Anna Sawai is having a moment. In September, the erstwhile child actor and J-pop singer’s performance in the epic historical drama Shōgun netted her an Emmy for best female lead, making her the first actor of Asian descent to win in her category, and the first Japanese woman to win an Emmy at all.
When Time magazine subsequently listed her in the Time100 Next 2024, her co-star Hiroyuki Sanada, who starred as future titular shōgun Yoshii Toranaga, penned an uncharacteristically glowing tribute: “Anna Sawai could play any role on this Earth, or in space,” he said. “Period pieces or far-future films – she is so talented that she can do anything.”
“I teared up when I saw that,” Sawai says, speaking on Zoom from the Tokyo film set for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Apple TV+’s foray into the Godzillaverse. “Hiro’s not someone to say something for the sake of it.”
Shōgun follows a 17th-century Englishman who is shipwrecked off Japan’s coast and ends up in Lord Toranaga’s service. Sawai wields, in real life, both the beauty and the don’t-mess-with-me mettle that makes her portrayal of Mariko Toda, the lord’s interpreter and secret weapon (and said Englishman’s lover) so indelible. She’s also instantly warm and peaceful, with all the time in the world.
On screen, she radiates impressive power – particularly during wordless internal struggles. I’ve spent months watching her battle entire battalions of ninja assassins (Ninja Assassin), leather-clad intruders (Fast & Furious 9) and Bubble-economy finance bros (Pachinko), not to mention monsters (Monarch). In Shōgun, meanwhile, she steals the show in Crimson Sky, the penultimate episode widely hailed as the best TV anyone has watched in years, warding off regiments of samurai warriors and handing Toranaga victory without his opponents even realising they have been defeated. Her actual fighting skills are undeniable. “I started ballet at around six years old,” she explains. “It gave me a solid core – which you really need to be able to swing a sword that’s twice your height.”
Mariko’s story has resonated with women far and wide. This tragic character stems from a long line of noble samurai. But like all women of her standing, she lives within social bounds as constricting as the layered silks she wears. Midway through the show, in a moment of rare candour, she speaks her mind to her lord: “A man may go to war for many reasons,” she says. “Conquest. Pride. Power. But a woman is simply at war.” What a line.
“It’s so strange,” she tells me. “A lot of men compliment me on my portrayal of Mariko. It’s always like, ‘Oh, you’re amazing’ – it’s very positive.” But the response from Japanese and Asian women and girls has brought Sawai to tears. “I feel their pain,” she says. “It has made me realise how much some Japanese women don’t even realise they’re being treated a certain way. We’re very behind when it comes to equality for women. It shocked me that our show taught them that it was OK to stand up and say no.”
It has also resonated with women living outside Japan. “They have been struggling, too, with expectations they need to meet. Of course, in Mariko’s time it was much more severe. But women really do need to do so much more in order to prove themselves.”
Sawai says she hadn’t set out to make a statement about women’s rights. She just wanted the show to be as authentic as possible. “But I’ve come to realise that it’s a much bigger thing that we’re doing.”
Shōgun is, without question, a big thing. It has beaten records for the most Emmy wins by a single show in a single year (18) and was the first non-English-language series to win best drama. It’s a world away from the 1980 TV adaptation of James Clavell’s eponymous novel – which focused so exclusively on sailor John Blackthorne’s white, western perspective that no one spoke Japanese – and has blown the doors off the industry in terms of how diversity ought really to be prioritised. But Sawai says she had little sense of the impact it would have while on set. “All I could do was just show up, do my best, then go home, take off my kimono and try to sleep.”
Putting the kimono back on each day was a lot, she says. She would get really tense around the shoulders. But she saw that as a tool: “My posture would change: the way I walked into the room would be different. I would sit properly. I don’t think I would have been able to portray Mariko otherwise.”
“I learned so much about Japanese culture that I would otherwise not have known,” she adds. One particular scene has stayed with her. Mariko and consort Fujiko head to the Willow World tea house, to negotiate – also at Toranaga’s request – with the brothel owner, Gin, over the price of Blackthorne’s forthcoming treat. That the three women are haggling is almost undetectable. They raise beautifully lacquered cups of green tea to their mouths, study them graciously then gently put them back down again. The experience of shooting the whole tea ceremony for this brief three-minute sequence settled something in Sawai’s mind.
She was born in New Zealand in 1992. Her family moved around a lot thanks to her father’s job with an electrics company, before heading back to Japan when she was 10. “Growing up, knowing the outside culture and coming to Japan, I was a bit frustrated that people are not direct. But in that tea house when they flip over the cup and admire the bottom of it, just staring at the design, not saying anything to each other, I learned that that’s where we come from. It’s not a culture where we’re loud or constantly saying things to each other. It’s more about spending time in silence and just taking it in.”
Just three years ago, when she got her first big international break with 2021’s Fast & Furious 9, Sawai’s sister Reina, a ballet dancer, took to Instagram with a hug of a post: “There’s something so beautiful and admirable about working hard silently and tenaciously without bragging. And my sister is the perfect example of it. So I’m going to go ahead and brag for her.”
Post-Shōgun, no one needs to brag for Sawai. “I feel like right now is a very good time for me. More people are showing interest in working with me.” She might direct. She is considering producing. She has ideas, not least the drama she experienced within the J-pop industry as a member of girl band Faky (which reportedly stood for “Five Ass Kicking Youngsters” and “FAntastic + toKYo” both). Listening back now, you note that Sawai can really sing.
“People have asked me if I’ll ever release music. And I’m like: ‘Oh, no one wants to hear it.’ I’m probably a bit scared because I did try singing and it wasn’t a success. We were struggling as a group. So there’s a part of me that’s like: ‘You don’t belong, you’re not meant to sing.’” That’s another industry long criticised for its objectification of often very young girls. “Maybe I want to tell that story,” she says, “of being part of a group like that.”
She would love to work with Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda or Hiro Murai, whose credits include Atlanta, The Bear and Mr & Mrs Smith. Murai’s directorial feature debut was recently announced as a samurai action movie set in feudal Japan. Given Shōgun, that might appear to have Sawai written all over it. But she is keen for casting directors to not make lazy choices.
“I’ve played mostly just Japanese women. But I hope I’m not boxed into that kind of role. There will always be an ethnicity; I will always be this” – she gestures to her face – “but I’m just a human being. I can play a character who doesn’t have a specific country; I want to be able to go up for those roles as well. I will say, though: if I am to play a Japanese woman, I want it to be very properly authentic.” Judging by her successes so far, that doesn’t seem out of reach.
