Part of the Shogun mini-series based on James book is being filmed in North Vancouver’s Princess Park.
Story from Sensational Vancouver
Princess Park:
I was walking in Princess Park this morning and noticed that a film crew is preparing to shoot some scenes for a mini-series based on James Clavell’s 1975 book Shogun. While North Van may seem like an odd location for a book that’s based in feudal Japan, Aussie-born Clavell spent 10 years living and writing in West Vancouver.
James Clavell:
Although Clavell is known for epic bestselling novels such as Shogun, Noble House and Gai-Jin, he was actually a screenwriter and director who got his start writing the screenplay for The Fly, a 1958 movie starring Vincent Price. He also wrote the screenplay and directed the wildly successful To Sir with Love staring Sidney Poitier and the 1963 The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen.
At his wife April’s suggestion, Clavell wrote his first novel, King Rat during a screenwriter’s strike in 1960 and based it on his experiences as a prisoner of war at the Changi camp in Singapore during the Second World War.
Buys house in West Van:
He used the $200,000* advance for the book to buy a house perched on a cliff in West Vancouver’s Whytecliffe neighbourhood owned by Remette Davis, a concert pianist who had an acoustic ceiling installed so that she could broadcast for the CBC from her home. The Clavell’s were the second owners and James wrote his second novel Tai-Pan from one of the seven bedrooms that looks out onto Howe Sound.
Clavell wrote, produced and directed The Sweet and the Bitter, a 1967 movie that looked at the horrible treatment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, while living in the West Van house. The movie was the first and only movie produced by Commonwealth Film Productions, an early attempt to establish a viable film industry in Vancouver and was shot at a West Van studio and at various locations around the city including the BC Hydro Building (now the Electra).
The movie went over budget, eventually premiered at the Orpheum Theatre in 1967, and was a complete flop. The Clavell’s moved to Switzerland in 1972 and sold the Cliff Road house to Gary Troll, owner of Troll’s restaurant in Horseshoe Bay. Troll won $14 million in the lottery in 1997.
In 1986, Clavell broke literary records when he received a $5 million advance for his novel Whirlwind.
*Currently assessed at $6.5 million
This story is an excerpt from my book Sensational Vancouver
© Eve Lazarus, 2022
Related: The Other Tree in Princess Park
5 comments on “Scenes from James Clavell’s Shogun filmed in Princess Park”
Like close to Princess Park, it is very beautiful like the beauty of the entire North Shore. This is a wonderful area to film nature in all its glory. The only thing missing is tropical winds and a world class beach.
How interesting. The home does not look that large but went to a good man. Gary actually won twice if my memory serves me well.
Your comments on the treatment of the Japanese Canadians during WWII are correct. But should be accompanied by a comment about the treatment of Canadians and other allies during the war. I have visited Changi Prison. The memories of that site and the tiny jail cells in the concrete structures were an assault on the senses. Singapore is very close to the equator and is almost always very hot and humid. Concrete retains heat and so the cells would have been unbearable. But heat was only one of the many terrible indignities inflicted upon the prisoners. The Japanese were truly a nation of savages during that time.
Yes, we were wrong, but the Japanese in Singapore and all of the Pacific were far worse. I will never forget what I saw.
The treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese has nothing to do with the criminal treatment of Japanese Canadians by the Canadian Government. You are guilty of the same racist thinking that resulted in Canada imprisoning Canadian citizens.
I agree with your comments entirely. Germans were not sent away from the West Coast due to the the atrocities of the Hitler regime and they murdered everyone from Jewish men, women & children to Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Blacks, those with mental and physical disabilities, unpopular religions and so forth and so on. The Canadian Japanese were not collaborators in what was done by the Japanese war machine, its emperor and military leaders.