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From: FPP <fredp1571@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Medium: Not Enough Black People in SHOGUN
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2024 09:01:32 -0400
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On 4/12/24 3:33 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> Apparently a show about feudal Japan isn't diverse enough even though it
> has hardly any white people-- 'not white' being the usual definition of
> 'diversity' in Hollywood.
> 
> Now it seems that the definition of 'diversity' is morphing yet again and
> it now doesn't matter how many other minorities are in your show, you still
> have to have a quota of black people regardless of whether their presence
> makes any damn sense or not.
> 
> https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/where-are-the-black-people-in-shogun-71fc1be70ab0
> 
> 

Guess we need another history lesson.  Yes, there were black people 
living in Japan in 1600 (and before).  We don't see them in SHOGUN for 
two reasons.

1) They were, statistically insignificant in number.
2) SHOGUN is based on real historical figures and events that took place 
in Osaka on the Island of Honshu.

John Blackthorne is based on William Adams (the English Samurai). 
Toranaga Yoshi is based on the actual SHOGUN Tokugawa Ieyasu. Toda 
Mariko is based on a Christian samurai Hosokawa Gracia, who was 
instrumental in establishing the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603. Her family 
history and death mirrors that of Toda Mariko in SHOGUN.

The clan crest (Mon or Kamon) used in the 2024 version actually used 
Tokugawa Ieyasu's correct sigil, the triple hollyhock.
(The 1980 version did not.)

Back to the blacks... the entire population of Japan in that period was 
12-15 million people.  Out of that, only one to two thousand were 
foreigners, and almost all would have been white missionaries, merchants 
and sailors.

The blacks brought by Europeans would have been servants, slaves, or 
navigators (pilots). They would NOT have been in the geographical area 
where Shogun takes place (OSAKA, on the Island of Honshu).  The black 
people in this period are in the Nagasaki area on the Island of KYUSHU, 
as slaves to the Jesuits and western merchants. (Not that there was a 
significant number of them anyway.)

This 2024 version of SHOGUN is incredibly historically accurate, in so 
far as it gets almost all of the details correct, including using the 
historical Japanese dialect of that period. Not perfect, but almost.

There was ONE famous black man who was made a retainer to the Daimyo Oda 
Nobunaga. His name was Yasuke, and he may have even been a samurai. He 
shows up in a few paintings of that period.
-- 
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind." - OC 
Bible  25B.G.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek8kap93bmk0q5w/D%20U%20N%20E%20Part%20II.jpg?dl=0

Gracie, age 6.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0es3xolxka455iw/BetterThingsToDo.jpg?dl=0