Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Book review: Shogun

 We watched Shōgun (2024 TV series) and I bought M the book for Christmas; this post is about the book. She didn't get very far - it is 1k+ pages. Wiki says Shōgun is a 1975 historical novel by author James Clavell that chronicles the end of Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568-1600) and the dawn of the Edo period (1603-1868). Loosely based on actual events and figures, Shōgun narrates how European interests and internal conflicts within Japan brought about the Shogunate restoration and that seems true enough. That page also has a historical accuracy section which though brief is incisive; my feeling is that an awful lot more is wrong; mostly I think that the whole thing represents a naive gosh-this-is-Japanese-culture kind of attitude; the emphasis on honour and so I think is overdone.

Although Blackstone is the key figure in the book - pretty well everything is shown from his viewpoint - his actual role in events is quite small. He saves Toranaga a couple of times, but so might any close retainer; he represents a fleet-in-not-quite-being threat to the Portugese "Black Ship" but not any actual threat; and so on. His main function is to mindlessly object to every tiny cultural difference he is presented with.

In the 2024 TV series Toronaga is generally presented as cunningly working out his plan (although mostly by being blank faced and staring off into the distance) which eventually does work out. In the book it is much clearer that he is winging it: repeatedly delaying on the off chance that something will turn up. This is in some ways less inspiring, but then again it makes his desire to avoid wasting vast number of lives clearer.

Overall, the book is too long. It really doesn't have 1k+ pages of things to say. But it is mostly well enough written though with occasional tells; for example, putting a mute as the lookout is kinda wacky.

Wiki thinks that the book is telling us that the samurai way is superior to the West. But the samurai acceptance of death is propped up by the Shinto belief in rebirth after 40 days. Without that, you can't have the culture. He mostly handles the rigidly caste-based culture by hiding the lower classes from us; they seldom do anything other than bow head-to-the-ground when their superiors go by. And in the end their system fell part in the face of superior Yankee tech.

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