My favourite miniseries, Shogun, was recently released on DVD. I’d had it pre-ordered for a while.

Imagine my surprise when Michelle not only said that she’d watch it this past weekend, but actually ended up liking it! (This doesn’t normally happen to me.) So, now I’ve got her hooked on it. Despite the fact that it’s something like 9 hours long, we may end up finishing it in just a few weeks.

As for the disc itself (or discs, since it’s actually a set of 5), the quality is all right, despite some imperfections from the original print that were not given the kind of detailed attention as is done to more critically acclaimed movies such as Lawrence Of Arabia or Citizen Kane. (During the opening minutes I repeatedly noticed flashes of black grain.)

There was also a humourous moment when I tried turning subtitles on for Michelle so that she could know what what was being said. The only subtitles that appeared were for the English speakers. Which makes sense, since you’re not supposed to know what the Japanese speakers are saying, but it was still funny.

(One thing that confused me was that I’d always thought that the suffix “san” was used to denote somebody of equal (and perhaps lower) rank or importance, and that “sama” was supposed to be used when addressing somebody of higher status. So, when addressing a lord, it should be, for example, “Toranaga sama” not “Toranaga san”. Yet, in the miniseries, Chamberlain’s character addresses superiors with “san” rather than “sama”. Even more perplexing is that the Portuguese pilot will refer to a ruler as “some sama” as if it’s an actual description of office, rather than just the honorific I’d thought it was. So, either Shogun got it wrong, several of the books I’ve read over the past few years got it wrong, or it’s actually a little more complex than either source is making out.)