What Is The Source Of The Series "Shogun"�?

This 1982 mini-series was adapted for the BBC from the best-selling novel by James Clavell. The novel itself was based on the true story of an Elizabethan sailor called Will Evans, who was shipwrecked in Japan, (a country then almost entirely unknown to the Western world) captured by local warriors and gradually integrated there. In the novel and the series, the sailor is Captain John Blackthorne (played by Richard Chamberlain) a former apprentice of Sir Francis Drake. He is given various formal titles, learns Japanese and, despite having a wife and children at home, acquires an official consort and also pursues an illicit affair with a married woman, Lady Mariko (Yoko Shimada.) In the end he succeeds in becoming Shogun – the highest grade of Samurai warrior. The series was filmed on location in Japan, and at the time it was one of the most expensive BBC dramas ever made.