When Carlos Rosario was first approached about costuming the FX show Shōgun, he was hesitant. He much preferred working on feature films, which, to him, present a narrative structure that’s more clear. But it was his parents—who fondly remembered the 1980s iteration of Shōgun—who changed his mind. Ultimately, Rosario decided he didn’t want to revisit the ’80s interpretation of the James Clavell novel. In fact, he didn’t want to revisit any Japanese films or TV at all.
“I knew that for this one, we needed to start from scratch,” he says. “It was important for me to go straight to the source, so we studied and dissected paintings from that period.” For Rosario, the paintings from 1600s Japan were his main source of inspiration. “At the end of the day, the paintings really represent the essence of the period without any filters. That’s why I didn’t focus on Japanese movies of that period, because that’s the vision of the director,” Rosario adds.
To prepare for his interview to costume the show, Rosario created a detailed, 125-slide research deck, which he whittled down to 30. (“That was post pandemic—I needed to put my energy into something,” he says.) While that served as the base, he reached out to experts to help him fashion a historically accurate feudal Japan. “I was in touch with historians and experts that guided me throughout the project to be as accurate as possible,” he says. “We were mostly in touch with a historian that is a teacher in the University of Kyoto, and he’s the one that really gave us guidance from the beginning to the end.” From there, he oversaw a workshop of over 125 people that spanned five countries—Japan, Canada, the US, Thailand, and China—to create the series’s 2,300-plus costumes.
