With the Golden State sitting comfortably on the Pacific Rim, Asian culture has been a presence in California life for many decades, but that didn’t mean instant access to the latest in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean movies, TV shows, and music. Technology changed that situation. You needn’t be anywhere in particular to access a wide world of international movies, TV shows, and music with the tap of a finger. And the expanded dissemination of media has also resulted in some fascinating cross-cultural collaborations.
‘Shōgun’
Shōgun is a sumptuous and thrilling 10-episode American television miniseries created by Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, adapting author James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 novel inspired by real events and actual people who lived in Japan from the late 1500s into the early 1600s during the rise of the crucial Edo period. More specifically, Shōgun examines the relationship between two strong-willed men — powerful, politically astute Lord Yoshii Toranaga and English ship pilot-turned-samurai John Blackthorne. As Toranaga tries to overcome a cadre of deadly rivals, he enlists shipwreck survivor Blackthorne to his cause while the latter attempts to navigate an unfamiliar land and way of life. Blackthorne is aided in his journey and struggles by the elegant, savvy, and mysterious Lady Mariko, who speaks English and can translate for the sailor. And yes, there is considerable sexual tension between them.
The cast is superb. Hiroyuki Sanada (John Wick 4, TV’s Westworld, Helix, and Lost) plays Toranaga; Cosmo Jarvis (Persuasion, Calm with Horses, Lady Macbeth) plays Blackthorne; and Anna Sawai (F9: The Fast Saga, TV’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Pachinko) is Lady Mariko. This is, in fact, the second time Clavell’s book has been made into a historical TV drama. The previous version, a five-episode miniseries released in 1980 and starring Richard Chamberlain as Blackthorne and Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga, was the recipient of an Emmy for Best Limited Series, as well as a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award.
Allocated twice as many episodes to unravel its yarn, the new Shōgun debuted at the end of February on the FX channel and Hulu and will deliver its finale on April 23. It has made good use of its extra time. Bravura direction and lush cinematography, enhanced by the latest in special effects, allow the actors to build their characters in confidence. The result is a sweeping epic with impressive period detail that gives its court intrigue, battle scenes on land and sea, and moments of intimacy between its central figures a vitality and sense of legitimacy, making it more than a match for its 1980 video predecessor.
Shōgun airs on the FX channel and streams on Hulu.
‘Perfect Days’
A lovely big-screen example of such East-West synergy is the Tokyo-set Perfect Days — the latest feature film from acclaimed German director and screenwriter Wim Wenders, whose starkly beautiful, bittersweetly romantic Wings of Desire is a fantasia in shimmering black and white about an angel in love with a human woman. That would seem to be evidence of an idiosyncratic filmmaker, but Wenders has also been truly eclectic in his output. The gritty interpersonal drama Paris, Texas, the period San Francisco detective story Hammett, and the Cuban music documentary Buena Vista Social Club are among his other notable achievements. Having made movies in English and Spanish as well as German, he’s giving Japanese a go with Perfect Days.
In the process, Wenders tries something different from all of his previous projects: He points his camera at the daily and nightly activities of Hirayama — a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo. Sound drab, even boring? Don’t be misled. It should be noted that, despite the verity and detail in its depiction of a professional toilet cleaner, Perfect Days is neither documentary nor docudrama. Visualizing a script written by Wenders and Takuma Takasaki, the narrative takes pains to present the sometimes unpleasant requirements of the profession, while revealing the simple beauty in Hirayama’s life — things that spark joy for him: his love of music, his occasional breaks to shoot nature photographs in the urban parks where his job sometimes takes him, and the unexpected connections he makes with a range of people during the course of his work.
As Hirayama goes about his business, Perfect Days also slowly divulges bits and pieces of his back story. The superb Japanese actor Kôji Yakusho plays Hirayama and is on screen for the almost entirety of Perfect Days, bringing warmth, whimsy and subtle emotions to the part — complexity amidst the simplicity. In some ways, Perfect Days recalls the work of the masterful Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, whose 1953 classic Tokyo Story gazed upon the doings of an ordinary family as an elderly mother and father deal with the diffidence of their adult children as best as they can. Perfect Days does the same, as Wenders shows the nuts and bolts of Hirayama’s toil and the unpretentious pleasures that color his endeavors and does so without any condescension. There’s delicacy and poetry to Perfect Days, which is quietly passionate and pitch-perfect in its execution.
Perfect Days is playing in select theaters and is available on demand via Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, and other streaming services.
‘Tokyo Vice’
Just having wrapped up its second season, Tokyo Vice, developed for HBO Max by playwright J.T. Rogers, is a period piece of more recent vintage, circa 1999. This engrossing and exciting series is primarily set in Tokyo and is informed by the actual experiences of U.S. journalist Jake Adelstein. Around the turn of the 21st century, he covered the local crime beat for a Japanese newspaper — which means that Tokyo Vice can and does lean into loads of police and yakuza gangster action as Jake digs for his stories at hostess bars and noodle stands, in dark alleys, and on neon-lit boulevards. There is the threat of gang wars, there is newsroom infighting, and there are some risky romances mixed in with the fish-out-of-water aspects of a bold young American on the case in Japan.
Tokyo Vice has a top-drawer ensemble led by Ansel Elgort (Solo: A Star Wars Story) as Jake; Ken Watanabe as his main police contact, Detective Hiroto Katagiri; and Rinko Kikuchi as Jake’s superior at the paper. Fictionalized or not, the depiction of Tokyo’s underbelly and the yakuza lifestyle are revelatory. Michael Mann, creator of the influential cop show Miami Vice and director of the hair-trigger crime dramas Heat and Manhunter, is an executive producer, as is filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), and renowned prestige TV director Alan Poul helms a number of episodes. Verdict: It would be criminal to not watch Tokyo Vice.
Both seasons of Tokyo Vice stream on Max.
Michael Snyder is a print and broadcast journalist who covers pop culture on “The Mark Thompson Show,” via YouTube, iTunes and I Heart Radio, and on “Michael Snyder’s Culture Blast,” via GABNet.net and Roku. Follow Michael on Twitter: @cultureblaster and on Threads @miketheknife123.