Japan: Memoirs of a
Secret Empire
2004, 180 minutes
English
4 stars
This is a PBS documentary, broken into three hour-long
episodes on one disc. For those of you who remember the mini-series of several
years ago, Shogun, this tells 'the rest of the story.' It tells the story of
the Tokugawa shogunate from the time of Tokugawa Ieayasu until Admiral Perry
took his war ships into Edo Bay. Richard Chamberlain, who played John
Blackthorne (Anjin san) in the series, did a marvelous job of narrating this
program. It is probably a simplistic history
of such a rich culture, but a marvelous introduction to Japanese history. And,
yes, there really was a shipwrecked Englishman, Will Adams (not John
Blackthorne) who sailed for the Dutch who was one of the advisors to Tokugawa
Ieayasu! Being a man of high intelligence, when offered the opportunity to
remain in Japan, he took it!
No comments:
Post a Comment