The Snapshot: In the Emmy-nominated series Shogun, Anna Sawai is Mariko, a young woman in feudal Japan who acts as an interpreter for her lord Toronaga. Though women in Japan in the year 1600 were subservient and answered to their husbands and fathers, Mariko stands apart as a strong woman whose intelligence and intuition give her more power than her peers.
The 10-episode limited series Shogun, based on the international bestseller by James Clavell, premiered February 27 on FX and Hulu, and all episodes are now streaming.
The Performance: You can tell a lot about a character by their entrance. When Mariko initially shows up in the first episode of FX/Hulu’s epic miniseries Shogun, it is in the middle of a crisis. A young mother named Fuji has been told that her infant son must die for a mistake her husband, the boy’s father, has made. Because this is how it was in Japan 400 years ago: a samurai publicly embarrasses his lord and commits seppuku, otherwise known as ritual suicide, taking his child with him to end his family line.
Feudal Japan was hardcore.
Fuji is understandably bereft, and unwilling to surrender her son to the officials who have come to take him away. Enter Mariko, who immediately calms the situation down, talks Fuji off the proverbial ledge, and establishes herself, both with the soldiers who have been at stalemate with the determined and horrified young mother and the audience, as someone to be reckoned with.
Soon, as it becomes clear that Lord Toronaga — played by legendary Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada — needs her for her skills as an interpreter to communicate with English sailor John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), the confidence she quietly exudes starts to coalesce into actual power. Even more so in the second episode, when her husband mentions that he expects her to be more of a wife and mother, and is quickly shown that Toronaga’s need of his wife’s skills outweighs his own.
Mariko, the audience understands, is a force, and we need to take her very seriously. Personified by New Zealander Anna Sawai, her stunning beauty acts as a form of camouflage, almost daring the men surrounding her to take her less seriously. Her tiny stature only adds to that. Standing just 5’1”, everyone seems to tower over her, and yet, she is consistently the center of everything. At first, it’s jarring to see her walking beside people so much taller than she is, until you start to understand that this is an illusion meant to lull you into underestimating her as much as the men around her. Then, slowly but surely, as she gets closer and closer to the English barbarian Blackthorne, everything starts to revolve around her.
As originally written, Mariko is a fascinating and fabulous character. She is a vessel through which the reader gets a view into the culture. As portrayed by Sawai, she is even more than that. She is the ideal combination of grace and power, her face never revealing anything more than necessary. With each episode, as we learn more about Mariko, Sawai remains an enigma, while also planting her own flag. She does this with Blackthorne at the end of the second episode, when he called her Mariko and she coldly replies, “You will refer to me as Today Mariko,” aka her formal title.
Translation, just because he’s a man and she’s a woman doesn’t mean she isn’t running the show.
In a series filled with interesting characters and great actors, Sawai stands above them all.
The Career: You can be forgiven if this is the first time you’ve seen Anna Sawai’s work. Before showing up in the 2019 Netflix miniseries Giri/Haji, she had only one other major credit, a tiny part in the 2009 movie Ninja Assassin as “Teenage Kiriko.”
Born in New Zealand in 1992, she moved with her family to Japan when she was 10 years old, earned her first role a year later in a Japanese TV production of Annie, but really rose to fame as one of the lead singers of the girl group Faky from 2013 to 2018. From there, making the switch back to acting was easy. First in Giri/Haji, then in the key role of Elle in F9: The Fast Saga, the ninth entry in the Fast and Furious film franchise. In the film, Elle is the key to unlocking Project Aries, a computer virus that could destabilize the world order. It’s not a huge role, but it’s a pivotal one, and it put her on people’s radar as a talent to be watched.
She capitalized on this in two Apple TV+ series, the first being 2022’s limited series Pachinko, based on the novel about an immigrant Korean family trying to make it in America, and the next being the Kurt Russell-Wyatt Russell Godzilla series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
But while these roles woke people up to her considerable talent, it’s Shogun that has really proved to be her breakout. As Mariko, it is impossible to take your eyes off her, and it has nothing to do with her looks. It’s about how compelling she is, and how she holds the audience’s attention. Critics agree, as her work is earning kudos across the spectrum.
So if you’re not big into monsters or big stupid film franchises or Korean TV dramas, Shogun is almost certainly your first experience watching Sawai in action. Rest assured, it won’t be the last.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Shogun‘s Emmy nomination.
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