Summer is here, and with it comes the perfect excuse to stay inside with the air conditioning on and catch up on your streaming queue. For those planning on binge-watching some Japanese series alongside new seasons of “House of the Dragon” and “The Bear,” 2024 is shaping up to be an especially bountiful year… with awards even possible in the near future when the Emmy nominations are announced on July 17.
The biggest ‘prestige’ hit of the first half of the year was undoubtedly ‘Shogun.” The latest film adaptation of author James Clavell’s 1975 novel of the same name is airing on FX in the United States and is currently available on Disney+ in Japan. The story is set in 17th-century Japan. This is the second time the story has been adapted for TV, after a 1980 miniseries based on the book was a phenomenon in its own time. The 21st-century version, however, gives the Japanese characters more power.
“In the 80s, people looked at feudal Japan only through the blue eyes. But this time in the script, we used more Japanese lenses… and then showed more details about our culture in depth,” Japanese producer and lead actor Hiroyuki Sanada told NPR earlier this year. “In Japan, this period is so popular, the most famous period, and then (there are) great characters there. So I wanted to introduce this to the world, hopefully correctly.”
