Most American audiences have probably never seen Hiroyuki Sanada without a sword in his hand. The illustrious Japanese actor has, since making his international film debut in 2003’s The Last Samurai, practically cornered the Hollywood market on playing yakuza bosses and samurai warriors. Look, there he is, facing off against Hawkeye. There he goes, defending John Wick. And, oh, who’s that guy Brad Pitt just brushed past aboard a bullet train? Sanada, again with a blade. It’s no surprise, then, that he wields a pair of katanas in his newest role as the star of FX’s Shōgun. “It’s in my DNA,” Sanada told me last month, grinning as he recounted his decades-long career of playing samurai. But his latest character, the imposing Lord Yoshii Toranaga, is possibly the actor’s most demanding one yet in Hollywood. Modeled after Tokugawa Ieyasu, the real-life figure who helped unify Japan, Toranaga is clever but stubborn, intimidating but warm—as dramatic a departure for Sanada as the show itself is for American television. An adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel, Shōgun …