Artistic License History / Shōgun (2024)

James Clavell's Shōgun is a longstanding example of how a remarkably-faithful and respectful presentation of Japanese history can still skew significantly from the facts. It's to the point that an entire academic book had to be produced to sift from fact and fiction during the airing of the original 1980 miniseries. That said, 2024's Shōgun (being helmed by a large number of Japanese collaborators and creatives) manages to make it more authentic toward current Japanese historiography, while playing further with the original text.

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Historical Personalities

• The main political conflict between the Council of Regents is between Toranaga (the stand-in for Tokugawa Ieyasu) and the other regents led by Ishido (the stand-in for Ishida Mitsunari). This is a heavily-streamlined version of the more contentious politics of the Toyotomi regime in Real Life:
  • For starters, there's 2 groups of five officials: the Council of Elders (a council of executives comprised of Ieyasu, Maeda Toshiie, Uesugi Kagekatsu, Mori Terumoto and Ukita Hideie) and the Commissioners (a group of essentially bureaucrats/secretaries working the day-to-day admin—comprised of Mitsunari, Asano Nagamasa, Maeda Gen'i, Mashita Nagamori and Natsuka Masaie). Mitsunari's relatively "lower" position was precisely the source of his negative reputation (i.e. meddling "above his station"). The 2 groups were lumped together, with Ieyasu/Toranaga and Maeda/Sugiyama remaining, and Mitsunari/Ishido becoming a full Regent.
    • Maeda Toshiie, despite his desire to serve as a stalwart protector of Hideyori, was just too old and ill, only managing to survive a year before dying of natural causes. His fictional counterpart Sugiyama is instead purged together with his family.
  • There were no overt Christians in the Council (with Maeda Toshiie at best being sympathetic to Christians—something which the stand-in Sugiyama is not shown to be). The Christian Regents shown were Kiyama (a stand-in Composite Character for historical Christian daimyo Konishi Yukinaga and Dom Justo Takayama Ukon, based on his name) and Ohno (a stand-in for Otani Yoshitsugu, who isn't even recorded to be Christian at all). Konishi and Otani were Mitsunari's co-commanders in the climactic Battle of Sekigahara against Ieyasu. It makes sense in-story to array their stand-ins against Toranaga as full Regents themselves earlier on.
• The lead female character, Toda Mariko, is loosely based on Hosokawa Gracia (1563 – 1600) as per her background (daughter in law to an elderly samurai, a Japanese Christian, and daughter of a rebel named Akechi). However, as has been the case with Clavell and as noted by her actress Anna Sawai, much has changed for her even to be said to be the same character—especially in terms of her burgeoning affair with Blackthorne—what with Gracia and the real-life William Adams never even having met. The circumstances of their deaths also differ; while there is some debate over the specifics of Gracia's death (namely whether or not it was her own idea/desire) the sources agree that she was killed by one of her household to prevent Ishida from taking her hostage or dishonoring her, and after setting the mansion where they had been housed on fire they all subsequently killed themselves.
• Mariko claims her father, Akechi Jinsai, assassinated Kuroda out of his tyranny and was forced into Seppuku after being forced to commit Pater Familicide. The Real Life basis for this, understandably, is grayer: the Real Life Akechi Mitsuhide did cause Oda Nobunaga's death, but primarily as an assault with his forces against Nobunaga's outnumbered entourage (the ending of which was Nobunaga and his retainers died amidst the flames of the Honno-ji). Motivations range from ambition, to the similar Tyrannicide as Jinsai's, his devout Buddhism clashing with the soon-to-be Demon King Nobunaga, lingering loyalty to the deposed Ashikaga Shogunate or all of the above. Furthermore, Mitsuhide died after being defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the Battle of Yamazaki in 1582—allegedly by a bandit who killed him as he fled—somewhat an Undignified Death, but less cruel than Jinsai's.
• While Lady Ochiba's real life counterpart, Yodo-no-kata, did have a lot of influence as the mother of Hideyori (Yaechiyo in the show), the only surviving son of the Taikō, she wasn't powerful or influential enough for the various Councils to answer to her; in fact, she mostly sat out the Sekigahara Campaign and sent messages to Tokugawa asking him to quell the crisis. This is likely the basis for her choice to ultimately withhold her (and the Heir's) support to Ishido in the leadup to Sekigahara—tacitly giving Toranaga the road to victory—as her payback for Ishido's actions leading to Mariko's death. She had also become a nun by this point.
  • The official podcast acknowledges Clavell's change from Yodo-no-kata's status as merely the niece of Oda Nobunaga (who killed her father Azai Nagamasa before forcibly being her guardian) into Ochiba/Ruri being Kuroda's daughter. This simplifies her motivation as to why she would consent to being a consort to the Taiko (as it keeps her safe and preserves her elevated position). At the same time, the show grants greater sympathy into her situation (acknowledging her victimhood even as she grows into the primary Lady Macbeth of the story).

Political Dynamics

• The rulership of Japan, as it is portrayed in-show, has been necessarily simplified and mostly left All There in the Manual. Admittedly, the backgrounder video from FX Networks's YouTube channel is surprisingly accurate to contemporary historiography—referring to how Imperial rule ultimately gave way to samurai rule over centuries of warfare and institutional weakening. However, there's not much detail given in-series as to how and why the Taiko (the stand-in for Toyotomi Hideyoshi) gained authority, why Kuroda (the stand-in for Oda Nobunaga) even managed to become a tyrant, and why Toranaga's claim to Shogunal authority via blood carries weight. The most we get is the dying Taiko admitting that his rule is primarily a stopgap in the absence of a bona fide Shogunate.
  • The short screen time given to the dictator Kuroda Nobuhisa involves him beheading Buddhist monks while Jinsai and Toranaga helplessly watch. Much of what caused the Demon King Nobunaga trope to persist is Oda Nobunaga purging the Buddhist temples, albeit Real Life is worse, as he usually did it via Kill It with Fire.
• The portrayal of the Catholic Church and the Evil Jesuit's influence is also quite oversized compared to historical reality.
  • Although the Treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza did technically (from the Catholic Church's perspective) give Portugal the claim Blackthorne describes, Portugal wasn't interested in taking over Japan — before anything else, they lacked the resources to do so — as much as maintaining exclusive trading rights with the country, which up until the 1590s had included a pretty robust slave trade; Toyotomi Hideyoshi despised the fact that so many Japanese were being sold en masse into slavery, and it turned him against the Jesuits and Christian evangelization. As mentioned below, it was ultimately Spanish attempts at getting into Japan (facilitated by the Iberian Union)—helped by the Spanish colony in the Philippines—that made it more plausible.
    • Though in the finale, Blackthorne admits to Toranaga that "I fed you shit" on their first meeting, suggesting he may have been well aware Portugal had no intention of taking over Japan, and was content with their lucrative trade monopoly.
  • Christian influence-peddling within the regimes of Oda Nobunaga and Hideyoshi never actually got to the extent that they hold them hostage — it was in fact the other way around. The city of Nagasaki (which was the major trading hub between Portugal and Japan, whereas in the show it's Osaka) had been formally granted to the Jesuits in 1580 by Ōmura Sumitada, the first Japanese lord to convert to Christianity, but this ended in 1586 with Hideyoshi not only ordering them to return the city to the control of the Ōmura clan (although Portugese ships were still allowed to trade there) but also announcing his first anti-Christian edict.
  • The in-story threat of a previous Christian rebellion suppressed by the Taiko and the influence-wrangling of the Jesuits is essentially a compression of a) the much-later Shimabara Rebellion (which was triggered by the oppression of Christians by the Tokugawa shogunate); and b) the San Felipe incident (wherein the belligerent missionaries that triggered the suspicions of the samurai class were not even Portuguese Jesuits, but Spanish Franciscans). It makes it galling to see the one sympathetic Franciscan becoming a prisoner due to the Evil Jesuit cabal — when historical records suggests it was Franciscans misbehaving that ruined Jesuit operations and the Catholic mission in general.
  • Similarly, as noted on Japanese Christian, it was Protestant Dutch rumors of Catholic Spain using conversions as a stepping stone to colonizing Japan that helped convince the government to oppose the religion. Clavell's (and by extension, the show's) inaccuracy in this vein can therefore be read as in-universe consistent with the Protagonist-Centered Morality of Blackthorne being a Protestant.

Weapons, Armor and Costumes

• Blackthorne is shown wielding a pair of British Pattern 1716 Sea Service flintlock pistols, which didn't come into use until 1716. Predecessors to flintlock firearms did exist during the period of the show (notably the German snaplock, the Spanish miquelet, and the more widespread snaphance, which was also produced in the British Isles). However, these devices tend to produce massive sparks which may have been cumbersome to Dual Wield as Blackthorne does. Also, considering Blackthorne's jingoistic loyalty to his queen (Elizabeth I), it might be out of character for him to buy foreign—this being a character-driven form of Acceptable Breaks from Reality.

Cultural Customs

• The portrayal of Seppuku in-show gravitates to both a close enough attempt at accuracy and this page's trope. Mizoguchi's seppuku is portrayed well-enough in showing his guts spilling out (and mercifully cutting away just before we see young Toranaga allegedly botch it by slashing at his neck nine times). However, in the case of old Hiromatsu's kanshi, we are shown him going through it while his second beheads him, his head bouncing off and splashing blood on the floor. As noted in Seppuku's page text:

  Contrary to popular belief, the kaishakunin isn't actually supposed to decapitate a person during seppuku; doing so often led to the severed head bouncing off the samurai's body in a very undignified fashion, which defeats the whole purpose of seppuku (and also causes huge cleanup issues, because corpses were considered unclean and any bit of ground the head touched would have to be dug up and replaced). Instead, a proper kaishakunin cut is to leave the head attached to the body by a bit of skin and neck muscle...

  • It should be noted, nonetheless, that historical records of seppuku do exist where the cut ultimately leads to a full decapitation, so this is most likely chosen to highlight the dramatic tension of the Sacrificial Lion dying and the fact that his distraught son was the one who had to behead him.

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