illegitimate son of Dirk Struan Admiral Charles Ketterer – commander of the British fleet Captain Settry Pallidar – captain of the Dragoons Dmitri Syborodin – American trader of Cossack descent Heatherly Skye – the only solicitor in Japan John Canterbury – a British trader; killed by samurai while guiding new arrivals on a routine tour of the Tōkaidō road. Sir Morgan Brock General Thomas Ogilvy Isiah Adamson – American Minister von Heimrich – Prussian Minister Background James Clavell announced in 1981 he wanted to write a novel called Nippon which dealt with descendants of the characters from Shogun in the era of Perry. However he got distracted writing Whirlwind instead and did not get around to his Japanese story until years later. Clavell later reflected on this period in history: Because of the opening, the Japanese saw very quickly that they needed to be on equal terms with the Westerners. The Westerners forced their way ashore with their ships and their cannons and their rifles. Very logically, the Japanese said, `How does a little island nation like Britain, which is smaller than Japan, rule the world?' A stupid Englishman explained to them, `Well, you do it with big navies and cannons.' So the Japanese said, `Domo.' And they got together and asked, `How the hell are we going to get big ships, bigger than them, and cannons?' What are the Japanese doing now? It's all in `Gai-Jin.' They're doing economically what they could not do militarily. . . . And there's the Japanese tradition that the student has the duty to surpass his teacher. But nobody explains that to anybody. So I think if I were Japanese, I would be very teed off to have this Japan-bashing when they're only doing what they were told to do. On the American side, I say, `Hey, let's talk about rice, reciprocity, trade imbalance.' Nobody understands nobody. I'm hoping that `Gai-Jin' and `Shogun' and the other books explain. Clavell says he was "surprised" that the protagonist of the novel turned out to be Malcolm Struan's wife Angelique instead of Malcolm. "But you never know how these things are going to turn out. For example, I was expecting Mrs Struan... to arrive from Hong Kong on every damned boat, but she never appeared. That's the way it happened." Clavell says the death of Malcolm in the book was not planned. "That death frightened me