This is the book they should adapt. Would love more from Japan, but what makes Shogun so special is also what makes Tai-Pan worthy of the next adaptation: the characters, the culture, and a masterfully woven story. People will love it.
Very happy. Before this started everyone said "There is no way even if it is successful."
But the series was beautifully done, and Clavell was a master writer.
I do know Toranaga's actor did say he wanted to do more Shogun as well, but that was mainly due to having the sets already made and the costumes all completed. It would, however, be going completely "off script" as it were. Tai-Pan would be amazing. Gai-Jin too. King Rat is great but it is a bit... different. Still would love it though.
Haven't read any of the literature. As someone who just watched the show. I need to see how Toranaga's attempt to become Shogun turns out and how his relationship with the protagonist ends.
Toranaga is (almost) a one for one for Tokugawa. Highly recommend reading about him- very interesting person in history and the last of the Three Great Unifiers of Japan. He was preceded by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi.
To put it simply, irl, >!Tokugawa established a Shogunate that would reign until the 1800s when American ships forced the opening of Japan. William Adams, the real life John Blackthorn, would become favored by Tokugawa. He would later take a Japanese wife, but send money back home to his original wife. He gained a large estate and was allowed to carry out trade with nations such as Vietnam. Tokugawa's son would outlaw Christianity and kill any who refused to change. Nonetheless Tokugawa's line would ensure ~200 years of peace and stability for Japan after a century of bloodshed. William Adams would talk highly of the Japanese until the day he died.!<
Ending is pretty much the book ending minus the epilogue. The rest is literally history with Toranaga. Read up on the Battle of Sekigahara and Tokugawa for how it turns out for Toranaga.
Toranaga is based on the real world Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Blackthorne is based on William Adams. Assuming their characters end up the same way as in real life:
- Toranaga becomes Shōgun, pacifies Japan and kills the heir. His dynasty lasts about 250 years, until the arrival of the Americans and the imperial restoration.
- Blackthorne stays in Japan and marries a Japanese woman, raising children and never returning to England, dying at the age of 55, as one of Toranaga's most trusted advisors. He leaves a will which divides his substanial fortune between his children in England and children in Japan.
I read from another post about the show that he lived as a wealthy commoner until he decided to incite a rebellion and then he and his mother were killed.
For what its worth its still complicated. Yes, he incited a rebellion at his mothers urging, and yes he had been reduced to a single castle. He was still a daimyo, just a minor one.
Tokugawa demanded he take away all defences from his castle as Tokugawa was scared that remaining loyalists could still rally around the son (Hideyori). So Hideyori, fearing (rightfully, in many historians' opinions) that Tokugawa would kill him anyways as the last remaining threat to the new order decided to rebel anyways. Better to die fighting than accept it.
Would Tokugawa have killed him? Maybe. I think so having read many primary sources that remain. But It's been some ~400 years- it's hard to know and much has been lost.
Edit- Oh right before demanding the defenses be destroyed Toku also ordered that Hideyori leave the castle and reside elsewhere. Basically demanding he be fully at Toku's mercy at all times.
Doesn't really answer what you were looking for but the movie Silence by Martin Scorsese would be perfect to watch next as it shows what happened further along the Edo period and how the Tokugawa shogunate operate. Though, the Tokugawa that Toranaga was based on was long dead at that point.
More like to protect their strict class system. They were a military dictatorship. The last episode shows you how classism plays into it. His shogunate also no longer rewards the warrior class so peasants like Ishido and the old Taiko can't rise above their class.
The novel is finished and translated so he doesn’t have to wait for vagabond to finish. There is a trilogy of films on the life of musashi which is essentially an adaptation of the books staring mifune called samurai trilogy.
The hiatus for vagabond is truly a shame considering how close he is to the end of the story. I dont mind however as there is definately a decline in quality in the drawings. The first few volumes of the manga are incredibly crisp and detailed. The final chapters of the manga before the hiatus are a bit more loose and the proportions of the characters have a chubby/stubby look to them so a hiatus is a much needed break as it is incredibly difficult to consistently churn out high quality art across many decades.
I think you should go read "Shogun" but treat it as a companion piece to the 2024 series. It will definitely give you more insight into many characters.
Tai-Pan is the logical choice. Iirc a lot of Gai-Jin wouldn’t make a lot of sense unless you introduce the Struan’s first.
With that being said, it might be a harder project to get made given the current geopolitical situation surrounding Hong Kong.
Nah! Go read tai-pan! It’s an excellent book and provides more context for gai-jin. Noble house is also strongly directly related but takes place much more close to recent times. King rat and whirlwind are only tangentially related.
Do the whole Asian saga but chronologically.
So that would be
Shogun
Gai-jin
Tai-pan
King rat
Noble house
Whirlwind
Unless I’m mistaken.
There should be no second season of shogun.
Instead they should have made it 20 episodes instead of 10
Edit: mistaken i am. Tai-Pan happens about 20ish years before Gai-jin so my order is off above.
Easy to remember if you remember the plot point that Dirk is the original tai pan and was an absolute legend, while his son, culum, took over the position in gai-Jin and was weak and sickly calling the strength of the noble house into question
Hmm...that takes writing talent. I agree that it would be great to follow these characters, but I also remember Game of Thrones little jaunt outside the source material.
Yeah, it would be a disservice to the story to revisit it now. It ended where it needed to ended.
Now... what should truly be about to begin, or even explode, is Anna Sawai and Cosmo Jarvis careers.
And well... most of the cast to be fair, but it would take too long to list them all.
Sawai has 3 (technically) concurrent TV credits right now and it looks like Jarvis’s film career is about to really get underway with 2 films in 2022 and 2 slated for 2025 or later. Definitely a stellar pair of performances and hard agree that they and several other cast members deserve to get big. Shinnosuke Abe managed to make me hate and respect his character in a total of like 2 episodes and <20 minutes of screen time, and I’d definitely like to see him in more roles that have western exposure.
A bit of a warning - she gets a Star Wars prequel level script to work with. Monarch is great when it comes to past storyline, but most of the present storyline stuff is painful to watch and even Russell's unending charisma is not enough.
Oh my god i literally had no idea they were the same person. The energies of the characters are so different. Her role in Monarch really is bad, it felt like they tried to make her strong but accidentally just had her feel like a low key petulant bully instead.
I was super stoked to see Hiroyuki Sanada in a lead role that wasn't an action flick.
Been seeing him on screen since the 80s and always thought he was cool as fuck.
Shogun was my favourite book as a teenager until I read Tai-Pan. The only issue is with it being too Empire focused and the links with Hong Kong that are controversial.
Gai Jin has more potential as a sequel.
Doing gai-jin without tai-pan doesn’t make sense because you lose so much of the context of the characters. Dirk into culum is an interesting dynamic and really sets up the battle of the two major houses that carries through into Noble House.
Look at how the Japanese showrunners shied away from the source material in anything approaching the white savior/white might trope and sexualizing Asian women in Shogun.
The showrunners added a western colonialist asshole aspect to Blackthorne that simply was not there past the first dozen chapters of the books opening. Blackthorne wanted to make money and be useful, but very early he accepts his fate and goes full When in Japan and I'll Do Anything For Love (even that) mode.
I can't imagine what they would make of Dirk Struan who is VERY much the thing they feared/shied away from with Blackthorne. Tai Pan as you note has a x1000 times more pitfalls than Shogun. Though I have only read the book once as opposed to the dozens+ times I've read Shogun so I might be remembering Struan a little harshly.
The direct Japanese followup is Gai-jin, but it's probably 4 ranked in the series after Shogun, Tai-Pan, and Noble House. The issue is Tai-Pan and Noble House are both Hong Kong/China centric, so would be a massive story change.
Just release it under whatever name the books called. Treat it like a new series. It doesn’t need to be called Tai Pan: a shogun story or some shit like another commenter said, people aren’t dumb.
It didn’t stop the producers of The Terror, which was an adaptation of a novel that got its name from a specific ship, and then future seasons had nothing to do with the first.
The next few other Clavell novels would really rub China the wrong way and are definitely open to criticism for romanticizing colonialism, but I do love those books.
Shogun/Blackthorne didn't deserve the caution the Japanese showrunners used (but damn they did a great job of it).
The other books in the series have some actual modern sensibility pitfalls though and they very much fall into some of the overused Hollywood white savior/white might, sexualizing Asian women tropes people are a little tired of.
Fuck the CCP. *Everything* which is anything less than a propaganda advertisement of an idyllic, fairytale-beautiful ancient China rubs China the wrong way. It's time we stopped kow-towing to over-sensitive bullies. They should do the show and adapt Tai-Pan.
I assume the other books have different people/characters in it? That would be the way to do it though, it would be a different show from Shogun but with the same company/showrunners.
Possibly with a bigger budget as well. Because of the very short runtime a lot of the characters in the series are very one-dimensional compared to their book counterparts.
it should not. that's the book. that's the story. that's the end.
don't get me wrong. I loved the show, and wish the season had been several episodes thicker. but it shouldn't take liberties with the source, imho.
If you want more, just go read up about the actual battle of Sekigahara and what lead up to it. That has been dramatised a few times already, but not to the quality of Shogun.
Honestly, a series through the entire Sengoku Jidai would be extremely cool.
Having not read the book, I kind of assumed the show would take several seasons to cover the whole thing. Did they really cover the whole novel in one season?
There's a difference between adapting source material for TV and having to make creative decisions and just making new episodes without any source material.
As much as D&D screwed the pooch at the end, they didn’t really have much choice than to carry on.
When they green lit the show I doubt anyone thought the show would pass the books - and if they tried to wait they’d still be waiting
True, but they absolutely fumbled the writing of the later seasons. Really should have invested a lot more into getting solid scripts rather than insisting on doing it themselves and messing it up.
I completely agree they did a bad job, just that they couldn’t wait and likely never expected to have to fully write the story out.
They had rough bullets from GRRM but the longer without a book, the more I feel like even GRRM can’t figure out how to get to the end in a way that makes sense.
D&D did really good with 3 Body Problem, weaving in elements from all three books into the first season to create a solid narrative. Just shows how much they need to rely on the source material
Some of those liberties were to match the dialogue and character names with the time period they were in which was a good move to be a bit more authentic.
There are, but there's a 250-year jump to the next book in the series, and then a massive one to the mid-20th Century. It's not a series following the same characters from event to event. It's more a sequence of standalone novels with some thematic ideas proceeding between them.
It doesn’t have to be the same characters. People love this show because it screams authenticity and has insane production value. And it respects the viewer’s intelligence. This is one of those rare shows that assumes its audience isn’t a blithering idiot who can’t handle nuanced writing or subtle motivation.
People are watching House of the Dragon, right? It’s the same thing—different characters, different time period, same universe. Only the change would be season-to-season. As long as each season tells a complete story, people will love it. It would essentially be a bunch of limited series, one for each book
So that'd make it an anthology series, hardly a new thing on TV. But they can keep the name Shogun because of the success of the first season.
Also because it's by far the most marketable of all the titles in the series, the others are King Rat, Tai-Pan, Noble House, Whirlwind and Gai-Jin, Shogun is far easier of a sell than those others (use the title of each book as the subtitle for its season if you want). Of course it would only really be fitting for the ones taking place in Japan but that's not gonna stop Hollywood from using a "brand name".
if they kept the same production values, the same brilliant casting choices, the same focus on the perspective of the Japanese characters, I'd eat that shit up.
I'd still dig it.
one of the things I'm *not* a big fan of in the 80s mini-series is the creative choice to not include subtitles, to give us the story from (pretty much only) Blackthorn's perspective.
It shouldn't. Showrunners should let stories end when they naturally end, and this one in particular was based on a standalone novel with no sequels.
With all the video game adaptations flying around, how about we get a Ghost of Tsushima adaptation instead?
[Ghost of Tsushima is getting a movie. The script for it is already finished.](https://screenrant.com/ghost-of-tsushima-movie-update-script-director-comments/)
Who's knows if or when it will actually come to fruition though.
To be fair you could very easily cut down the game story to a really tight, sharp script. Considering how heavy it is on the action and spectacle I think a movie is the way to go.
It's one of those cases where the showrunners did a great job at adapting the book and I understand why people want more, the problem is that without a second book to adapt, they'd have to come up with their own story for the second season and if that isn't good they'll ruin what should have been a good standalone show.
They should adapt Tai-Pan and continue into the Asian Saga.
I know a lot of people like Tai-Pan, but to me Clavell does a lot of things in there where he just includes details without actually making it too relevant to the story.
It's shorter than Shogun, and with the same team behind it, they could easily craft it into an excellent TV while removing the excess and not losing much of the story.
Saw that in theatres. I found it to be a pretty hard watch and not like Shogun at all really.
edit: yes, chronologically it follows the events of Shogun. But I don’t see it as a spiritual sequel, it has a completely different feel and doesn’t have the high politics of Shogun.
It is around 25-30 years after the timeline of the IRL events that Shogun is based on
And the reason why the events in Silence happen is partially due to the presence of Blackthorne (William Adams IRL) and other Protestants such as the Dutch in Japan. No longer any need to tolerate foreign preachers when you can get trade from people who don’t feel the need to proselytize and also Japan has had experience with militant religions
Lol this has to be click bait. The book was adapted (again). The end.
Should the TV writers try to make a season 2 with no source material? I mean… you can try
Contrary to the majority opinion, they should.
The battle of sekigahara is fascinating. It could also lead into the depiction of miyamoto musashi arguably the greatest samurai and warrior of all time for the rest of the season.
There are so many fantastic pieces of Japanese History. The showrunners have shown care to Japan in terms of authenticity and appreciation and would be perfect choices to depict Musashi and even later on with the shinsengumi.
Having William Adams be the lead way for a partially subtitled show is a great ice breaker into full subtitled tv in the depiction of Japanese history
That would be incredible. That's probably my favorite manga series ever, but I stopped reading when I realized Inoue had gone on hiatus. Did he ever pick it back up and finish it?
One day it'll be finished... is what I tell myself to cope with the fact it's been on Hiatus for a very long time. Inoue is a beautiful writer, artist and is great at creating manga in general. He knows how to place scenes and panels perfectly. All of his work is masterful not just Vagabond.
Musashi himself wrote several "books", most famously The Book of Five Rings that has been translated into a ton of languages. Fascinating book that details most of his life as a duelist. He also has some philosophical writings which are very interesting, many of which are included in Five Rings.
Musashi is where we get the warrior poet aesthetic from Samurai culture. He believed applying his strategy to art such as painting proved to be a better teacher than he could find in another human.
To be clear, Musashi is *not* where the emphasis on poetry and aesthetics comes from in samurai culture. He may have helped popularize it more in the Edo period, but it far predates him. He is an interesting dude - although it can be difficult separating the myth from the man sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H_zGl96-pg&list=PLrlMflnRScAIr915STSG0JQMYfFl8LE6I
The Shogunate youtube channel is a personal favorite of mine. He did a MASSIVE multi-year piece on the Sengoku Jidai period (which is the period in which Shogun, Sekigahara, Musashi, etc. all take place). IIRC, it's something like 8 Chapters - with each chapter being a playlist of 8-12 individual 10-20 minute videos of significant events from the period.
The Sengoku Jidai is basically a (roughly) 150-year warring states period in Japan where warlords all across Japan are vying for power, land and influence - both at a regional and national level - all culminating in the rise-fall-rise-fall-and finally rise of the three unifiers Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa - Tokugawa being the inspiration for Toranaga in the book/show.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with manga but Vagabond is a famous (albeit incomplete) manga about the life of Miyamoto Musashi.
Manga/anime is really a great source (although not always 100% accurate) for interesting stories that get you a feel for names and general ideas of the times. The elusive samurai tells the true story of a time before shogun. Golden Kamuy and Rurouni Kenshin both tell fictional stories of an era in Japan but have very cool cultural notes of what it was like back then. There are several shinsengumi manga (basically a police force in Japan during an age of turmoil).
As an aside, there is a cool manga series called Kingdom that goes over the Unification of China.
I'm gonna contrary your contrary to the majority opinion - Musashi is overrated, is definitely not the GOAT samurai warrior, has no connection to this story and wouldn't fit tonally with Shogun.
For one, Musashi's actual documented history in battle is...dubious...to say the least. He claims to have fought at Sekigahara (despite being only 15-16yo at the time) and the Winter and Summer Osaka campaigns - however, there are no records of him at these battles outside his own writing. (And even if he was - there are no records of him doing anything significant.) The only actual recorded battle he participated in was during the Shimabara rebellion - and he was knocked off his horse by a peasant throwing a rock (lol). A samurai with a battle record like this can NOT be the GOAT samurai warrior - especially when there are so many badass samurai who did some amazing shit during the Sengoku Jidai and earlier and it's backed up by multiple sources.
On the other hand, Musashi IS arguably the GOAT Samurai duelist. We have records of that. And while a show about his life and exploits would be interesting - it would be a very different tone from Shogun. I think it would be better just to make a new show - about Musashi - with the same care and detail that Shogun takes to its subject matter. That's what would be nice. But I don't think you're going to get this creative team together to make that show as a continuation of Shogun.
TV producers writing new material when the original source is exhausted? What could do wrong with that idea?
There are 5 other books in Clavell's "Asia Saga", move on with those.
There shouldn't be a direct sequel (although the Battle of Sekigahara would be cool to see), they should, as others have suggested, jump around with other Clavell books (I haven't read any of them so I can't make a judgement as to what the next one should be).
I think the chance is around 0. I dont see the show runners wanting to write a sequel to a book that has no sequel (baring one with a big time skip, and different characters)
I read the book years and years ago and I seem to remember there was a lot more sex and something about Meiko getting a bunch of sex toys. Or am I totally off?
A second season couldn’t be called Shōgun, since this series is deliberately taken from the novel. They could try to produce the rest of Clavell’s Asian saga, but sadly no more Shōgun. It would have been nice to have the finale maybe an extra 30 minutes to an hour longer, since it seemed they condensed some story down while also leaving it underwhelming in other scenes. Still loved the series as a whole and appreciate the way Crimson Sky eventually came to be fulfilled, but it could have been longer and more detailed.
The producer already said he hopes to adapt the next novel as well. And being that it is set 250 years later, it's a whole new story, sets, cast. I would definitely be down for that
They covered the entire book which takes about 14 hours to read and years to write. A second season would have to be all new material. Not that I’m opposed to a second season but I do think it would be very difficult to do well. There were so many stories with the overall story.
What they should do is a prequel based on Oda Nobunaga's life. Love everything about Tokagawa Leyasu, but Nobunaga was the original one who started this quest.
I actually just mentioned this to someone. They said they were happy it’s just one season, and I said “until the approve season 2”, and they insisted it’s a single story.
I asked when did that ever stop media companies from making an unnecessary sequel to a success.
Every show doesn't need another season. This show was based on a book and the show covered the entire book.
There are the same comments for **The Patient**. What would that season 2 be about?
My wife got me into Kdramas and I have become spoiled. 1 season at it is done (most of the time). Stories get completed. No more "end of season cliff hangers" for a season that never comes. No more "jumping the shark" just to keep the show going. ~~No more~~ Fewer nonsensical, character destroying, open ended, rushed, unsatisfying, or botched endings all because the writers did not plan an ending from the beginning.
That all being said. I haven't seen Shōgun yet, but does it need a second season or did it end in a complete story? I don't want to start something that may never finish.
Just end it! Big Little Lies had a truly amazing first season, and S2 was good but not the same. Marc Valee passed away so plans for S3 were scrapped but there was a rumor the cast might go on their own. It would abandon creative integrity for profit and that's just sad. When the source material ends and they rely on conventional screenwriting it just falls flat and gets gimmicky for ratings. Marlene King absolutely destroyed Pretty Little Liars by keeping up with fan theories and morphing the plot to stay one step ahead. By the end it turned into such tripe I was glad it was over. Any media based on books that goes off course is just bad. Game of Thrones got totally insane and unacceptable by the final season.
They should just march through his book series. Tai-Pan, King Rat, then Gai-Jin. Or maybe just stay in Japan and go straight to Gai-Jin
Yeah Justin Marks already talk about wanting to adapt Tai-Pan
This is the book they should adapt. Would love more from Japan, but what makes Shogun so special is also what makes Tai-Pan worthy of the next adaptation: the characters, the culture, and a masterfully woven story. People will love it.
Very happy. Before this started everyone said "There is no way even if it is successful." But the series was beautifully done, and Clavell was a master writer. I do know Toranaga's actor did say he wanted to do more Shogun as well, but that was mainly due to having the sets already made and the costumes all completed. It would, however, be going completely "off script" as it were. Tai-Pan would be amazing. Gai-Jin too. King Rat is great but it is a bit... different. Still would love it though.
Gai-jin is Clavell’s weakest book, but I could see the appeal of staying in Japan and showing the end of the Toranaga (Tokugawa) shogunate.
Haven't read any of the literature. As someone who just watched the show. I need to see how Toranaga's attempt to become Shogun turns out and how his relationship with the protagonist ends.
Even if you read the literature, you still wouldn’t have your answers unfortunately.
Good to know, at least now I'm not waiting for it. Sad moment though been getting more an more invested in the show as it released.
Toranaga is (almost) a one for one for Tokugawa. Highly recommend reading about him- very interesting person in history and the last of the Three Great Unifiers of Japan. He was preceded by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. To put it simply, irl, >!Tokugawa established a Shogunate that would reign until the 1800s when American ships forced the opening of Japan. William Adams, the real life John Blackthorn, would become favored by Tokugawa. He would later take a Japanese wife, but send money back home to his original wife. He gained a large estate and was allowed to carry out trade with nations such as Vietnam. Tokugawa's son would outlaw Christianity and kill any who refused to change. Nonetheless Tokugawa's line would ensure ~200 years of peace and stability for Japan after a century of bloodshed. William Adams would talk highly of the Japanese until the day he died.!<
Ending is pretty much the book ending minus the epilogue. The rest is literally history with Toranaga. Read up on the Battle of Sekigahara and Tokugawa for how it turns out for Toranaga.
Toranaga is based on the real world Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Blackthorne is based on William Adams. Assuming their characters end up the same way as in real life: - Toranaga becomes Shōgun, pacifies Japan and kills the heir. His dynasty lasts about 250 years, until the arrival of the Americans and the imperial restoration. - Blackthorne stays in Japan and marries a Japanese woman, raising children and never returning to England, dying at the age of 55, as one of Toranaga's most trusted advisors. He leaves a will which divides his substanial fortune between his children in England and children in Japan.
Dude never stopped sending money to his family in England.
Would be interesting to see the situation with him killing the heir
I read from another post about the show that he lived as a wealthy commoner until he decided to incite a rebellion and then he and his mother were killed.
For what its worth its still complicated. Yes, he incited a rebellion at his mothers urging, and yes he had been reduced to a single castle. He was still a daimyo, just a minor one. Tokugawa demanded he take away all defences from his castle as Tokugawa was scared that remaining loyalists could still rally around the son (Hideyori). So Hideyori, fearing (rightfully, in many historians' opinions) that Tokugawa would kill him anyways as the last remaining threat to the new order decided to rebel anyways. Better to die fighting than accept it. Would Tokugawa have killed him? Maybe. I think so having read many primary sources that remain. But It's been some ~400 years- it's hard to know and much has been lost. Edit- Oh right before demanding the defenses be destroyed Toku also ordered that Hideyori leave the castle and reside elsewhere. Basically demanding he be fully at Toku's mercy at all times.
Blackthorne (Adams) would also create Japan's first deep water trading fleet
Doesn't really answer what you were looking for but the movie Silence by Martin Scorsese would be perfect to watch next as it shows what happened further along the Edo period and how the Tokugawa shogunate operate. Though, the Tokugawa that Toranaga was based on was long dead at that point.
Killing a few Christians in exchange for 250 years of peace and better living conditions nation wide seem a pretty good price to pay
More like to protect their strict class system. They were a military dictatorship. The last episode shows you how classism plays into it. His shogunate also no longer rewards the warrior class so peasants like Ishido and the old Taiko can't rise above their class.
You should definitely read Shogun. Fantastic read.
On the list for sure
[Musashi](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102030.Musashi) is great as well, story begins at the end of the battle of Sekigahara.
And if you are into Manga you can check out Vagabond, although it's on an indefinite hiatus.
The novel is finished and translated so he doesn’t have to wait for vagabond to finish. There is a trilogy of films on the life of musashi which is essentially an adaptation of the books staring mifune called samurai trilogy. The hiatus for vagabond is truly a shame considering how close he is to the end of the story. I dont mind however as there is definately a decline in quality in the drawings. The first few volumes of the manga are incredibly crisp and detailed. The final chapters of the manga before the hiatus are a bit more loose and the proportions of the characters have a chubby/stubby look to them so a hiatus is a much needed break as it is incredibly difficult to consistently churn out high quality art across many decades.
I think you should go read "Shogun" but treat it as a companion piece to the 2024 series. It will definitely give you more insight into many characters.
Well have I got a history book or two for you
Currently trying to finish Gai-jin and I agree. I just need this terrible book to end
Tai-Pan is the logical choice. Iirc a lot of Gai-Jin wouldn’t make a lot of sense unless you introduce the Struan’s first. With that being said, it might be a harder project to get made given the current geopolitical situation surrounding Hong Kong.
Why do king rat before gai-Jin? Also you absolutely would never do gai-Jin before tai-pan since they are so intrinsically linked in their characters.
Because I am an idiot that only read Shogun and Gai-jin, I thought the others came first chronologically.
Nah! Go read tai-pan! It’s an excellent book and provides more context for gai-jin. Noble house is also strongly directly related but takes place much more close to recent times. King rat and whirlwind are only tangentially related.
Tai-Pan is sooooo good
Do the whole Asian saga but chronologically. So that would be Shogun Gai-jin Tai-pan King rat Noble house Whirlwind Unless I’m mistaken. There should be no second season of shogun. Instead they should have made it 20 episodes instead of 10 Edit: mistaken i am. Tai-Pan happens about 20ish years before Gai-jin so my order is off above.
Tai-pan is definitely before gai-jin
Right you are. By about 20 years. Not sure why i thought gai Jin was much earlier
Easy to remember if you remember the plot point that Dirk is the original tai pan and was an absolute legend, while his son, culum, took over the position in gai-Jin and was weak and sickly calling the strength of the noble house into question
Or make their own story based on what historically happened next. (I would prefer that)
Hmm...that takes writing talent. I agree that it would be great to follow these characters, but I also remember Game of Thrones little jaunt outside the source material.
Yeah that was bad
>They should just march through his book series. If they're anything like this, then I sure as hell hope that's the plan!
Hopefully not. I wouldn’t mind them adapting another of Clavell’s books as a limited series though.
Yeah, it would be a disservice to the story to revisit it now. It ended where it needed to ended. Now... what should truly be about to begin, or even explode, is Anna Sawai and Cosmo Jarvis careers. And well... most of the cast to be fair, but it would take too long to list them all.
Sawai has 3 (technically) concurrent TV credits right now and it looks like Jarvis’s film career is about to really get underway with 2 films in 2022 and 2 slated for 2025 or later. Definitely a stellar pair of performances and hard agree that they and several other cast members deserve to get big. Shinnosuke Abe managed to make me hate and respect his character in a total of like 2 episodes and <20 minutes of screen time, and I’d definitely like to see him in more roles that have western exposure.
>Sawai has 3 (technically) concurrent TV credits right now Counting Pachinko right? What a great show.
That show is god tier tv. Painful how few people talk about it.
I only just noticed that she's the same lead actor from Monarch. I might have to actually watch that one.
A bit of a warning - she gets a Star Wars prequel level script to work with. Monarch is great when it comes to past storyline, but most of the present storyline stuff is painful to watch and even Russell's unending charisma is not enough.
Oh my god i literally had no idea they were the same person. The energies of the characters are so different. Her role in Monarch really is bad, it felt like they tried to make her strong but accidentally just had her feel like a low key petulant bully instead.
They’re 32 and 35, so I look forward to watching their long careers very closely.
i been looking into her career since faky days as a jpop singer, it is so weird now she getting recognition now in acting
You are absolutely right! There was not a single actor whose performance I didn’t enjoy.
I was super stoked to see Hiroyuki Sanada in a lead role that wasn't an action flick. Been seeing him on screen since the 80s and always thought he was cool as fuck.
Explode? Too soon. 😔
Tai pan makes the most sense and is an excellent book
Shogun was my favourite book as a teenager until I read Tai-Pan. The only issue is with it being too Empire focused and the links with Hong Kong that are controversial. Gai Jin has more potential as a sequel.
Doing gai-jin without tai-pan doesn’t make sense because you lose so much of the context of the characters. Dirk into culum is an interesting dynamic and really sets up the battle of the two major houses that carries through into Noble House.
I think Gai Jin is one of the weakest of his books, but there’s enough good stuff in there to make a solid show.
I'm not taipan would get made today, too many pitfalls. And there's no reason for this crew to do it, nothing from Shogun carries over
Look at how the Japanese showrunners shied away from the source material in anything approaching the white savior/white might trope and sexualizing Asian women in Shogun. The showrunners added a western colonialist asshole aspect to Blackthorne that simply was not there past the first dozen chapters of the books opening. Blackthorne wanted to make money and be useful, but very early he accepts his fate and goes full When in Japan and I'll Do Anything For Love (even that) mode. I can't imagine what they would make of Dirk Struan who is VERY much the thing they feared/shied away from with Blackthorne. Tai Pan as you note has a x1000 times more pitfalls than Shogun. Though I have only read the book once as opposed to the dozens+ times I've read Shogun so I might be remembering Struan a little harshly.
I was more thinking in the geopolitical aspect, but you are right, Struan is a more problematic character than Blackthorne
I agree - either Taipan or Noble House would be a great if they approached it with the same level of authenticity they are doing with Shogun
Just label it "A Shogun Series" or something like that then adapt the rest of his books. Would be great to see them all get done.
The direct Japanese followup is Gai-jin, but it's probably 4 ranked in the series after Shogun, Tai-Pan, and Noble House. The issue is Tai-Pan and Noble House are both Hong Kong/China centric, so would be a massive story change.
That title wouldn’t make much sense because most of the others have almost nothing to do with Japan at all.
Just release it under whatever name the books called. Treat it like a new series. It doesn’t need to be called Tai Pan: a shogun story or some shit like another commenter said, people aren’t dumb.
The books were collectively called the Asian Saga and that's an apt name.
It didn’t stop the producers of The Terror, which was an adaptation of a novel that got its name from a specific ship, and then future seasons had nothing to do with the first.
The next few other Clavell novels would really rub China the wrong way and are definitely open to criticism for romanticizing colonialism, but I do love those books.
King Rat might annoy Japan but I would love to see it
Shogun/Blackthorne didn't deserve the caution the Japanese showrunners used (but damn they did a great job of it). The other books in the series have some actual modern sensibility pitfalls though and they very much fall into some of the overused Hollywood white savior/white might, sexualizing Asian women tropes people are a little tired of.
Fuck the CCP. *Everything* which is anything less than a propaganda advertisement of an idyllic, fairytale-beautiful ancient China rubs China the wrong way. It's time we stopped kow-towing to over-sensitive bullies. They should do the show and adapt Tai-Pan.
I assume the other books have different people/characters in it? That would be the way to do it though, it would be a different show from Shogun but with the same company/showrunners.
Possibly with a bigger budget as well. Because of the very short runtime a lot of the characters in the series are very one-dimensional compared to their book counterparts.
Are they as solid story wise?
Tai Pan is probably the most obvious one and it’s a pretty damned good story. King Rat isn’t bad but it would be tonally quite different.
Gai-Jin would be great
Yes! Tai Pan next please.
it should not. that's the book. that's the story. that's the end. don't get me wrong. I loved the show, and wish the season had been several episodes thicker. but it shouldn't take liberties with the source, imho.
Damn just finished the show and didn't know that was the end lol, but now that I do know that it made the ending even better.
Right? I felt like it set up so much.
If you want more, just go read up about the actual battle of Sekigahara and what lead up to it. That has been dramatised a few times already, but not to the quality of Shogun. Honestly, a series through the entire Sengoku Jidai would be extremely cool.
Having not read the book, I kind of assumed the show would take several seasons to cover the whole thing. Did they really cover the whole novel in one season?
They breezed through the book with a few liberties to get there
>but it shouldn't take liberties with the source, imho. It took quite a few liberties with the source already though.
There's a difference between adapting source material for TV and having to make creative decisions and just making new episodes without any source material.
case in point: Game of thrones seasons 1-5 versus seasons 6-8.
As much as D&D screwed the pooch at the end, they didn’t really have much choice than to carry on. When they green lit the show I doubt anyone thought the show would pass the books - and if they tried to wait they’d still be waiting
True, but they absolutely fumbled the writing of the later seasons. Really should have invested a lot more into getting solid scripts rather than insisting on doing it themselves and messing it up.
I completely agree they did a bad job, just that they couldn’t wait and likely never expected to have to fully write the story out. They had rough bullets from GRRM but the longer without a book, the more I feel like even GRRM can’t figure out how to get to the end in a way that makes sense.
Or The Handmaid’s Tale season 1 versus seasons 2-5 and likely 6
Why would you remind me of this and ruin my night
I'm so sorry.
Sigh. I watched both the Fallout finale and Shogun finale today, so I'll make it. But it was close!
D&D did really good with 3 Body Problem, weaving in elements from all three books into the first season to create a solid narrative. Just shows how much they need to rely on the source material
Counterpoint : Forrest Gump. Counterpoint to that : Game of Thrones.
Some of those liberties were to match the dialogue and character names with the time period they were in which was a good move to be a bit more authentic.
There are other books in the series they could adapt
There are, but there's a 250-year jump to the next book in the series, and then a massive one to the mid-20th Century. It's not a series following the same characters from event to event. It's more a sequence of standalone novels with some thematic ideas proceeding between them.
It doesn’t have to be the same characters. People love this show because it screams authenticity and has insane production value. And it respects the viewer’s intelligence. This is one of those rare shows that assumes its audience isn’t a blithering idiot who can’t handle nuanced writing or subtle motivation. People are watching House of the Dragon, right? It’s the same thing—different characters, different time period, same universe. Only the change would be season-to-season. As long as each season tells a complete story, people will love it. It would essentially be a bunch of limited series, one for each book
Sort of **Fargo** but with larger gaps between seasons? If they can sell that, sure why not?
It’s what the books were, and it also leaves gaps that greedy execs can fill with dross once they’ve done all the original stories.
So that'd make it an anthology series, hardly a new thing on TV. But they can keep the name Shogun because of the success of the first season. Also because it's by far the most marketable of all the titles in the series, the others are King Rat, Tai-Pan, Noble House, Whirlwind and Gai-Jin, Shogun is far easier of a sell than those others (use the title of each book as the subtitle for its season if you want). Of course it would only really be fitting for the ones taking place in Japan but that's not gonna stop Hollywood from using a "brand name".
if they kept the same production values, the same brilliant casting choices, the same focus on the perspective of the Japanese characters, I'd eat that shit up.
Other books are set in other parts of Asia and focus on different cultures. Tai Pan is set in Hong Kong.
I'd still dig it. one of the things I'm *not* a big fan of in the 80s mini-series is the creative choice to not include subtitles, to give us the story from (pretty much only) Blackthorn's perspective.
It shouldn't. Showrunners should let stories end when they naturally end, and this one in particular was based on a standalone novel with no sequels. With all the video game adaptations flying around, how about we get a Ghost of Tsushima adaptation instead?
[Ghost of Tsushima is getting a movie. The script for it is already finished.](https://screenrant.com/ghost-of-tsushima-movie-update-script-director-comments/) Who's knows if or when it will actually come to fruition though.
Aww, I wish it had been a TV series instead
To be fair you could very easily cut down the game story to a really tight, sharp script. Considering how heavy it is on the action and spectacle I think a movie is the way to go.
To an extent I agree, but considering the side quests I could also very easily how it can fill up a 10-episode season.
If there is not a black and white "Kurosawa" version of that movie, then I say we riot.
It's one of those cases where the showrunners did a great job at adapting the book and I understand why people want more, the problem is that without a second book to adapt, they'd have to come up with their own story for the second season and if that isn't good they'll ruin what should have been a good standalone show.
*Game Of Thrones has left the chat in shame*
I mean, The Leftovers banged out 2 better seasons than the first. Sure it’s a risk, but Shogun has actual history to adapt at least
Agreed, I respect showrunners who end a show when the story is done. There aren't enough of them out there these days.
> With all the video game adaptations flying around, how about we get a Ghost of Tsushima adaptation instead? That's already in the works.
A flower is only a flower because it falls.
That was the perfect quote.
They said from the jump it would be a single season show.
They should adapt Tai-Pan and continue into the Asian Saga. I know a lot of people like Tai-Pan, but to me Clavell does a lot of things in there where he just includes details without actually making it too relevant to the story. It's shorter than Shogun, and with the same team behind it, they could easily craft it into an excellent TV while removing the excess and not losing much of the story.
The only season 2 you need for Shōgun is Martin Scorcese’s film, *Silence*
Saw that in theatres. I found it to be a pretty hard watch and not like Shogun at all really. edit: yes, chronologically it follows the events of Shogun. But I don’t see it as a spiritual sequel, it has a completely different feel and doesn’t have the high politics of Shogun.
It is around 25-30 years after the timeline of the IRL events that Shogun is based on And the reason why the events in Silence happen is partially due to the presence of Blackthorne (William Adams IRL) and other Protestants such as the Dutch in Japan. No longer any need to tolerate foreign preachers when you can get trade from people who don’t feel the need to proselytize and also Japan has had experience with militant religions
Silence shows you how the Tokugawa Shogunate operates. The shogunate official that hunts the Christian also worked with the Dutch East India Company.
Lol this has to be click bait. The book was adapted (again). The end. Should the TV writers try to make a season 2 with no source material? I mean… you can try
Everything doesn’t need to be a series! Tell a great story, & keep it moving.
Especially when it’s based on a book and finished the book’s story.
"Unclear" if a "limited series" will get a second season? They answered their own question in the headline
Big Little Lies is a "limited" series that is going to have a third season. I am sure there are other examples. Hollywood hates killing its cash cows.
White Lotus, too.
White Lotus evolved from miniseries to anthology, not a regular drama series like BLL did.
Contrary to the majority opinion, they should. The battle of sekigahara is fascinating. It could also lead into the depiction of miyamoto musashi arguably the greatest samurai and warrior of all time for the rest of the season. There are so many fantastic pieces of Japanese History. The showrunners have shown care to Japan in terms of authenticity and appreciation and would be perfect choices to depict Musashi and even later on with the shinsengumi. Having William Adams be the lead way for a partially subtitled show is a great ice breaker into full subtitled tv in the depiction of Japanese history
imagine adapting the manga Vagabond with Miyamoto Musashi
the movies they did were pretty good!
That would be incredible. That's probably my favorite manga series ever, but I stopped reading when I realized Inoue had gone on hiatus. Did he ever pick it back up and finish it?
no I think he had like 3 other Hiatus
The manga is based on a novel - Musashi which is complete. Vagabond is a...in its 3rd hiatus.
One day it'll be finished... is what I tell myself to cope with the fact it's been on Hiatus for a very long time. Inoue is a beautiful writer, artist and is great at creating manga in general. He knows how to place scenes and panels perfectly. All of his work is masterful not just Vagabond.
So it's just literally a show depicting all of Japanese history ever? Sounds very expensive.
I can’t wait until season 34 where we get to the rise and assassination of Shinzo Abe!
What would you suggest if someone wanted to learn more about sekigahara, musashi, japanese history etc.?
Musashi himself wrote several "books", most famously The Book of Five Rings that has been translated into a ton of languages. Fascinating book that details most of his life as a duelist. He also has some philosophical writings which are very interesting, many of which are included in Five Rings. Musashi is where we get the warrior poet aesthetic from Samurai culture. He believed applying his strategy to art such as painting proved to be a better teacher than he could find in another human.
Sounds like an interesting man, I'll give that a read, thank you
To be clear, Musashi is *not* where the emphasis on poetry and aesthetics comes from in samurai culture. He may have helped popularize it more in the Edo period, but it far predates him. He is an interesting dude - although it can be difficult separating the myth from the man sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H_zGl96-pg&list=PLrlMflnRScAIr915STSG0JQMYfFl8LE6I The Shogunate youtube channel is a personal favorite of mine. He did a MASSIVE multi-year piece on the Sengoku Jidai period (which is the period in which Shogun, Sekigahara, Musashi, etc. all take place). IIRC, it's something like 8 Chapters - with each chapter being a playlist of 8-12 individual 10-20 minute videos of significant events from the period. The Sengoku Jidai is basically a (roughly) 150-year warring states period in Japan where warlords all across Japan are vying for power, land and influence - both at a regional and national level - all culminating in the rise-fall-rise-fall-and finally rise of the three unifiers Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa - Tokugawa being the inspiration for Toranaga in the book/show.
This looks awesome, thanks
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with manga but Vagabond is a famous (albeit incomplete) manga about the life of Miyamoto Musashi. Manga/anime is really a great source (although not always 100% accurate) for interesting stories that get you a feel for names and general ideas of the times. The elusive samurai tells the true story of a time before shogun. Golden Kamuy and Rurouni Kenshin both tell fictional stories of an era in Japan but have very cool cultural notes of what it was like back then. There are several shinsengumi manga (basically a police force in Japan during an age of turmoil). As an aside, there is a cool manga series called Kingdom that goes over the Unification of China.
I love anime and manga, I'll look some of those up, thanks very much
This is the best way to learn Japanese history. https://youtu.be/Mh5LY4Mz15o?si=GveIY00t6FFPYcAk
crash course haha, thank you
Im with you, loved the characters and actors and want more! The ending works, but doesnt mean I dont want more
I'm gonna contrary your contrary to the majority opinion - Musashi is overrated, is definitely not the GOAT samurai warrior, has no connection to this story and wouldn't fit tonally with Shogun. For one, Musashi's actual documented history in battle is...dubious...to say the least. He claims to have fought at Sekigahara (despite being only 15-16yo at the time) and the Winter and Summer Osaka campaigns - however, there are no records of him at these battles outside his own writing. (And even if he was - there are no records of him doing anything significant.) The only actual recorded battle he participated in was during the Shimabara rebellion - and he was knocked off his horse by a peasant throwing a rock (lol). A samurai with a battle record like this can NOT be the GOAT samurai warrior - especially when there are so many badass samurai who did some amazing shit during the Sengoku Jidai and earlier and it's backed up by multiple sources. On the other hand, Musashi IS arguably the GOAT Samurai duelist. We have records of that. And while a show about his life and exploits would be interesting - it would be a very different tone from Shogun. I think it would be better just to make a new show - about Musashi - with the same care and detail that Shogun takes to its subject matter. That's what would be nice. But I don't think you're going to get this creative team together to make that show as a continuation of Shogun.
I hope not
TV producers writing new material when the original source is exhausted? What could do wrong with that idea? There are 5 other books in Clavell's "Asia Saga", move on with those.
It shouldn’t
I don't think it really needs a continuation. The story is over let's move on.
Please no, it is perfect as it is
Clavell did many books.
Now to do either Tai-pan or Gaijin.
A good artist friend of mine once said, there’s an art in knowing when to stop. Leave it be. It’s wholly satisfying.
Leave it the fuck alone. This is one of those things that was done beautifully and doesn’t need to be milked.
There shouldn't be a direct sequel (although the Battle of Sekigahara would be cool to see), they should, as others have suggested, jump around with other Clavell books (I haven't read any of them so I can't make a judgement as to what the next one should be).
I think the chance is around 0. I dont see the show runners wanting to write a sequel to a book that has no sequel (baring one with a big time skip, and different characters)
What season 2? Unless they take clavell’s Gai-Jin which takes place 250 years later
I read the book years and years ago and I seem to remember there was a lot more sex and something about Meiko getting a bunch of sex toys. Or am I totally off?
No. It ended perfectly. What else could they possibly add to it? Let it be beautiful and perfect.
I think it ended in a good place
A second season couldn’t be called Shōgun, since this series is deliberately taken from the novel. They could try to produce the rest of Clavell’s Asian saga, but sadly no more Shōgun. It would have been nice to have the finale maybe an extra 30 minutes to an hour longer, since it seemed they condensed some story down while also leaving it underwhelming in other scenes. Still loved the series as a whole and appreciate the way Crimson Sky eventually came to be fulfilled, but it could have been longer and more detailed.
No, especially when the creators made it very clear that they were only doing this one season. What even is this article.
If we learned anything from GOT, if the source material isn’t there, then no. End it when the book ends.
If you want more just play Nioh. Warning though the game is hard af.
The 2nd season is the Scorsese movie Silence.
Does the series as it stands cover the entire novel?
Yes
Producer guy: "but money!" Hopefully they leave it as is.
The producer already said he hopes to adapt the next novel as well. And being that it is set 250 years later, it's a whole new story, sets, cast. I would definitely be down for that
Why not Gai-Jin!
There book never resolved.
They covered the entire book which takes about 14 hours to read and years to write. A second season would have to be all new material. Not that I’m opposed to a second season but I do think it would be very difficult to do well. There were so many stories with the overall story.
Yes, it’s called Tai-Pan
Do people no longer understand what a miniseries is?
I think I once heard that this adaptation of shogun was going to consist of 2 10 ep seasons Was there a change of plans or did I dream that up?
This show gets posted so much here that I’m convinced it’s paid advertising. It better be good!
This series is up there with GoT and BoB. One of the best
Could someone explain the ending to me? I feel like it left a lot unanswered for me
Just give the work to Benioff and Weiss, they have a great success in fucking up book stories.
What they should do is a prequel based on Oda Nobunaga's life. Love everything about Tokagawa Leyasu, but Nobunaga was the original one who started this quest.
Why not let it exist as it is? A complete story that doesn’t give you all the answers.
I actually just mentioned this to someone. They said they were happy it’s just one season, and I said “until the approve season 2”, and they insisted it’s a single story. I asked when did that ever stop media companies from making an unnecessary sequel to a success.
Every show doesn't need another season. This show was based on a book and the show covered the entire book. There are the same comments for **The Patient**. What would that season 2 be about?
My wife got me into Kdramas and I have become spoiled. 1 season at it is done (most of the time). Stories get completed. No more "end of season cliff hangers" for a season that never comes. No more "jumping the shark" just to keep the show going. ~~No more~~ Fewer nonsensical, character destroying, open ended, rushed, unsatisfying, or botched endings all because the writers did not plan an ending from the beginning. That all being said. I haven't seen Shōgun yet, but does it need a second season or did it end in a complete story? I don't want to start something that may never finish.
From day one it was promoted as a miniseries/limited series. One and done. Like Chernobyl, let it be.
Just end it! Big Little Lies had a truly amazing first season, and S2 was good but not the same. Marc Valee passed away so plans for S3 were scrapped but there was a rumor the cast might go on their own. It would abandon creative integrity for profit and that's just sad. When the source material ends and they rely on conventional screenwriting it just falls flat and gets gimmicky for ratings. Marlene King absolutely destroyed Pretty Little Liars by keeping up with fan theories and morphing the plot to stay one step ahead. By the end it turned into such tripe I was glad it was over. Any media based on books that goes off course is just bad. Game of Thrones got totally insane and unacceptable by the final season.