Shōgun: A Novel of Japan (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Critics often responded to Clavell's Shōgun with begrudging admiration, as if compelled by the force of the story to take the book seriously. An early book review in the New York Times Book Review, by Webster Schott, began "I can't remember when a novel has seized my mind" like Shōgun.According to Schott, "Clavell is neither literary psychoanalyst nor philosophizing intellectual. He reports the world as he sees people — in terms of power, control, strength. He writes in the oldest and grandest tradition that fiction knows." Common themes in later criticism of Clavell tended to focus on three themes: Clavell's brilliant storytelling, the work as a historical novel or fiction, and the work's multiculturalism. It is easy to point out the historical inaccuracies of the novel, but its entertainment value and its understanding of broader historical themes to light led most critics to forgive Clavell's manipulation of historical fact.

A reviewer in The New Yorker desperately wanted to disparage the book, going so far as to say Clavell's novel was a throwback to the "derring-do" of Errol Flynn. But the review shifted to admiration in a blink with the recognition that "Clavell does have a decided gift for storytelling, and he makes a heroic effort to provide the right atmosphere." Still, the reviewer sneered at the anachronism of modern slang in the novel given the effort to render the atmosphere with veracity.

D. J. Enright, in the New York Times, was somewhat condescending in calling Shōgun "a tourist guide to medieval Japan." Yet Enright noticed some of Clavell's achievements in the book. noting that Clavell in some ways captured a sense of Japan's literary art in his massive work. Noting that the Japanese "are masters of the miniature," he suggested that Clavell was doing them an honor by writing his novel with such massive amounts of detail — from the way to wear a sword to a description of a Tea Ceremony. Julian Barnes, in the New Statesman, also commented on Clavell's attention to minutiae, noting that "Each page" of the novel "is the length of a short story, and scarcely a one passes without some new extravagant delight." Nonetheless, Barnes also criticized Clavell's sometimes clumsy attempt to mix Elizabethan English with modern slang.

Henry Smith, an educator and historian of Japan, took an evenhanded approach. He pointed out where Clavell bent fact and discussed the numerous problems with Lady Mariko being a real person — someone of her stature in 1600 would have been sequestered, not cavorting with a barbarian. But historical accuracy, for Smith, was not nearly as important as plausibility. After all, Clavell set out to write an entertaining tale through which Westerners could learn something about Japan in 1600. Smith determines that despite the inaccuracies, Clavell succeeded in contrasting the East and West. However, Smith noted, "[Clavell] is in effect delivering a polemic against the Christian church for instilling in Western man his (in Clavell's view) distorted attitudes to sex, death, and cleanliness."

Terry Teachout focused on Clavell's literary intentions. Teachout quoted Clavell saying that his goal was to "be a bridge between East and West" though writing stories that entertain and "pass on a little information." Teachout noted that between the incredible success of his novels and the huge viewing of the television miniseries, Clavell succeeded in being a bridge. Clavell, said Teachout, "is now among the most widely read authors of the century." As Susan Crosland, using material from an interview with Clavell, notes, Clavell's position as a bridge comes honestly. After purging himself of the horror of Changi in King Rat, Clavell began an investigation into his captors' history and psychology, discovering that his former enemies shared with him a common humanity.

In Book Two of Shōgun, a phrase from Edgar Alan Poe's 1849 poem "A Dream within a Dream" appears. The poem recurs amidst the crucial scenes in Osaka castle and on the last page of the novel. These literary references led Burton R. Pollin to observe a great subtlety on the part of Clavell in terms of the novel's structure. Pollin suggested that Clavell masterfully complicated the position of Toranaga as choreographer through the use of highly charged lines from a great writer. Each time the poem is referred to, said Pollin, "we are being informed about a key" to the mystery of the overall strategy of the book. Pollin's article is the nearest a critic has come to treating Clavell's novel as serious literature.

Clavell, as many critics admit, wanted to entertain and impart information to his readers. In that he succeeded, but few critics have wanted to treat his work as a serious literary effort. The popularity of the novel has not changed that opinion.