The movie "Shogun" 10 hr DVD vs 2 hr VHS

I Remember seeing Shogun for sale in blockbuster video back in the mid-late 90's. It was only on ONE VHS tape. It was either 2 hours or one and a half, I forgot. I was upset that someone had treated it like a Readers Digest condensed book.

I heard later that it was made up MOSTLY of deleted scenes, and scenes unairable. I didn't know if they were unairable for violence, or sexual content.

Are the deleted scenes included on the DVD version? Not as extras, but re-added. I know there was an "extended cut" out there, but have never seen it on disk. The reprinted book calls it a "12 hour maxi-series", but the DVD release is omly 10 hours. I presume tis is because the commercials were stripped out, but am unsure how the time was effected by other scenes being added back in.

Anyone know a source for info on this?

Best Answer

To the best of my knowledge, it was a compacted set of scenes that took out much of the backstory and character development that was on the 2-hour VHS tape. The DVD restored everything, with one exception; there was a frontal nude scene of Mariko that was shown in Europe that ended up on the VHS. That scene was deleted in the DVD, which was the entire mini-series shown to US audiences.