Nor me; but I expect that Neal Stephenson – who tried to crowd-fund a “realistic” sword-fighting computer game – would have at least based such a statement on some actual research.
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With the possible exception of “Shakespeare in Love”, I am confident that you are wrong on all counts :). (And especially about “The Crown”, given the recency of the period.)
Not the majority of people, for sure; but the people who are already familiar with a given history, and have strong feelings about it, are always liable to be irked by inaccuracies in historical dramas.
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Hmm, I think it’s more that the Imperial government was very much attached to the symbolism of the katana as the officer’s sword, but with a need to produce a lot of them in a hurry (and with overseas trade gradually shut down) they were prepared to issue any old rubbish to the poor bastards at the sharp end. (Who were not, for the avoidance of doubt, nice people themselves, but it’s hard to look around and say “my entire society is sick and I won’t be a part of it”. Also often fatal.)
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Do not go to a second world war film with my friend S. who cannot resist shouting “but that’s Helvetica!”. 
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I had to research that one :).
Typefaces also make me think of the Saturday Night Live Papyrus sketch…
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I did some investigation into Japanese iron and steel in the 16th century. It wasn’t that bad or rare.
iron
Apparently, although iron sand having low iron oxide content was widely used, it doesn’t seem that made a significant difference in steel quality.
Surface-level magnetite ore was also used (around 60% iron oxide, fewer impurities), and starting from the 16th century there was also some trade for iron from Portugal.
Iron sand was filtered in streams quite thoroughly before it ever reached a furnace, apparently reaching reasonably high levels of purity (~80%). In the end, it was just another source of magnetite. Magnetite particle quality could be controlled fairly easily by weight - the heavier, the better, and made for decent iron ore.
Although the foot-pumped bellows tatara process (the tall furnaces dscheidt mentioned) was used to smelt iron sand with a relatively low temperature to directly produce steel, this method was well-suited to iron sand, and had an advantage of not introducing impurity by melting the furnace walls. Indirect smelting was also a thing - producing pig iron with high carbon content first, then decarburizing it in a subsequent process.
Japan didn’t have any real shortage of iron at this time. Imported iron wasn’t sold in high quantities or for high rates, prices went down in the period before isolation, and in the 15th-16th century, Japan actually oversold swords to China, pushing down the initial massively overinflated price for them (~37 kg of copper coins each) by bringing way too many swords in trade missions before trade relations broke down (at which time, each poor-quality sword was netting only around 1 kg of copper coins each).
So, all this to say basically that, yes, iron sand wasn’t an ideal iron source, but also no, that didn’t make for “utterly crap” iron, and iron wasn’t particularly rare for the period.
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Just a quick final word with regards to katanas and their metallurgy. Without being a metallurgy expert, as Benkyo and dschdeit have indicated, the source of iron was one of the factors, but not the only one with influence on the final quality and characteristics of the blade. The other main factors are the shape of the blade, the profile and the quenching, which make the katana (and in general the traditional Japanese swordmaking system) quite unique.
The blade quenching itself could be one of the more determinant parts of the process. European (or Western) sword blades were immersed completely (well, the exposed blade was) in cold water or oil to temper the steel, and make it flexible and harder. Japanese blades had two thirds of the blade covered with clay, leaving the cutting third exposed to the quenching liquid. This partial quenching gave the blade its final curved shape, and made the edge very easy to sharpen, but very brittle. The thick spine of unquenched steel makes the blade less likely to snap, rigid due to its thickness, but easier to bend.
Katanas are great cutters, or put it in a different way, very easy to cut with. But so are medieval swords like falchions, or Asian swords like tulwars. By the time the katanas met with European counterparts after the first contacts in the XVII century, no medieval swords were being used by the westerners, and most of what they were using were rapiers or later on sabres, with higher quality blades, more flexible and durable, and generally longer.
There is a good whole episode of katana making in the Swords and swordsmen book by Mike Loades, book that I recommend.
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I finished Shogun, so we can stop having the (admittedly fascinating) discussion on katana.
The ending was quite a bit different from history, and so I am more inclined to forgive the weird name-change quirks. Still weird. If the Queen in The Crown had been named Elizabort in order to allow for the artistic license, I think people would’ve been rightly confused and upset?
I say this having never seen The Crown. My opinion of monarchies, including the shogunate I should add, is very Pratchettian;
“Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: “Kings. What a good idea.” Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”
- Pratchett, Feet of Clay
(There’s a better one about your grandfather being better at murdering people and then suddenly people want to give him a golden hat and make him seem important… but I can’t find it)
Anyway, Shogun was good. The final straw was the importance of Blackthorn to Tobunaga/Tokugawa… chef kiss
You might make the argument that it was an episode or two too long, and that the romance between Mariko and Blackthorn was… unearned?.. unbalanced, I suppose? It doesn’t make sense from her perspective aside from “Ooh, he’s weird and smelly” and it doesn’t make sense from his perspective aside from “she speaks my language and insults me constantly,” but they did try and I can forgive it.
I enjoyed it.
I still think a historical recreation of the civil war in the style of Shogun would’ve been way more interesting. But I’m weird.
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Btw, I watched it way too long ago to remember much, but there was a previous version of Shogun from the 80s, with Richard Chamberlain playing Blackthorne: he had played the priest/cardinal in the The Thorn Birds previously, and that was a massive success in Spain, so you can imagine how influential was his presence in the new series to us. I don’t remember much from it, besides the fact that it was the first time I saw the concept of a ninja on TV.
Years later I remember finding the novel by James Clavell in a charity shop in Marlborough next to Tai Pan (also from Clavell) and I bought them due to nostalgic memories. I remember struggling so much to finish Shogun that I never read Tai Pan. But in the novel the Tokugawa name was changed as well. I knew enough Japanese history back then to pick that up and how it was loosely based on the historical changes that happened in 1600 in Japan (Sekigahara, and the imminence of a shogunate).
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I think I have all of the Clavell books, given to me by my parents since they weren’t going to reread them at this point. Haven’t tried getting into any of them yet, but will eventually.
Personally I recommend them all - I also enjoyed Pierce Brosnan (and the rest of the cast) in the adaptation of Noble House (also Clavell in case that’s not clear), just to bring it back to watching something!
(@Marx - I believe the romance was a lot better in the book which explained it a bit more but its aaaaages since I read Shogun so can’t be sure)
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Fun fact about the Richard Chamberlain 80s Shogun: it was the first time many Americans had seen historical Japanese culture, and was singlehandedly responsible for a giant spike in US men marrying Japanese women the following year.
Edit: also a huge number of new Japanese restaurants in the US.
TV is powerful stuff. The 80s Shogun was “most popular thing on TV ever” levels of a big deal.
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Dornenvögel was also very successful here and my mom watched it over and over because we just got the VCR and… oh my. At least we also had Star Wars. And so of course at some point I also watched the old Shogun series. I don‘t remember it much just being weirded out that the priest from Dornenvögel was now Blackthorne. 
I later read several of Clavell‘s books including Shogun. I remember liking them a lot. They were just the lengthy history-adjacent stories I enjoyed a lot at the time. But it has been a very very long time and so I can‘t actually say if I would still recommend them.
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I would recommend all of Clavell’s books.
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I read Shogun a very long time ago and remember enjoying it very much. I was aware of the old TV adaptation but have never seen it. I greatly enjoyed the new adaptation.
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Oh, you don’t get to tell us we can’t argue about ethnic super weapons!
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I have to report that Bridgerton Season 3 was very very cringy at times. So cringy I had to stop the episodes and breathe… before I could continue. But I have a feeling that‘s more on me. It wasn‘t bad. I really like Penelope as a character and so it‘s good seeing her get so much focus. It has been a while since I read the books but I have a feeling we have pretty much departed from those now? And I am not keen on rereading them right now. Once again great costumes, I could just stare at pretty dresses and weird wigs all day. Too bad they get rid of the dresses more often than not 
It felt a bit weird at times knowing that our friends‘ 16 yo daughter has watched the show.
We also watched all the available episodes of Delicious in Dungeon which was quite fun to watch. I haven‘t watched that many anime but I hear the focus on food is not exactly unique 
Anyway: fun.
I read somewhere that Jujutsu Kaisen was one of the best new anime and since it is on Netflix we started watching. It‘s a good watch so far and I mind the monsters far less than the cringy parts of Bridgerton. Go figure.
I like the shorter episodes of the anime we‘ve watched. The episode arcs go quicker and I suppose that is part of the reason, they are easier to watch for me at the moment.
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I think, if my memory doesn’t fail me, that I had read just before the Eiji Yoshikawa books on Mushashi (I believe they were 5 books), and after that I felt a bit let down by Shogun. The name changes could have been part of that as well.
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After spectating the katana chat, I’ll throw my hat into the ring of - ‘swords were almost never primary weapons anyway’ - they were sidearms - polearms and bows were where most of the action was anyway. Turns out not needing to get right up on someone trying to kill you was an advantageous strategy…
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A friend recommended Netflix anime Delicious in Dungeon, about a D&D party who cook and eat the monsters they battle. I’ve just seen the first ep. It is completely unhinged, and very funny.
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