James Clavell
1975
An
Alexandrine Couplet About Shogun
A Dutch sailor is shipwrecked in Feudal
Japan
He hob-nobs there for years—and learns
that Europe sucks
This review could start and end with
this:
Wow, this book is pretty offensive.
But since I don’t say anything in 6
words I could say in 600, I’ll go into detail.
I suppose it wouldn’t be quite so
offensive it was written A) By a Japanese person, B) By a historian, or C) By a
Japanese historian. Sadly, it’s written by none of these, but rather by James
Clavell.
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James Clavell is probably not entitled
to write
“A Novel of Japan”
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Shogun is so over
the top you need to play an mp3 of stereotype wind instruments and wave a Rising
Sun flag before reading about the plot. It’s a rule.
This’ll do.
You've pressed Play? Then I'll continue: A Dutch sailor crash
lands in Japan, where only the Spanish and Portuguese have been. The Dutch
don’t know anything about Japan, the Japanese don’t know anything about
non-Catholic Europe, and the Spanish mostly want the Dutch guy dead or gone. He
spends the rest of the novel being used as a pawn between political powers
throughout Japan, becoming a samurai, and realizing that Europe sucks and he’d
much rather get massages, bang geishas, and wave his sword around than return
to his wife in Holland.
Because you can always trust the back
cover of a novel, you know that this is all “MARVELOUSLY ENGROSSING” AND
“IRRESISTIBLE” (their caps, not mine), that it “grips the reader”, and that it
isn’t only "something you read—you live it.”
Despite its insistence to the contrary, Shogun
is basically Clavell’s masturbatory fantasy about Feudal Japan. Though it
assures us it’s an inspiring epic about humanity (or something) it mostly
inspired countless vaguely offensive stories of Westerners hanging out in
whatever year they believe Feudal Japan took place.
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Who remembers Heroes? Anyone? Does anyone remember Heroes?
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I mean yeah, the book is based on a true
story and many of the interesting cultural details are likely accurate. But
this novel was, despite Clavell’s insistence, never about history or culture.
It’s Japanophile/history slash fic, replete with hari-kari, bathing and massage scenes, archery and sword waving,
geishas, sake, a tea ceremony that goes on for pages and pages, and the
wholesale subjugation of the lesser classes. If you open it to any random page you’ll
find dime store writing masked by one of two things: how awesome Feudal Japan
was, or political intrigue. And I’m going to prove it:
Here’re
2 quotes from a page I randomly opened to right now:
. . . Each
tiny house was set on elegant pilings with circling verandas and four steps up,
made from the finest woods, everything polished and gleaming. Each was
separate, fifty paces from its neighbors and surrounded by manicured gardens
within the greater garden within the high bamboo wall. There were streamlets,
and lily ponds and waterfalls and blossom trees in abundance with day perfumes
and night perfumes, sweet smelling and luxurious. Clean stone footpaths,
delicately roofed, led to the central baths, cold and hot and very hot, fed by
natural springs. Multicolored lanterns and happy servants and maids and never a
cross word to disturb the tree bells and bubbling water and singing birds in
their aviaries . . .
. . . “Ah, how
kind you are to me, Anjin-san. First bathe, then the evening food and lots of
sake.”
“Good. Very
good.”
These 2 passages are from a page I actually selected randomly
just now. If you’re not such a fan of florid and heavy handed descriptions
and monosyllabic dialogue then you don’t like Ayn Rand then you wish I
would’ve opened to the next page. On the very next page . . . and this is true
. . . the female lead pulls out “an
assortment of pillow devices” (read: sex toys) and the couple pick a cock ring
to use that night. They spend most of a page putting it on, and after they
“pillow” she goes to sleep “instantly, totally spent” and the guy thinks “I
know I’ve truly satisfied her. For once I’m absolutely sure.” Never mind that
they’re both married, since she doesn’t love her husband and his wife is in
Holland, so it doesn’t count, right? Isn’t there some rule about different zip
codes or sailors having one in every port? Those are rules, right? Right James
Clavell? Right?
Believe me, it’s not even a spoiler to tell you that the sailor’s wife never sees him again.
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What A Dick.
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In case I got off track, remember I am
not making any of these scenes up, and again, random page!
Oh, did I mention this book is 1211
pages long? That puts it in the top 50 longest books ever published.
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That deserves fireworks.
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Really, the only reason Shogun was noticed, read, and became
popular is because it’s easy to write political intrigue and discuss cultural
details if you have the fortitude to write 1200 pages. Clavell did it on a
typewriter, and that is impressive, but it doesn’t make it high quality.
Despite everything, it’s not
uninteresting if you can speed read, happen to commute four hours a day by bus,
and have the wherewithal to distinguish truth from fiction. It created or
reinforced many of the West’s pre-conceived notions about classical Japan, so
that might be interesting to international studies majors. I don’t know. The
book’s heavy enough you could chain it to a prisoner’s leg to keep them from
escaping and, as discussed, is often offensive, so I can’t honestly recommend
it unless you have a specific interest. It’s much faster to just watch the 1980
miniseries version, which does a great job covering what’s in the book. Mostly because it's really fucking long.
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9 hours, 7 minutes long.
Really.
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Save the fireworks for after you finish
it. You’ll deserve them.
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Okay, full disclosure: I actually really
like the movie. It’s ridiculous and spectacular and I’ve convinced several
people to watch it. All but one of them was mad at me, but that’s neither here
nor there.
If you’re pressed for time you can just
watch the Tom Cruise version.
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.
. . because it’s pretty much the same movie.
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