Shogun creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo tease what to expect in season two of epic series

When the critically acclaimed Shogun returns for its second season, it will jump forward in time by 10 years.

The historic epic which penetrated the zeitgeist and won a record 18 Emmys is going back into production in January, still led by legendary Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada who plays war lord Yoshii Toranaga.

Sanada and Shogun creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo appeared at Disney’s Asia Pacific regional showcase for its streaming platform to share little nuggets about the secretive new season.

One of which is the time jump. Marks explained, “The 10 years later idea, when it came to us, was largely about recognising in some sense the reality of how we watch television now, which is this show’s going to take us a little while to produce.

“It’s not coming out one year later, and there’s this thing that drives me crazy when you watch a show that ended three years ago, and you get into season two and it’s like five minutes later (in the story), and you jump right in and it is tough on the audience.

“We have a lot pulling at our eyeballs and we’re trying to show them it’s a very complex world to use this jump as a way to come back to our characters again, to see what’s changed in their lives over the course of the last 10 years and to rediscover them.”

Marks’ comments also serve as a warning of sorts, which is that fans won’t be getting a new season of Shogun for a while yet. Given the scale of the production and the January start of filming date, it’s likely season two won’t land until 2027.

As Marks pointed out, the story killed off many characters in its first season, including Anna Sawai’s Mariko, so a slew of new cast members will be joining the series, including Japanese actors Asami Kizukawa, Masataka Kubota, Sho Kaneta, Takaaki Enoki and Jun Kunimura.

In addition to Sanada, returning cast include Cosmo Jarvis, Fumi Nikaido, Tommy Bastow and Shinnosuke Abe.

When you consider that list of names with its predominantly Japanese cast and culturally specific subject matter of the politics of feudal Japan in the early 17th century, Shogun has been something of a surprise hit.

But it also points to audience trends where Western audiences are quicker to embrace international stories.

Marks gave credit to the executives at FX, an American TV network owned by Disney, who greenlit a show that primarily had Japanese dialogue. “It was a really courageous choice on their end,” he said.

Kondo recalled the degree of difficulty in making season one, hampered as they were by COVID restrictions, the scale of the shoot, and her own inexperience in mounting a massive series.

“We discovered that having parameters enhances this story, and we had so many blockades along the way,” she said. “We learnt to invite parameters and FX is part of that.

“The biggest parameter for us now is history itself. We have to work within the confines of what has happened and make choices and be discerning.

“It was surprising to us that the audience was drawn to the story as emotionally and as profoundly as they were,” Kondo said.

“They lent us the most important things, they lent us their time, they lent us their care, they lent us their attention.

“It is really the thing that we take into season two because it’s what emboldens us, it’s what allows us a certain confidence to say, if we had people follow us into this land of feudal Japan, maybe they’ll follow us into some deeper, more cavernous spaces.”

Shogun, which was originally designed to be a limited series, was based on the 1975 James Clavell novel and had previously been adapted as a 1980 TV miniseries. That earlier version didn’t even subtitle the little Japanese dialogue it had.

The second season will now move beyond Clavell’s book. The Australian-born, British Clavell died in 1994 but his daughter Michaela Clavell is a producer on the show and has been involved in casting, director and story choices.

He said that even though the story will pass the book, some of season two is still drawn from the book. “We were able to go back to that text and comb it for deeper meaning and find some surprising ideas,” he said.

The original story took place in the aftermath of the arrival of a British ship in Japan with the navigator John Blackthorne and the weapons onboard the vessel. It sparked a war for power between Toranaga, one of five regents ruling on behalf of the young emperor, and his rivals.

The characters were dramatised versions of real-life historical figures and events.

“Shogun is a saga, first and foremost,” Marks said. “Part one was a story about agency, about finding power over the course of events, and a man who intends on bringing about peace from the threshold of war.

“But as we know in history, that’s not quite how things turned out for feudal Japan at that time.”

Of part two, Marks declined to reveal his cards but said there would be an “unexpected love story” and “a story of war and the cost of war”.

“There are battle sequences that we’re putting together now that I don’t think you’ve ever seen anything like before, this kind of scale, this kind of tragedy and this kind of humanity. We’re hoping to render something on screen that audiences are going to be blown away by.”

The writer travelled to Hong Kong as a guest of Disney.