Shogun

The novel explores how Japanese society enforces obedience, which differs depending on class and status.

The lowest members of society, peasants, are obedient because of fear: The penalty for resisting the orders of their ruler is usually death, and samurai are legally allowed to kill any non-samurai, no questions asked. Even breaches of etiquette for peasants under a samurai’s fief have lethal consequences, as Blackthorne quickly learns when he witnesses the beheading of the man who breaks seemingly trivial aspect of protocol. One of the major flaws in this system is its malleability: The person in power can define the nature of duty, or success, punishing failure to meet a somewhat arbitrary standard accordingly. Daimyos with a reasonable sense of duty help their people thrive. However, monsters like Yabu cruelly exploiting their power under the guise of establishing duty. For instance, to get his villagers to teach Blackthorne Japanese, Yabu threatens that they will all be killed if they do not achieve the desired result.

Samurai obedience is achieved completely differently. The focus of the samurai’s life is unquestioning fealty: Unconditional obedience is such a high ideal in bushido, or the samurai code of honor, that the word samurai literally means “servant.” To defy one’s lord is to dishonor and bring shame onto oneself—which is seen as significantly worse than death. In fact, the clearest, most extreme version of the Japanese commitment to honor—and their antipathy for shame—is the ritual of seppuku. The samurai would rather die than live with the shame of losing face, or of failing their lord’s expectations.

The belief in karma and reincarnation influences ideas surrounding shame as well. If death is a temporary waypoint between lives, then a good death that removes shame—for instance, through honorable seppuku—will lead to rebirth in a better form. Many characters in the novel specifically request the honor-restoring ability to die by seppuku, which is doled out as a mercy (for example, when Omi slips the samurai in the pit a knife) or withheld as a punishment (for instance, when Toranaga refuses it to the samurai who almost attacks Ishido during a meeting).

Secrets function in a variety of ways in the novel. They are a way to explain the way Japanese cultural practices differ from those of Europeans, an important currency, and a power source for women.

Clavell insists that Japanese mores require that people hide their true selves from those around them—a trope that often features in anti-Asian bias to this day. While the novel draws no generalizations or conclusion when its European characters do not reveal their motives or inner desires, the Japanese are portrayed as purposefully inscrutable. Rodrigues, a man who is comfortable enough in Japan to have married a Japanese woman, still falls for this racist stereotype: “It's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where” (173).

Secrets are also tools and currency. One of the things that makes Blackthorne a valuable pilot to his Dutch employers is his knowledge of trade secrets—sailing routes and navigational strategies. After the shipwreck, Blackthorne, Rodrigues, and the other Europeans are desperate to retrieve the rutters, pilot journals that contain information that could be used against the crown and details about sailing safely to Japan. Similarly, Toranaga quickly realizes that Blackthorne’s knowledge of naval warfare, European battle strategy, the Western perspective on cartography, the division of the known world will prove invaluable. Though Toranaga is confused and amused by European issues like the conflict between Christian sects and the idea that foreign governments have divided the world up into cartographic demarcations, and that Japan is thought to belong to European rulers, he understands that if he can integrate Western knowledge into his politics and military actions, he will be more powerful in his eventual ascension to the rank of shogun.

Finally, women in the novel often lack substantive ways to hold and wield power. However, we see one ambitious woman, the procuress Gyoko, use the secrets told to her courtesans by their clients to leverage her way up. Her motto is that “Men need to share secrets […] but we women only reveal them to gain an advantage” (869). Allying herself with Toranaga, Gyoko sells the secrets that give him an edge for control of the Willow World and a samurai title for her son.