Wolverine star’s samurai drama Shogun debuts on Disney+

Actor Hiroyuki Sanada has revealed what it was like to face off against Australia’s favourite movie star and why he’s intent on ensuring Japanese culture is portrayed accurately on screen.

Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada attends the red carpet event for FX's "Shogun" at the Academy theatre in Los Angeles, February 13, 2024. Picture: Michael Tran / AFP

For more than two decades, Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada has been on a mission to make sure the culture of his homeland is represented accurately on screen.

The martial artist and actor has been a regular fixture in Japanese film and television since the 1960s, when he made debut at the age of six in a yakuza movie playing the son of local acting legend Sonny Chiba.

In the decades that followed, he put his karate skills to work carving out a successful career in Hong Kong martial arts roles, alongside the likes of recent Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh and his long-time friend Jackie Chan, while also flexing his dramatic muscles with character roles and even a stint with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK.

But it was his role as the master swordsman Ujio opposite Tom Cruise in the 2003 hit The Last Samurai that changed everything.

His decades of experience playing samurai – both real life figures and fictional characters – had left him well versed in the customs and costumes of the feudal era and before he knew it, he was giving Tom Cruise tips on sword technique and volunteering his services to the filmmakers in the name of authenticity.

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in a scene from Shogun.

“Just as an actor I was on set but I wanted to correct everything, so every day I went to set ¬ even if I had no shooting as an actor – and checked every detail on the extras, the costumes, props, decorations,” says Sanada via Zoom call from Tokyo.

“Then I spent six months on post-production in LA. That was a great experiences and then all the department people asked me about our culture, so I thought in the future we could make better collaborations between East and West. That made me decide to move to LA from Tokyo.”

Having relocated to Los Angeles, the roles came thick and fast both on the small screen in shows such as Lost and Westworld, and the big screen in 47 Ronin, The Wolverine, Avengers: End Game, Mortal Kombat and last year’s John Wick: Chapter 4.

Every time, he offered to act as a consultant to the producer and director on matters pertaining to Japanese culture, all of which was ideal preparation for his own first stint in the producer’s chair on a new production of Shogun, adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 doorstopper bestseller of the same name.

“It’s a good chance to introduce our culture to the world,” says Sanada. “So as a producer I wanted to make it authentic as much as possible.”

Sanada also plays one of the lead roles, Yoshii Toranaga, who was based on the real-life figure Tokugawa Iyeyasu, who founded the Tokugawa Shogunate and (historical spoiler alert) ruled parts of Japan from 1543 to 1616.

The actor had regarded Iyeyasu is a hero figure since he was a child because “he stopped the war period and created a peaceful era for a long time” and had even already played him on screen in a 1989 Japanese telemovie.

Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai, Hiroyuki Sanada and Tadanobu Asano at the Los Angeles premiere of Shogun this month. Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

But whereas Clavell’s book – and the top-rating 1980s TV miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain – had told the story through the eyes of English sailor-turned-samurai John Blackthorne, Sanada was adamant that his version would bring the Japanese protagonists to the fore.

In Chamberlain’s version, the Japanese spoken on-screen remained unsubtitled to help express his bafflement of being in a strange land with unfamiliar customs.

In the new version, with British musician and actor Cosmo Jarvis (Persuasion) as Blackthorne and Kiwi pop star Anna Sawai as the translator who acts as a bridge between the two worlds, large stretches are in subtitled Japanese as the show digs deeper into the Game Of Thrones like machinations of rival warlords who have been tasked with running the country until the young emperor comes of age.

“The difference is that in the ‘80s one, the audience watches feudal Japan through Blackthorne’s blue eyes,” says Sanada, “but this time we thought, ‘let’s put it more through Japanese lenses in the script and then show more detail of how the British sailor or the Portuguese look from our side’. So it’s not only the one side this time and that’s a big difference.”

Hiroyuki Sanada and Hugh Jackman facing off in The Wolverine.

Sanada’s reputation as an action star with dramatic skills has brought regularly brought him to Australia and he says it’s one of his favourite places to shoot.

He returned to the Gold Coast – where he’d also made 2013 drama The Railway Man with Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth – just before last Christmas to film Mortal Kombat 2.

Four years earlier he’d made the first Mortal Kombat in Adelaide, showcasing his swordsmanship as the fan-favourite, dart-throwing ninja, Scorpion.

But his favourite memory of his time here was making The Wolverine in Sydney (subbing in for Japan) and celebrating their shared birthday with Hugh Jackman on set.

The pair faced off in a brutal and elaborately choreographed fight, with Sanada’s character wielding two swords against Jackman’s metal clawed mutant.

Such was the Aussie A-lister’s trust in the veteran martial artist’s fighting skills that he let him use a wooden sword for the clash, rather than replace it with a computer generated one in post-production.

“I had to swing, full swing, and then stop right on his skin and not hit the muscle or the bone,” Sanada recalls. “We had a great time and he believed in me.

“Our fighting scene was like a dancing scene – he had to step back and turn the corner and avoid dropping into the garden.

“So he believed in me and I led him so he could step back without watching. It was a great collaboration – it was like dancing in a musical.”

Shogun premieres on Disney+ on February 27.

Originally published as Wolverine star’s samurai drama Shogun debuts on Disney+