\n<\/p>\n
Take a look at any of FX\u2019s promotional material for \u201cShogun,\u201d and one image will stare back: Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), in full samurai armor, his sword drawn as he charges into battle on a white horse. Tattered red banners and a cavalry provide the backdrop. It doesn\u2019t require close reading to determine that he has cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also false advertising. There is no culminating battle in the final episode of \u201cShogun.\u201d Toranaga does not charge into the fray on a white horse, his katana dealing death on all sides. The regents\u2019 armies do not fight among themselves. Lord Ishido is not beaten down in defeat. John Blackthorne does not prove his battlefield mettle to earn his samurai sword. Instead, the episode mimics the leafless branch in the poem Lady Mariko dictated before her death.<\/p>\n
By now, you may be shouting that the book upon which the show is based doesn\u2019t include a final battle, either. But just as James Clavell, the author of \u201cShogun,\u201d altered, edited and exaggerated real-world people and events from Japanese history to suit the needs of his novel, the creators of the 2024 television version also altered, edited and exaggerated in turn. They\u2019ve changed character names, shifted points of emphasis<\/a> from Blackthorne to Japanese characters and so on. For this episode they cut the book\u2019s epilogue, in which Toranaga executes Ishido by burying him up to his neck and leaving him to die of exposure. (Toranaga is a tough cookie, but that act seems a bridge too far for the TV version.) The showrunners don\u2019t mind taking advantage of adaptational freedom when it suits them.<\/p>\n Much as I think both the marketing and the writing have deliberately steered audiences to expect an all out action-horror spectacle \u2014 in the mode for which the pioneering \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d set a still-unmatched standard on television \u2014 the show\u2019s creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, as well as the writers Maegan Houang and Emily Yoshida (not to mention Clavell himself), turn out not to be telling that kind of story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n If there\u2019s a through line for how \u201cShogun\u201d depicts violence, it\u2019s that it\u2019s almost always dirty pool. A Christian lord\u2019s army ambushing another lord\u2019s forces under cover of darkness. A cannon fusillade launched at men given no warning. A nephew attempting to murder his uncle in a brothel. A squad of palace guards, slowly driving an outnumbered woman warrior to exhaustion and defeat. Ninja assassins slaughtering their way through a sleepy household, not once but twice. The entire plot is driven by Blackthorne\u2019s revelation that even the Christian lords\u2019 European allies are secretly building an army with which they intend to take all of Japan unawares.<\/p>\n When it comes to violence, nobody here moves out in the open. \u201cShogun\u201d is consistent in that respect, at least if you ignore the picture on the promos.<\/p>\n