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Daniel Eagan

Every November the medieval city of Torun in Poland hosts Camerimage, a festival devoted to cinematography. In addition to honouring visually outstanding films and television series, this year it gave the award for best performance in a TV series to Japanese star Hiroyuki Sanada for his role in Shogun.
Sanada accepted the award at the opening ceremony, and thanked the cast and crew of Shogun, which has won 18 Emmys, including outstanding lead actor for Sanada and the first outstanding drama won by a foreign-language show.
Over the following days, Sanada was a familiar presence at the festival. He took part in a question-and-answer session after a screening of the pilot episode of Shogun, and discussed his career in a moderated talk.
When Sanada met the Post for this interview, we were at the Hotel Bulwar, converted from a former military barracks, on the banks of the Vistula River. Despite the piercing cold, Sanada kept the doors and windows open.


Shogun is based on a novel by the Australian-British writer James Clavell. Both the book and an earlier 1980 miniseries use a shipwrecked British sailor named John Blackthorne to tell the story of feuding clans battling for power in 16th-century Japan.
“They were told only through the blue eyes’ point of view,” Sanada says. “No subtitles for Japanese dialogue. They wanted audiences to feel like Blackthorne, not knowing what the people around him were saying.”
The actor felt that after 40 years, viewers had a better understanding of Japanese culture.
It was time to “put Japanese lenses in the script”, he says. “Show the story from both viewpoints so we can understand why these events unfolded the way they did.”
Sanada, who was offered the part of Lord Yoshii Toranaga, had worked largely on American blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame and Mortal Kombat. These followed an illustrious career in which he starred in Japanese hits and on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

As development on Shogun progressed, Sanada agreed to become a producer. He soon took a leading role in shaping the series.
“Series creator Justin Marks sent me an English draft of the script,” he says. “First I checked it to make sure cultural references were accurate. I tried to cut stereotypical images Westerners had of Japan. The writing staff rewrote several drafts before we translated the script into Japanese.”
Sanada took the Japanese version to period drama specialists to go over the dialogue. He then retranslated the script back into English for Marks to adjust the subtitles, a process that required several additional drafts.
He took the same painstaking steps at every stage of the production. While shooting John Wick: Chapter 4, he held Zoom meetings with costume designer Carlos Rosario and other department heads.

“If I saw some Westernised colour, or if the collar of a kimono was too wide, I would point it out,” he says. “Props, set design, I looked at everything.
“I could also hire Japanese crew members, some of whom had been working together for 30 or 40 years. I used the same wig specialist from my last samurai drama, The Twilight Samurai. So not just in the script, but in every department, Japanese eyes could make this more authentic than usual for Hollywood.”
In that quest for authenticity, Sanada arranged for actors to attend a boot camp with a full curriculum in dialogue and movement.
“In Japanese samurai movies today, they speak in a modern style,” Sanada says. “Maybe easy for a young audience to understand, but it drives away true samurai fans. We tried to use more accurate dialogue, which at times was more difficult. So the cast needed to be trained.”

The actor says he was the first person on set every day, inspecting the props, the costumes, and the extras. He checked the monitor for every shot over the 11-month shooting schedule. Then he oversaw a year-and-a-half of post-production.
“I was there for every single ADR dialogue recording, and I directed all the Japanese dialogue and gave advice to the voice actors,” he says.
Sanada even inspected every publicity photo. “Sometimes we would have to flip an image,” he admits.
“A Japanese kimono is so important – you must fold the left side on the top. If the right side is on top, that’s what a dead man wears at his funeral. Also, the sword must be on the left side, OK? Present the image the wrong way and you have a dead, left-handed samurai. Not good.”

Sanada has been promoting Shogun around the world. And since season 2 and 3 have been announced, he is set to continue promoting it for many more years.
“All of this process has been so much fun,” he says. “This is my first time as a producer. Before, if I wanted to correct something as an actor, I would hesitate before saying anything. Little by little I learned how to communicate without breaking their pride.
“Now I’ve put all my experience, 40 years in Japan, 20 years in Hollywood, into Shogun. I feel it’s my baby.”
Working in Hollywood, Sanada has won a new generation of fans for his films with stuntmen-turned-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski.

“I met David on The Wolverine,” Sanada says. “He was the second unit director. That was in Sydney. We did reshoots in Los Angeles, where I worked with Chad. Then I was offered a role in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, but I was injured during training and couldn’t appear in it.
“For John Wick: Chapter 4, Chad said he wrote a role for me as John’s old friend. It was an immediate yes for me. I told him, ‘See you on set.’”
For several years, Leitch and Stahelski have delivered the best action in Hollywood. They have assembled top-notch stunt teams, and schedule months of preparation and training. Franchise star Keanu Reeves joined the stunt team for two weeks of rehearsal before shooting started on John Wick: Chapter 4.
Sanada, on the other hand, says he could skip basic training “because they know my skills. I went straight to choreography, where I could add some ideas with the stunt guys. The same for Bullet Train.”

The actor describes designing action as an “easy collaboration”. When he worked with Donnie Yen Ji-dan, they took basic situations and added to them.
“He’s an action pro,” Sanada says. “On set, he and I would create moves and stunts, and Chad would just sit there watching. If he believed it, we kept it. One, two, maybe three times, a slow rehearsal. Then it was, ‘OK, let’s shoot’. Sort of Hong Kong style.
“Chad’s judgment was so clear that once he loved a shot, we would go on. Always moving on, boom, boom, boom. It was two nights of all-night shooting, but so much fun to do.”
Through it all, Sanada’s emphasis on honour and tradition in his performances has made him something of a role model in Japan.

“Maybe it’s the spirit of the samurai,” he says. “Loyalty, sacrifice, hard [on] yourself and kind to others. That spirit is very important to our culture. I feel it’s an especially good message for the younger generation.
“Don’t forget where we come from, you know?”
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Sanada, who has appeared in Japanese films and US blockbusters, talks about making the cultural references in TV series Shogun authentic


Sanada, who has appeared in Japanese films and US blockbusters, talks about making the cultural references in TV series Shogun authentic.


From Shogun to John Wick and Bullet Train, how Hiroyuki Sanada adds Japanese authenticity

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Sanada, who has appeared in Japanese films and US blockbusters, talks about making the cultural references in TV series Shogun authentic

Sanada, who has appeared in Japanese films and US blockbusters, talks about making the cultural references in TV series Shogun authentic