‘Shogun’ Episode 7 Recap: Death Wish

Season 1, Episode 7: ‘A Stick of Time’

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Few cinematic genres have had as fruitful a conversation with one another as the samurai film and the western, so it’s only fitting to use an epigraph from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to sum up the central conflict in this week’s episode.

It begins in full “print the legend mode,” as the director Takeshi Fukunaga brings us a dreamlike flashback depicting the aftermath of Lord Toranaga’s first victory in battle, achieved before he’d have been bar mitzvah’d. The rogue warrior whose forces he defeats calls for the young Toranaga himself to serve as his second in the ritual of seppuku. An overhead shot shows us the lad preparing to strike the deathblow from a point of view that feels a million miles away, less a bird’s-eye view than a god’s.

But looks can be deceiving. Ask Saeki (Eita Okuno), Toranaga’s estranged half brother, upon whose support the lord of Edo is counting if his fight against Lady Ochiba and the Regents is to be successful. He’s happy to tell Toranaga’s adoring son, Nagakado, that his pops severed the head of the rebel with a single stroke at the tender age of 12. No such thing occurred — Toranaga hacked away nine times like a miniature ax murderer before finally decapitating the man.

But Saeki isn’t doing this to flatter his older brother. He’s doing it to taunt him. He knows Toranaga’s sense of honor will make hearing exaggerated accounts of his exploits uncomfortable. And he knows that by elevating Nagakado’s image of his father, he can send it crashing back down all the more easily. So he tosses in the tale of how young Toranaga soiled himself when he was sent away as a hostage. That’s not the kind of story that makes it into the legendarium.

It’s also not the kind of story you tell if you plan to ally yourself with the boy who fouled his breeches. Indeed, despite initially giving every appearance to the contrary, Saeki has no intention of taking up his older brother’s cause. He announces that he has accepted Lord Ishido’s offer of membership on the Council of Regents, and has been dispatched to summon Toranaga to his impeachment and execution. It takes everything the lord has left in him to prevent his Nagakado from blindly accepting Ishido’s order to commit seppuku over the cannon attack he ordered in Episode 4.

The Toranaga of decades past wasn’t fit to deliver the coup de grâce to the rebel lord, and the Toranaga of today refuses to do the same to his country. He could defend himself, issue the order for Crimson Sky, make war on Osaka, declare himself shogun — but he won’t. “No one has the right to tear the realm apart,” he tells his assembled vassals as he agrees to surrender to the Council.