Shogun

Shogun is an absolutely compelling story about an English pilot, John Blackthorne, sailing for a Dutch company that speaks Portuguese and ends up in Japan during the time of the Shogunate. The book is long, something like 1,100 pages, with layers of plots and movements, but rewarding.

As a reader, you get to witness Blackthorne and his crew stumble through the radical cultural and language barriers. The Japanese are much more refined in their hygiene, their clothing, manners, eating habits, and more. As the book goes on, Blackthorne develops a relationship with Toranaga, who is one of the five regents ruling Japan. Blackthorne essentially arrives in a time in Japan when the Shogunate had an empty seat, the prior military ruler’s heir was too young to rule, and the other Regents were being influenced by missionaries from Portugal to convert to Christianity and become commercial allies and a colony of Portugal. The other layer here is that the Portuguese are missioning Catholicism, but Blackthorne is a Protestant. This creates another conflict throughout the story.

Throughout the novel Toranaga utilizes Mariko, who has converted to Catholicism, to act as a translator for Blackthorne, as she understands Portuguese. She also takes a role in educating Blackthorne on cultural values the Japanese have, and how to adjust his behavior. Over time Blackthorne transforms and starts to appreciate their habits more, to the point his own crew’s lack of hygiene disgusts him. Blackthorne becomes a character study of clash of Eastern vs Western culture and transformation through exposure.

“Love is a Christian word, Anjin-san. Love is a Christian thought, a Christian ideal. We have no word for ‘love’ as I understand you to mean it. Duty, loyalty, honor, respect, desire, those words and thoughts are what we have, all that we need.”

The novel stages an elaborate chess match between Toranaga and the other regents of Japan. We get to peek into Toranaga’s mind and how he strategizes and anticipates his enemies’ moves, stays silent, and then pulls off his maneuvers carefully and patiently. Toranaga cleverly utilizes Blackthorne and his European knowledge of sea travel and military to give him an edge against the regents that are aligned with the Portuguese and Catholic missionaries.

This is a close to perfect book and I would recommend everyone read it, but a few things keep me from saying that it’s perfect. I felt like there was an exaggeration of certain practices like the over willingness to perform seppuku. The book also builds up and serves an amazing narrative, but ultimately the pay off is off the pages. Despite that, it’s still such a good book, it tells you how gripping the story is, that even with an ending that teases us on big things to come that we never get to read, I would still recommend Shogun.

Highly recommended if you love Japan, history, novels about politics and war, historical fiction and such.

Words I Learned

Suzerainty - a relationship in which one state or other polity controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to maintain its own government.

Piquant - having a pleasantly sharp taste or appetizing flavor; pleasantly stimulating or exciting to the mind.

Paroxysm - a sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity.

Sibilance - having or making a hissing sound; characterized by a hissing quality of speech sounds.