Japanese Light Novel Book Club discussion

A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life. All brought together in an extraordinary saga aflame with passion, conflict, ambition, and the struggle for power.

Here is the world-famous novel of Japan that is the earliest book in James Clavell’s masterly Asian saga. Set in the year 1600, it tells the story of a bold English pilot whose ship was blown ashore in Japan, where he encountered two people who were to change his life: a warlord with his own quest for power, and a beautiful interpreter torn between two ways of life and two ways of love.

The principal figures are John Blackthorne, whose dream it is to be the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, to wrest control of the trade between Japan and China from Portuguese, and to return home a man of wealth and position; Toranaga, the most powerful feudal lord in Japan, who strives and schemes to seize ultimate power by becoming Shogun—the Supreme Military Dictator—and to unite the warring samurai fiefdoms under his own masterly and farsighted leadership; and the Lady Mariko, a Catholic convert whose conflicting loyalties to the Church and her country are compounded when she falls in love with Blackthorne, the barbarian intruder.

In dramatizing how a Westerner, the representative man of his time, comes to be altered by his exposure to an alien culture, Mr. Clavell provides a spellbinding depiction of a nation seething with violence and intrigue as it moves from the medieval world to the modern.

Discuss Shogun here!

Reading Schedule:
2/7-2/13: Prologue-Chapter 2
2/14-2/20: Chapters 3-6
2/21-2/27: Chapters 7-8
2/28-3/6: Chapters 9-13
3/7-3/13: Chapters 14-17
3/14-3/20: Chapters 18-20
3/21-3/27: 21-25
3/28-4/3: 26-28
4/4-4/10: 29-31
4/11-4/17: 32-34
4/18-4/24: 35-38
4/25-5/1: 39-40
5/2-5/8: 41-42
5/9-5/15: 43-45
5/16-5/22: 46-47
5/23-5/29: 48-50
5/30-6/5: 51-53
6/6-6/12: 54-57
6/13-6/19: 58-59
6/20-6/26: 60-61

Okay, so this is a very long book. My copy is 1,152 pages. ^^;;;

I will be aiming for the 50-ish pages a week for the schedule, so we'll be reading it for a while...

I watched the miniseries before I read the book, and I loved both. I got the book from the library (we had one copy), and someone else put hold on it before I could finish it, so we traded the book back and forth for a couple months before we finished it. It was a lot of fun to read, and not only because I adored the story.

I didn't know there was a miniseries. I'll have to see if I can find it. :)

So I'm curious how you guys are liking this one so far. I haven't gotten that far myself yet (just finished chapter 1), but I'm liking it so far.

I read this book a long time ago. James Clavell had an intimate experience with the Japanese by being a prisoner of war during WWII. Apparently, he and his fellow POWs were so desperate for food that when the Allies liberated his camp they could not find another living organism on it besides the prisoners! So, Clavell has no problem describing the Japanese capacity for cruelty in Shogun, like when that one samurai has a young castaway boiled alive for his evening entertainment. Despite that rough past, Clavell’s respect for the genius of the Japanese people comes through. A really great and immersive novel.

I might try to jump in midway. This novel is about as long as something from the Wheel of Time series.

This book is definitely a long one. I've switched over to the audio book because I wasn't making progress in print ^^;;;

I didn't know that about Clavell! It really puts things into perspective with how the daimyo treats the Dutch sailors.

I am so far behind (only on chapter 20), but I'm liking it. The political intrigue and back stabbing and everyone being out for themselves is great, but my favorite parts are probably when Blackthorn learns about and is confused by Japanese culture and the Japanese characters reacting to him.

How are you guys liking it so far?