Thread by @OliverJia1014

Some are disappointed that Shogun doesn’t feature Blackthorne, Mariko, and the Jesuit characters speaking Portuguese.

Using English as a stand-in for other languages is nothing new for films and shows, but language is actually one of Shogun’s more fascinating aspects.

Thread.

As is well-known by now, Shogun protagonist John Blackthorne is based William Adams.

Adams was an English sailor who arrived in Japan in 1600 via the Dutch trading ship de Liefde.

He was the first Englishman in Japan and was given samurai status by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

William Adams’ adventures before arriving in Japan are already fascinating enough. The ship he boarded was part of a fleet of five.

Adams’ ship was the only one to make it to Japan after two years at sea and he was one of the few survivors out of hundreds of sailors.

We can assume that Adams knew how to speak Dutch because of his crewmen, but his interactions with the Jesuits upon arriving in Japan suggest that he also spoke Portuguese.

Adams had very few opportunities to speak English in Japan because no one spoke it there at the time.

The presence of Dutch and Portuguese traders in Japan since the 1500s greatly influenced the Japanese language with new loanwords.

Much of what we know about Japanese around this time comes from the extensive dictionaries and grammars the Jesuits wrote. They’re vital resources.

The Shogun character Martin Alvito is based on João Rodrigues Tçuzu, one of the most esteemed Jesuit scholars and linguists working in Asia at the time.

He learned Japanese to a high degree of fluency and worked as an interpreter, as Shogun depicts.

James Clavell was well-aware of how important language and linguistic differences were in Japan during this evolving period of foreign exchange.

He knew enough Japanese to understand its basic grammatical features, which added to the world-building of his Shogun novel.

When Shogun was first adapted into the acclaimed 1980 television miniseries, it was famously decided that none of the Japanese would be subtitled.

The idea was that we as the Western audience are in Blackthorne’s shoes. If he doesn’t understand what’s happening, neither do we.

NBC wanted Sean Connery as Blackthorne, but he turned it down, so Richard Chamberlain was cast.

Chamberlain acted in his native American accent instead of a British one since it was believed that the unsubtitled Japanese was already going to be a hurdle for U.S. viewers.

1980 Shogun uses English as a stand-in for the Western characters speaking Portuguese.

Waterloo, The Last Emperor, The Hunt for Red October, and Schindler’s List are other examples of English being used as the language for audience benefit instead of Russian, French, etc.

With Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg chose English as the film’s primary language instead of German and Polish.

He did this because he believed the audience would resonate more with what was happening on screen without the “safety” of subtitles.

Shogun 2024, on the other hand, practically revels in subtitles.

It wants you to see the Japanese perspective and while a full English dub exists, I can’t imagine watching the show that way.

These are some of the finest Japanese actors alive today.

Different projects call for different approaches.

But while some (particularly American) viewers will complain, most of the world has long accepted subtitles.

Other Asia-focused shows like Pachinko and The Sympathizer have also embraced them as an important storytelling device.

Practically, it makes sense why both the 1980 and 2024 versions of Shogun use English for the non-Japanese languages.

Both are American productions and finding actors who could act in English, Portuguese, Dutch, and Japanese was realistically never going to happen.

If you want to read some more of my thoughts about Shogun, check out this other thread of impressions I did.

I’ve long researched William Adams and James Clavell, so this is a subject I’m particularly invested in.

There will be an article on my Substack as well.