Kind of Obsessed With Shōgun

I finished the last half of Shōgun, James Clavell’s 1200-page 1975 historical novel, on my recent vacation, riveted the entire time. I loved reading it and possibly enjoyed it more than Hulu’s TV series (which is saying something). The TV version hews pretty closely to the text but the major difference is in the amount of detail and explanation available to the book’s readers. There’s just so much more intrigue & plotting in the book and the reader is much more aware of what’s going on than in the show (the reader has access to the inner dialogue of multiple characters), but without sacrificing any of the suspense or drama. And the end of the book is devastating — I was completely gutted by it.

Anyway, I’ve been poking around to see what else I can read/watch/listen to about Shōgun and the historical period in which it’s set. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• Of course, there’s the original TV adaptation of Shōgun from 1980, which I was surprised to find that you can stream on Amazon. Richard Chamberlain stars as Blackthorne and the legendary Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga.
• Just before the 1980 miniseries was broadcast, a group of scholars published a book called Learning from Shōgun: Japanese History and Western Fantasy. “This book is intended for those who have read James Clavell’s Shōgun and who are curious about its educational significance as ‘A Novel of Japan.’” The book is out of print but I found this PDF copy on Columbia’s website and have been reading it with interest. I wonder though how contemporary scholars would react to Shōgun.
• FX Networks’ viewers guide for the 2024 miniseries has a bunch of resources on the history behind the events in the book & show, including this 6-minute video on The World of Shōgun: History & Backstory.

• Naturally, there are podcasts. The Hulu series has an official podcast (also available on YouTube). The Prestige TV Podcast did 60-minute+ recaps on all the episodes (first episode on Apple & Spotify). A Short History of Japan podcast runs 35 episodes…it looks like the last few cover the period in question. (I haven’t listened to any of these yet, so ymmv.)
• There are also many books about the late Sengoku & early Edo periods of Japan, but it’s hard to pick out which ones are actually good. I poked around on various lists and found Sengoku Jidai. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu: Three Unifiers of Japan, The Battle of Sekigahara: The Greatest, Bloodiest, Most Decisive Samurai Battle Ever, and The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan.

If anyone has any advice on what to watch/read/listen to about this period of Japanese history, please share it in the comments. The resources I found are mostly Western, so I’d be especially interested in English translations of Japanese resources.

• books
• Japan
• podcasts
• Shogun
• TV