'Shogun' set to reign at Emmys

Good luck to the cast and crew of Shogun. I hope they win everything they get nominated for. Shogun was an exceptional show, well written and acted, taking great pains to be period accurate in all possible areas. Thoroughly enjoyable.

An excellent show but disappointing that they were unable to film in Japan as it was very obviously BC Canada in many shots.

Japan and Canada are islands on either side of the same water. Sort of...

An excellent show but disappointing that they were unable to film in Japan as it was very obviously BC Canada in many shots.

Why were they unable to shoot in Japan?

They could have shot this in Tokyo. Then it would look like Japan.

Who knows why they shot it in Canada? I'm guessing they needed more space than they could get in Japan, or that the money the land owners wanted from the producers was too high. The Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand. Why? I don't know. Production had something to do with it, though.

It's a common story in Sengoku period movies, but in Japan, permission is generally not granted for large-scale filming. It's also difficult to gather extras in regional cities.

As a result, past Japanese films that include large-scale battles have often been shot overseas, such as "Heaven and Earth."

You may be disappointed to find out that the person wearing the armor is a foreigner, but there's nothing you can do about it.

Japan is a headache for a lot of filmmakers. Permissions, approvals, etc. from all the uptight vested interests. Often not worth the effort, unless you don't mind that your "extras" are actually pedestrians who happened to be in frame during the shot.