In Part One of our conversation with costume designer Carlos Rosario, we talked about the monumental effort his team went through to research, design, and handmake 2,300 costumes for FX Networks’ gripping historical saga. We continue the discussion today on how his team designed a distinct closet for each of the three main characters.

Unlike most other projects, Rosario could not design a collection that could be utilized throughout the series. As the story moves from the royal court to Ajiro village and the battlefield, and from tea ceremony to palace intrigue to war, his team dressed hundreds of characters: the samurais, koshōs (the equivalent of a squire to a warlord), and soldiers in battle; the lords and ladies in the royal court; the courtesans in the teahouses; and the villagers in Ajiro, all with varying looks. “Sometimes it took two or three people to dress each character in armor, and we had so many in some of the battle scenes.” On one occasion, he spoke with costume designer Kazuko Kurosawa (daughter of filmmaker Akira Kurosawa), who did not work on the series but offered valuable insight on whether the lords would tone down their wardrobe when visiting the villages. “I was wondering if their costumes should be more like what everyone else was wearing around them. But she said no, that’s actually when they want to show their wealth and power.”

“When I first read the script, two words came to me: ‘texture’ and ‘colors.’ In the novel, Ishido’s [Takehiro Hira] army is described as the gray army, and brown for Toranaga’s [star/producer Hiroyuki Sanada],” Rosario reveals of the color palette used for the different armies and, by extension, their lords. “That was the starting point. For Toranaga, what is more elegant than brown? Gold and copper. That gave me a framework for each of the lords. Even though that wasn’t how it was done, we wanted to respect the novel. It is also easier for the audience to visually understand who’s part of which clan and follow the storyline.”

When it came to texture, each group of characters has distinct qualities to delineate rank, wealth, and power. “For the residents in Osaka, I used a pale color palette with subtle patterns and mostly linens. The nobles wore luxurious costumes made of silk, elaborated hand-painted textiles, and lots of embroidery, and many layers to signal wealth and abundance. The villagers in Ajiro wore rustic, textured, natural fabrics like hemp, which was the predominant fabric of that time and reflected their connection to nature.”

The most intricate costumes for Toranaga was his armor, which Rosario made from leather rather than metal. Not only was leather more period-appropriate, but it was also more comfortable for the actors. “At first, we looked at renting armor from Japan, but it was too expensive. Once we decided to make everything, I thought, why not make them as light as possible to keep the actors happy? I remember Hiro [Sanada] told me it was the lightest armor he has worked with,” Rosario says. But there was another reason for using leather: since Japan had been fighting a civil war for over 100 years by this point, he wanted to give the armor a battle-worn look. “You can break down leather easily and age it to give it life and depth. I wanted the armor to look worn down – there’s an ongoing power struggle with the lords, they’re going into battle, and everything is sort of falling apart. I wanted the audience to relate to that visually.”

Like the other lords, Toranaga has several jinbaoris (陣羽織), the stunning vests worn over his armor before going into battle. “Besides acting as an extra layer of protection, it also shows wealth. Each is handmade with 20-25 different fabrics, trims, and a painted crest. One of Toranaga’s has hundreds of peacock feathers, each attached to the base fabric by hand. I had a lot of fun designing the jinbaoris,” Rosario says about the vests that took hundreds of hours to make. Some of his favorites are the ones made for one of Toranaga’s vassals, the volatile and serpentine Lord Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano). “Since he is edgier and grittier, I was even more creative with his jinbaori and added black spiky swan feathers to give it some attitude,” he adds.

John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), a beleaguered stranger trapped in a foreign land, is at the mercy of his captors. Slowly but surely, he figures out how to survive by learning the Japanese way of life. “I had to convey his evolution from the stranded sailor to when he begins to blend into Japanese culture. The first time they dress him in a kosode (小袖) is the beginning of that evolution,” Rosario shares. [Kosode is the standard unisex garment that serves as the precursor to the modern kimono (着物).] “But we also needed to contrast him with the Japanese characters because he is also at the heart of the story. So, I kept his clothes very subtle and muted, mostly because he’s powerless in that environment.”

“His fabrics are very textured, raw silks and linens; some of his kosodes were handwoven in Vancouver over several weeks,” Rosario continues. “After that first kosode, he also gets hakama pants. When he leaves Osaka to go on the fields, he gets into the tattsukehakama (裁着袴), which are hakama pants tied at the bottom with gaiters to make them more functional.” The first formal piece that Blackthorne wears is a kataginu (肩衣), a vest with broad wing-like shoulders inspired by Chamberlain’s white and brown kataginu in the original miniseries. “It was such an iconic costume – anytime anyone thinks of Richard Chamberlain in Shōgun, they think of that outfit. So that was our homage to the ‘80s miniseries.”

The sartorial feast continues with Mariko’s [Anna Sawai] wardrobe, which evolves as she moves beyond the crestfallen and subservient wife. When we first meet her, she is stoic and merely going through the motions, bearing the shame of her family name. As Toranaga admits, her husband’s decision to forbid her from committing seppuku “kept you from your fight, robbed you of purpose.” Her melancholy and emptiness inspired Rosario to start her wardrobe with a winter motif. “She was lifeless in a way. The first thing that came to me was a branch without flowers; there was nothing blooming. So, we started with her wearing monochromatic colors, the patterns have snow covering the grass. That was my way of showing a woman who felt empty; she was like a ghost,” he explains. But as she finds more courage and agency, “it goes from the winter concept to camellias blooming, and more colors and patterns are added as she finds her path, her empowerment, and her voice towards the end of the story.”

The first five episodes of Shōgun are available to stream on Hulu.

Featured image: “SHŌGUN” — Pictured: Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga. CR: Kurt Iswarienko/FX

“I wanted to create from a white canvas without any mental references going into the project,” costume designer Carlos Rosario (The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Jolt) explains why he chose not to read the James Clavell bestselling novel before working on FX Networks’ cinematic historical saga, Shōgun (将軍), and only used the 1980 miniseries adaptation as a broad reference. “As a costume designer, you build a strong psychological, spiritual relationship with these characters. You live and breathe with them for two years. The mental references would have stopped me from tapping into who these characters really are. So, I wanted to start from scratch.”

Forty-four years after Richard Chamberlain’s hit series, co-creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo revisit the Clavell classic to bring us a thoughtful and lavish tale of war, honor, love, and betrayal. Chronicling the civil war in 17th-century feudal Japan, the exhaustive commitment to authenticity in this 10-part miniseries is evident not only in the script — which hews closely to the Clavell text — but also in the largely Asian-American writers’ room. Not only that, lead actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada personally translated portions of the script to ensure the period-appropriate speech and cultural nuances were accurate.

That level of authenticity permeates every facet, including the meticulous care that went into every costume. For Rosario and his Vancouver-based assistant designers — Kenichi Tanaka, Paula Plachy, and Kristen Bond — the Herculean task of making over 2,300 costumes went beyond adding depth to the characters; it is the pivotal element in immersing audiences in 1600 Japan. Since the story begins as the Sengoku period (1477-1573) was waning into the Edo/Tokugawa period (1603-1868), it gave him more creative freedom. “It was great because I could play a little outside the boundaries and still be authentic since a lot of things were changing,” shares the French-born Spanish designer, who took the big leap into American cinema in 1995 after commencing his career at Christian Dior Homme in Paris.

Filmed on location in Vancouver over ten months, the series utilized production incentive credits from the Canadian federal government as well as the Province of British Columbia. Rosario and costume supervisor Carole Griffin managed a crew of 125, including cutters, fitters, dyers, seamstresses, shoppers, and set costumers. “Several set costumers, experts in kimono dressing, came from Japan, but everybody else was based in Vancouver. This was by far the most talented and experienced crew I had worked with. I had incredible textile artists breaking down the costumes and making beautiful hand-painted textiles, and excellent dyers who helped me stay within a strict color palette for each character,” he says of the monumental effort to deliver all the costumes on time for every episode.

With five months to prepare before filming began, Rosario started researching right away. “We worked with experts and historians to dissect paintings from that period and visited museums anywhere in the world that had relevant pieces, including the Met.” Although he first tried to source fabrics from the United States, he could not “find anything remotely close to what we needed. The fabrics from Japan were one-of-a-kind and extremely expensive, so I had to convince the studio to increase my budget. That’s what made the show — the patterns, the colors, the weight of the fabric all captured the essence of Japanese culture.”

When the warship Erasmus drifts into a sleepy coastal village, British sailor John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) quickly finds himself engulfed in the power struggle within the Council of Regents: the five warlords collectively ruling Japan until the heir comes of age. Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Sanada) — a brilliant strategist and warrior — sees Blackthorne as a potential ally in his fight against chief rival Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira), both for his expertise in naval warfare and Western weaponry. Serving as Toranaga’s translator is noblewoman Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai), a devout Christian who is the last of her disgraced family lineage. Amidst the constant threat of war, the arrival of Western powers also complicated matters, as the Catholic Portugal and Spain, the Protestant English, and the Dutch clamored for their share of trading supremacy in the region. 

“Every single costume on the show was handmade. We made all the armor and helmets in China. The soldiers’ uniforms and peasant’s costumes were manufactured in Thailand. And the fabrics came from Japan,” Rosario says. His first task was to design the armor so it could be manufactured in time to be broken down before the first costume fittings began. “I did everything pretty much within the first six weeks. I started with the historians so we could be as accurate as possible since these characters are loosely based on historical figures. Then, I worked with illustrators on the concepts and drawings. Once the showrunner approved them, we created 20-30 boards for each armor for the lords and soldiers. We had five illustrators across five time zones to get everything done on time,” Rosario recalls of the intense process. Fortunately, his first instincts proved right, as “everything you see on-screen is from the first drawings I designed — there was no time for anything else. In the end, nothing much changed, except for the Ashigaru’s (foot soldiers) sleeves that had to be more protective, so we added more metal pieces. Otherwise, what you see is what I offered at the beginning.”

Every element of these ornate costumes has meaning. The number of layers a woman wears indicates status and wealth. For Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido), the calculating mother to the heir: “Since she is the most powerful and highest-ranking female character, she wears the most layers: five compared to Mariko’s three layers. The lords’ wide-pleated pants – the hakama (袴) – have six or seven pleats, whereas men of lower rank have maybe two or three,” Rosario explains of the society where status and rank meant everything.

For the first five episodes, Rosario enlisted the help of the textile artist who worked on The Last Samurai and Memoirs of a Geisha, especially for some of Ochiba and Mariko’s more elaborate pieces. One of Ochiba’s uchikakes (打掛) — a long, decorative outer robe worn by high-born women — “was made with 50 stencils [silk screens], each hand-painted based on a painting of her historical counterpart. We made a lot of the fabrics, with 15 people working in the textile department,” Rosario shares. Part of the uchikake’s fabric also functioned as a matching hair accessory for the ladies. [Interesting sidebar:  The Last Samurai’s DNA in this series is not limited to its costumes: not only does Sanada have a prominent role in that film, Shōgun’s second unit director, Lauro David Chartrand-Del Valle, also worked on the film as a stunt performer.]

Please check back tomorrow for the second part of our chat to learn how Rosario’s team utilized texture and distinct color palettes to set each character apart and the intricate work that went into assembling the jinbaoris (陣羽織), the embellished vests worn by the samurai.

Check out part two of our conversation with Carlos Rosario.

Episode 5 streams on on March 19.

Featured image: Eita Okuno as Saeki Nobutatsu, Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko, Hiromoto Ida as Kiyama Ukon Sadanaga. CR: Katie Yu/FX