Costumes in Shogun (2024), Episodes 1 and 2

Frock Flicks note: This is a guest post by Lisa Joseph, who’s been a Japanese history nerd for two decades. Known as Saionji no Hana in the Society for Creative Anachronism, she was elevated to the Order of the Laurel for her research into the arts, culture and history of pre-17th century Japan. You can find some of her work online at wodefordhall.com

 

British writer James Clavell says he became inspired by a sentence in his daughter’s history that stated “in 1600, an Englishman went to Japan and became a samurai.”

By his own admission more interested in storytelling than historical fidelity, Clavell filed the names and serial numbers off the life and times of one William Adams, shipwright, Spanish Armada veteran and navigator of the Liefde, and his relationship with Japanese warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early 17th century, thus creating a runaway bestseller in 1975.

The 1980 miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune was a major network event: so epic in scale it took two separate blogposts, you can read my analysis of the costume designs here  and here.

Writer-showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks (writers) and actor-producer Hiroyuki Sanada have taken Shogun back in the name of the Shogun and the Emperor, a Shogun with a smarter, grittier, more nuanced and culturally savvy points of views, a Shogun that is not a retread of what we’ve already seen. Shogun (2024) on Hulu and FX chucks you in the deep end at full speed, no mercy, no quarter, so pay attention to those subtitles or opt for the English dub if you must.

Now, to the costumes! The bar was set high in 1980 by the fine work of costume designer Shin Nishida. Spanish costume designer Carlos Rosario clears the bar easily.

Let’s get the Namban (European characters) out of the way first: an assortment of scruffy seafarers or Catholic priests.

John Blackthorne/Anjin (Cosmo Jarvis) starts out in a leather doublet, shirt, breeches, stockings, and sturdy shoes — I have not been able to find anything in the way of a full body shot. His captain, who commits suicide seconds after we meet him, is much the same. The other survivors of the shipwreck are in assorted worn shirts and breeches that don’t strike any jarring notes to my eye for the early 17th century.

Vasco Rodrigues (Nestor Carbonell), the Spanish master of the Japanese galley is similarly kitted out.

Rodrigues meets with some Jesuits, fretting over the arrival of the Protestant Englishman. Father Dell’Aqua (Paulino Nunes), the senior man, gets a ruff with his cassock, while Father Alvito (Tommy Bastow) is more simply robed.

Alvito displays an accurate, if unfortunate, looking tonsure when he meets with his student, Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai).

Compare to these paintings from the period, such as a portrait of Jesuit founder Francis Xavier:

And a detail from a folding screen by Kano Naizen showing a Portuguese ship landing in a Japanese town:

By the time the Japanese decide to hang on to the Anjin and see what he knows, he is bathed, shorn, and given a very simple kosode and obi to wear. This is as basic as it gets.

Villagers would dress similarly. Cotton or hemp, often in layers, solid colors with natural dyes or with resist-dyed or woven patterns.

Compare to this Kyoto street scene by Kano Takanobu which shows a wide range of classes and occupations from commoners and artisans to a fashionable lady of the samurai class with her retainers.

Samurai refers to the military caste between the peasantry and the Imperial Court, with members ranking from very modest status up to the daimyo or feudal lords, and they dress for the activity or occasion. We are introduced to Toranaga Yoshii as he travels to Osaka in a traditional hunting costume.

A similar example is found at the costume museum in Kyoto.

He changes to formal dress for a meeting with his fellow Regents: a silk brocade hitatare kamishimo, with eboshi (a folded lacquered silk cap), as are his fellow regents.

This humorous picture scroll of monkeys imitating humans from the late 16th-century shows several dressed similarly. (Not sorry, it’s a favorite of mine.)

We see him more casually dressed in a dobuku (a short over-robe that can have sleeves or not).

The daywear of the samurai male is the kataginu kamishimo, comprising a kosode worn with hakama and the vest-like kataginu, which might or might not display a clan mon (crest).

We will be seeing this style a lot, as exemplified by this 16th-century portrait of an unknown man from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I’ve also seen at least two characters, Yabushige and Buntaro, wearing jinbaori over kosode and hakama, though this garment is more commonly worn over armor by commanders. Yabushige’s feathered jinbaori exemplifies the use of exotic materials.

Compare to the three historical jinbaori held, left to right, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, and Kyoto National Museum respectively. The center example is covered with pheasant and duck feathers, the one on the right was made from an imported Persian carpet.

Women’s garments consist of kosode, often layered, particularly by the higher ranking, tied with a narrow obi knotted simply in the back. An ornate outer robe, which could be brocade, resist-dyed, gold leafed, painted, or embroidered, is called an uchikake, and even though it’s early days as of Episodes 1 and 2, there are some wonderful examples.

Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai) dresses in chilly, muted colors in the first two episodes. She’s been through a lot, as we will discover: her father was a traitor, and she was ordered not to take her own life, then she was forced into a loveless marriage to one of Toranaga’s men, and she’s a Christian convert. Her pale uchikake evoking sparse winter grasses is worn over darkly patterned shades of indigo.

She has another with cherry blossoms, but it’s still quite muted.

We meet Usami Fuji (Moeka Hoshi) as she’s trying to take her own life, and Mariko convinces her not to. I found a screenshot of her departing that shows the gorgeous tsujigahana resist-dyeing on her uchikake — and her husband is a rank-and-filer in Toranaga’s entourage! This complex decorative technique was extremely popular in the 16th century.

Here’s an extant example from the LA County Museum for comparison.

This still shows Fuji, dressed for her disgraced husband’s ritual suicide, Mariko, and several attendants behind them. The lower ranked women are in fewer layers, indigo with stenciled resist-dye decoration, and simple obi. Even extras and background figures are properly addressed and coiffed.

I don’t have a good screenshot because it was a dim, candlelit scene, but the series poster shows the opulent gold embellished uchikake worn by Ochiba no Kata (Fumi Nikaidô), consort of the late Taiko and mother of his child and heir.

It’s clearly inspired by a portrait of Yodo no Kata, consort of the real Taiko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

There’s a stunning Noh costume dating from this period in which rice paste has been stenciled onto dark brown silk and gold leafed.

The Taiko’s other consort is shown has having taken vows as a Buddhist nun after his death: Dayoin (Ako) wears a zuhkin (veil) and robes.

We also have a portrait of her real life counterpart, Nene.

Hair for male and female characters all looks period-appropriate, right down to cord or paper hair ties. Makeup tends to a naturalistic look that won’t alienate modern viewers. The standard of beauty for the period for married women — which does come up in the recent animated Blue Eye Samurai – included blackening their teeth with a solution of rice vinegar and iron. Noh character masks illustrate the beauty ideal, white skin, red lips, and stained teeth.

So that’s where we are at the end of the first two episodes of the series. It bodes well for the rest and I’m looking forward to what comes next.

 

Note: As is the period usage in the series, Japanese character names are written surname first, actor names have been written first name first.  Period appropriate honorifics that are used in the new Shogun are [name]-dono or [name]-sama, e.g., Toranaga-dono, Mariko-sama.

For more info: FX has put out a number of video featurettes on the making of the series that will help the viewer get up to speed on characters and history as well as production details. You can find them on Hulu and its YouTube Channel.

To read more on the life and times of William Adams, Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan by Giles Milton and Anjin -The Life and Times of Samurai William Adams: A Japanese Perspective by Hiromi Rogers.

 

 

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