Nearly a full year has passed since the premiere of Shōgun on FX and streaming for viewers with a Hulu subscription, but the 2025 TV schedule continues to be a source of triumph for the historic drama. Not long after winning in some key categories at the Golden Globes and months after making history at the Emmys, the drama and its cast cleaned up at the long-delayed Critics Choice Awards. In perfect timing, the CCAs took place just days after I spoke with star Hiroyuki Sanada about the show, and he placed special importance on "authenticity."
Shōgun led the Critics Choice Awards nominations with a total of six, and ultimately won almost every category that it possibly could with a total of four. Along with Best Drama Series, Hiroyuki Sanada won Best Actor in a Drama Series, Tadanobu Asano won for Best Supporting Actor, and Moeka Hoshi won for Best Supporting Actress. Anna Sawai was in the running for Best Actress but lost to Kathy Bates for Matlock, whereas Takehiro Hira couldn't win Best Supporting Actor simply because his co-star already did win it.
All in all, it was a great night for Shōgun, shortly after I spoke with Hiroyuki Sanada on the red carpet of SCAD TVfest in Atlanta, where he was being presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award. The actor had already earned recognition for the sheer number of films and TV shows he'd worked on over the years, in my humble opinion, but Shōgun is arguably the pinnacle. When I spoke with Sanada – who was also an executive producer on the series – about what it means to him that he received this award directly in the wake of Shōgun, and he said:
This is big. Since I was a child actor, I've done a lot of different kind of roles or project or genre. Every time when I get the new role, I mix up every single experience into the next one, try to make best one ever. [laughs] And Shōgun, after 20 years in Hollywood, I learned a lot. World market, Western audience, and also I know the Japanese audience. So how to mix, how to create the best screenplay to make Shōgun, we needed the audience who will enjoy both Western and Japanese. That balance was the most important and difficult.
Notably, Shōgun used subtitles for all of the dialogue in Japanese rather than directing the actors to speak English, as might be otherwise expected in Western media. The approach clearly worked, as the show was immensely popular when it released episodes in the 2024 TV schedule, received an order for Season 2, and continues to clean up on the awards circuit. At SCAD TVfest, Sanada went on:
On set, just we try to make authentic. Not westernized, not modernized, just go straight to authenticity. That was our plan, so I put all my experience in my life into Shōgun, and then Shōgun brought me here. So it's a lot for me. This is a lot for me.
The actor/producer went on to joke that he's now "old enough" for a Lifetime Achievement Award, but it's clear that his career definitely isn't over. He's attached to Season 2 of Shōgun, although details remain scarce about the next batch of episodes and if/how they'll continue the story from the first round. After all, by the end of Season 1, several of the key characters were dead!
If you missed Shōgun the first time again – or, like me, are just in the mood to rewatch it after Hiroyuki Sanada's comments about authenticity – you can find the full first season streaming on Hulu now. The show has won award after award after award for good reason, and I have to believe that it holds up on more than one watch.
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