At the beginning of the period of samurai culture in Japan that would influence everything from animation to spaghetti westerns, a lone Englishman aboard a derelict Dutch privateer ship landed in Izu and became enmeshed in the intrigue that would usher in the Edo Shogunate. The real-life Tokugawa engaged in a deadly game of wits for a kingdom without a crown in a court without a throne. In 1979 James Clavell published a fictionalized version of that historical period with names changed and a 1980s miniseries adaptation of his novel captured a global audience and garnered the highest Nielsen rating to date for NBC.