Shogun writers and producers talk about the Disney+ series, creating a manual for directors, and why filming moved to Canada
- Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, who wrote and produced the Disney+ series based on James Clavell’s novel, look back on their five-year labour of love
- Shogun, starring Cosmo Jarvis, Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai, tells the story of an Englishman, washed ashore in feudal Japan, who becomes a samurai
It’s 1941. War comes to the Pacific as Pearl Harbour is blitzed. Aboard a ship bound for Singapore to fight the Japanese is British Army second lieutenant James Clavell.
But the ship is sunk and Clavell finds himself in Java, where he is wounded and captured. Eventually, he does make it to Singapore – as a prisoner of war in Changi prison.
Thus were planted the earliest seeds of what would become known as novelist Clavell’s Asian Saga: six books, including Tai-Pan (1966) and Noble House (1981), both set in Hong Kong.
But perhaps the best known of the bunch is Shōgun (1975), the fictionalised history of an expedition to Japan in 1600, feuding warlords, and the culturally and politically seismic role of an Englishman who somehow rises to the rank of samurai … all the way from barbarian.
Now, bringing Shōgun to the screen in a landmark, 10-part series is Disney+, which has big hitters of its own on board. And while this isn’t the novel’s first television adaptation, it could prove to be the gold standard, considering its cast, locations, sets, intricate script and obvious pre-production thoroughness.