There’s two ways to look at Shogun’s Samurai: it’s either a clever reinvention of history for the sake of drama, or a shameless excursion into total fantasy. The fact that most Western audiences won’t know the way history’s being so drastically mixed around (shilling for mutilated) is a boon, not a hindrance: they’ll see it through relatively unclouded eyes.
I knew enough about the history behind the events in Shogun’s Samurai to be amused by the changes, but I’m not close enough to them to be outraged. Perhaps that makes me the ideal audience for it: I liked it fine for what it was—stylish but also intelligent pulp fantasy—without grousing about what it should have been.
Samurai is based on a popular novel that drew on the intrigues behind the throne around the time of the third Tokugawa Shogun (the mid-1600s). Japan was finally unified, and the Shogun, the military ruler of the country, had to be someone willing to do anything to keep the peace. Iemitsu (Hiroki Matsukata), the underdog for the throne, is nobody’s idea of a ruler: he stammers and has an ugly wine-colored birthmark covering most of his face (shades of I, Claudius). Small wonder he’s out of favor with even his own father. The royal fencing instructor, Yagyū Tajima (Kinnosuke Nakamura, a samurai-movie regular), decides to take matters into his own hands: he has Iemitsu’s father poisoned, then moves to have the misfit installed on the throne.
