Shogun

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. How did you respond to John Blackthorne’s capture and survival? How did John’s fate compare to your expectations of his fate? 

2. The novel explores notions of obedience and honor. How do John’s and Yoshi Toranaga’s customs relate to your own cultural, familial, and national customs?

3. Discuss your connections to characters including John, Yoshi, and Lady Mariko. Which character did you relate to most strongly? What made each character relatable, and why?

4. Discuss John’s integration into Japanese society. Have you ever immersed yourself in a very different cultural context? Do you think it’s possible to assimilate fully, and is doing so desirable?

5. Imagine that you are John and have been captured by Yoshi. Would you respond the same way as John? What would you do differently? Discuss why.

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The novel explores differences between European and Japanese perspectives. How do Clavell’s representations of European and Japanese culture relate to historical patterns of globalization and colonization? Does Clavell subvert or affirm cultural biases, and in what ways?

2. The novel is set at the end of Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama period. What role does this historical period play in the novel’s overarching plot? How do historical events inform Clavell’s fictionalized version of Japan?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. The novel’s third-person narrator largely follows John’s point of view. How does this narrative vantage dictate the novel’s primary conflicts and themes? Which aspects of the novel would change if the narrator followed Yoshi’s point of view instead?

2. Compare and contrast John and Yoshi. How does Clavell grant each of them dimensionality? What stereotypes might the characterization of each draw on, and which does it subvert?

3. Secrets play a prominent role throughout the novel. Explore the thematic significance of the secrets the characters keep from one another. How would the novel unfold differently if the characters were more forthcoming and/or less withholding?

4. Compare and contrast the symbolic significance of the Black Ship and Erasmus. What does each ship represent, and how are the ships narrative devices used to represent differing cultural and political objectives?