For FX’s adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel Shōgun, it was essential for series creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks to focus on authenticity in every department. “It was really important for Justin [Marks], the showrunner, to find someone who grew up in Japan, had an authentic Japanese experience, and also being female is actually kind of important for them to be able to tell the right story in the right way,” says editor Aika Miyake.
Miyake worked alongside editor Maria Gonzales, who says the pair worked in tandem to piece together the series. “We were on the show for a year and a half together, so during that time we became close collaborators. I needed Aika to help me out with Japanese, or at least I ran scenes by her to make sure I got the pacing right or that there weren’t any big language mistakes. So, we did rely on each other and built a friendship and a collaboration.”
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“For me, authenticity when I think about it, comes from the experience of living in Japan,” says Miyake. “I remember how the forest sounds at night, so how can I recreate the feeling of being there by putting the sound designs in or cutting the shots together?”
Shōgun takes place in the 17th Century when British sailor John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) ends up shipwrecked in Japan. He meets Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), one of five Regents ruling Japan, who sees Blackthorne as a means to tip the scales of power in his favor. Blackthorne and Toranaga are two members of an extensive list of characters, each with their own storyline that the editors needed to keep track of.
“That was one of the challenges for us,” says Gonzales. “Trying to get all these wonderful characters their due time on screen, but also keeping up the pace of the show… On Shōgun though, we had really amazing footage and a lot of the objective of the camera work was really to kind of be subjective and very close to the characters.”
“The cutting itself is not really fast or slow, the shot could have a lot of emotions and it could last for a long time,” says Miyake. “It’s really about acting and how long the shot can last, and we are the master of knowing when that ends.”
Shōgun is nominated for 25 Emmys, with Miyake and Gonzales being nominated for editing the season finale, “A Dream of a Dream”. “Editing episode 10, one of the things that ended up being kind of symbolic for me and I believe Aika as well for that episode, was that it really sort of represented the culmination of our working relationship on the show,” says Gonzales. “Even just as an episode, a lot of the action wraps up with episode 9, so episode 10, editorially, was just a lot of wrap-up, and we have huge dialogue scenes, we have very silent scenes, and just to keep the audience’s interest in something like that is always a challenge.”
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