Shogun S1E7: A Stick of Time
After six episodes of buildup, Toranaga and his followers are finally ready for war. The episode wastes no time, opening on a battlefield in the aftermath of carnage, dead bodies strewn everywhere. A man cries, “The war is over! Lord Toranaga has won!”
Did we skip an episode? Are they gliding right past the heart of the action? Of course not. It’s a flashback to Toranaga’s first battle, 46 years earlier, at age 12. His opponent graciously surrenders, committing seppuku as the boy looks on, and then beheads him with a stroke of his sword. But first he apologizes to Toronaga, saying fate forced him into declaring an unwinnable war.
Now, a lifetime later, is that the position Toranaga finds himself in? He’s committed to a risky plan to invade Osaka castle, even after losing a good portion of his army in the earthquake. And one of his only remaining potential allies is his estranged half-brother Saeki. If he can’t win over his brother, “then this war is lost before our swords are even wet.”
Saeki looks none to happy to see Toranaga, but that’s another fakeout. He’s eager to help, and a much more jovial figure than his stone-faced elder brother. He’s eager to drink some sake and visit the hot springs and the courtesans at the brothel before getting down to business.
The episode also takes a minute to get down to business, showing us a bit of the bustle of the fishing village, food being prepared, the formality of who bows to whom — all details that make Shogun feel more lived-in than a show solely concerned with action and intrigue would be.
We end up at a feast, where Saeki makes jokes and impresses Toranaga’s son with stories of his father as a boy, but only as a buildup to reveal that, like just about everyone on the show, he’s working an angle. In exchange for helping win the war, he wants Izu, the province the fishing village is in, to add to his own lands. Leaving that request hanging, he tells another story of Toranaga, shitting his pants in fear as a child, knowing his brother needs him too badly to object to the insult. His son and the rest of his group look on stone-faced.
But that’s not the worst of it.
To say more than that would give away the episode. But to keep running with the Game of Thrones comparisons, that series was famous for its swift betrayals and sudden plot twists, but Shogun is a more measured show. Toranaga is handed a seemingly insurmountable setback, but he — and the episode — have time to meditate on fate, and whether it can be escaped. As always, Shogun is more concerned with its characters than pushing the plot forward, and few TV dramas have the patience for that.
So rather than preparing for battle, or watching some cunning plan unfold, we see how everyone faces a seemingly inescapable end. What could feel like wheel-spinning before the next big plot bombshell instead feels like pieces being expertly moved around the chessboard. We meditate on fate vs. free will, stories vs. legend, and whether any of these people can make a meaningful choice, or whether it’s their lot to be tossed around by larger events like the last episode’s earthquake.
Every character has had a thwarted desire, and we return to each in turn. Blackthorne wants his ship back. Mariko wants to die to atone for her father’s sins. Fuji wants to join her husband and son in death. Her husband, Buntaro, wants her to look at him the way she looks at Blackthorne. Yabushige wants to be able to scheme his little schemes without being kicked back down. And Nagakado just wants to live up to his impressive father, the man standing in the way of every one of these frustrations, Toranaga.
Yet the man at the center of it all remains as unreadable and immovable as ever. We’ve established that he keeps his own counsel, but if he has a plan this time, he shows no sign of it. He refuses to give the people around him a glimmer of hope, pacing around, lost in thought, unreachable by any of them.
Yet he does have time for a contemplative scene with the woman who runs the brothel. She asks Toranaga to allow her to set up a classier red light district in Edo, with tea houses that offer more comforts than a down-and-dirty brothel. Apart from anything else, her girls don’t have much to look forward to when their youth and beauty is spent; a tea house would let them “age with the grace we devote our youth to cultivating.”
Toranaga is too concerned with his impending no-win situation to have time to think about either youth or the future. But while his advisors offer him no hope, the madam does. “Fate is like a sword. Useful only to those who can wield it.” She reminds him that while he’s a nobleman and she was born in the gutter, both of them rose up through hardship by learning tenacity and guile. It’s not good enough to sulk and resign oneself to an unhappy turn of events. He has to make his own luck.
But with seemingly everyone in Japan arrayed against him, and one final cruel twist of fate at episode’s end, will luck be enough?
Stray thoughts:
• “A Stick of Time” refers to the amount of time it takes an incense stick to burn down. A few characters offer that much of their attention and no more. It’s one well-placed metaphor among many this episode, as Toranaga and his supporters watch their time slowly burn out.
• The show has two major female characters, and both of them want to kill themselves to atone for a male family member’s actions. On the surface, it’s not a great look to have the women consumed by self-hatred while the men boldly go about their plans. But we’ve seen men in this world want to kill themselves for honor; they simply do. Whereas the women are so constrained by this society that even death isn’t something they’re allowed without a man’s permission.
• The women also have something else in common. Last week we saw a flashback Mariko training to fight; this week we see Fuji training with weapons. Both will certainly come into play at some point.
