TOKYO - Aika Miyake, the film editor of "Shogun," the hit TV series airing on the Disney+ streaming platform, says she knew the production was a winner from the moment she started working on the footage.
"I was so excited because I could tell right away that 'Shogun' was different from all the other samurai epics," Miyake said in an interview from Los Angeles.
As a Japanese woman working in Hollywood, Miyake is especially alert to the cultural and gender stereotyping that can occur in film projects, particularly in the depiction of Japanese women. "But I would describe 'Shogun' as feminine-forward," she said. "The submissive, helpful and obedient Japanese girl is just not here. In her place is Lady Mariko, [who is] strong and smart and acts by her personal code of honor."
Miyake went on to explain that the overall tone of many of the episodes of the series, which is also streaming on Hulu in the U.S., was defined by Lady Mariko, a samurai woman in feudal Japan who is as adept at speaking Portuguese (rendered as English for the series) as she is at explaining the machinations of Japanese politics and culture to John Blackthorne, a British sailor who blows into Japan on a storm. If she were transported to the 21st century, Lady Mariko would surely be a tenured professor of Japanese studies at a posh American university.
