Shogun - Mesmerising Television Series

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Shogun - Mesmerising Television Series

Originally a world-famous bestseller (James Clavell's 1975 historical fiction had sold 15 million copies by the year 1990), Shogun has demonstrated its small-screen potential before. 

In 1980, was the original Shogun, a nine-hour NBC miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain, John Rhys-Davies, Japanese icon Toshirô Mifune, and Orson Welles as narrator, won three Primetime Emmys and three Golden Globes after achieving the second-highest viewership ratings in US TV history. 

In 2024, Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks' new series Shogun, largely avoids big names, but instead brings even more vivid historical context to the forefront ultimately delivering a rich description of feudal Japan in all its terrifying glory.

The thrillingly TV series, is holding a 99% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I would truly recommend both tv programmes, and Shogun: A Novel by James Clavell.

Shogun Haircut

If you’ve been watching the brilliant Shogun (TV Series), it’s probably raised a lot of questions in your mind about the haircut

The Shogun haircut is the traditional chonmage, the topknot, where the long pigtail is oiled and gathered up to the top of the head and the head is shaved. 

In the TV show, however, it’s clear that the top was intentionally shaved bald, given that this is far too big of a production to let day-old stubble be constantly poking out if someone was supposed to be bald.

The origin of this hairstyle was simple practicality, which eventually turned into tradition. In the beginning, it was a method of keeping the head cool and the helmet snug while wearing traditional samurai headgear, something that draws a link between the samurai’s chonmage and the modern hockey player's mullet. 

The samurai were highly respected both in society and in battle, so the haircut became a signifier of that samurai’s title, even outside of battle, it became a badge of honour.

The demise of the chonmage is interesting. In 1871, the Meiji government issued a law, the Dampatsurei Edict, according to which the samurai were banned from wearing topknots and were forced to adopt Western hairstyles. This was the end of the chonmage; only Sumo wrestlers were allowed to wear a topknot but even they were not allowed to shave.

The chonmage is still around today, most notably on sumo wrestlers and kabuki actors, but it’s more common to see it with the top of the head left fully furred, maybe contributing to the retroactive weirdness of the original. Sumo wrestlers even have specialized barbers to carefully coif their chonmage known as tokoyama.