Shogun (novel)
Shōgun is the first novel in James Clavell's Asian Saga.
It is set in feudal Japan somewhere around the year 1600 and gives a highly fictionalized account of the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu to the Shogunate, seen through the eyes of an English sailor.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
John Blackthorne (given the nickname Anjin , meaning pilot, by the Japanese since they couldn't pronounce his name), pilot and acting captain of the Dutch trading ship Erasmus, is shipwrecked on the coast of Japan. He enters the service of Toranaga, a powerful feudal warlord who rules over the Kanto plain, the site of modern-day Tokyo, and falls in love with Mariko, a convert to Christianity who's torn between her new religion and her native culture, which rejects Christianity.
Despite an inhospitable welcome, Blackthorne slowly gains an understanding of the Japanese people and their culture, and eventually learns to deeply respect it. The Japanese also grow to respect the 'barbarian' and he is eventually granted the status of samurai.
The novel has been adapted as a movie, a television mini-series, and an Infocom computer game.
Key to characters
These characters in Shogun are based on historical figures:
See also
