Product Description

This is James Clavell's tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, SHOGUN is a stunningly dramatic re-creation of a very different world.Starting with his shipwreck on this most alien of shores, the novel charts Blackthorne's rise from the status of reviled foreigner up to the hights of trusted advisor and eventually, Samurai. All as civil war looms over the fragile country.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166917 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1136 pages

Review
'My bet for the most satisfyingly popular novel of the year ... It has power, it has violence, subtlety and lots, lots more ... Clavell never puts a foot wrong ... Get it, read it, you'll enjoy it mightily' -- Daily Mirror 'SHOGUN is a huge exotic, blood-stained canvas of sixteenth century but still medieval Japan, rival warlords and proselytising Jesuits, geishas, seppuku, samurai with the death-with and a shipwrecked Elizabethan' -- Guardian 'Mr Clavell tells his story brilliantly' -- The Times 'One of the great page turners of all time' -- Good Book Guide 20020208 'I can't remember when a novel has seized my mind like this one. It's irresistable, maybe unforgettable. Clavell ... creates a world so enveloping you forget who and where you are' -- New York Times 20020208

About the Author
James Clavell, the son of a Royal Navy family, was educated in Portsmouth before, as a young artillery officer, he was captured by the Japanese at the Fall of Singapore. It was on this experience that his bestselling novel KING RAT was based. He maintained this oriental interest in his other great works: TAI-PAN, SHOGUN, NOBLE HOUSE and GAI JIN.

Customer Reviews

The Amazing Transformation of Master Pilot Blackthorne.
I was first attracted to "Shogun"'s world by the TV series. First puzzled, then absorbed, waiting each week for the next step. As soon as it finished I rushed to the book store to buy my copy.
I wasn't disappointed. If the series is good, the book is better. Mr. Clavell constructs a master piece describing how two so different symbolic universes interact and react to each other. European vision and values embodied by Master Pilot Blackthorne, Japanese ones by Toranaga-sama and Mariko-san. Characters are based on real-life people: Master Pilot William Adams and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Situated in the late 16th century Japan, at the critical transitional moment from a feudal state to a centralized administration (the Shogunate) that will last until 19th century, the story depicts the struggle of Toranaga to be designed Shogun..
Master Pilot Blackthorne, his ship and his crew are thrown into Japanese shores by a mighty storm.
After a couple of shocking encounters with Portuguese Catholic priests and Japanese hieratic Samurai, Master Pilot starts a rollercoaster trip.
He will, step by step, discovers the values of Samurai code, learn Japanese, understand the complex psychology of the people surrounding him and fall in love with a noble woman. Finally he will be converted in a true Samurai with a high rank in Toranaga's entourage.

Mr. Clavell has done a great research of the period and presents it without boring the reader. The characters, even the secondary ones, are described in depth, penetrating their motivations and rationale.
After "Shogun" I was eager to read more Clavell's books. I picked "King Rat", "Tai Pan" and "Noble House". They are good, but "Shogun" is a master piece.
There is also a very interesting book about the real historical character: "Samurai Williams" authored by Giles Milton.
Enjoy this reading!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

THE MASTERPIECE THAT POPULARIZED MEDIEVAL JAPAN TO THE WEST!
This is the novel that introduced the Samurai's bushido, daimyos rivalries and the bakufu Shogunate to the average westerner. Through the eyes of a shipwrecked navigator, Blackthorn, a previously hermetically closed world is revealed.

From battle ethics and sepuku to hygiene and tea ceremonies, the interwoven narrative lines flow harmonically, like carps in a Zen rock garden pool. Beautiful, economical and seamless, Clavell's insights on human nature have produced another Masterpiece.

Like most of James Clavell's novels, SHOGUN is a thinly veiled historical story. There was a "Blackthorn" (English pilot William Adams), as well as a "Torenaga" (Shogun Tokugawa whose dynasty ruled Japan for over 200 years). However, like most James Clavell's novels, the story comes alive in some many ways it is pure enjoyment!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

PS:
There is a 1980 TV mini series based on this book - of comparable merit. Casting Toshiro Mifune and Richard Chamberlain was just the tip of the iceberg. Truly beautiful production. Nevertheless, my advice is to first read the book and only THEN watch the TV version.

meh...
I really looked forward to reading this book for months, so I brought it with me on a trip to Japan and read it in the first ten days of my trip.

As the other reviewers have pointed out, this work of fiction contains very detailed character descriptions. Some of the details are superfluous (the excessive talk of men's 'lavish yangs', the Japanese women speaking of said men's yangs and pillow toys, silly conversations and daydreams, distracted mental wanderings of various characters, the repetition of the word "karma", etc.) and having just finished I wish I had stuck with the movie or found an abridged version of the book. At points tedium drove me to speedreading.

Aside from the few grammatical mistakes in the English narration (the use of compound verbs) there are some bizarre language conventions the author incorporates in the text.

Spanish:
If it's intended to be Spanish (and not Portuguese), then "¡Qué va! should be written as such, the rules of Spanish grammar being written in 1493, so not much should have changed since the time period of the narrative. However, the vernacular of that time was different from the 20th century when the book was written, so terms like "Qué va!" and "Leche" while used in Spain today, may not have been so common five centuries ago. Moreover, sailor's have their own speech which is often quite different from the language of landlubbers.

English:

Grog is an incorrect term for what the sailors drank or wanted to drink in the book, as grog wasn't conceived of until the 1700s or perhaps even the mid 1600s.

Ropes. There are no "ropes" on boats. Sailors use "lines".

Bosun can be written, but since the author used terms like Captain (instead of "Cap'n") perhaps it would have been more uniform to use "Boatswain".

Japanese:

Seppuku means "cut stomach", so to refer to it as a woman's suicide act is absolutely incorrect since female samurai slit their throats (jigai) and men cut their stomach (seppuku). "Jigai" is a preferable term for suicide for females in Japanese language instead of "seppuku".

The term "pillowing" is not correct. A translation such as "sharing the pillow" is more appropriate. There are also some odd spelling conventions (Yedo instead of Edo, Kwampaku instead of Kampaku, Kwanto instead of Kanto). My wife and mother-in-law had a hard time figuring out some of the other Japanese translations.

The terms samurai and ninja are used frequently in the novel. Why is ninja always italicized but not samurai? It's odd.

Another historical inconsistency: The village "Yokohama" was called "Yokohama Mura" up until the end of the Edo period (the 1800s).

The author uses Japanese, but as my wife and mother-in-law point out, the Japanese in the book is not appropriate for the time period. It would be better to just use English rather than to mislead readers into thinking they're using some correct historical Japanese. For example, try reading Shakespeare: it is still English, but the morphology and lexicon is different than modern English; languages change over time.


Italian: Little used in the text, but what's there looks fine.

Latin: The "thee" and "thou" bit is very sappy and wearing in Shógun. The subject pronoun "Tu" (translated "thou" or "you") was not, and still is not, commonly used in Latin, just as "kimi" and "anata" or any subject pronouns are NOT used in everyday Japanese speech. "Te" ("thee") may have been used more commonly in informal speech in the 1600s, as is even used informally today in various Italian dialects descended from Latin.

It would have been rare (and even insulting) for a woman to learn Latin as the Lady Mariko did. Latin was a language for educated men, but since Mariko was special, and it is fiction we can give the author a pass here....

Ultimately, this is the sort of soap opera fiction with a thousand convenient coincidences (like in Harry Potter stories, the Kite Runner, Tom Clancy [who presents plenty of research in his novels], Ayn Rand [whom Clavell greatly admired], and so on) that I enjoyed as a teen but now would just prefer to get over with in a two or three hour movie. It was really disingenuous all the writing about how disgusting the women found the Anjin-san. As soon as I started reading that it was just a matter of counting pages until you knew the women would end up in bed with him. Then there were the penitential periods and well-timed earthquakes. In one soundbyte: Ugh.


If I'm going to "suspend belief" for fiction, I prefer like the action to be on the big screen for a movie like Star Wars or LOTR. This book is VERY highly fictionalized, but there are still some interesting and accurate cultural tidbits in the book that make it worth reading (the women keeping a hesokuri and maintaining responsibility for household finances, the Japanese not necessarily being inhibited by nudity, the importance of cleanliness in Japan, Shinto in Japan, etc.). Sadly, many readers will not be able to distinguish between stereotypes, the author's impression of Japan based on his experiences as a POW, and the realities of Japanese culture (both past and present). The author's experience as a POW during WWII no-doubt gave him some interesting impressions of Japanese culture which are clearly reflected in the text, though this does not pass for accurate historical research. I'm curious who edited his book and how/why certain inaccuracies were left in place.

There is no plethora of likable characters in the book, which would be OK if the characters showed some growth in the end. Toranaga, the anjin-san and most of the samurai are petulant creeps. Toranaga uses people as some sort of wannabe Machiavellian prince. The big difference between Toranaga and Machiavelli is that the latter always acted for the benefit of the people, seeking to unify the Italian peninsula for the benefit of all; Toranaga is petty, self-serving, and neurotic. At the end of the novel Toranaga says he'll never admit to having a friend... and then calls the anjin his friend. Whaaaaat? At that point, Clavell sums up a few future events and mercifully ends the story. Perhaps Clavell was just fatigued after writing 1100+ pages and missed the contradiction? In any case, Toranaga regresses, Blackthorne submits to his situation and Alvito also ends up in submission not just to the Church, but also to Toranaga. The Lady Mariko is likable, but her behavior is not plausible.

Further commentary about the book can be found here: [...]

That said, if you've got the time and the inspiration go ahead and read it. Enjoy the book!