In Shōgun, Cosmo Jarvis plays John Blackthorne, a sailor who’s the first Brit to set foot in Japan. New Zealand-born Anna Sawai plays the show’s leading female character Toda Mariko, who acts as Blackthorne’s translator and the object of his gruff affection.
The two rising stars spent nearly 11 months making the series, which is based on James Clavell’s bestselling slab of historical fiction from 1975. Judging by the reviews, the new Shōgun is shaping up as one of the television events of the year – just as it was back in 1980 with a global hit miniseries.
The new version, though, is less white-samurai-and-saviour, more Game of Thrones in a 17th-century feudal Japan very much resembling the real thing. One where Christianity has begun to take hold, Western weapons and ship design might sway the balance of power and Blackthorne – who Clavell based on the real figure of English seafarer William Adams – is first regarded by the locals as a useful idiot and barbarian who doesn’t bathe enough.
As Jarvis speaks to the Listener from Tokyo, he agrees it’s strange that it has been the show’s promotional trail which has led to his first visit to Japan.
“It is an odd thing doing it this way around instead of the other way around … but it’s lovely to be here. It’s a lovely place. It’s very clean.”
Sawai, sitting alongside him, laughs at her co-star paying her country a compliment. Yes, beyond inspecting the hygiene, he has gone out to see some history.
“It was astounding some of the relics they had. They had a 1000-year-old sword, and it was excellent to see.”
Jarvis’s answers come deliberately paced, making you wonder if he chooses his words very carefully, or it’s a side effect of having spent a couple of days in Tokyo and having everything he says translated. Perhaps it’s both.
Like her character in the show, Sawai is brisker and more business-like. That’s understandable for someone who has been on the acting, dancing, singing star-making conveyor belt since she was a pre-teen. She was born in Wellington as her Japanese family followed her father’s overseas job postings before settling back in Yokohama.
Sawai is already famous in her home country after spending five years as a member of the J-Pop girl group Faky. She left the band in 2018 to pursue an acting career. That has already led to roles in the British crime drama Giri/Haji, the South Korean-Japan generational saga Pachinko, the Godzilla spin-off Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and the ninth in the Fast & Furious franchise.
Her Shōgun role is as an aristocrat, another character Clavell based on a well-known historical figure. Her Lady Mariko is one of the few who speaks Japanese and English in the drama, making her a go-between for Blackthorne and Yoshii Toranaga, the samurai warlord played by veteran actor Hiroyuki Sanada, who thinks he can put the Englishman’s particular set of skills to good use.
Jarvis has also translated a music career into a screen one. As a singer-songwriter, he released three albums in a burst between 2009 and 2012 before he switched to acting, starring in films Lady Macbeth, Persuasion, and shows Peaky Blinders and Raised by Wolves.
Still, might the singing ability come in handy had there been cast and crew karaoke nights during Shōgun’s long production in Canada?
It wasn’t a serious question, but Sawai is quick to reply she wants only to talk about acting. Jarvis just grins and says he’s long “amputated” his music career. Curiously, when the Disney organisers of the Zoom call send through a recording of the interview, the brief exchange about music has been edited out.
So, acting then. They’re playing 17th-century characters in a show that is striving for historical accuracy and Sawai’s character acts as the drama’s main translator. How did they work out how their characters talked?
Sawai: “I think, just wearing a kimono kind of sets you up. Like, just your posture changes. And she’s speaking in period Japanese. I didn’t really have to think about it too much. It just naturally shifted for me.”
Evidently, Jarvis thought about it quite a lot. “I started out looking at historical linguistics, and then I realised that English in 1600 wouldn’t have been understandable to an Englishman today, so there was no way of honouring that level of historical accuracy. It just wouldn’t have been feasible for a show that needs to be understood by contemporary English-speaking folk and Japanese-speaking folk.
“So that was out, and that took a while to accept. And then I started looking at old recordings – as old as I could find – of sailors from England, and even though they weren’t old enough, there was still something ancient about them.
“I went through a period of trying to wrestle it into what the script’s requirements for Blackthorne were and I wanted it to work, but it didn’t … I sort of modelled him slightly on my father and sort of more of an older English thing. That became Blackthorne and then he sort of stuck around for 11 months.”
Having been in gestation since 2018, the production was filmed mostly in and around Vancouver between mid-2021 and early 2022, going a couple of months over schedule.
“It was relatively long in terms of what I’ve been used to before,” says Jarvis. “But it was necessary, I think, to execute the task at hand.”
Sawai: “We paid so much attention to detail and in order to really portray the Japanese history and culture right, I think we needed to take our time. We had Japanese crew and so just being on set, we would have translations, so that would also cause a little bit more delay. I don’t think it was supposed to be 10 or 11 months, but every month, they were like, ‘one more month, one more month’.”
Yes, it certainly looks like the genuine article in the details and epic in its sweep, complete with ships on storm-tossed seas, earthquakes, massed armies and the costumes on every character suggesting they would have had to get up early each day for a spot of personal origami.
Jarvis: “It was married to a period and a place which has a good record in history, so there was a certain expectation to get it right.”
Sawai: “Obviously, we were taking James Clavell’s bestseller novel and they had already done a miniseries and I didn’t want to just do the same thing, because we’ve seen enough of Japanese culture being portrayed in Western media in a way that didn’t feel right to Japanese people. So, in our show … I hope that when people see it, they’re not going to feel like it was just a Western production, but that it was a collaboration. I’m hoping that we’re bringing our beautiful culture to a more worldwide audience because of this collaboration.”
The original miniseries, which neither of the pair has seen, did wonders for how Japan and its history and culture were perceived in the West.
“I absolutely agree,” says Sawai. “I think that it introduced our history to everyone and our people to everyone. But I think that even with representation, there is misrepresentation. And now, because people already know about us, we’re able to give more detail to it.”
Shōgun is screening now on Disney+. For the Listener’s preview story, see here.
This story was originally published on listener.co.nz on March 14, 2024.
