Shōgun Podcast Episode 10 | FX's Shōgun

Blackthorne (Played by Cosmo Jarvis): Toranaga won't be surrendering.

Alvito (Played by Tommy Bastow): Not yet. Ishido-sama has mobilized the council of regents to war. The Lady Ochiba has pledged her son's support. Toranaga will be dead in weeks.

Blackthorne (Played by Cosmo Jarvis): Then you don't know Yoshii Toranaga. The hostages are free. He got just just what he wanted. No dirty hands, no war. Just a woman.

Emily Yoshida: Welcome to Shōgun: The official podcast. I'm Emily Yoshida. I'm a writer from the show, and today on our final episode, we’re going to get the inside story of the finale from the creators and stars of the show.

Today, we'll be talking about episode 10, and here’s your spoiler warning: yes we’re going to be talking about all of it - the episode and the entire series. And as you may have noticed, I am one of the credited writers on this episode, so rest assured, we’re gonna go deep.

On this episode, I'll hear about the meaning of Blackthorne's fate from actor Cosmo Jarvis. The rise to power of Toranaga’s real life inspiration from historian Frederick Cryns. And what the title of Shōgun means to actor Hiroyuki Sanada.

But first we catch up with showrunner Justin Marks about the final episode and that shocking twist – Toranaga burning Blackthorne’s ship.

Justin Marks: He had it coming. He was a son of a bitch, and now he's finally free.

Emily Yoshida: He lost out to the biggest son of a bitch.

Justin Marks: Yeah.

Emily Yoshida: OK I actually wanted to ask about Father Alvito, and that final scene between him and Blackthorne. It's always been a very enigmatic scene to me and I was wondering what your take is on these two characters and their relationship now at the end of this story, and also the sacrifice that Mariko has obviously made for Blackthorne.

Justin Marks: I think to me what's clear in the last two scenes between Alvito and Blackthorn is that first of all, in his own way, Alvito loved Mariko just as much as Blackthorne did. It may have been spiritual love, it may have been more than spiritual love, I don't know. But it's certainly his, his feelings for her were strong enough that he would make a promise to her and keep that promise to her, even if it meant sparing the life of a man who his own church and faith tells him must die. You know, so much of Blackthorne's fate relies on this central unseen twist moment between Alvito and Mariko where Mariko negotiated a deal to spare Blackthorne's life in exchange for giving access to, and allowing for the destruction of the Erasmus, Blackthorne's ship and, and the principle weapon that could be used against the church.

So in other words, save the man, but take the weapon out of his hands, maybe then try to find a way to kill him some other day. But for Alvito, I think the act of keeping that promise in Osaka where he could have been killed in those woods and no one would've ever known, but Mariko would've known, and Alvito wouldn't let that happen.

So I think it speaks to the depth of his love for Mariko that that's what he was willing to do.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. I'm very curious to find out if there's gonna be any contingent of online fan who is just shipping Alvito and and Mariko really, really hard. I know they'll be out there. Um.

Blackthorne's fate is so interesting and, like you say, totally unexpected. People are gonna see in it what they wanna see. Cause there's a lot of ways you can read it as it's somehow worse than death. It's like a purgatory of some sort. And then there's a way in which you can read it as like a life of devotion to something beyond him, which has sort of been something that's been a struggle for him.

How do you view Blackthorne's fate?

Justin Marks: I think Blackthorne's journey in this episode to the place where it lands in such a beautiful and powerful scene between Blackthorne and Toranaga on that hill where he offers up his own life is the journey that I hope all of us who are trying to kind of understand how we interact with cultures we don't understand and people we want to forge relationships with but, you know, don't really necessarily speak the same cultural, spiritual, or literal language.

Which is to say that Blackthorne, through this entire story, has been a prisoner of his own ambition. Which, you know, one might call the disease of colonialism or even almost capitalism too. Um, but this idea of a man who is so bound by his ambition and his own sense of where he belongs in this world and what is owed to him, that he is the worst prisoner of all. So is Yabushige, they're both like this. And, and Yabushige never comes to that awakening and finds himself dying here.

But for Blackthorne, you know, it revolves crucially on this idea of what we call the false dream. You know, we wanted to open this episode with what feels like the beginning of a flashback structure where we jump forward into the future and we meet Blackthorne as an old man, and we tell the story of an old man looking back and looking back with regret I might add, right, on the life that he led. Only to realize that, that was not the dream of an old man looking back, it was actually the dream of a young man looking forward to one possible version of his life. A version of his life that he has to draw to an end by killing that path. What Blackthorne is trying to kill there is not himself, it's the version of himself that he's always been. And when Toranaga knocks that knife out of his hand and then looks down at him, he's looking at a man reborn now to a completely different life.

Emily Yoshida: He kind of does have almost this like psychic break and it, like, he’s like in shock almost because he's walked so close to death and been drawn away from it and he kind of comes out of it reborn. But yeah, it does feel like if he doesn't reach that by the end of the story, then what is it all for? You just have to find the right place to put it.

Justin Marks: Yeah. Yeah. And, and find the right way to express it that feels persuasive, because I don't think in this modern era, one even has to be Japanese to understand that that's not quite right. That it doesn't quite make sense for someone to just appropriate a custom that they understand very little and then suddenly gain acceptance by a whole other community by means of doing it. That’s not how life works. But what is powerful is the idea of a man spiritually finally letting go. And this is something that we talked about from the very beginning, Cosmo and I, is that this whole story for Blackthorne is really just a story of a man learning to let go.

Emily Yoshida: This was all shot chronologically, so presumably you're kind of on the beach out there filming that scene that we've been talking about for forever and, it's there in front of you. I mean, that must have been an incredibly emotional and huge moment.

Justin Marks: We were, except for one thing that the last scene that we shot was actually the very first scene of the whole series. But this is a pointed kind of coda to the conversation was the last day of production was me in costume playing a corpse of a sailor that Omi steps over in the very beginning of the show, when they first board the Erasmus. Which is always how I like to play it, is eventually I will, I will cast myself as a corpse in a show because, because it's, it's just sort of how you're left spiritually feeling at the end of a—what was a very long and challenging and ultimately fruitful and rewarding shoot.

And I think in a certain respect, all of us as Westerners participating in the production of this show felt a lot like Blackthorne on that beach at the end, and I think back to us in the writer's room together in the very early days with all of our ambitions culturally for what we could do with this story, that to tell a grand epic through a different lens, that's still a grand epic. That's not trying to be an indictment of grand epics or anything else, it is, it's a great classic swashbuckling throwback story. But to simply involve a cast of characters who we haven't really seen elevated to this point.

We went into that and then I think we learned so many things along the way. Including the thing that's most important for Blackthorne in this story, which is that at some point you kind of have to let go of your own agency too, as Westerners in this process. And part of what was so great about that collaboration was you could see it at every moment. Every department head at some point realizes that, you know, this is not our show just as Westerners, that this show belongs to the Japanese filmmakers and cast and crew who we were working with.

And that means relinquishing some version of control every single day until you finally kind of leave yourself like Blackthorne on the beach, realizing that you're free, that you're not this prisoner of your own creative ambition that you've hopefully, I hope, successfully pulled off what we tried to do on the very first day of the writer's room, which is to say like, let's do something that feels truly intersectional in a certain way.

You know, as we approach what would otherwise be a very traditional epic, but approach it through a very different door in the house.

Emily Yoshida: Was it hard to figure out a place to end the story?

Justin Marks: It was always going to end on a closeup between Blackthorne and Toranaga. And, and the way they would just look at each other in that final moment as Blackthorne stood on the beach in the kind of reborn purpose that he's been given without realizing that this purpose is all for nothing.

But it doesn't matter that it's all for nothing, because that's the point. He's happy, you know,he's found something again, and he's found a community too of these peasants who are helping him pull the ship out. This is his new crew, you know, in a certain respect. His new, his new buddies.

Emily Yoshida: Him and Buntaro are the new buddy comedy, the most unexpected buddy comedy.

Justin Marks: the most unexpected, you know, that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

Emily Yoshida: There is no question. John Blackthorne went through a journey both physically and spiritually. But where exactly he’s going after this, is a little harder to pinpoint.

Cosmo Jarvis: I never thought that Blackthorne had a traditional, slowly progressing, episodically cohesive story arc.

Emily Yoshida: Once again we’re with actor Cosmo Jarvis. Cosmo spoke to me about how Blackthorne came to reach his own kind of peace.

Cosmo Jarvis: I always thought that he sort of stays vaguely the same throughout a huge portion of the series, being that he's fairly selfish and he has a very narrow realm of interest and a great ambition, which is ultimately rooted in his own fickle ego. When we first meet him, he's totally obsessed with the possibility of control.

But after months of trying to achieve something significant in Japan with regard to his English persona and position in English society, and being sort of, subdued by the people around him, some aspect of the country and its customs and the peripheral sense of greater honor and duty and the impermanence of life and the futility of fighting fate and the possibility of meaningful death are allowed into him by Mariko's death and the destruction of his ship.

In episode 10, he, for the first time, is compelled to attempt something that is objectively purposeful in, in an honorable sense and totally selfless and, and has nothing to do with his long established aims.

So I don't think he saw his arc coming, but he does arrive at one. He's sort of liberated by being forced into a situation where he no longer has anything that he's attached to. And when that happens, he is then capable of trying something else. So he does.

Emily Yoshida: That must have been such an intense scene to shoot, especially at the end of all of this, the Seppuku scene.

How do you think he understands his actions in that moment? And is it Seppuku in the Japanese sense, or does—is it his own kind of...

Cosmo Jarvis: I don't think it's seppuku in the Japanese sense. I think he knows that.

I think that he knows that the demonstration or the act itself has the potential to have tremendous significance and is a language that is recognized by these people. The thing that still makes it meaningful for him is that it's sincere and he is prepared to do it.

I think there's a sort of a, western, um, bias to his seppuku in a way because he's kind of like, all right, you know, you want to take all this blood, you want to kill all these people in the village if you want to, you seem intent on destroying the people of Ajiro. And he's just kind of like, well, just kill me instead, if it means stopping them, because the people of Ajiro seem like a nice bunch of people. And by this time Blackthorne is somewhat of a villager himself, and ultimately, he is fully responsible for any fate that may be put on them by Toranaga. So...

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. And it's sort of a clear eyedness about his position here and it's not quite so clear to him still in episode five with the whole situation with the pheasant, he's still figuring out how his actions have consequences in this world. And I think he has a much clearer idea of it at the end of the story.

Cosmo Jarvis: Yes. And it happens to coincide with a moment where he's also realizing that his lack of sincerity throughout, since we met him, on every occasion. I mean, it's easy to be blinded by the sort of endearing quality of Blackthorne and the kind of, even when he is being a car salesman, he seems like he has a plan and he seems like he has some notion of honor. But I was always pretty sure, that everything that came before this moment was, you know, yeah, he can have a nice moment with Mariko on a horse learning Japanese, as long as it's just not getting him killed and he's getting one step closer to getting the fleet he wants and building trade relations with Japan and, and with one day being, you know, knighted by his queen for setting that up.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. I mean even when him and and Yabushige are sailing back to Ajiro and even in this moment Yabu is bargaining and trying to figure out a way for himself to survive and like hitch his ride to Blackthorne. And they both are kind of united in this survival of ‘me above all else’ and, you know, trying to, to scrounge something out of it.

And, and in that moment I almost feel like Blackthorne sees Yabushige a little, like he's a little bit separate from him at that moment. Like he kind of sees him as, oh no, like, I can't be this guy anymore.

Cosmo Jarvis: Yeah that's what I meant about the destruction of the ship and also seeing Mariko's demise as well. It kind of forces him into a position where he has to sort of sit with himself and sit with who he is left with in the absence of those two entities, being the ship and her, he's kind of, there's nobody else to kind of talk to.

There's no hope of sailing back. And so when Yabushige is asking him those things, he's not the man to ask anymore. And I think that's why Blackthorne's kind of like, just pull yourself together, because that's he, he doesn't know who he is necessarily, but he's not that guy anymore.

Emily Yoshida: While Blackthorne’s fate remains unwritten at the end of our series, Yabushige, the wild card of a daimyo reaches a definitive end to his scheming.

Emily Yoshida: two men stand on a precipice, one on the brink of death and the other on the brink of greatness. What we hear in that pivotal scene between Toranaga and Yabushige is only the beginning.

The 265 year period that was set in motion after the Battle of Sekigahara would come to be known as the Edo period. It began when Tokugawa Ieyasu took up the mantle of Shōgun and the control that came with it.

During this Tokugawa Shōgunate, the city of Edo became the new seat of political power, while the emperor remained mostly a figurehead in Kyoto.

Tokugawa Ieyasu's time officially holding the title of Shōgun did not last long. He passed the title to his son Hidetada within two years, But continued to rule behind the scenes. But by passing on the title to his son, he effectively made the Shōgunate a dynasty, lasting until 1868 – the longest lasting Shōgunate in Japanese history.

The Edo period was an era of peace and prosperity in a country that had been plagued by civil wars for hundreds of years.

But with the growth came a tightening of class ranks and an institution of a feudal system that restricted class mobility. Men like Ishido or the Taiko, who were born into lower castes, would no longer be able to climb the ranks to power.

Tokugawa also closed Japan to virtually all foreigners, only maintaining one port for foreign trade. In a way, Japanese society had never been more rigid.

But as a result of these trade restrictions, regions of the country began to specialize in everything from tea to textiles. It was a time of invention, art, and urbanization. By the early 18th century, Edo was the largest city in the world.

The end of the Edo period came slowly, but in 1867, the last Shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu returned political power to the emperor, and the city of Edo was renamed Tokyo.

Tokyo is still the most populous city in the world today.

But in order for all this to happen, to build the future of his country, Tokugawa Ieayasu first had to win power over his rivals. In our show, in episode 10, Toranaga has finally achieved victory over Ishido.

Fredrik Cryns: Well, the story resembles very much the real historic events.

Emily Yoshida: Back to help us understand how close our series is to these real events is historian Frederick Cryns.

Fredrik Cryns: Of course, it's fiction, it's, it's different, but as a whole you had Mitsunari, so our Ishido, could get a coalition together of warlords, of especially the members of the council of regents. He did that by a lot of plotting and deception.

So the unity of the coalition was not, not very great. It really started to crumble as soon as hostilities started. So it really resembles what we did on the show and Yodo-no-Kata also, she eventually she didn't side with Mitsunari. The letter of Ochiba-no-Kata does exist. So, real life, Yodo-no-Kata also sent a letter to Ieyasu that Mitsunari was plotting, so...

Emily Yoshida: And that had huge historical consequences, that letter.

Fredrik Cryns: Yes, yes, because the heir was not on the side of Mitsunari. There’s a lot of misconceptions about the Sekigahara battle.

Emily Yoshida: I'm glad you brought up Sekigahara. This was a super famous battle that took place just after the real life events of the show that basically turned the tide for Tokugawa Ieyasu, aka Toranaga. But for those who aren’t familiar with it, can you just kind of explain what exactly this battle was, and what was the outcome?

Fredrik Cryns: So the, the documents of the period describe the battle as, as quite chaotic on Mitsunari side. So you had this alliance of the regents and a lot of warlords in the western camp who came to Sekigahara, but there was no unity at all. And then you had Ieyasu's forces, which were much more united.

And here we get the role of Mariko, or Hosokawa Gracia, because Mitsunari wanted to get her as a hostage. And she refused and she committed suicide. This news came to the ears of Hosokawa Tadaoki, so Buntaro. You know Buntaro so you can expect that Tadaoki was really furious about this. So he really prepped the other generals up to go to fight with Mitsunari.

So when they met at Sekigahara, you, you got a shaky union of generals under Mitsunari, and you got Ieyasu with his generals, where some of them were very furious and wanted to have revenge. So they, they really did a very serious blow to Mitsunari's forces.

Emily Yoshida: What ends up happening to the Portuguese, I mean, after Sekigahara and after Tokugawa takes power?

Fredrik Cryns: Well, the Jesuits already lost a lot of power under the reign of the Taiko, Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi issued an edict banishing the Jesuits from Japan. But as he needed the trade of the Portuguese, the banishment was not enforced. So the Jesuits stayed, but they lost a lot of their influence. And when William Adams washed ashore in Japan, Adams told Ieyasu that the Spanish, they wanted to conquer Japan, and they did that by first sending missionaries, converting the Japanese into Catholics, and then collaborating with those Catholics they would invade Japan.

And that was the catalyst for Ieyasu to banish all Christianity from Japan and only the Portuguese, they were allowed to come to Nagasaki to trade. But no Jesuits or other Catholics were allowed from that time to set foot on Japanese soil.

Emily VO: Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually overcame his detractors and changed Japan forever. But while his story has been told in Japan for centuries, many westerners first learned of him in the 1970's through Shōgun. The novel was written by a British veteran of World War II named James Clavell.

Michaela Clavell: my father had an insatiable curiosity about life, just insatiable. he would not stop until he got to the end of the story in someone.

Emily VO: This is executive producer Michaela Clavell, describing her father, author James Clavell.

Michaela Clavell: As great a storyteller as he was verbally, which he really was, as a listener, he had incredible powers, and he knew how to pull stories out of people. And I think that's why he was so successful along the way, writing about things that he wasn't there for in history. He spent two years reading before he ever wrote a word on the book of Shōgun.

He wanted to yes, investigate the culture and bring it to life, but he always said his job was to entertain and it wasn't meant to be an academic evaluation of the culture at the time.

It was meant to be a great yarn that brings things to life in a way that entertains people. And I think that the extra layer that FX added to that was the attention to the detail and the authenticity. And, you know, Hiro was a producer on it. He’s an expert of that time. He was there every day. He, he was an eagle eye on the production.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah, he was consulting on, like, the movements of the background and the, you know, the, yeah, every detail about the costumes and everything. And every prop, like, oh, they wouldn't have had that there, you know, that's, that's what you get from having a real vet on, on screen there.

Michaela Clavell: That's right.

Emily Yoshida: One of the pleasures of reading the book is how, I think that curiosity comes through in his depiction of the interiority of every character. That's the kind of thing I think in doing an adaptation, you have so much to work with.

Michaela Clavell: And when you're adapting it, what they've done here is to take some extra nuances that aren't in the book but that are true to the book. The story of the women come through so strongly. These, completely different characters, but each completely finished and well rounded. I mean, the strength of the women in this story. Mariko's obvious, she's a modern fighter and comes through so beautifully with such strength. But Fuji, a different character altogether, an older soul, a new mother, is beautifully portrayed in the show and just as strong as Toranaga ready to die for what she believes in, ready to wield the sword.

So I think the women are very modern and still true to the time in this version of Shōgun.

Emily Yoshida: You were involved from the very beginning with this FX adaptation and so you've seen the entire process to get to where we finally had our 10 episodes. I wanted to kind of talk about getting to production and getting on set and seeing this come through visually. What was that like, up in Vancouver?

Michaela Clavell: My sister and I went up, and with my daughter, to visit the set and watch them shoot some of the last episodes and one of the last scenes is Fuji and Blackthorne sprinkling the ashes of Mariko's cross and Fuji's baby.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Michaela Clavell: Out in the bay. The bay where I grew up, where my father's ashes were sprinkled.

Emily Yoshida: Wow.

Michaela Clavell: So imagine our surprise when we, you know, 40 years later, are shooting in that same bay on a beach where I grew up playing on.

Emily Yoshida: That's so—what a coincidence!

Michaela Clavell: I mean, you can't, you can't make this up, right?

And it was such an extraordinary experience to be there for such a complete circle of life moment. They rarely happen so perfectly, but this one did. And that scene brought tears to our whole family's eyes. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. It was magical. And I hope, my hope is that people watching this see the same beauty, dark and light in all of it, the story, the landscape, it was so complex and so beautiful.

Emily VO: Our show ends with Toranaga about to usher in a new era, looking forward with a dream of peace and prosperity.

So we couldn't end the podcast without sitting down one last time with Shōgun producer and actor Hiroyuki Sanada.

[GUEST 4: HIROYUKI SANADA]

Emily Yoshida: So this whole series has been about Toranaga and Blackthorne, but at the end of this episode, we kind of see the full picture of how Toranaga has been using Blackthorne.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah.

Emily Yoshida: And it's pretty, I think some people might be shocked by it because it's so, like, cold, but it also feels like it's, it's not that simple. How would you describe Toronaga's feelings toward Blackthorne?

Hiroyuki Sanada: I think, from the beginning, Toranaga liked Blackthorne. And then he can learn from Blackthorne a lot. Not only about the world, not only about the ship, he has some spirit. Never give up spirit. ‘Oh, this guy. Mhm.’

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: So he wanted to stay…

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Blackthorne with him, like a falcon.

Emily Yoshida: Right.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah, in episode eight, Toranaga said, ‘Yabushige and Blackthorne is like a falcon.’ Very easy to read. And then, as a weapon, very useful.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah, yeah, so we have our two hawks Blackthorne and Yabu, and they both come to very different fates and, and in a way, Yabushige is a very convenient person for Toranaga to kind of reveal his whole plan to because he's gonna kill him. So, but how does Toranaga feel about Yabushige at the end there?

Hiroyuki Sanada: They spend long time together, and not like Hiromatsu, but they knowing each other and then fight together. So, Toranaga knows him well and then he knows his linking to Ishido. But still using him and then it's a good weapon for Toranaga and also even sometimes betraying Toranaga, but Toranaga likes his character, his charm.

He's charming, right? Yabushige is a charming character. So Toranaga is enjoying. And sometimes, you know, have to think about Yabushige seriously, of course, but still useful and, again, charming. And then, Yabushige have to die. And that's a hard, hard for Toranaga, but easy decision. Toranaga is, uh, always make a decision for everything, ‘what's important for this country?

Emily Yoshida: Mm hmm.

Hiroyuki Sanada: And then this country's future?’ And again in episode 8, he said, ‘what is important most important thing our bloodline, or our family clan, or Japan itself, or Japanese future?’ So that's his, you know, judge, uh, always the scale.

Emily Yoshida: The big, big picture.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah. So always struggling a little bit, but also getting hurt, you know, in his heart. And alone, like Taiko told Toranaga, ‘top of the world, top of the country, the person is always alone.’

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: And then finally, Toranaga felt what that was mean, Taiko said. It's all linking, you know, Toranaga lost thousands of soldiers at the earthquake, episode five, and Nagakado, and Hiromatsu.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: He said, ‘I will never waste your death,’ right? So, Yabushige too. And then he asked me to, as a second, behead of him. ‘I'm happy thank you. We create this new world together. Bye. I'll be with you soon.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: After I created a better world.’

Emily Yoshida: So what, what do you think both Toranaga and then you, Sanada-san, like, what is the name and the title ‘Shōgun’ mean to you? And what, what does it say about the story that we're telling?

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah, Toranaga has a right to be a Shōgun because his bloodline. In the show he said, ‘no, no, I'm not interested in being a Shōgun.’ But I think that's correct.

Emily Yoshida: You think he was always saying, telling the truth?

Hiroyuki Sanada: When he tried to make a better era, finally he understood, ‘If I do this, I need a title to make sure, make my dream come true.’

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. You can't just be another Taiko, you have to be something different.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah. And then, for me, like, I didn't want be a producer. I was an actor, and that's enough, I thought. But I tried to make better about the culture thing, and then, but I felt the limit. How much can I say as an actor, just as an actor? You know, hard to fix everything just as an actor. Then I started thinking, if I make more authentic, better drama or movies, maybe, now, finally, I need the title.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Then, I can go forward. I can hire a Japanese crew, and then make better, change the history.

Emily Yoshida: Mm hmm.

Hiroyuki Sanada: I felt, like, similar thing to Toranaga. Needed the title, finally needed the title to go forward.

Emily Yoshida: I mean, it's a great point though, because I think maybe a lot of actors end up producing for a similar reason because you realize, you know, in a certain way, you have to create your own destiny, kind of. I'm just wondering for you, like, what are you thinking you're going to do with that going forward? Are you going to continue to produce, or do you have any ideas around that?

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah, if it's possible. I've learned a lot during the Shōgun shooting. I felt a lot of happiness consulting young actors or others. You know, I want to introduce great talent, even actors or crew, from Japan to the world. So, I think I got another mission for the rest of my life. So, I'd love to continue both.

Emily Yoshida: I feel like a lot of people on this show feel similarly, you know, with their roles, just that this is such a unique production. It's so international, and there's just been so much care and time put into it. It feels like a great opportunity to do more like, you know, to, to, you know, set the standard for the future.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Yeah, yeah, before I moved to LA, I felt my— the mission is like, break the wall between East and West and then make a bridge to the next generation. That was my mission, and then 20 years ago, I was thinking about that. And then now, another mission, use those bridge...

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Hiroyuki Sanada: Bring great talent to the world. So, just want to keep continue doing this. We cannot change the history just one movie, one TV show, but just keep doing, keep doing, and then, with the next generation, I believe we can change the world.

Emily Yoshida: Thank you so much for joining us for Shōgun: The Official Podcast.

It’s been such a pleasure to dig into all that went into making this show with you. From the costumes to the stunts, the directors and actors, and every last historical detail that brought this story to life. So much work went into every detail. Even as someone who worked in the writers room, taking you on this journey meant I got to meet people from all corners of this production, many of them for the first time. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing from all of them as much as I did.

You can find a link in our description to all ten episodes of Shōgun. And if you want to dive deeper into the world of our story, check out the official Shōgun viewer's guide. There's a link to that in our show notes as well.

Be sure to rate, review, and follow Shōgun: the official podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Yoshida. Thanks so much for listening.