‘Shōgun’ Showrunner Justin Marks Really Wants You To Know About the Toranaga/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Mifune Easter Egg He Put In

FX‘s Shōgun is a series that doesn’t skimp when it comes to the finer details. The dialogue was painstakingly translated from English into Japanese, tweaked by a Japanese playwright, given another pass for historic accuracy, and then retranslated into English for the subtitles we see now. Japanese artisans were flown into Vancouver to do everything from tying obis to working with traditional wigs. There’s one detail, however, that Shōgun co-creator and showrunner Justin Marks is eager for fans to notice. So much so, when Decider was wrapping up an interview with Marks and fellow co-creator Rachel Kondo this week — which will run the day after the show’s April 23rd finale — he asked us if we had plans to reveal a tiny, nerdy Easter egg we’d discussed months prior.

“I have a question for you before we go,” Marks asked, turning the tables on the usual interview. “Did you ever get to point out the thing that I’m really hoping people key into, which is the color choice of Toranaga’s Kosode?”

Marks was referring to an off-the-record conversation Decider had with the Shōgun team at a party FX hosted for journalists at Winter 2024 TCA. In addition to chatting about the show’s early reception and the fact that Cosmo Jarvis improvised his hilarious Episode 7 line, “This appears to be occurring,” we circled back to a comment Marks had made during an earlier interview. Marks had revealed on the record that the Cloud City sequence in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back was a key source of inspiration for Saeki’s (Eita Okuno) heel turn in Shōgun Episode 7 “A Stick of Time.” Marks later confirmed Decider’s inkling that Toranaga’s costumes were another homage to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy.

“We were trying to give it back to Obi-Wan [Kenobi],” Marks said, of Toranaga’s specific shade of brown.

The extremely nerdy reason why Marks wanted to draw a line from Toranaga to Obi-Wan Kenobi ironically has nothing to do with the Star Wars film we know and love today, but the movie that could have been. George Lucas’s original first choice for the samurai-inspired Jedi Knight was none other than Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s most legendary star.

“I’m still hoping someone keys into the color palate,” Marks said. “It was our little tribute back to Mifune almost being cast as Obi-Wan. We were trying to kind of give Toranaga a little bit of that color scheme.”

Mifune, ironically, would eventually find his way into a major American production anyway. A few years after Star Wars debuted in 1977, he starred as Toranaga in the original 1980 Shōgun miniseries.

So it’s a layered Easter egg that honors not only the ways in which samurai media influenced George Lucas’s concepts for Star Wars, but how the king of the samurai movie and the original Toranaga, Toshiro Mifune, was almost Obi-Wan Kenobi. And now it’s officially out there in the world…