To Prevent Need for Subtitles, New Season of Shogun Is Set In Texas

A temple in Japan at night which looks like it could come from the new season of shogun although there might be some electrical lights but you know Japan, they're always pushing ahead with technology

Following the hit season 1 of Shogun, season 2 has been confirmed but will feature a surprise change of location.

“Shogun hit big. Real big, bigger than we expected,” said producer Stewart James.

“But, it seems there was one thing that held us back and that’s the fact that the main characters all spoke Japanese. Of course, normal people don’t speak Japanese and so we had to have subtitles. Subtitles put people off because of the whole having-to-think-about-what-you’re-watching thing.”

However, for season 2, the Shogun team have hit on an ingenious solution to the subtitle problem.

“We move the whole thing to Texas. We still have all the lords fighting for control of Japan, but instead of all doing it in Japan, where they speak Japanese, they do it from Texas, where they speak Texan, which is form of English.”

As well as removing the need for subtitles, the change in location also opens up new casting opportunities.

“Yeah, because we were in Japan for the first season, that limited who we could have playing the lords to Japanese people. You might have recognised them from playing, like, tech guys and henchmen in other films and shows, but they weren’t big names.

Now we’re in a America, we can really open up that casting – we’re thinking Kevin Costner for Toranaga and Josh Brolin for Kazunari.”