When I was a teenager, we didn’t have no fancy streaming services. “Movie night” meant renting a VCR and a couple of VHS tapes. Which probably explains why I was such a voracious reader. From my earliest novels, I remember two big standouts: Stephen King, and James Clavell.

I read all of Clavell’s books: Shogun, Tai-Pan, King Rat, Nobel House, Gaijin… they were fascinating windows into another world. While clearly not fantasy, it felt like these books had all the elements of a time and place so removed from my own that magic would not have been out of place.

But Shogun was Clavell’s most popular work, and in the 1980s it was something of a cultural phenomenon. I think it single-handedly turned an entire generation — mine — into Japanophiles.

Now, there’s a new Shogun series airing, and it’s bringing me back to that world after a decades-long absence. It’s striking to me how relevant and poignant the story remains! And finally, after all this time, I feel like I’ve come alive to the why.

Because my whole life, spent reading, and in university, studying the greatest works of English and the West, I’ve had scant encounter with other cultures than my own depicted in so flattering a light. In Shogun, we learn about a Japan that is both incredibly foreign, while being manifestly superior to the 16th century Englishman’s home.

The reader takes the same journey as its protagonist, John Blackthorn. At first repelled by the differences between his familiar life and Japanese culture, he comes to appreciate its beauty and elegance. Nowhere is his transformation more clear than when he’s finally reunited with his crew, who had been moved to a village of outcasts, and had absolutey not acculturated to their new life. Here’s the clip from the current Shogun series:

I vividly recall this scene when I read the book so long ago as well: the foreigner has come to look upon his former life with disgust! He pummels it with his fists!

And what a gift to the reader that is. To be given the perspective that every piece of Western literature has been raising me to learn — we’re the best, we’re number one — and getting a huge “well, actually” instead.

Shogun is many things: an adventure, a political thriller, an action story. But it’s also an object lesson for smug white folk who think they’re all that. Any opportunity to learn some cultural humility is a service well-received.