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  BookDiscovery.com — Printed on 6 June, 2026
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  • Bailey

    Member
    January 8, 2025 at 6:55 pm
    Difficult | Engaging | Heavy | Philosophical

    This Book Changed Me

    Sometimes the best books are the ones you pick up at random. I was sick with COVID when I found Shogun as an eBook on my library’s website. The primary recommendations were (1) that it was long and (2) that it began as a sea story, which I tend to like.

    The sea story quickly evolves into a cultural tale, when the hero, John Blackthorne washes up with the remnants of his crew in a small Japanese village. His transition from prisoner to an important counselor to a Japanese warlord is the story of the book.

    The most compelling part of the book for me was Blackthorne’s effort to integrate his own Western ethics with the samurai ethics in which he must function. In some respects, the samurai way is superior — they take baths, for example — and they have a stronger sense of honor than Blackthorne’s crew. But Blackthorne finds it difficult to reconcile their readiness to kill and die with his own Western way of valuing life.

    The turning point comes when Blackthorne finds it thinkable to take his own life over a Western moral principle he will not relinquish. The samurai way becomes clear to him and life, rather than becoming less valuable, becomes infinitely valuable. And the experience of life becomes more immediate.

    It’s an engrossing story, which took me out of my own culture and into another. Returning back again I found myself changed. And that has always been one of the most valuable benefits of reading for me.

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