FX’s Shogun extended its reign over the 2024 Emmys on Sunday night. Going into the evening, the hit samurai series already held the record for the most wins by any show in a single year, having bagged 14 trophies at the Creative Arts Emmys a week ago. But the show further cemented its rule inside the Peacock Theater at the Primetime Emmys, winning an additional four awards, including the top categories of best drama series, best actress in a drama series for Anna Sawai, best actor in a drama series for Hiroyuki Sanada and best drama directing for Frederick E.O. Toye.
Shogun’s triumph is momentous on several fronts. The historic awards haul represents a huge win for FX and parent company Disney for a pricey series that took nearly 10 years to bring to fruition and once looked like a very uncertain bet. It’s also a major moment for Asian representation and non-English-language television. Shogun is the very first majority non-English-language series to win in the outstanding drama series category (Netflix’s Korean sensation Squid Game was nominated in 2022 but lost to HBO’s Succession), and Sanada and Sawai are the first Japanese actors ever to win Emmys.
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Speaking backstage at the Emmys, Sanada said that when he arrived onstage to accept his Emmy, he “felt the weight of the moment and what it all means historically.” One of Japan’s few top actors to cross over to Hollywood in a major way, Sanada began performing in Tokyo nearly 60 years ago as a child actor, apprenticing under local screen legend Sonny Chiba. He said his best actor win also made him think about “all my peers and teachers who have taught me since I was a child.
“As far as the next generation,” Sanada added, “I hope they see a lot of meaning in our nominations and wins and just understand that we created a period Japanese series that really connected with the world.”
Japanese cinema was recognized in Hollywood as far back as 1951, when Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon won the best foreign-language film Oscar at the 24th Academy Awards. Miyoshi Umeki later won a best supporting actress Oscar in 1957 for Sayonara opposite Marlon Brando. But recognition for Japanese talent on the small screen has been much later coming. Previously, only Japanese actor Masi Oka, nominated for outstanding supporting actor for Heroes in 2007, had received a drama series nod from the Television Academy.
Backstage at the Emmys, Sawai said that when she broke down into tears while accepting her best actress in a drama series award, it was probably her “12th time crying today.”
“I’ve just been a mess,” she added. “I think it’s just mixed emotions and anxiety, wanting everyone to win. … I’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll think this was all a dream.”
Shogun‘s march through Emmys history Sunday night wasn’t without some hard-fought losses, however. Billy Crudup took best supporting actor in a drama for The Morning Show over cult Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, whose performance as the wily samurai Kashigi Yabushige was a Shogun fan favorite. The FX series’ writers room — which condensed James Clavell’s 1975 best-selling novel of 1,312 pages into 10 hourlong episodes of TV — also lost out in the drama writing category to Apple TV+’s Slow Horses.
Shogun may be FX’s most watched series ever (based on global hours streamed), but it’s actually the second TV adaptation of Clavell’s sprawling book. A deeply influential epic about duty, honor and the struggle for power in Feudal Japan, the novel was previously adapted by Paramount Television in 1980. Shot on location in Japan with the biggest budget ever spent on a TV series at the time, the first Shogun became a pop culture sensation when it aired on NBC. The series earned 12 Emmy nominations at the 1981 Emmys, winning for outstanding limited series, costume design and best title sequence.
Paramount’s adaptation ended where the story of Clavell’s beloved book concludes — just as the first season of FX’s Shogun does. Co-creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo delighted fans in May with the revelation that Disney greenlit two additional seasons of the show. Sanada, who produces Shogun in addition to starring as Lord Toranaga, has begun teasing ideas about what might be in store for the story’s next chapters. After Sunday night’s Emmys celebrations wind down, the Shogun creative team surely has its work cut out as it tries to sustain Lord Toranaga’s Emmys reign by adding two, wholly original seasons to the saga.
