Directors: Frederick E.O. Toye, Jonathan van Tulleken, Charlotte Brändström, Takeshi Fukunaga, Hiromi Kamata, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour
Writers: Justin Marks, Rachel Kondo, Maegan Houang, Emily Yoshida, Shannon Goss, Matt Lambert, Caillin Puente, Nigel Williams (based on the novel by James Clavell).
Cast: Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai, Cosmo Jarvis, Tadanobu Asano,
Number of Episodes: 10 (dropping on Wednesdays)
Available on: Disney+ Hotstar
Early on in Shogun, a character says the Japanese believe every man has three hearts. One is in his mouth, for the world to know. Another is in his chest, known only by his friends. Finally, there is the secret heart, buried deep where no one can find it. It’s tempting to map the three protagonists of Shogun against this saying. There’s no doubt that the English navigator John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) is the show’s first heart. Blue-eyed, foul-mouthed and floundering in this faraway land, Blackthorne is anything but subtle. Shogun’s other two hearts are Mariko (Anna Sawai) and Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), and it takes a while into the show’s 10-episode duration to know which of them has more secrets.
The paths of these three characters cross because Blackthorne washes up on Japan’s shores precisely when Osaka is crippled by political intrigue because its ruler is underaged, and the Portuguese have cast their colonial net over Japan. Lord Toranaga, one of the five regents locked in a power struggle, realises Blackthorne could be a useful ally (or pawn?). Mariko is brought in as a translator upon Toranaga’s orders. Ostensibly, the three have nothing in common. Blackthorne is a foreigner who is seen as a barbarian and is at the bottom of Japan’s social pyramid. Mariko is married into a powerful aristocratic family, but bears the taint of belonging to a disgraced clan. She’s also Catholic and knows Portuguese. Lord Toranaga is descendant of an illustrious family and a confidant of the former ruler of Osaka, who now finds himself handicapped and cornered by his rivals. Even at his most powerless, Toranaga commands authority and has the regal bearing that marks him as elite. What these three vastly different people have in common is that all of them are prisoners. In Blackthorne’s case, this is very literal as he’s thrown behind bars early into Shogun. Similarly, in Toranaga’s case, the show opens with him becoming a political prisoner. Mariko meanwhile is trapped in an unhappy marriage and imprisoned within the constraints imposed by her gender. Over the course of 10 episodes, Shogun shows these three characters come into their own, finding ways to break out and discovering new ties that bind them in unexpected ways.