This TV Fest, SCAD honored Hiroyuki Sanada from Shogun with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Sanada’s career reaches back to the 70s and 80s when he mainly played in Japanese action, period films, and TV shows. Later in his career, he branched into Hollywood starring in movies like Bullet Train, Avengers: Endgame, and John Wick 4. For last year’s debut of the period drama Shogun based on James Clavell’s book, Sanada personally was able to put his hands directly on a piece of work, producing the show. His hard work paid off, and the show received multiple Golden Globes and Emmys this award season. With such a global reach and robust career, no one deserved this honor more than Hiro.
It’s one of the most brilliant shows that weaves politics and lessons about our past and present into one. A woman’s role in society, an English barbarian’s turmoil with cultural acceptance, and the redemption of a new era that rises from the ashes of a chaotic war. The story takes place during Japan’s Sengoku period or “warring time”. The country was in political limbo, and the lack of centralized leadership made way for a civil war. It predates the Edo period, an era regarded as Japan’s “peacetime”. The country shut itself off from the world for 200 years and reinstated the shogunate under the Tokugawa regime.
In the show, we follow our main protagonists, Lord Toranaga, Mariko, and Blackthorne through the growing pains of this era as they teach us about this long-lost time and our modern existence. Today I want to focus specifically on Sanada’s character, Toranaga-sama, and what his story can individually illuminate about our modern political landscape.
Shaping The Wind
The mastery of Shogun’s writing comes in what I’ve dubbed the “One Piece effect”. It’s used in several TV shows and movies but is best described with my favorite anime. From the beginning of One Piece, we as the audience know that Luffy will see the One Piece and be the king of the pirates – the same as we know Sanada’s character, Toranaga, will be the Shogun. The show isn’t about the end point as much as it is about the journey to get there.
For much of the show, the journey seems impossible and we question the title’s truth. Toranaga’s brother betrays him, his army is decimated in an earthquake, yet we sit in awe as he demonstrates militant mastery. Most of his tactics are psychological. Since the age of 12, he’s been known as a trickster who has never lost a battle. He manipulates emotions, drives wedges between his enemies and their allies, and very rarely uses bloodshed unless necessary.
Nobody shapes the wind to their will better than Toranaga-sama, and there are no limits to achieving victory. Towards the end of our journey, even his allies aren’t safe from his strategy. If anything, they are the strategy. He uses our other main character, Blackthorne, to drive a wedge between the council, which is led by his opposition, Ishido. Blackthorne’s seething hatred for the Portuguese as a protestant drives a wedge between the catholic members and the secular members of the council. The death of Toranaga’s son, as odd as it sounds, allows him time to formulate his final plan to take the shogunate. The council offers him a customary mourning period in which he can’t be captured, and he takes full advantage of the time he’s given.
These are the coincidental sacrifices. He doesn’t instruct their happenings, they simply fall into his lap. However, in a shocking twist, it would be those closest to him that he would be willing to sacrifice to achieve the title of shogun. He and his second in command, Hiromatsu, stage a conflict between them. Toranaga pretends as if he is giving up and stages a meeting where everyone must plead their loyalty to him, and forfeit as well. Of course, they all protest, Hiromatsu going so far as to state he will commit seppuku unless Toranaga changes his mind. But Toranaga refuses and Hiromatsu commits seppuku, asking his son to second him. It isn’t until the following scene when Toranaga cries in front of Mariko that we realize as the audience, that the entire thing was staged and Hiromatsu committed the ultimate sacrifice to not only convince his enemies but his men that he was truly going to give up. It’s one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the show but it leads to one of his men, Yabushige, betraying him to secretly side with Ishido. An event that had to coincide with his final sacrifice.
Mariko’s death was the most gut-wrenching of them all. In episode 9, after a battle with Ishido’s samurai who refuses to let her leave Osaka, she proclaims she is unable to fulfill her Lord’s duties and will commit seppuku at sunset. And she gets close to doing so. We see her dressed in white, ready to make the cut with Blackthorne seconding her as a romantic gesture, but before she gets the chance to act, Ishido charges in and permits her to leave.
For a moment, as the audience we think this beloved character we’ve grown so attached to is safe. We feel as if we can breathe again, but then our world is ripped into chaos once more. Yabushige, in his alliance with Ishido, sends shinobi or ninjas to kill Mariko in her chambers. But they are caught off guard by Blackthorne’s presence, allowing the two to momentarily escape. They join Yabushige, unbeknownst to his betrayal of Toranaga, and hide in a storage room together. The shinobi track them down, setting explosives on the door, and Mariko takes it as her chance to sacrifice her life for a greater cause. With her body guarding the door, it explodes.
She committed the ultimate sacrifice for her lord. Before her death, her protest at the capital called attention and uproar among the citizens being held captive in Osaka. It also caused her best friend, the mother of the heir to the Taiko, or former head of Japan, to turn her army on Ishido. All of this was a calculation made by Toranaga to achieve victory and win the title of Shogun.
In the final scene, Toranaga sits and talks to Yabushige before he commits seppuku for his betrayal. Yabushige questions his character, calling him a hypocrite, which isn’t entirely wrong. Becoming shogun would defy his promise to the Taiko to look after the heir. His moves throughout the show can definitely be analyzed as completely self-serving and a betrayal of his own duties.
Toranaga isn’t completely infallible. I would never call him a hero. He’s deceptive, manipulative, and kind of psychopathic in his methods to gain power. He’s not necessarily a good person. Ieyasu, the figure based on Toranaga and the first Shogun of the Edo period, although hailed in Japan as a hero, was definitely not. He brought strict Confucianist rule to Japan, which restricted the lives of women and the lower class. His decision to close down the country could be critiqued as immigration was completely blocked and Japanese citizens were trapped inside. A decision that certainly contributed to Japan’s current insular attitude and restrictive immigration policies.
Toranaga’s blatant character flaws aren’t necessarily a bad thing though. I don’t necessarily agree with him morally on every calculation he makes throughout the season but on a pure character writing basis, his flaws give him depth. They make him feel like a real, fleshed-out person that wasn’t just simply made for our entertainment.
In our final moments with the show, we are rewarded with this view of the future. We see the hills of the countryside as Ishido’s army is defeated before the battle even begins. He tells us his plan to move the capital to Edo or present-day Tokyo. He always hated Osaka. We then return to reality, vindicated as the war has now been won. Yabushige digs the blade into his abdomen, grimacing. Toranaga swiftly slices the traitor’s neck, ending our story.
Has Crimson Sky Arrived?
We are in a moment where questions of fate and tradition are more prevalent than ever before. Some figures are trying actively to restore the worst parts of tradition–ideas and institutions we’ve already fought and won the battle over. Others are trying to create new traditions, ones that require the wielding of their destiny and the power of our collective strength.
Looking specifically at Japan, this is a country famous for holding on to its past for good and for bad. A lot of the traditions and social conditioning of politeness, even if a performance, I fond over and wish we possessed. They demonstrate a basic understanding of consideration and how that can positively impact laws and living conditions–something we in the Western world desperately need. In other ways, their stagnation politically and refusal to cross certain societal markers or even start the conversation should be addressed. Lack of queer rights, unlivable wages, and a political party in charge since the end of WWII that cares more about order than prosperity.
Applying these themes in a broader context to the West or America, the situation from where I’m looking is worse. I don’t live in Japan so I can’t analyze their socio-political landscape with the same depth. But I know exactly where a country like America is heading. No question about it. Our current administration is led by a party that is continuously trying to pull us back to the past and a society that is too desensitized to weaponize its fate. Our propensity to fund and facilitate violence globally no matter the party demonstrates this too. We are constantly repeating history. Whether it be Palestine, Vietnam, or the Trial of Tears, nobody is more collectively stuck in their ways than us – we are that personified.
As we enter a new Trump era, as we sit amid a genocide, as we dwell in an economic present developed for the past full of nearly 20 years of the same minimum wage, the same system of slavery through the prison system, the same healthcare that doesn’t help anyone–as we watch this empire fall, it feels as if we are in the midst of Toranaga’s fight. His brother has just betrayed him, his stupid son split his head on a rock–this fight seems impossible. This story is a perfect allegory to what we are all globally facing in the present: a seemingly impossible battle to restore peace to an anarchic land. But if Toranaga has taught us anything, it’s that we must be willing and ready to fight for that vision.
