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.
The series has been created for television by the husband-and-wife team of writers and producers Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, both Hollywood premier league players. And for Kondo, it was an adaptation with particular resonance.
“I was strongly drawn to it in that I felt it was a wonderful opportunity for me, as a person of Japanese heritage, to re-encounter my culture and how I identify with myself, and on and on and on,” says Kondo during a joint video call with the pair from their home in Hawaii.
“But I’m Japanese-American, born in Hawaii and raised here – and that’s a completely different experience, obviously, to being a Japanese national.
“So it was quite the process, learning to zero myself out and to be quiet enough so that we could start to learn how to listen to the people who are actually from Japan.”
“Rachel’s journey was very much like my journey to the production,” adds Marks, “which is strange given where we thought we would start – as a kind of marriage of two cultures.
“But as we got deeper into the process, we discovered that there was a far more complex world to render than we had given credit.”
Ultimately, the demands of what Marks calls “authenticity and making it right” meant the project “turned into a five-year endeavour”.
The finished product – lush cinematography, visceral battle scenes, incendiary politics and more – transports the viewer to an unmistakable time and place. And should any further convincing be required, stars Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai and Cosmo Jarvis, among others, are never less than compelling.
Authenticity is a long road without a destination. You’re never going to get to that place fully, but the early reactions in Japan have been really rewarding
Yet it could have turned out so differently – if at all. In 2019, the series was already taking shape when production company FX called a halt. Soon after, Marks was enlisted as writer and executive producer and an overhaul followed.
“I think the way the writers’ room and script delivery had been constructed in the previous iteration was such that [the production] was not going to be able to keep up with the massive flow of information and research and cultural feedback,” says Marks.
“So rather than force that and force the start date with a previous writer and director, they just decided to hit the reset button.”
That readjustment brought with it significant relocation. Shooting plans originally had Cornwall, southwest England, representing Japan. But as Marks confirms, filming took place “entirely in British Columbia, Canada”.
“The idea, on taking it away from Cornwall, was to move it to Japan”, he says. “This was late 2019, as we wrote the scripts, then in 2020, Covid happened and we were landlocked for a year.
“That was good for development, but by the time we were back on our feet, in 2021, it was clear production in Japan was going to be prohibited, and we couldn’t get back there for another year after that.”
With detail being as essential to the project as the bigger picture, that development saw the creation of the show’s own reference work. Says Kondo: “The job of one of our producers was marshalling all the research and creating a manual, a bible that was almost the length of Shōgun itself.”
“And almost the length of the real Bible!” adds Marks. “Eight-hundred-and-seventy pages of diagrams, who enters where and when and so on. It was to help build an engine, so that the director of each episode could come in and have the world handed to them.”
“We hoped the weight of that book would convey just how much care and consideration had gone into it,” says Kondo.
“Authenticity is a long road without a destination,” says Marks. “You’re never going to get to that place fully, but the early reactions in Japan have been really rewarding.
“But this is James Clavell’s book – an international, intersectional book – and we are really proud of our part in it.”
Shōgun is streaming on Disney+ from February 27.
