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View Full Version : Speaking of "historical novels"- James Clavell's "Shogun"



stratcat
2nd June 2003, 08:25
Hi All-
I just read the thread on Musashi, and I wondered, what about James Clavell's "Shogun" novel?

At first sight it seems to be fairly well researched (it is a large book- 1000+ pages) but I've caught a couple of bloopers so far
-Judo and Karate appear some 200 years BEFORE they actually came to exist (the novel takes place in 1600. Judo and Karate don't appear, as such, until the mid to late 1800's)
-The names are all changed, Toranaga instead of Tokugawa, Nakamura instead of Hideyoshi, etc.

The question is: is there a historical basis for the Englishman, Blackthorne? I certainly don't remember ever having heard of a foreigner in Tokugawa's camp, much less a Hatamoto. Can anyone clarify this for me?

And does anybody know why the author changed the names around? I mean Gore Vidal does this sort of thing all the time, i.e. "Lincoln" and "Burr", etc. It's not like there's anyone around now that might be offenfed.

And what about the events in the novels themselves? Aside from the mention of Sekigahara and the Council of Regents, and find it hard to recognize the events. And what about Oda Nobunaga? He's nowhere to be found!

Anyway, thanks for your help
Stratcat, 2003!

PRehse
2nd June 2003, 10:24
Shogun - is meant to be only loosely based on histroical events. When you write these things you have a choice - use the real names and have people cry foul if things are not quite right or make it clear (by using altered names) that you make no claims.

Blackthorn was based on the histrical character of William Adams - although the love-interest was a clear imposibility he was definately in Tokugawa's favour.

Really really brief description can be found here. That took just a little effort with google.

http://hsv.com/writers/jeffog/wa-hist.htm

fifthchamber
2nd June 2003, 14:58
Hi all,
Not much to add to what Peter said....There is a book out now on the actual William Adams character..Here (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374253854/qid=1054561940/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-0331418-9885639)
...And Oda Nobunaga is certainly mentioned in "Shogun"!...He goes under the name "Goroda" in it....But died before the book and is only listed in the history set out before "Nakamura's" takeover as Taiko... (Page 202 for example:) "This was just after the Dictator Goroda (Oda Nobunaga) had been assassinated when General Nakamura (Toyotomi Hideyoshi)...Was trying to consolidate all power into his own hands"...
Regards

PRehse
3rd June 2003, 00:57
I recently finished another Eji Yoshikawa (author of Musashi) book. This one is far more rooted in historical reality than Musashi which in turn was more rooted than Shogun.

The Heike Story

I really liked this - kept flipping to the geneology charts as the story unfolded.

Earl Hartman
3rd June 2003, 01:44
I saw the movie version of "Shogun".

How can I put this? Let's see.....

Oh yeah. It really, really sucked.

If the book is anything like the movie, it must be really bad.

Foreigner good and kind. Japanese violent, unfeeling and inscrutable. Heap brave foreigner save beautiful Japanese damsel from abusive husband.

Puh-leeeeeeze.

I especially hate all of those people who gushed about "how much they had learned about Japan" by watching that POS on television.

The spirit reels. The mind boggles. The stomach heaves. The bowels churn.

PRehse
3rd June 2003, 02:10
Originally posted by Yobina
Ah, sorry 'bout the double post.
Yobina-san;

You can of course delete the second post.

I liked the Shogun series but I have a gift for not taking films made for a general audience very seriously. I could say that my interest in Japan was sparked by the book.

kage110
3rd June 2003, 11:36
I liked the Shogun series but I have a gift for not taking films made for a general audience very seriously. I could say that my interest in Japan was sparked by the book.

I will second that. That book started my interest in things Japanese at the tender age of eleven. The book is very good (as are the majority of Clavell's other novels) and the TV series (which I own on video) is ok but nothing special.

Jock Armstrong
5th June 2003, 03:52
Guys, guys, Shogun was a NOVEL about a fantasy about "The Japans" not Japan. It was not ever intended to be a historical treatise. Relax folks- some are getting WAY too serious about this. As for ill treatment of foreign sailors. It just depended on who you met with. Tokugawa was friendly- some daimyo were highly anti foreigner. the xenophobia with gripped the warrior class [with shogunate sanction] did not really become the norm till nearly a hundred years after Will Adam's time but Japanese warriors ferocity and touchiness were well documented before this by the Portugese [also in Adams's own memoirs he recorded an incident in Indonesian waters where two wako {Japanese pirates] vessels attempted to board his own small flottila and had to be annihilated since they would not surrender]. The incident of boiling unfortunate sailors was performed by the same headcase who delighted in tying his peasants hands then igniting their mino [straw raincoats] and watching their death throes. This charmer was the prime reason for the shimabara rebellion, which later took on a Christian flavour [they were being actively persecuted]. One of the main reasons for Perry's visit was to end the execution of shipwrecked sailors on sight. [some were lucky enough to be imprisoned by more farsighted japanese officials. As for the book, it actually addresses the comparitive barbarities of west and east. If I remember, the younger samurai in Kasigi Yabu's retinue [Omi I think but I can't remember] is disgusted by the torture of the dutchmen. Perhaps the gentleman from palo Alto is not a deep reader, if indeed, he has read the book at all......

Jock Armstrong
5th June 2003, 03:58
PS Also remember the movie release of two hours was cut down from around eight hours of the TV miniseries. Only the most basic of plotlines remained. Also, in Japan, the series was cut differently to present the story more from Toranaga and Hiromatsu's view point.Apologies to Earl- I forgot that you had only seen the movie. Read the book -its not fact but it gives a "feeling" of the old days.:beer:

Earl Hartman
5th June 2003, 06:49
Apology accepted. Haven't read the book. I saw the miniseries on TV, and it was just, well, stupid. The one scene that stood out was when Adam's squeeze was going to kill herself, and it was all in public like a regular seppuku ritual, and she even had a guy who was going to be her kaishaku! I just cannot believe anything like that could possibly have happened. Also, the fight at the end where Adams fights with ninjas and kills them with a katana was dumb.

I mean, c'mon guys.

Not only that, while I am perfectly willing to accept the fact that the Japanese could be perfectly beastly, I got tired of the way the film portrayed Adams always having to protect the locals. It just gave the whole thing a "foreigners good, Japanese bad" feel.

So, I never bothered to read the book. A movie based on real historical sources and Adams' own memoirs would be very interesting, however.

Mark Barlow
5th June 2003, 19:04
I enjoyed the book but not the movie. The only real complaint I had with the book was having one of the townspeople being expert in karate and judo.

koma
18th June 2003, 12:46
I enjoyed the book and the mini-series. The movie was just butchered to get it on the shelves.
Perhaps Clavell used the terms "judo" and "karate" because those were terms his readers would understand. I don't think he had martial artists as an audience in mind while writing it.
Historical fiction is just that, fiction. It might be based on bits and pieces of facts but it's just fiction.:smilejapa

Mark Barlow
20th June 2003, 00:30
Koma,
I'm sure you're right but I still hate to see things "dumbed down" for the general public. I've read some outstanding historical fiction that was entertaining, informative and historically accurate.

I've forgotten the title, but there was a novel out a few years ago involving an Okinawan who had been blown out to sea and joined an American whaling ship in the early 1800s. The book detailed the history of the various te systems because the Okinawan trained in Shuri te and Naha te (forgive me if I've butchered the spelling). I loaned it to a shorin ryu instructor (who never gave it back) who had trained in Okinawa under Hohan Soken and he assured me that the book was correct in every detail regarding Okinawan karate.
This is the kind of narrative I enjoy.

Jock Armstrong
21st June 2003, 13:00
Anjin san couldn't kill ninja with a katana? How so, or better why not? Blackthorne is a pretty salty ole Elizabethan seadog. He's no shrinking violet either, having a heap of combat experience against the Spanish- or is this a kind of reverse racial bias that assumes that asian martial arts are much more effective than the old western ones? Documents [Japanese as well as European] relate how some samurai picked a fight with some portugese sailors and got their asses handed to them on a plate. The Ports were armed with boarding cutlasses [ not to be confused with the shorter "cutlass" of the Royal Navy in the 18th C- these were long swords similar to katana] and the officers with rapiers. Tha samurai were screwed by their own overconfidence- when they came back for revenge they had studied up on how the Ports fought. They did better but it was pretty even. Authorities solved the situation by not allowing the sailors to carry weapons ashore and forbidding the samurai to fight any of them. There is a fallacy that because western MA died out in the end of the 19th C that somehow they never existed . It goes hand in hand with the idea that ancient people were stupid because they weren't technologically advanced- which we know is not true. Schools which taught swordsmanship, boxing/wrestling and pistolcraft were common and considered a prerequisite for young gentleman to have a "rounded" education. No MA are intrinsically "superior" to others. The warriors make them work or don't.:beer:

Drunken Scotsman abroad.

Mark Barlow
23rd June 2003, 16:31
The title of the book I mentioned in an earlier post is HARPOON by C.W. Nichol who also wrote MOVING ZEN: KARATE AS A WAY TO GENTLENESS.

Mark Barlow
23rd June 2003, 17:31
Sorry, that last name is Nicol, not Nichol.

Alex Meehan
24th June 2003, 18:15
For anyone who's interested, I wrote the following review of Giles Milton's Samurai William book for a newspaper in Ireland.

Alex
Dublin


In 1598 an English pilot named William Adams set sail for Japan as part of a Dutch expedition with five ships and 100 men. Lured by the thought of lucrative silk and spice trades, the Europeans hoped to make their fortune and return with enough cash to secure their futures.

However the journey proved extremely difficult, and when Adams eventually landed in Japan in 1600 after 20 months at sea, four ships had been lost and just 24 crew had survived. Those that did make it were suffering from scurvy and dysentery -- only six could stand and several died the week after they arrived.

Giles Milton’s Samurai William is the story of this epic voyage to Japan and the subsequent events that took place during Adam’s 20 year stay in the country, with a special focus on his spectacular rise in stature in the court of the feudal Shogun, or ruler of Japan, Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Milton’s account of the trip makes for unsettling reading. Sailors of this period did not yet know that fresh fruit prevented scurvy, and so many died painfully on long sea journeys.

Standard rations consisted of salted meat and biscuits which were frequently infested with weevils. This was bulked up with whatever fresh food could be gathered en route, although boiled rats and mice also featured when stores ran low.

In 1600 there were no reliable maps of the Pacific and the Far East, and navigational techniques were still extremely rudimentary. As a result, the route taken by Adam’s expedition involved sailing down the cost of Africa, across the Atlantic, through the Magellan Straits and across the Pacific to Hawaii before finally reaching Japan.

Europeans had arrived in Japan some time previously, most notably Jesuit missionaries intent on converting the natives to Catholicism. The Jesuits had told the ruling Shogun that all of Europe was united in Roman Catholicism under the authority of the Pope, and that all rulers in Europe deferred to him.

Needless to say, these pioneer priests weren’t too impressed when the Dutch and English Protestants aboard Adam’s boat arrived, and tried to have them crucified. But Shogun Ieyasu was intrigued by the tales of political division which Adams told, and invited him to court to educate him in European politics as well as shipbuilding and navigational techniques.

Much to the displeasure of the religious orders in Japan, Adams rose in stature to become a trusted confident of Ieyesu and he was eventually honoured with the title of Samurai and Hamamoto, or Lord, complete with country estate and retainers.

After 13 years as the only Englishman in Japan, Adams was longing for the company of his countrymen but was horrified when the next batch of English seamen eventually arrived – he thought them smelly, bad mannered and uncouth while they in turn thought Adams had gone native.

He had adopted the local customs of bathing daily, as well as washing and oiling his hair. He dressed in silk kimonos, had a large retinue of servants and carried the signature daisho, or twin swords, of the Japanese ruling samurai class.

Most shockingly, he had married and had children by a local Lord’s daughter, despite having a wife and daughter back home in London.

By contrast the newcomers had been on a ship for two years without a wash, had lived on rats, were suffering from scurvy and were intent on boozing and whoring once they hit dry land.

While the Milton’s book purports to be about William Adams, it would probably be more accurate to describe it as an intensely readable account of the first trading missions to Japan.

Much space is given to documenting other voyages to the region at the time, key among them the Dutch East India Company’s efforts to establish trading bases around the Far East.

Much of the book is constructed from the records and logs left by the sea captains and pilots of the day, and so also provides an intriguing insight into the workings of feudal Japan and the attitudes of European travellers to this unique island nation.

Adam’s story was the inspiration for James Clavell’s epic novel Shogun, and the subsequent 1970s TV series of the same name starring Richard Chamberlain. It’s easy to see why, as it is a fascinating tale.

Giles Milton has managed to provide a complex history lesson in the form of an engaging narrative. Anyone interested in the mysteries of the East or in the cultural makeup of the inscrutable Japanese will find this an engaging read.

ENDS

Earl Hartman
24th June 2003, 21:12
I found the idea that Adams could kill a ninja with a katana silly not because I think that Western MA are necessarily inferior to Japanese MA, but because it seemed ludicrous that he could defeat a trained enemy with a weapon with which he was probably unfamiliar. If he had used a rapier or a cutlass, in the use of which he was probably pretty well schooled, that would have been much easier to accept.

But then, I'm picky, and it was just another fault to find with a film that I found pretty silly throughout.

Doraggure-su
26th June 2003, 06:00
Originally posted by Earl Hartman
I found the idea that Adams could kill a ninja with a katana silly not because I think that Western MA are necessarily inferior to Japanese MA, but because it seemed ludicrous that he could defeat a trained enemy with a weapon with which he was probably unfamiliar. If he had used a rapier or a cutlass, in the use of which he was probably pretty well schooled, that would have been much easier to accept.

But then, I'm picky, and it was just another fault to find with a film that I found pretty silly throughout.

Hey, even a blind squirel can find a nut once in a while!:D