A stranger in a strange land. Stranger than he ever dreamed of.
Japan, sometime in the 17th century. Only Europeans that have set foot there are the Spanish and the Portuguese, who guard the secrets of the lucrative trade routes zealously. Trade worth of millions goes through their ships from China to Japan, as while Japan is dependent on Chinese silk, China doesn't trade with them, as the nations have been enemies for decades. This was the golden opportunity for the Europeans to make their mark. And this was the opportunity for the Catholic Church to sink its tendrils around a new flock of people to convert, with the Jesuits working their magic among the regular people and the Samurais and nobles of Japan.
This all is about to change, as Dutch trade ship Erasmus, piloted by English John Blackthorne, who has been trying to circumnavigate the Earth as the 1st English pilot. Guided by stolen routers, through hostile waters and storms, Erasmus crashes on the Izu, with most of its crew dead.
The arrival of these new strangers is not left unnoticed. Soon enough, a great daimyō Toranaga finds good use for Blackthorne, as he proves to be a capable, brave and smart. Toranaga first meets Blackthorne during an interview translated to him by a Jesuit father Alvito, and the animosity between the representatives of two different sects of Christianity is not left unnoticed by him. This is perhaps the moment Toranaga begins to spin the possibilities on how to use Blackthorne, who is now called Anjin as the Japanese don't know how to pronounce his real name, to his own advantage.
One of the uses for Anjin is found in the warfare. European warfare with troops armed with muskets and cannons. As it happens, Erasmus was carrying quite a few muskets and this opens up a brand new opportunity for Toranaga to get himself Samurai armed with European weapons. He also realizes that Japan, like every island nation, would greatly benefit from its own navy.
John Blackthorne is not the hero of Shōgun. He is one of the main characters, but the story itself is more about Japan and Toranaga than it is about Blackthorne (or the real historical pilot William Adams he is based on). He's more of a vessel that allows us to enter the 17th Century Japan and experience it from a similar outsider experience, thrown into a world that is so vastly different from anything European. Unlike the Portuguese or the Spanish, no Englishman had set their foot in Japan and the whole country was before it more like a fable to the English, filled with gold and silver in the dreams of the sailors.
Shōgun follows its large cast intensely. A good bulk is about Anjin trying to learn Japanese and of Japanese. A bit by bit he begins to embrace the customs and the people of the land, appreciating their insistence on cleanliness, which was not as prominent with Europeans of the era. For him, Shōgun is a travelogue mixed with political intrigue, for the Japanese characters, Shōgun is more about the political intrigue. Alliances, betrayals, preparing for a war.
Even after Toranaga makes Anjin a Samurai and a hatamoto, he doesn't suddenly turn into a katana fielding swordmaster. Action is mostly left for other people, as he never manages to learn how to properly use katanas during Shōgun. Even in action Blackthorne is an observer, an outsider, who has a hard time grasping his head around the extreme notions of honor that are stressed everywhere he goes.
Shōgun is a novel written in meticulous detail. Almost obsessively, Clavell goes through even some of the minor characters and their parts and thoughts in the larger scope of the story. Even when something might seem odd at first, he ends up explaining it at some point, the answer often being Toranaga's extremely long game. But this amount of exposition is so well written, so precise, that it's hard not to end up caring about the people, even those who have animosity between each other, as you understand where they are coming from.
You actually might call it a flaw of the story, the way Toranaga comes out as such a superhuman strategist. While on one or two occasions he has to place some trust on luck, he is just so good at being ahead of everyone else, that his strategic mind seems more like a superpower than a genuine human trait. He is a mastermind, for whom people around him are mere pawns in a game he's dominating so hard, that his opponents are blinded by it.
Shōgun is an astonishing achievement. It's a fish out of the water story, that manages to surpass its rather simple premises by turning it into a deep exploration of a cultural clash between vastly different people. It mixes fact and fiction into a delicious concoction, that makes you turn page after page just to see where it all leads. It's one of those books you will remember for a long time after reading it. It isn't the easiest book to read thanks to its many twists and turns and minor characters to keep track of, but it is a rewarding book, that lingers in your mind.
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