Shogun S1E8: The Abyss of Life
Things went from bad to worse to even worse than that for Toranaga last week. His half-brother Saeki betrayed him, giving him no choice but to surrender to Ishido to be executed. And his son Nagakado, always eager to prove himself to his father, tries to kill Saeki, only to stumble and bash his head in on a rock.
As much emphasis as the story has put on the era’s Japanese culture calmly accepting death, Toranaga looks like a shell of a man, leading the procession to his son’s funeral. But this show is never just about one thing, so Nagakado’s death also advances the chess game — Toranaga’s execution is postponed, as he’s allowed 49 days to mourn his son.
He and his retinue return to his capital, Edo. Edo will eventually become the largest city in the world, after being renamed Tokyo. For now, it’s only potential, a few magnificent buildings surrounded by huts and muddy roads. There, Yabushige and some of Toranaga’s men gather to remember Nagakado, although it’s largely with jokes and backhanded compliments, about how overeager and reckless the boy was. His friend Omi shames the older men, saying Nagakado died fighting to save his father, while the rest of them meekly accepted surrender.
The only other one not to accept surrender was Blackthorne, who scorned Toranaga at the end of last week’s episode (in words no one but Mariko could understand). Mariko tells Blackthorne he’s been released from his obligations to Toranaga, and he’ll be reunited with his ship’s crew in Edo. She flatly tells him that after the mourning period, she’ll go to Osaka with Toranaga and be killed alongside him. Her loyalty to him gives her no other options. Some of the rest of Toranaga’s clan spend the episode wrestling with that question of loyalty, and whether it’s worth following their lord even to suicide. But for Mariko, there’s no question at all. As always, she does what she must, and sees no other alternative.
But Toranaga himself, as always, is a mystery. We see him coughing during the funeral procession, and he uses illness as an excuse to miss both the funeral and the birth of his granddaughter. As everyone around him despairs over their fate, he isolates himself in his castle. Is he broken by grief? Or still scheming somehow?
If it’s the latter, he’s playing things extremely close to the vest. The one person he does agree to see is the Portuguese priest, who relays that Ishido is allied with Ochiba, the queen mother, and pressuring her into sealing their alliance with marriage. The priest suggests that if Toranaga could sway Ochiba to his side, Ishido would be powerless, and the child Emperor’s army would be on Toranaga’s side.
But Toranaga is worn down from his brother’s betrayal and the loss of his son. He says he’d rather have a peaceful defeat than victory at so high a cost. He orders his vassals to pledge to march with him in surrender. Except he tips his hand at the very end, asking the priest to return to Osaka and report on what he’s seen, a defeated Toranaga ready to accept death. His generals quickly realize that this has all been for show. Toranaga’s planning to fight back. (And with two episodes left, did you expect anything else?)
A lesser show would build on that realization and get straight into the action. But Shogun has, at every turn, resisted the temptation to go straight for sex and violence, and instead remain a thoughtful show focused on its characters. So with life-and-death stakes once again laid out, we pause for a long scene of Bushido making tea for Mariko. The slow, ritualized preparation leads to an emotionally devastating conversation between the two of them, that underscores that he legitimately cares for her, and also fundamentally doesn’t understand her and likely never will.
Likewise, Blackthorne’s long-delayed reunion with his crew is less about keeping he and his ship in play strategically, and more about demonstrating how the character has changed. The man who spent the first few episodes yelling at everyone in English now speaks Japanese well enough to converse. He doesn’t understand Japan’s labyrinthine cultural mores, but he does understand enough to be respectful and polite. He greets his men smartly dressed in a kimono, and is dismayed to find them slovenly, drunken louts, who resent him for taking them to Japan more than they’re grateful for his offer to return them to England.
So he leaves his men behind and attempts to strike an unlikely alliance that would keep him in his new homeland. Again, it’s an interesting strategic move, but it’s mostly interesting because of what it reveals about the characters. Blackthorne realizes he no longer belongs anywhere. He fundamentally doesn’t understand the Japanese, and yet he’s also at a remove from England. In a larger sense, however, he does understand people, and that may be enough for him to make his own way.
But no one on this show understands people as well as Toranaga, even as he’s made himself impossible to understand. Mariko spoke of the Eightfold Fence, that every Japanese person is supposed to lock their true feelings behind, but Toranaga’s fence is eighthundredfold. He frustrates the people who care about him most to the point of madness, but after an episode that deeply explores loss and loyalty and the toll each exacts, we finally see what Toranaga’s true intentions are, and the price he’s willing to pay to see them through.
Stray thoughts:
• We’re a week behind on these reviews; we’ll try and run through the final three episodes over the next few days.
• Yabushige unsurprisingly has no sympathy for Nagakado, only interested in the unlikely manner of his death. ”I’d rank it lower than boiling but higher than being eaten by dogs.” It’s entirely to Tadanobu Asano’s credit that he manages to make Yabushige as charming as he is, because on the page, he’s a sociopathic monster. And yet, he, more than anyone, is resolute not to follow Toranaga into surrender. As Blackthorne wisely observes, “he’s a shitface. But he’s a brave shitface.”
• So many conversations on this show have layers of meaning, and the show doesn’t condescend to the viewer by overexplaining. Ishido asks Ochiba to marry him; she ignores the request. It’s possible he has feelings towards her that aren’t reciprocated; it’s also possible both of their feelings are purely practical. He’s ready to consolidate his power; she’s not ready to relinquish hers to a man. Or at least not to this man.
• Blackthorne’s Japanese continues to improve by leaps and bounds. (In the book, besides English and Portuguese, he also speaks fluent Latin, which he uses to have private conversations with Mariko) His facility for languages is an interesting wrinkle for a character who spent the early episodes just yelling at everyone.
• The show rarely jokes, but there’s a wryly funny scene in which the Portuguese priest surveys the land Toranaga has granted him to build a Catholic church in Edo, only to see the women from the brothel planning their “tea house,” as Toranaga has granted them the adjacent plot. It’s a terrific joke on Toranaga’s part, but as with so many things on this show, there’s another level to it, as both plots of land are bare stretches of mud, but each has a promising future for someone with the vision to imagine it.
