Update Monday 1/6: He won.
It’s no secret that at The Path we’re all major fans of Shogun. It was the impetus for our evolution into a bilingual blog, and we’ve covered every aspect of its success from episode reviews to fight choreography to its philosophy of life and death. We have criticized it, celebrated it, and contemplated its ramifications for Western perceptions of Japan and East Asian representation in media. But today, I, Benjamin Rose, Editor of The Path, come to you with a fervent message of grave international importance. It concerns none other than the MVP of Shogun, the greatest actor of the greatest season of television in a decade. Verily verily I say unto you:
Give this motherfucker a Golden Globe, right fucking now.
As everyone who watched Shogun can agree, despite its Emmy domination and Tadanobu Asano’s nomination for a Best Supporting Actor in a Primetime Drama award, our boy Kashigi Yabushige got robbed. It’s impossible to understate how bravura his performance was in Shogun, from the moment we saw him riding into Ajiro in his jinbaori to judge Blackthorne’s men to the last impish grin he gave before stabbing himself in the belly and being beheaded by Toranaga. Asano brought such expert comedic energy to what easily could’ve been a role as a one-note sociopath that Yabushige is impossible to hate even as he connives and backstabs everyone around him. And to be clear we’re talking about the man who got Mariko killed. We should have no sympathy for this guy, but oh well.
The making of a rockstar
Asano’s central insight into the character rested on two observations executed brilliantly. One, Yabushige in the FX adaption of James Clavell’s novel is less an outright sadist than an intellectually curious child. Second, he’s a rockstar. In a world of strict conformity, where the slightest breach in protocol can warrant a man’s death, Yabushige is both a rebel with a cause (his own survival and accumulation of power) and the thinking man’s miscreant. While early commentary on Shogun likened him to Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, the lord of the Kashigi is both conspicuously worse at playing both sides and eminently more likable. As Asano noted in a piece for Rolling Stone,
““Even when I’ve worked outside of Japan, I’m always aware of being a Japanese actor, who’s been in a lot of Japanese movies and TV shows…I knew it would be subtitled, no matter what language I spoke, but I also knew it’d be an American production as well. I had to come up with some sort of physicality to the performance — how I stood, how I moved, the expression on my face — that translated whether or not there were subtitles. I wanted people to see what I was doing and be convinced, or to find him interesting, from just that alone. I wanted them to ‘get it,’ regardless of what language they spoke. That was the challenge.”
This approach worked. On YouTube you can find an entire supercut of Asano’s physical comedy in the role, composed mostly of face-acting and various non-verbal exclamations from grunting in exhaustion to rueful laughter and surprise. Among the best moments in the season was watching Yabushige completely lose his shit as the noose tightened in the finale, where the days of stupendous helmets I labeled his “Kabuto Drip” era gave way to an at first hilarious and then surprisingly poignant downfall. In the end, the gods really were laughing at him.
Friends and Foes
‘Besides his individual achievement, Asano’s talent and feel for improvisation led him to elevating the already incredible performances of everyone around him as a scene partner. At the height of the season, it was extremely common to see pleas for Yabushige to join frenemy John Blackthorne in some sort of remake of Rush Hour. Despite the language barrier (Asano does not speak much English, nor Cosmo Jarvis Japanese), the two developed a great ability to play off one another in a dance of mutual respect-meets-reflexive contempt. “Why am I talking to you? It’s like pissing into the wind!” Yabushige growls in episode 7 before coercing Blackthorne into a very aggressive lesson in kenjutsu, chiding him on his inept technique and ultimately flooring him with a kick to the gut.
Likewise, in episode 8, as Blackthorne attempts to persuade Yabushige into sponsoring an attack on the Erasmus, Asano’s face erupts with mirth when Blackthorne declares, “He is a shitface, but he is a brave shitface.” When he immediately regains his composure after Omi points out this would be treachery to their lord, Yabushige’s insincere stand upon principle is all the merrier. This chemistry extends to the smallest of gestures in Shogun, such as tricking Blackthorne into declaring himself a dog during the bandit ambush and correcting his posture before the meeting with Ishido in “Crimson Sky”.
Likewise, Asano gets great mileage out of his scenes with Hiroyuki Sanada, reflecting their actual history and rapport as actors over several decades. As Yabushige plots, Toranaga is always one step ahead, with Yabu often playing something of the teenage son to Toranaga’s bemused father. “Aren’t you my loyal friend?” Toranaga asks him, knowing full-well in episode 3 that Yabushige has facilitated the attack on Blackthorne, for which Yabushige expects to be executed. No sooner has Toranaga spared his life and awarded him the Suruga province before Yabushige is immediately back to scheming with Ishido. Along with the script’s major revision to the novel of softening his relationship with Omi, as well as his awkward friendship with the unpersuaded Nebara Jozen, Asano never squanders an opportunity to find the nuance in Yabushige’s relationships, be they friend or foe, as he pursues, like a trapeze artist, his high wire act to advance his station and, more importantly, not die.
The Last Laugh
All that being said, it’s unthinkable that Asano, who is a bonafide movie star in Japan but has generally been relegated to supporting roles in the West, should not win his goddamn Golden Globe tonight. Having robbed Yabushige of an Emmy after Toranaga already robbed him of a more “interesting” death than seppuku, the gods, or at least the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, must laugh at Yabushige no longer. Give the man his due. It’s his karma, his shukumei.
Photos credited to FX, drawing by Natalie Bielat
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