‘It Felt Like Fate to Play This Role’: Hiroyuki Sanada’s Journey from Japan to ‘Shōgun’

When Hiroyuki Sanada was a teenager, he read something that had a profound effect on how he viewed the future. Written by Tokugawa Ieyasu on the occasion of his abdication as shōgun, the military leader of Japan, the Testament of Ieyasu contained many lessons, but what stuck out to Sanada was Ieyasu’s first precept: “Life is like walking along a road shouldering a heavy load; there is no need to hurry”

“Never rush. That word hit my heart,” Sanada, 63, tells me over a Zoom call in early February. “I was always thinking about the future. Not tomorrow — ten years later, thirty years later. I want to be a better person, better actor. So, what do I have to do now?”

Shōgun, which premiered on Hulu and Disney+ earlier this week after a decade of development, is a culmination of all of that. Sanada has been attached to the series for seven years, both as star and producer. Fifty years after his introduction to Ieyasu’s lessons, he is telling the story of Ieyasu’s rise to power, albeit starring as the fictional replica of this towering figure of Japanese history, Lord Yoshii Toranaga. It’s a role for which Sanada feels uniquely qualified. “Fate is one of the themes of this show,” Sanada says. “But [it] felt like fate to play this role.” 

Indeed, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing Toranaga. Having moved to Los Angeles 20 years ago, Sanada has carved out a path as one of the most prolific and versatile screen presences of the twenty-first century as well as a go-to for Western directors depicting Japan. Yet, even as Sanada’s past and future collide in the role, what comes next and what he can do to make it happen remains Sanada’s focus.

Shōgun is unlike any Western depiction of Japan we’ve seen before. Though filmed in Vancouver, the vast majority of Shōgun’s spoken lines are in Japanese, delivered by an almost exclusively Japanese cast. It dramatically shifts the perspective from James Clavell’s Eurocentric novel, as well as other Western portrayals of Japanese culture. Shōgun is the final product of decades of work to bring to Western audiences a truer image of Japan.

“Usually, if I’m involved in some movie or TV show using our culture, I [consult] by myself as an actor. But I felt the limit to say something, as an actor,” he says. “This time, I’ve got a title as a producer, so, you know I could hire Japanese crew, experienced samurai filmmakers.”

That Japanese crew is one Sanada has assembled over years of working in the genre. “Hiro had at the ready the exact people he was hoping to enlist, be they experts on movement or wig application, props or even obi tying,” says Rachel Kondo, who co-created Shōgun with Justin Marks. “It was as if he had been waiting for something like 20 years to suggest these people.”

The result is a series in perfect balance between being accessible for a western audience and also removed from the inauthenticity of past depictions of Japan. It’s something for which, Kondo suggests, Sanada deserves much of the credit — even if he’s too modest to take it. “[He] poured himself into the role in a way that that truly feels unprecedented,” Kondo says. “To say he was merely ‘hands-on’ would be an understatement.”

Speaking to Sanada, however, one is struck by the contrast between the intense, gravel-voiced Toranaga and the soft-spoken, almost retreating Sanada. He is humble, gracious in the face of praise, even deflecting it. Yet both he and Toranaga share a profound appreciation of the future. For Toranaga, this comes through in his personal ambition to ascend to the shōgunate. This is most apparent in Sanada when he speaks about others and his hope that his example might inspire others to follow him.

“I feel the door is much much more open than 20 years ago,” he says. “So, I hope young actors try to come to the world market more and more. I’d like to make a bridge for them, so that’s why Shōgun [is] going to be a big footstep for the future, for the industry, but also for the young generation of actors in Japan.”

Which is why it’s important for him that so many young Japanese actors worked on Shōgun. He relates how watching these young actors do well often brought him more satisfaction than his own performance. Still, he allows himself a moment of personal excitement as he considers that a series to which he has been attached for years — he even had to film for a day in London, back in 2019, so FX could maintain the rights to the novel — hurtles towards reality. “I’m so excited, finally we can release [it] and show it to all the audience, you know, in the world. All at once, right? It’s so crazy!”

Though he credits his team and the people around him for the success of Shōgun more than himself — and we should not discount the team effort that went into the series — so much of Sanada can be found in the series. Something he hopes can set an example of how to tell a story from another culture with integrity and authenticity. Kondo says that the production even had to bring in a special stool, so Sanada could move from shooting his scenes to “study every take while wearing the massive armor for the scene being shot that he himself is in.”

That attention to detail comes from years of working on historical productions. Sanada has a desire to play in all genres, but there is a joy in his voice when he talks about samurai stories. From The Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983) and The Twilight Samurai (2002) in Japan to The Last Samurai (2003) and Westworld (2015—22) in the West, it’s a genre that has granted Sanada some of his most iconic characters. One might think returning to historical stories so often might inspire a fatigue with playing samurai, but Sanada brightens when he says, “Samurai-period words [are] like Shakespeare for us.”

It’s telling for Sanada to compare historical roles with Shakespeare, given how pivotal both have been to Sanada’s career. He first rose to fame as a child actor, starring as Shin’ichi “Sonny” Chiba’s son in 1965’s Game of Chance, a film in which a newly single parent must quit his vices to support his son. Multiple productions with Chiba followed, after which Sanada joined Chiba’s training school, the Japan Action Club, at 13. Though many will know Sanada for his action roles, the dramatic always drove him. “The acting’s first,” Sanada says. “And then all the other skills are just skills.”

Searching for more meaning in his work, Sanada pulled away from action and towards a more versatile oeuvre — surprising many of his Japanese fans. Starring roles as the effortlessly cool Koji in 1999’s Round About Midnight and Ryūji Takayama in horror phenomenon Ringu (1998) made Sanada a household name. Speaking about that time, Sanada is, of course, humble.

“I just kept continuing to learn,” he says, “using skills in the movies, and then learning from the movies, or learning from the theater. All of my experience made me, now.”

Of that experience, none was more significant than when, at 39, Sanada joined The Royal Shakespeare Company and spent a year as the Fool opposite Sir Nigel Hawthorne’s King Lear. “It was my biggest challenge in my life,” Sanada says. “Mixing culture [to] create something new, no one has ever seen. It’s very hard, difficult, but also I felt very interesting and important for the future, I thought.”

It certainly proved important for Sanada’s future, signaling a sea change in his priorities as he turned his sights to a broader stage. “During King Lear, I became 40,” he says. “After that I decided to jump into the world market. Then I took the audition for The Last Samurai. So, if I didn’t join King Lear, maybe I didn’t get the audition for The Last Samurai. So, maybe King Lear changed my life.”

In a modern world that moves so fast and in such a volatile way, some might feel paralyzed by the idea of making such a profound change in their late thirties. Yet, for Sanada, that’s what makes a series like Shōgun so pertinent despite its historical context. In many ways, Sanada’s career is one of patiently waiting and taking the chances that come. Through this latest role, he hopes some of the lessons he learned from Toranaga’s model, Ieyasu, might filter through to the audience.

“That was the biggest motivation to take this role for me. I really enjoyed that patience, and waiting for the timing and then fighting for peace,” Sanada tells me. “The world is so difficult now, I felt we needed [a] hero like this.”

After such a meaningful role, both as star and producer, it would make sense for Sanada, in his sixth decade of acting, to take a step back and slow down — but staying still doesn’t seem to be his style. “I want to try more different roles,” he says. “If I have the chance I’d like to continue producing and introduce a great talent from Japan to the world… I think that’s my next mission from now on.”

It’s a vision to which he returns many times during our conversation: to bridge the gap between East and West — a gap he, as one of the few truly global stars of today, has already had a major hand in narrowing — and provide opportunities for those who come after him. 

“His every effort was for the younger generation of actors,” Kondo says. “So that maybe, just maybe, their journey to such a role as his won’t take as long as it did for him to reach it.” In Shōgun, and Sanada’s performance therein, we’ve a distillation of that dream: a unique and sizable step towards greater authenticity in the depiction of Japan in the west, driven by a Japanese cast, and, arguably, a realization of the bridge Sanada has strove to create. “It’s going to be a new normal, that’s my dream. I hope the audience feels that,” he says.

When the conversation turns to how he might realize that new normal Hiroyuki Sanada returns to his modest, thoughtful self. Even at 63, it’s still about patience — never hurry, focus on what you can do now. “I just want to continue what I’m doing,” he says. “We cannot change the history [with] only one movie or TV show, so keep going—keep going.”

From Rolling Stone US.