Shōgun

A Property Master's Perspective on the Intensive Prep Required to Delivery Award-Worthy Design

By Dean Eilertson

The day I received a phone call for a new show called Shōgun coming to town was back in early January 2021. I had just finished a Netflix show called The Adam Project, where for the last six months, my focus had been on time travel and future sci-fi technology circa 2028, designing and building the props you may have seen on display in the PMG booth at last year’s L.A. Comic Con. Now, I was being asked to take on the formidable task of recreating all the props needed for a 10-episode series about ancient feudal Japan.

I was told Shōgun would be based on the original book, like the 1984 TV series, and our story would be set in the Sengoku period of 1594 as Japan neared the end of 250 years of civil war. In my mind I thought, “But this is the west coast of Canada; we have zero knowledge of the history or this period, let alone history from over 400 years ago.” There’s not a rental house in North America with props from that period!

In my head I told myself, “Calm down, you have done period shows and you know how to research Westerns, the Civil War, pioneers, 1800s stuff.” (The oldest had been 1822 for The Revenant.) The more I thought about taking on a show like Shōgun, the more I realized just how difficult this project was going to be. There isn’t a single aspect of Japanese life that isn’t full of detail that we would need to research and source to help tell the story. Somehow, that still wasn’t enough for me to talk myself out of taking on the challenge.

A bit about me: I have stayed away from doing series for good reason for most of my career, because my prep has always been my most stressful time. To do a series, all I would be doing is prep for the next 18 months. Starting with 22 weeks of prep—which I had never heard of before, as normally 12-14 weeks of prep for a feature was more what I was used to. Then my phone rings, and it’s one of the producers. “We normally have a picture car person, but this is 1594, we need boats. Our production designer tells us that you are a sailor and know a lot about boats. We need 24 traditional Japanese boats. If we start you a month early, would you be willing to take on this boat building? We need boats!” And my six-week break suddenly turned into two.

So, the process starts: Scripts are issued, production opens offices, and other heads of department are being hired. During this time, I pay special attention to who they are hiring, since I will need to either establish a new relationship with them or hopefully, already have a history with them. As the show builds momentum, I am so impressed with the decisions that are being made. These producers are headhunting the best of the best in all departments, which I’ll say right now was very intimidating for me, since they had already set the bar so high. After years of doing this, I am always so fascinated by who it is that ends up carrying the visionary keys. Will it be the production designer or the costume designer? In a series, it usually never is the director but yes, it could be the showrunner. Only in hindsight will we ever see who it was.

Ten 1-hour episodes equal approximately one foot of 8”x11” paper with every word of every episode printed on those pages. I organized my scripts in a catalogue-like rack you typically see on the desk of an auto parts store. Truthfully, in my early prep, I had only been able to read the first three scripts, as I was already too deep into my research. We began our talks with the potential buyers I was going to need full time in Japan. There was nothing we could resource here, and we needed everything! At this stage, the scale of what we were doing really took its toll on me. I needed to get every script read! To do this, I needed to take my catalogue rack full of paper home and lock my doors. My head was exploding! We needed weapons for six different armies. Each army might have upward of 300 samurai. We needed personalized props for each Regent, handwritten documents, historically correct lacquerware for some very complicated food scenes. We needed everything for tea ceremonies and everything for scenes involving seppuku. In short, we needed everything!

I set up shop with our set dec department in a 65,000-square-foot warehouse. At one point, we thought the art department was going to join us, which would have been perfect. My portion of the warehouse was set up with the boat building on one side and the prop building and shelving on the other half. A wall of heavy clear plastic was hung from ceiling to floor to help control the dust from the boat side. Unfortunately, the deafening sounds of their power tools could not be avoided. We had three dedicated boat builders and four full-time prop builders, two on set 1st assistants (Jason & Claudio) who would alternate between two-episode blocks on set and joining us would be first one, then eventually three full-time buyers in Japan. I hired Douglas Brooks, author of the book Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, to be our expert and consultant for traditional Japanese boats. We chose three different styles to build. The longest was a 35-foot design from the early 1800s, based on a whaling boat, of which we built five. The samurai liked their speed and ability to carry many people. Next, we built five 15- foot cargo boats, typically used to haul goods from ship to shore. Brooks helped us purchase three boats he had built with students at Bates College in Vermont. The remaining 11 were skiffs of varying lengths. For these, I stumbled onto a bunch of used dragon boats up for auction. Their size and shape provided a strong, workable base to create a Japanese-looking watercraft.

My week usually started on Sunday at 5 pm, which was Monday morning in Japan, with a Zoom call to Tomo, my head buyer in Japan. By now, I had my breakdowns for each episode. Luckily, Tomo spoke very good English and could read the breakdowns without needing translation. With that, we would start our page turn as we made up our buy lists. Tomo had a great setup called Air Table, where he would upload files of assorted items from local auction sites in Japan. Our plan was to build up our inventory by buying everything we needed and shipping it all to Vancouver. Our goal was to fill four 40- foot containers and have everything shipped by boat. Tomo had a shipping company organizing departure dates to guarantee timely arrival. One day in March, we woke up to the news that a massive 1300-foot cargo ship had run aground, wedging itself across the Suez Canal and shutting off all passage of ships headed north and south. After a six-day delay of 369 cargo ships and billions of dollars in cargo, they finally reopened the canal. But for us, the damage was done. The backlog was so bad that we were forced to use air cargo instead, which more than tripled our shipping budget.

My Mondays usually started with me going over Tomo’s latest Air Table files. I was amazed at what was for sale. Like here, Japan has an aging population, and the younger generations no longer have an interest in or the will to hang onto old antiques. It didn’t matter what we were looking for; Tomo could usually find it, and I would simply type “BUY!” in my reply notes. This became our process as we steadily amassed all the amazing things I needed. For more detailed buying, I would either ask our historian for input or, for example, include our tea ceremonies master in the meetings so she could explain to Tomo what was needed. Who knew there were such big differences between making spring or winter tea and the Zen of the ceremony?

Quill and Perry were well into making the mold for the whale boats, while Bob had the job of cutting the scarf joints into 100 sheets of marine plywood. With these, Bruce then glued up four sheets at a time to make 32-foot lengths of plywood. It was going to take 20 sheets of marine plywood for the outer strakes or planks for each boat. Bob did an amazing job. Quill and Perry started building the first of five whale boats using the full-sized patterns taken off plans Douglas provided of Senzanmaru, the oldest plank-built boat in existence, preserved at the Tokushima Castle Museum.

Finally, I paid a visit to our Costumer, Carlos Rosario, who I had never worked with before. He was so welcoming and spent a lot of time explaining his ideas through his illustrations and color palette boards. He talked about the Regents and the armies they each had. Each Regent’s army had its own colors: brown, green, red, silver, gold, etc. We agreed that my props needed to complement, not stand out from, what he was doing. For the armies, we agreed that the cordage on their swords needed to match his base colors. Carlos intended to design and build everything, as the costume houses in Japan did not have the numbers he needed, nor anything he liked. At the time, I thought this was a bold but potentially dangerous move. We had heard some troubling news about our lead actor and his opinions about how things should be done. For one, Kyoto is the only place in Japan where directors like Akira Kurosawa have made their samurai movies for decades. Famous prop rental houses like Takatsu have always supplied props for these movies. In our lead’s opinion, if things did not come from Takatsu, then we were not doing the right thing. So, it became quickly obvious that all our hero Regent’s tachi and tanto swords needed to come from Takatsu. Only then could I stare our lead actor in the eyes as I presented him with his character’s swords.

I had to organize training camps for our samurai. Our Japanese experts trained them how to walk, sit, draw their katana; yes, we had naginata, kyudo or yumi longbows... On a show like this, the list of things to do was endless.

In our shop, our boats were coming off the assembly line to get aged and ready for the camera. We flew Douglas Brooks in from Vermont for a week to teach our background rowers how to scull their oars and maneuver the boats. I have so many stories I need to write about, starting with a whole book on the Norimono, next the saddles the samurai used, then tacking up the samurai horse, and finally, what funeral props you will need. Many of our saddles had the original maker’s mark. One that needed repair was inscribed with: “March – Lucky Day – 1634 – and the name of the maker” (photo attached). We opened fragile, handmade, ancient vintage boxes with a full set of lacquerware inside. One included the original purchase receipt dated 200 years earlier for the purchase of an antique. Our antique tea ceremony cups and whisks, etc., started showing up, and as I unpacked the boxes, I witnessed five geckos from Japan hop out and blend into their new surroundings.

In all my years, I have never experienced or learned so much on a show. Finally, on June 30, 2022, Shōgun was officially and finally in the can. It would take almost two years before we would get a chance to see our work. If you have watched Shōgun, you will have seen an early scene in the first episode shot at our Lower Anjiro location. Hundreds of samurai line the shore of a beautiful bay as we establish Toranaga giving his speech. It’s all real and when I look at that scene, I see every department’s hard work. Without every department contributing at the highest level, I don’t feel Shōgun would have had the same success. That included the props, which for some strange reason never get the recognition they deserve on any show ever seen in the history of film, finally received their due. In mid-January 2024, Shōgun aired on Disney FX and Hulu. Nine months later, the Emmy Awards honored our show with awards in 14 creative departments. Then, one week later, we received four more Emmys for Best Show, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director, totaling 18 Emmy Awards in all.

Check out the rest of the Winter 2025 Issue of Prop Culture here.