Depicting Japan’s Sixteenth Century in Netflix’s Age of Samurai and Hulu’s Shogun

Netflix’s show Age of the Samurai (2021), Hulu’s Shogun (2024), and Netflix’s Blue-eyed Samurai (2024) are part of a samurai “boom” in the United States. Age of the Samurai, which was touted as a “real-life Game of Thrones,” included dramatic re-enactments of famous historical figures and battles that, according to the production company, were filmed in a style inspired by graphic novels and Akira Kurosawa movies. How does Age of Samurai’s depiction of Japan’s sixteenth century compare with historical dramas made for the Japanese domestic market?
This lecture will feature Dr. Segal, a historian of medieval Japan, who was interviewed for the Netflix show. His talk will discuss the series’ ahistorical glorification of blood and swords, designed to appeal to the preconceived ideas of North American viewers, and the producers’ careful editing, which conveys a misleading sense of historical consensus among the show’s scholarly experts. The talk will also highlight significant differences in style and emphasis from a similar Japanese television production, NHK’s 2020 Kirin ga kuru, a historical drama that addressed the same historical figures and time period as the Netflix show but with less gore and violence and more attention to the historical texture of the period.

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