aid his cause. He is to fetch the cannons from his ship and train Toronaga’s soldiers in their use. Toronaga also appoints another member of the royal court, a young woman named Lady Mariko, to serve as Blackthorne’s interpreter. Mariko, a noblewoman of royal lineage, lives under the shadow of tragedy. Her family was all killed during a power struggle, but she was spared. She may have her life, but not her honor. As the only remaining member of her family, she is suffused with shame, a living reminder of failure. In her grief, she turned to the Catholic Church, befriending a Portuguese priest and converting to the faith herself. Fluent in English and Japanese, conversant with Eastern conceptions of honor as well as Western conceptions of faith, she serves as a bridge for Blackthorne.

And in the course of acquitting their various duties, do feelings of a more personal nature develop? Of course. This is a grand, sweeping historical story, filled with romance and drama. But those feelings do not proceed in ways one might expect. Duty, rather than love, is the law of the land here.

Blackthorne, like so many other Western visitors to Japan, is at once amused and shocked by the formality of Japanese culture. The ritualized modes of speaking, from the introductory bows to the precise rules regarding when one is allowed to speak, are a source of curiosity. Yet other instances shake him to his core. As a sign of his new – if contingent – place of honor in the court, he is assigned a consort, a young widow whose husband and child have just been executed following a breach of protocol during a negotiation among the royal houses. Essentially, he spoke out of turn, and for that, his life and his bloodline were forfeited. Blackthorne, the anjin, finds this barbaric. (While he cannot get out of the arrangement, the only consort duties he allows her to perform are housekeeping.) Yet his sense of disgust, and superiority, makes him arrogant. After hanging up a fish to rot for several days to prepare some sort of English stew, he makes an offhand comment – a joke – that anyone who touches the fish will die. Once the smell grows unbearable, a groundskeeper finally takes it down and throws it away. And when the housekeeper discovers this, she takes Blackthorne at his word, and puts the groundskeeper to death.

Blackthorne is furious, but as Lady Mariko points out, the housekeeper was simply doing her duty. Blackthorne is the one who acted poorly, thinking that his very English sense of tomfoolery would be understood by people belonging to a culture entirely different from his own. The only failure is his – the failure to take his duties seriously.

Duty, as a concept and an ethos, is somewhat unfashionable nowadays. Freedom, particularly the personal and individualistic kind of freedom, is the virtue most often held in highest regard. It is the kind of freedom that permits you to go where you wish, leave responsibilities behind, forge your own personal soul beyond the bounds of any sort of community, with its demands and expectations. Blackthorne himself is an example of this. He left a wife and child behind in England to set sail on the high seas, off to find his fortune and himself. Yet he only achieves genuine self-knowledge as he becomes more and more enmeshed in Toronaga’s court, eventually receiving the rank of hatamoto, a kind of lieutenant in the samurai hierarchy. Even then, he still bristles against being told what to do, which of course drives Toronaga mad. Who does this anjin think he is?

But when the life – and the soul – of Lady Mirako is threatened, Blackthorne truly feels the claims of duty, rising to the occasion. Following some complicated courtly maneuvering, Blackthrone and Mariko return to the royal city, where the other houses have gathered to force Toronaga to resign. With the royal court in lockdown, Mariko is essentially a prisoner. She tests the resolve of the court by attempting to leave, to return to Toronaga, as her duty demands. When the court forces her to stay, she vows to do what duty demands. Since she has failed to return to Toronaga, there is only one path left following an act of dishonor: she must commit seppuku.

Duty, as a concept and an ethos, is somewhat unfashionable nowadays.

Seppuku is a ritual form of suicide, practiced in Japan during the shogunate era, and at certain points afterward. (The most well-known instance in the modern era is that of author Yukio Mishima, who staged a failed coup of the Japanese military academy shortly after World War II. Indeed, Mishima counted on the coup failing – he wanted to commit seppuku, to live out his Imperial fantasies, and that failure was the pretext he required to carry it out.) Forgive the gory details, but it’s important to understand the risk Mariko takes. In seppuku, one uses a sword to pierce the abdomen while another person – a second, in the parlance of the Japanese court – stands waiting with another sword ready. The second then decapitates him or her, as a means of ending suffering. This occurs multiple times throughout Shogun, and it is at once agonizing, and highly formalized.

At the appointed hour, Mariko takes her place to commit seppuku. She asks if any in the royal court will step forward to act as her second. None do. This is doubly concerning. Not only will her agony be horrific, but she will thus end up taking her life by her own hand – a mortal sin for a devout Catholic. Her soul will descend straight to hell, with no hope of purgatory. An eternity of suffering, of ultimate estrangement from God.

A moment of deep religious drama, and it is dramatic precisely because Mariko feels the pull of twin aspects of herself: her newfound faith, and her age-old duty. When considering the spread of Christianity during this era, it is all too easy to focus on the disruptions, as the church comes into conflict with different cultures. Yet this moment feels like a fulfillment of the promises of the faith, Japan drawing something vital out of the church, and vice versa.

It is at this moment that Blackthorne volunteers. He stands, steps forward, and offers to act as Mariko’s second. Fulfilling duty by performing a role, yes, but also acting out of a deep sense of love, one whose depths surprise even him. He will take her life for her, whom he loves, to spare her from the torments of hell. Gruesome, yes, but also deeply, profoundly, swooningly, romantic.

And what happens next? I won’t spoil everything for you. Suffice it to say, Blackthorne comes to learn that performing one’s duties, and submitting to one’s responsibilities, can plumb the depths of one’s soul in a way nothing else can.