Reply #3: Shogun was a good read, but

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Clavell's grasp of Japanese history and culture was not that great. I conce saw a book for history teachers called "Learning from Shogun," and it went through all the historical and cultural errors in the book and miniseries. It was about 100 pages long.

For example, the idea that the Japanese would have been less puritanical than the English in that era is just plain wrong. The Puritans were still a tiny minority in England at the time, and mainstream society was pretty lusty.

The Japanese language used in the book is also pretty bizarre, either as modern Japanese or 16th century Japanese. For instance, the exclamation, "Oh, ko!" is unknown in either variety of the language.