James Clavell’s Shogun is now in the minds of TV bingers worldwide after the brilliant FX show brought the 1975 novel to life in one of the best dramas we’ve seen in years. However, it turns out you’ve likely already seen an adaptation of Shogun before in the form of 2013’s X-Men movie The Wolverine.
During a long-overdue rewatch of the entire X-Men movie catalogue—yes, even Origins: Wolverine and Dark Pheonix—I watched the extended cut of The Wolverine for the first time. Not only was I surprised by the additional gore and a few bad words, but also at my realisation that James Mangold’s often-overlooked Marvel flick is also an adaptation of James Clavell’s unforgettable novel.
There are obvious links between the two such as the presence of Shogun’s amazing Toranaga actor Hiroyuka Sanada, also seen in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame for a few seconds. However, beneath the flick’s over-the-top action setpieces and superhero lunging across the tops of bullet trains, The Wolverine is a very obvious, albeit loose, adaptation of Clavell’s novel.
Straight in Act One, we see Logan’s Wolverine exploring Japan as a “gaijin”, as the Japanese characters often call him. It’s a classic fish-out-of-water adventure with a dash of Yakuza for good measure, but Logan also goes through the same steps as Shogun’s Blackthrone goes through. As an unwashed foreigner he’s forcefully cleaned and shaven, he’s given traditional robes and taught customs to do with honor, life, and death, and he comes to understand these traditions even if he disagrees with them.
In the Blackthorne role, Wolverine even has his own Mariko, literally a love interest called Mariko. As the successor to Yashida’s company, Wolverine’s Mariko is placed in the same level of importance as her classier, more badass Shogun version. She even has a lover who is jealous of her closeness to Logan and can be abusive in her treatment of her, much like Buntaro is to Shogun’s Mariko.
However, it’s not director James Mangold who’s at fault for copying—or being very inspired by—the massively popular novel. The Wolverine is a pretty faithful adaptation of the 1982 Wolverine mini-series, a comic run that released just seven years after the release of the original Shogun novel. Not only does this comic run rip multiple storylines out of the novel and create them with Wolverine at the center, but creator John Byrne has already confirmed this.
In an interview published in comic book magazine Back Issue (#4), Byrne confirmed that the character of Mariko was taken almost verbatim from Shogun. In an interview celebrating “30 Years of Wolverine”, Byrne admitted that Mariko was shamelessly stolen from the iconic novel, including the fact that she was destined to die, a storyline that was omitted from Mangold’s film version.
“Mariko was mine,” Byrne said. “I had just read Shogun which [co-creator] Chris [Claremont] had not read at the time. I just absolutely wanted to steal that character, just shamelessly steal the character. And as you probably know, she was created to die.”
In fact, this is why Mangold’s adaptation of Byrne and Claremont’s clear Shogun rip-off feels confused at times. Oftentimes it’s a deep character study about the realities of life and death, honor and duty, just like Shogun. Other times it’s a movie where Wolverine is fighting a giant adamantium mech-suit or lighting a cigar with a vehicle’s explosion. In fact, it feels exactly like what would happen if a comic book writer tried to steal Shogun.
Since its release in 1975, James Clavell’s Shogun has been officially adapted numerous times, and unofficially adapted countless others. In fact, despite being amazingly converted into a single-season show by FX, Shogun Season 2 and Season 3 have already been greenlit. While the original novel does have some pretty weird parts—thank the 70s—it’s a novel that will go down in history and will be adapted for decades to come.
The Wolverine and Shogun are available to stream worldwide on Disney Plus.