8 Reasons Why You Have to Watch the Emmy Champ ‘Shogun’ Now

The biggest Emmy winner in history stars TV’s top new talent Hiroyuki Sanada, 63, and it’s the greatest show on TV

Tim Appelo,

AARP

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Published July 26, 2024

/ Updated September 16, 2024

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga.

Katie Yu/FX

The original 1980 miniseries Shōgun made TV history, and so did the artistically superior 2024 Shōgun, a ripping epic inspired by the battle of the first Shogun to unite Japan for the first time in the 1600s. Shōgun's record-breaking 18 Emmy wins include the big ones: best drama series, best drama actress (Anna Sawai), best drama actor (Hiroyuki Sanada, 63, as the shogun) and best drama directing (Frederick E.O. Toye). The FX/Hulu miniseries is mostly in Japanese, with English subtitles and a mostly Japanese cast. Its plot is complicated, like Game of Thrones, only smarter and a bit easier to follow. All the major characters are based on real people at a crucial historic moment — when an English sailor stranded and imprisoned in Japan helped a great warlord outwit his formidable rivals. Unlike much of what’s on streaming TV, you have to pay attention to get the most out of it. But quit multitasking, close that laptop and feast your eyes on Shōgun!

Here’s why you should start streaming it right away.

Richard Chamberlain, Yoko Shimada, Toshiro Mifune in the original 'Shogun.'

Alamy

**1. It’s even better than the 1980 miniseries Shōgun, which you should also watch now.**

The original 1980 miniseries adaptation of James Clavell’s novel — about a sailor, Blackthorne (Richard Chamberlain, now 90), who landed in Japan in 1600; met Japan’s wily, upright Lord Toranaga (Toshiro Mifune); and became the first Englishman to become a samurai — hit TV like a hurricane. With 120 million viewers, it was the second-most-popular miniseries ever after Roots. It earned 14 Emmy nominations and helped popularize the sushi craze. And after a long absence, it’s back on TV and still delectably watchable today.

2. The 2024 version is more prestigious than the 1980 version.

TV audiences are fragmented now, and subtitles scared lots of viewers away, so only 9 million watched the 2024 Shōgun debut — though that’s more than The Bear or Fargo, and it may be the secretive Disney’s top streaming series. It earned a stunning 25 Emmy nominations, more than the 1980 show and more than any other 2024 show (The Bear got 23.) Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave Shōgun a near-perfect 99 percent score.

Cosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne.

Katie Yu/FX

**3. The new Shōgun is better because it’s not just about the English sailor.**

The 1980 Shōgun is told from the point of view of Chamberlain’s Blackthorne, but in the 2024 Shōgun, Blackthorne (lively Englishman Cosmo Jarvis of Persuasion and Peaky Blinders) shares the dramatic spotlight with Hiroyuki Sanada’s Toranaga. It honors the immensely important Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who united Japan after endless wars, and makes the Japan of the 17th century (actually filmed in British Columbia) and its people seem real. In 1980’s Shōgun, when people speak Japanese, it’s not translated, so they don’t come off as full characters. The new Shōgun gets you deep inside their heads and hearts, even when they’re urgently trying to hide it.

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga.

Katie Yu/FX

4. Toshiro Mifune was a legend, but Hiroyuki Sanada is the Tom Cruise of Japan.

Sanada, 63, started out as a protégé of iconic director Sonny Chiba (a crucial inspiration for Quentin Tarantino). He costarred with future Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, 61, in kung-fu cinema, then became a box office star in a wide variety of roles and a huge celebrity in Japan. He’s still got his action chops: He did Shōgun’s exciting fights, horse riding and stunts himself. But his Toranaga also has Shakespearean depth. He played Hamlet in Japan, and when he performed in King Lear at London’s Royal Shakespeare Company in 1999–2000, the RSC’s PR rep told Englishmen, “Remember, he’s a big star; think Tom Cruise.”

Sanada costarred with Cruise in 2003’s The Last Samurai, and director Ed Zwick invited him to Hollywood to help make the movie authentic. Since then, he’s costarred in smash hits (Lost, Avengers: Endgame, The Wolverine, John Wick: Chapter 4). Still, he’s never had a moment like Shōgun, nor a drama he did more to shape, as an actor and producer. No grownup star has broken out more dramatically this year, except possibly Thelma’s June Squibb, 94.

5. Sanada was the shogun of the production, making sure every last detail was authentic.

Mifune was so concerned with respecting his nation’s history and tradition that he turned down the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, which was inspired by the 1958 samurai epic The Hidden Fortress, starring Mifune. Hollywood was notorious for silly, inauthentic caricatures of Japan, so he said no. Sanada was a producer on Shōgun and took extraordinary measures to ensure that it was scrupulously authentic and respectful of Japanese culture, employing over 300 Japanese expert advisers for everything from makeup to props to period hairstyles to combat to the gestures actors used. The show was largely shot in British Columbia, but it sure looks like Japan.

Also, as a tribute to Mifune’s integrity, Shōgun cocreator-showrunner Justin Marks (Top Gun: Maverick) and cocreator Rachel Kondo gave Sanada’s Toranaga a brown costume, like that of Alec Guinness’s Jedi master. “It was our little tribute back to Mifune almost being cast as Obi-Wan,” Marks told The Decider. “We were trying to kind of give Toranaga a little bit of that color scheme.”

**6. The author was a Hollywood legend, for Shōgun and other classic hits.**

Clavell — whose daughter Michaela Clavell executive produced the 2024 miniseries — parlayed his experience in a World War II Japanese POW camp into the book and film King Rat, and wrote and/or directed iconic films, including The Great Escape, The Fly and To Sir, With Love. Then he poured deep research into the saga of five warrior lords battling for absolute power and the title of shogun. The 1,000-plus-page novel sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.

Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko.

Katie Yu/FX

**7. *Shō**gun’*s women get more respect in 2024 than they did in 1980.**

J-pop singer and rising actress Anna Sawai gives quietly overpowering gravitas to the character of Toda Mariko, daughter of a Toranaga ally and translator for Blackthorne. She’s brilliantly intelligent and fiercely proud of her family’s thousand-year history as samurai. In the face of swordsmen threatening certain death, she’s braver than all of them put together.

More important, she’s an integral part of the drama. Marks told Time magazine that all three of Shōgun’s main players are captive: “Toranaga is a political prisoner [of the rival warlords]; Mariko is a prisoner of gender, faith, marriage, her past; and then Blackthorne is a literal prisoner.”

Pictured (L-R): Takehiro Hira as Ishido Kazunari, Tadanobu Asano as Kashigi Yabushige.

Katie Yu/FX

8. It’s the perfect show to watch in America right now.

We live in a time of strife, no less so than Lord Toranaga — or the real-life Tokugawa Ieyasu. “Because we live in an era of constant conflict,” Sanada told Nikkei Asia, “I want the world to know about Ieyasu, the hero who brought an end to a warring era.” After Ieyasu’s triumph, Japan was peaceful and unified for 250 years.

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Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at Entertainment Weekly, and a critic and writer for The Hollywood Reporter, People, MTV, The Village Voice and LA Weekly.