Shōgun takes viewers back in time to 1600 Japan. We travel alongside English navigator John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) as he journeys from the small fishing village of Ajiro to the exquisite cosmopolitan of Osaka. There are moonlit battles, shivering seas, and dreamy soaks in natural hot springs. Have you found yourself watching the FX show wondering how you, too, can travel like John Blackthorne? Well, there’s good news and bad news. Japan is one hundred percent a real place you can visit. However, Shōgun was not filmed in Japan…
Shōgun is FX’s new adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel of the same name. In 1980, ABC aired a Peabody-winning miniseries adaptation of the book and that version of the tale was completely shot on location in Japan. The story, after all, follows an intrepid English sailor who winds up on the shores of feudal Japan. He falls in with a powerful, brilliant daimyo named Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and falls in love with his translator, Mariko (Anna Sawai).
So if Shōgun wasn’t filmed in Japan, where did the FX series find its version of Ajiro, Osaka, and, in the future, Edo (aka Tokyo)? Here’s everything you need to know about where Shōgun was filmed…
Even though Shōgun takes place in feudal Japan and boasts a large Japanese cast, the FX series was actually filmed somewhere closer to Hollywood. Shōgun was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a mainstay of many television sets.
Variety reports it was shot on Vancouver Island and in the suburbs of Vancouver. Production designer Helen Jarvis “ended up transforming two exterior backlots and two soundstages to build the world of Shōgun, which included a fishing village, a harbor, royal palaces and samurai houses.”
Although Shōgun was filmed in Canada, star and executive producer Hiroyuki Sanada kept pushing the production to bring in crew from Japan. During a post-screening Q&A Decider attended for the show back in December 2023, Shōgun showrunner Justin Marks revealed that although they tried to make it work with just Canadian crew, they were soon flying in experts from Japan, specifically for wardrobe.
“We’re in Vancouver. There’s not a lot of shootable day in the winter, so you’re always looking at your watch as we’re just preparing to get our first shot off. And sometimes we have 150 extras in any given scene, which — that’s a lot of people to put into costume. That’s a lot of nakazori to put onto their heads — you know, the caps. That’s a lot of makeup to put on,” Marks said.
“I remembered as a conversation about obi-tying, you know, the belts, the kosodes — and just kind of — there are YouTube videos for that. We can all look at that, and we can all understand these things…Three days into production, we have tyers coming out from Japan in armies because we just couldn’t get people up fast enough.”
Marks explained that the Canadian crew was able to learn these classic techniques much faster from the Japanese professionals and eventually the whole production benefitted.
“Hiro-san, it was you who was like, no, we really need them from Japan,” Marks said.
So instead of flying in present-day Japan, Shōgun created their version of feudal Japan in Vancouver with the help of “armies” of helpers flown in from Japan.