Shōgun

In the year 1600, an English ship appears off the coast of Japan. On board is John Blackthorne — pilot, adventurer, Protestant — a man who believes he knows what civilization looks like. He is about to learn otherwise. James Clavell's Shōgunis a novel of enormous ambition: a thousand-page immersion in a world where honor is more valuable than life, where political genius wears the mask of submission, and where a “barbarian” from the West must unlearn everything he knows to survive.

Published in 1975, Shōgun sold 15 million copies and ignited a worldwide fascination with Japanese culture. It is at once a swashbuckling adventure, a love story, a meditation on power, and the greatest novel of cross-cultural encounter in the English language. This site is your guide to its world.