John Blackthorne
TV characterWikipedia
50
MENTIONS
10
EPISODES
7
PODCASTS
Search complete. 50 mentions across 10 episodes found for "John Blackthorne".
Oct 9, 2026
speaker_1HOST
Exactly.
speaker_1HOST
The story of the English pilot, John Blackthorne, who gets marooned and caught in the, uh, the gravitational pull of Lord Yoshi Toranaga, it merges the macro and the micro perfectly.
speaker_0HOST
It really does.
speaker_1HOST
The grand political maneuvering is the environment, but the intimate human desperation, that's the oxygen.
speaker_0HOST
I mean, you have Toranaga playing this like God level game of four-dimensional chess with the fate of a nation.
speaker_1HOST
Right.
speaker_0HOST
And then you have Blackthorne just trying to figure out how to bow correctly so that somebody doesn't chop his head off before lunch.
speaker_1HOST
Yeah.
SaYoHOST
Hmm?
Armunn RighHOST
Anjin-san.
Armunn RighHOST
Anjin-san.
SaYoHOST
[laughs] But, uh, so when I s- hear these days that ...
SaYoHOST
B- because I, I used to try to get the information from very intelligent people.
Charlie HoupertHOST
But let's get back to Shogun, because this will all make a lot more sense when you watch [laughs] that battle play out on screen.
Charlie HoupertHOST
So in this scene, we have John Blackthorne, who is this Englishman, and he is shipwrecked in Japan in the early 1600s.
John BlackthorneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
My name is John Blackthorne.
John BlackthorneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I'm English, pilot of the Erasmus.
Charlie HoupertHOST
And he's talking with his interpreter, Mariko.
Charlie HoupertHOST
She's married to this guy that she just hates, and it's gotten so bad that she does not want to live.
speaker_2UNKNOWN
[dramatic music]
Charlie HoupertHOST
So Blackthorne, being this Western explorer individualist, says this to her.
RogerHOST
There is a dubbed version as well, which is probably a lot easier for you to watch.
RogerHOST
with this Western who gets sort of trapped in Japan and there's a whole storyline going on.
RogerHOST
It's an epic book.
RogerHOST
This is an epic adventure.
speaker_1SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Key to see if you're holding out.
speaker_1SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Anjin-san a the last shogun.
speaker_1SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
We'll jump and swear to a show for fun.
speaker_1SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Samurai way, we no use no gun.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And there were moments when simply finishing it began to feel like a spiritual discipline.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Shogun is historical fiction set in Japan around the beginning of the 17th century and At the centre of the story is an English sailor called John Blackthorne, who becomes known in Japan as the Anjin-san, the pilot.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Blackthorne arrives in a world almost completely unfamiliar to him.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Different customs, different beliefs, different ideas about duty and life and death and honour and faith.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And one of the things I found fascinating about the novel is that Blackthorne begins by assuming that his way of seeing the world is normal.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
and then he discovers that it isn't.
Michael KaneSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Perhaps there is something important in that for all of us.
speaker_4HOST
So Toranaga is this brilliant, calculating military leader.
speaker_4HOST
Then you have the English interloper, John Blackthorne.
speaker_5HOST
Right.
speaker_5HOST
Blackthorne is heavily based on a fascinating real-life man named William Adams.
speaker_5HOST
Adams was an English navigator who has the historical distinction of being the first Englishman to ever visit Japan.
speaker_4HOST
Wow.
speaker_4HOST
So into this incredibly volatile powder keg of political, religious, and economic division, a literal storm tosses a highly disruptive foreign element.
speaker_5HOST
This is the inciting incident of the entire plot.
speaker_3HOST
Exactly.
speaker_3HOST
We had John Blackthorne, the European pilot, stranded and deeply entangled in this political web.
speaker_4HOST
He was trapped, essentially.
speaker_3HOST
But instead of showing us the immediate aftermath of that powder keg, they are skipping a decade.
speaker_4HOST
If he won, we are now looking at the heavy isolating paranoia of maintaining absolute power.
speaker_3HOST
Oh, that's dark.
speaker_3HOST
And what about John Blackthorne? The report confirms Cosmo Jarvis is returning.
speaker_4HOST
Which is fantastic news.
speaker_1HOST
Yeah.
speaker_0HOST
The way John Blackthorne is depicted on the page, like, it alters the narrative trajectory significantly.
speaker_1HOST
His whole timeline is shifted.
speaker_0HOST
Yeah, his timeline, his fundamental dynamics with the Japanese characters, it's all built on a different foundational logic in the book, and there are unexpected fates for certain individuals that just completely recontextualize the political fallout of the story.
Andy DalyHOST
The FX limited series Shogun.
Andy DalyHOST
John Blackthorne, the main character of the FX limited series Shogun, is based on what real-life historical figure? Dupree.
Andy DalyHOST
No, it's not your turn.
Andy DalyHOST
Me? It's not your turn.
7 MINS LATER
Andy DalyHOST
All right.
Andy DalyHOST
Very good.
Andy DalyHOST
What is the full name of the actor who plays John Blackthorne on the FX limited series Shogun?
Sean ConroyGUEST
I did used to know this.