Anna Sawai was born in New Zealand to Japanese parents, lived in Tokyo, Hong Kong and the Philippines as a child, and has spent a lot of time in Los Angeles lately, largely to promote the series she stars in, “Shōgun.” “But ask him where her house is and he doesn't hesitate to answer.
“Japan is where my heart belongs,” he said in a recent video interview. “When I grew up in Tokyo I wanted to get out of there. I felt like people were too proper and I missed living in the Philippines. But after traveling for work outside of Japan and spending time outside, I realize how much it is a part of me.”
Her love for the Land of the Rising Sun is one of the main reasons she was so excited to take on “Shōgun,” a series packed with period details and Japanese history. Sawai, 31, plays Lady Mariko, a translator in early 17th-century Japan who suddenly finds herself in a deceptively powerful position. She comes from a family disgraced when her father killed a corrupt lord. Then, English ship pilot John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) arrives on the shores of the fishing village of Ajiro and soon becomes a pawn in an epic civil war, as the cautious Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) confronts a power grab by his fellow regents.
Knowing Mariko's fluency in Japanese and English (which she shares with Sawai) and her discretion, Toranaga recruits her to be his conduit to the white “barbarian,” a relationship that creates sexual tension that can be cut with a sword, which it only increases. when her abusive husband, presumed dead, returns very alive.
“She is a very complex and fragile soul,” Sawai said. “She has repressed all this suffering and she cannot release it. But she also has this resilience despite the brokenness of her. If you've been through what she's been through, it wouldn't be strange if you had that resilience. “She has this central power and I think we see it in all the women in the series.”
Indeed, the female characters in “Shōgun” share a steely quality born of the need to forge a path in a highly patriarchal society. They include Fuji (Moeka Hoshi), who puts a knife to her throat when asked to hand over her baby for execution (her husband has offended the Council of Regents by speaking out of turn) and later becomes the consort. of Blackthorne; Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido), mother of the heir whom she protects with violent intensity; and Gin (Yuko Miyamoto), who runs the teahouse/brothel in Ajiro and proves to be a skilled political fighter in her own right.
For Sawai, the strength and depth of the “Shōgun” women were a big part of the series' appeal and provided contemporary resonance.
Anna Sawai plays Lady Mariko and Cosmo Jarvis plays John Blackthorne in “Shōgun.”
(Katie Yu/FX)
“Everyone lives in a controlled society,” he said. “I think that's something we see even today in Japan, where there's a certain expectation toward women, and you're not supposed to do this, or you're not supposed to say this if you're a woman. “We see the struggles that Mariko goes through, and in the end, we really get to see the power that these women have.”
Sawai caught the acting bug as a child, when she landed the lead role in a Japanese television production of “Annie” (which seems to be an international rite of passage for young actresses). She saw herself primarily as a singer and achieved fame in Japan as one of the lead singers of the girl group Faky. But she never really turned her back on acting. At 15 she got a role in the movie “Ninja Assassin” (2009), then she returned to the world of singing, where she was more established. She decided to give acting another try in 2019 and quickly began racking up roles in movies (2021 action sequel “F9: The Fast Saga”) and television (2022 drama series “Pachinko”).
“Shōgun” presented him with some challenges, including mastering period Japanese, learning to walk in a kimono, and learning the correct way to kneel: “You're supposed to stand up straight, and you're not allowed to use your hands. You just have to use your thigh muscles. So it was a bit of a workout,” he says.
Sanada, who in addition to playing Toranaga was a producer and general advisor on the set, took Sawai under his wing and became a kind of unofficial guardian of the customs of feudal Japan. He was captivated by the dedication and work ethic of his student.
“His effort was great and he learned quickly,” he said in a video interview. “She asked questions until she understood perfectly and spent a lot of time preparing. She had very, very long dialogues in English and Japanese, and she had to learn traditional Japanese, including fighting, but she never gave up. And she did everything on time. I'm very proud of her. Only Anna could play this role.”
“Shōgun” is based on the same James Clavell novel as the 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshirô Mifune. But it is a very different series, made in and for a very different time. It uses subtitles in almost every scene, one of the many ways it strives for authenticity and respect for Japanese culture. Sawai has not seen the previous series; “Shōgun” creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks wanted the cast of the new series to come in with a new perspective.
But she knows the new series is a milestone in its accurate, epic depiction of a bygone era in Japan.
“For me, as a Japanese, it was important that this time we did it with more authenticity and precision,” she said of the series, which, as recently announced, will return for at least one more season. “The details really matter. So I think with our program we are taking a step forward.”
