Shogun
This is a reprint of the TV essay from Issue #86 of Exploits, our collaborative cultural diary in magazine form. If you like what you see, buy it now for $2, or subscribe to never miss an issue (note: Exploits is always free for subscribers of Unwinnable Monthly).
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Poetry doesn’t get much play across TV or film, at least, not in a way that really zooms in on the unique linguistic malleability of verse. There are plenty of stories about poets, heavy moments with a line dropped for measure, pæans towards the sublime in action or in frame. But poetry has so little presence in our conscious daily lives that often when it does pop up in a show it feels gangly, newborn, too raw and soon shuffled away.
But in Shogun, the most recent iteration of James Clavell’s historical fiction novel of the same name, poetry is key. Throughout the series we follow various characters in the orbit of Lord Toranaga, weaving through political and military enemies, enlisting allies foreign and domestic in his cause, as the country struggles with death of the ruling taiko. Court intrigue and martial prowess abound in equal measure, and at nearly every stage language and poetry take a vital role.
As most students in the West are aware, the haiku originated in Japan centuries ago (along with many other meters and scaffolds for writing), and this often is the alpha and omega of their knowledge. Throughout Shogun and Japanese society at the time though, adept utilization of poetry as artistic expression, form of thought, code and contract is a vital skill and at play at almost every level in life. People will trade verse when sharing a table, warriors spend a lifetime considering their death poem. Listeners take in the language and make their own interpretations, scouring the words for literal meaning and coded layers, and regardless there is nothing finite: the poem written will not always equal the poem heard, two halves of the great salve of poetry.
One of the most iconic scenes in Shogun is when Lady Mariko recites a poem as requested while attending a hostile court:
While the snow remains
veiled in the haze of cold evening
a leafless branch
The regents scoff, consider the poem flawed as it presents an incompatible comparison within nature between the leafless branch and the start of spring. They exist in a rigid world of decorum and order, one that nature above all aligns with, or so they feel. Of course, as the show indicates, there’s a layered meaning for Lady Mariko’s former friend Ochiba no Kata, consort to the deceased taiko and the only one to bring him a male heir. This poem is a link between the women: a code of sorts yes, as those in the room wave away the words: “absurd.”
But the lines are more than a cypher, and poetry moves beyond feelings dressed up in gauzy expression. Here we have a call, from one heart to another but suffused with meaning for others paying close attention, including we the audience, rewarded for turning the words in our minds, luxuriating in their presentation. We were all lucky Lady Mariko was generous enough to share, and that Shogun planted the joys of poetry a little deeper in our hearts.
