https://winteriscoming.net/2018/08/07/game-thrones-director-adapt-shogun-fx/
This is from the link above (can't wait to watch it):
According to Entertainment Weekly, FX is adapting the "Shōgun" mini-series, and they’ve tapped "Game of Thrones" director Tim Van Patten to helm multiple episodes.
Van Patten directed the first and second-ever episodes of Thrones, so he didn’t stick around Westeros long, but he made his time count .... Novelist and screenwriter Ronan Bennett will write the FX’s adaptation .... Here’s the network’s official synopsis:
[Shōgun] charts the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds and a mysterious female samurai: John Blackthorne, a risk-taking English sailor who ends up shipwrecked in Japan, a land whose unfamiliar culture will ultimately redefine him; Lord Toranaga, a shrewd, powerful daimyo, at odds with his own dangerous, political rivals; and Lady Mariko, a woman with invaluable skills but dishonorable family ties, who must prove her value and allegiance.
Hollywood has come under fire in recent years for its depiction of Asian characters, and a story about about Japanese culture that revolves around a white guy may not be the best way to course correct .... however, the new adaptation will focus on a diversity of viewpoints, rather than zeroing in on Blackthorne’s perspective, as the 1980 adaptation did
The story will be told from multiple points of view .... there’s an opportunity to tell the story of two cultures in a way that wasn’t done before...
Saturday, April 20, 2019
The Life of William Adams turned into a novel and TV mini-series
Just a couple stops to the north of the large/central "Yokosuka Chuo" Keihin Kyuko train station are "Hemi" and "Anjin-Zuka" stations .... both are located in the fief which William Adams was granted by the Tokugawa Shogun .... The scenic hills which loom above the stations have hiking trails, and some lead to the park where Adams and his wife are memorialized by large gravestones .... apparently, the locally-famous grave site was sort of lost to outside history/attention until being rediscovered by an Englishman from the foreigners settlement in Yokohama, during the late-19th Century...
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"Shōgun" is an American television miniseries based on the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell, who also was the executive producer of the miniseries. It was first broadcast in the United States on NBC over five nights between September 15 and September 19, 1980. To date, it is the only American television production to be filmed on location entirely in Japan, with additional sound stage filming also taking place in Japan at the Toho studio.
The miniseries is loosely based on the adventures of English navigator William Adams, who journeyed to Japan in 1600 and rose to high rank in the service of the shōgun. The miniseries follows fictional Englishman John Blackthorne's transforming experiences and political intrigues in feudal Japan in the early 17th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shōgun_(1980_miniseries)
= = = = =
"Shōgun" is an American television miniseries based on the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell, who also was the executive producer of the miniseries. It was first broadcast in the United States on NBC over five nights between September 15 and September 19, 1980. To date, it is the only American television production to be filmed on location entirely in Japan, with additional sound stage filming also taking place in Japan at the Toho studio.
The miniseries is loosely based on the adventures of English navigator William Adams, who journeyed to Japan in 1600 and rose to high rank in the service of the shōgun. The miniseries follows fictional Englishman John Blackthorne's transforming experiences and political intrigues in feudal Japan in the early 17th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shōgun_(1980_miniseries)
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
William Adams --- Miura Anjin --- An Incredible Story
If you want to learn about the amazing real-life saga from the early=1600s, about "三浦按針 Miura Pilot" or "Blue-eyed Samurai William Adams", here is the first thing you should read (published by Yokosuka City Government):
Link to PDF: Sans titre (clvaw-cdnwnd.com)
More below...
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William Adams, known in Japan as Miura Anjin ('Pilot'), is thought to be the first Englishman to have set foot in Japan.
Born in Gillingham, Kent in 1564 Adams started work as an apprentice in a shipyard in Limehouse, London at age twelve. After twelve years of study of astronomy, navigation and shipbuilding, Adams joined the Royal Navy under the command of Sir Francis Drake and saw service against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Aged thirty four, Adams joined a Dutch expedition of five ships to the East Indies as a pilot. After various adventures off the coasts of Africa and South America, only one ship of the original flotilla, the Liefde, with a crew of just twenty, starving men arrived off the coast of Kyushu.
Resisting pressure from Portuguese Jesuits, who wanted the men put to death as pirates, the surviving crew were imprisoned in Osaka Castle on the orders of Ieyasu Tokugawa and the Japanese authorities.
Summoned to meet Ieyasu, Adams impressed the future Shogun with his knowledge of ships and navigation and was released from confinement.
In 1604, Ieyasu ordered Adams to build Japan's first western-style vessel and over time the two men's relationship strengthened as Adams built more ships and lead trading expeditions, the so-called "Red Seal" voyages, on behalf of the Shogun to Thailand and Vietnam in South East Asia. Eventually Adams was granted the title of "hatamoto" -- a samurai in direct service of the Shogun -- and granted lands and servants in Hemi, near present-day Yokosuka.
Although married in England, Adams took a Japanese wife, possibly called Oyuki, the daughter of a highway official, with whom he had two children - Joseph and Susanna. Adams also had a consort in Nagasaki with whom he had another child born after his death, as during the latter part of his life Adams became estranged from his Japanese wife.
Adams was influential as a translator in the setting up of Dutch and English trading stations in Hirado and Nagasaki, though the English 'factory' at Hirado (1613-1623) proved unprofitable and was abandoned.
Adams was unable to establish a good relationship with the English representative in Japan, John Saris, who disliked Adams for his adoption of a Japanese lifestyle and habits. Adams advised against Hirado (a small island off Nagasaki) as a permanent trading post and favored Uraga (Yokosuka) much nearer to Edo (present-day Tokyo). Adams refused to return to England with Saris, due to his dislike of the man.
Adams died in Hirado aged 55 and his tomb and memorial stone look out over the sea. A stone from his wife's grave in the UK was brought over so the two could be united in some way.
Adams was largely forgotten in Japan after his death and is mostly known to Westerners nowadays due to his depiction in James Clavell's best-selling novel Shogun, and then the TV mini-series of the same name.
https://www.japanvisitor.com/japanese-culture/famous-japanese/william-adams
Take a closer look at Yokosuka's scenic Tsuka-yama Park, which is the site of a memorial gravesite for the "Miura Anjin" .... The Amazing Story of Williams Adams.
= = = = =
William Adams, known in Japan as Miura Anjin ('Pilot'), is thought to be the first Englishman to have set foot in Japan.
Born in Gillingham, Kent in 1564 Adams started work as an apprentice in a shipyard in Limehouse, London at age twelve. After twelve years of study of astronomy, navigation and shipbuilding, Adams joined the Royal Navy under the command of Sir Francis Drake and saw service against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Aged thirty four, Adams joined a Dutch expedition of five ships to the East Indies as a pilot. After various adventures off the coasts of Africa and South America, only one ship of the original flotilla, the Liefde, with a crew of just twenty, starving men arrived off the coast of Kyushu.
Resisting pressure from Portuguese Jesuits, who wanted the men put to death as pirates, the surviving crew were imprisoned in Osaka Castle on the orders of Ieyasu Tokugawa and the Japanese authorities.
Summoned to meet Ieyasu, Adams impressed the future Shogun with his knowledge of ships and navigation and was released from confinement.
In 1604, Ieyasu ordered Adams to build Japan's first western-style vessel and over time the two men's relationship strengthened as Adams built more ships and lead trading expeditions, the so-called "Red Seal" voyages, on behalf of the Shogun to Thailand and Vietnam in South East Asia. Eventually Adams was granted the title of "hatamoto" -- a samurai in direct service of the Shogun -- and granted lands and servants in Hemi, near present-day Yokosuka.
Although married in England, Adams took a Japanese wife, possibly called Oyuki, the daughter of a highway official, with whom he had two children - Joseph and Susanna. Adams also had a consort in Nagasaki with whom he had another child born after his death, as during the latter part of his life Adams became estranged from his Japanese wife.
Adams was influential as a translator in the setting up of Dutch and English trading stations in Hirado and Nagasaki, though the English 'factory' at Hirado (1613-1623) proved unprofitable and was abandoned.
Adams was unable to establish a good relationship with the English representative in Japan, John Saris, who disliked Adams for his adoption of a Japanese lifestyle and habits. Adams advised against Hirado (a small island off Nagasaki) as a permanent trading post and favored Uraga (Yokosuka) much nearer to Edo (present-day Tokyo). Adams refused to return to England with Saris, due to his dislike of the man.
Adams died in Hirado aged 55 and his tomb and memorial stone look out over the sea. A stone from his wife's grave in the UK was brought over so the two could be united in some way.
Adams was largely forgotten in Japan after his death and is mostly known to Westerners nowadays due to his depiction in James Clavell's best-selling novel Shogun, and then the TV mini-series of the same name.
https://www.japanvisitor.com/japanese-culture/famous-japanese/william-adams
Take a closer look at Yokosuka's scenic Tsuka-yama Park, which is the site of a memorial gravesite for the "Miura Anjin" .... The Amazing Story of Williams Adams.
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