Sh%C5%8Dgun (TV miniseries)

Shgun is an American television miniseries based on the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell, who also was the executive producer of the miniseries. It was first broadcast in the United States on NBC over five nights between Septemberand September 19, 1980. To dateupdate, it is the only American television production to be filmed on location entirely in Japan, with additional sound stage filming also taking place in Japan at the Toho studio.

After his Dutch trading ship Erasmus and its surviving crew is blown ashore by a violent storm at Injiro on the east coast of Japan, PilotMajor John Blackthorne, the ships English navigator, is taken prisoner by samurai warriors. When he is later temporarily released, he must juggle his selfidentity as an Englishman associated with other Europeans in Japan, namely Portuguese traders and Jesuit priests, with the alien Japanese culture into which he has been thrust and now must adapt to in order to survive. Being an Englishman, Blackthorne is at both religious and political odds with his enemy, the Portuguese, and the Catholic Churchs Jesuit order. The Catholic foothold in Japan puts Blackthorne, a Protestant and therefore a heretic, at a political disadvantage. But this same situation also brings him to the attention of the influential Lord Toranaga, who mistrusts this foreign religion now spreading in Japan. He is competing with other samurai warlords of similar highborn rank, among them Catholic converts, for the very powerful position of Shgun, the military governor of Japan.Through an interpreter, Blackthorne later reveals certain surprising details about the Portuguese traders and their Jesuit overlords which forces Toranaga to trust him they forge a tenuous alliance, much to the chagrin of the Jesuits. To help the Englishman learn their language and to assimilate to Japanese culture, Toranaga assigns a teacher and interpreter to him, the beautiful Lady Mariko, a Catholic convert, and one of Toranagas most trusted retainers. Blackthorne soon becomes infatuated with her, but Mariko is already married, and their budding romance is ultimately doomed by future circumstances. ........

Source: Wikipedia