Shogun (TV Program)

Lady Mariko is bound to her orders, which force the hand of Lord Ishido of Lady Ochiba.Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Crimson Sky’It’s a deception by which even the ingenious Lord Toranaga would be impressed. Step one: Spend several episodes of your prestige-drama period piece touting “Crimson Sky,” a battle plan for an all-out assault on a medieval castle the brutality of which frightens even Toranaga himself.Step two: Use “Crimson Sky” as the name for the penultimate episode of your 10-episode mini-series, when both you and the audience know that the penultimate episode is where massive battles tend to happen in prestige-drama period pieces.Step three: Don’t have a battle.Put that way, “Crimson Sky” is a bit of a bait and switch. But to deride it as such is to ignore all the episode delivered in exchange for putting off a climactic confrontation of samurais. It is a riveting look at a woman in extremis, channeling a lifetime of pain into one final incandescent act of strength and sacrifice.After opening with a flashback that shows young Lady Mariko’s desperate to follow her family in death, the episode proper begins with Mariko, Lord Yabushige and John Blackthorne’s arrival in Osaka. The rascally Yabushige continues playing each side against the other, to mixed results, while deepening his unlikely friendship with Blackthorne.Mariko, it soon becomes clear, is there on a very specific mission. Addressing the shocked Council of Regents, led by Lord Ishido but ruled by his fiancée Lady Ochiba, Mariko declares her intention to leave the city the next morning, with Lord Toranaga’s consorts and infant son in tow. Ishido comes up with procedural reasons to delay their departure, or at least he tries to, largely based on Mariko’s own shockingly indecorous behavior in court.Proudly declaring herself the daughter of the disgraced Lord Akechi Jinsai and heir to a thousand years of samurai tradition, she declares, “I will never be captive, or hostage, or confined. I am free to go as I please, as is anyone.” She says this from the center of the frame, with her eyes pointed at the camera. The staging is clear: It all comes down to her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

As Toranaga trudges toward surrender, his closest allies wonder if the old samurai has really given up the fight.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘The Abyss of Life’Lord Toranaga is a sick man. Sick in his heart, grieving the loss of his son Nagakado, who died in a vain fight on his father’s behalf. Sick in his body, having contracted an illness on the long road back to Edo for Nagakado’s burial. The central scene of this week’s “Shogun” — perhaps the scene from the series so far — confronts vassal and viewer alike with an even more troubling question, one that it draws out for minute after excruciating minute: Is Lord Toranaga sick in his mind as well?Toranaga gathers his vassals in Edo to certify his big decision. He will not authorize Crimson Sky, the plan to attack Osaka and overthrow Lord Ishido and the Council of Regents. Once the customary mourning period is over, he will dutifully march off to his execution, and many of them must join him in marching to theirs. He wants their signatures to this effect.The vassals are aghast. Lord Yabushige and his nephew Omi are the only ones who sign before protest breaks out. The vassals have a duty to give honest advice, and their advice is that this course of action is madness. To go down without a fight over a charge — that Toranaga is conspiring to kill the Heir — with no basis in reality whatsoever? Surely it’s better to stay in Edo and defend their home turf, where they have the advantage over Ishido’s forces.No, Toranaga says. That would destroy the city, just as surely as marching on Osaka would destroy the realm. The survival of their clan is secondary to the survival of Japan, he argues.The vassals’ argument coheres in an impassioned challenge from Hiromatsu, Toranaga’s oldest and closest friend, who begs him to stop “throwing away all we’ve fought for.” Hiromatsu threatens to commit seppuku on the spot if Toranaga persists in his plan to surrender. Minute after tense minute, the two go back and forth, barely stifling their tears in a grim game of chicken — but Toranaga won’t relent.“So you do believe in pointless death,” Hiromatsu says, seemingly stunned. “Your vassal dies in vain.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

As the walls close in around Lord Toranaga, his vassals and family look for ways out.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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Lord Toranaga finally gets a worthy opponent, while Lady Mariko’s true mission is revealed.Season 1, Episode 6: ‘Ladies of the Willow World’In this week’s episode, we get to know Lady Ochiba no Kata: daughter of a brutal warlord, consort to the Taiko who replaced him, mother to the Heir, commander of the Council of Regents (as of Episode 5), … and archnemesis of our heroes Lord Toranaga and Lady Mariko.In Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido), Lord Toranaga finally has a worthy opponent. Lord Ishido is dangerous and cunning, but has not been able to avoid failures as a political operator and would-be strongman. No one has to suppress a shudder of fear when he enters the room or worry that this guy is going to somehow outfox them. With Ishido, what you see is what you get.Lady Ochiba, by contrast, is regarded with something like awe. (The show smartly inserts a show-within-the-show in this, her first big episode: a beautifully executed Noh performance dedicated to what a big deal she is.) Everyone seems to respect her heroism for enduring the aging Taiko to produce an heir, a feat that hundreds of other women had failed to accomplish. Ochiba still remains a powerful figure, a living bridge between the late Taiko and his son and future successor. Her word carries a lot of weight.This is why poor Lord Toranaga has been singled out and framed for trying to kill the Heir in the first place: Lady Ochiba has decreed it. Even Daiyoin (Ako), the Taiko’s wife and Ochiba’s mentor, can see that Toranaga would have been the wise choice for an alliance, instead of a piker like Ishido. Has the shrewd Ochiba made a fundamental error in judgment?Flashbacks offer the answer. In her youth, Ochiba, known as Ruri (Mila Miyagawa), is the daughter of a powerful ruler and fast friends with the young Mariko (Mana Nakamura). But Mariko’s father, the samurai Akechi Jinsai (Yukata Takeuchi), is aghast at the brutality of Ruri’s father, as are other prominent nobles, including Toranaga. Acting almost certainly as part of a conspiracy, Jinsai assassinates the rogue lord, the shattering event Mariko described for Blackthorne in Episode 5.The murder paves the way for the Taiko’s peaceful reign. But it is also a grave crime, one for which honor demands that Jinsai kill his family, then take his own life. As the only surviving family member, Mariko’s reputation is stained by her father’s treason.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

John Blackthorne and Lady Mariko learn the responsibility that comes with freedom when Buntaro returns.Episode 5: ‘Broken to the Fist’Sometimes there’s nothing worse than a miracle. On this week’s episode of “Shogun,” Lady Mariko is shocked when her lord husband, Buntaro, emerges unscathed from what seemed like certain death at the hands of Lord Ishido’s soldiers back in Osaka. Though a brave and formidable warrior, he’s also a emotionally and physically abusive husband. To Buntaro, being forced to share a house with a barbarian like John Blackthorne is like living in the monkey house at a zoo. What he would do if he found out about the clandestine dalliance between Blackthorne and Mariko is all too obvious.Buntaro’s disgust with the Anjin is easy enough to explain. But his contempt for Mariko — on display during a drunken target practice when he laces arrows millimeters past her face —is part and parcel of his contempt for her entire family. In violation of virtually every shibboleth governing the conduct of samurai, her father assassinated a brutal lord for the sake of the realm. Mariko’s entire family was executed for it — by her father, who committed seppuku after being forced to carry out the act. Mariko wished to fight and die to avenge this injustice, but Buntaro has ordered her to live. She does this while offering him no emotional response to his importunities whatsoever.To Blackthorne, who cannot fully grasp the concept of the eightfold fence, it sounds like a miserable existence — and to be fair to the Anjin, Mariko has given him little reason to believe otherwise. “You’d die to avenge your father,” he says. “You live in anguish to spite your husband. What becomes of you?” Does she not crave the freedom of self that Englishmen like him enjoy? She wouldn’t enjoy that kind of freedom, Mariko retorts, because it’s a prison of its own. “If freedom is all you ever live for,” she says, “you will never be free of yourself.”By the time they have this bitter conversation, Blackthorne has come to rue intensely what he perceives to be Japan’s absence of freedom. In an attempt to capture the flavors of home, he allows a pheasant to rot outside his house — the better, he says, to prepare it for stew. For a while, the bird’s stench and the flies it attracts are the stuff of comedy, as is Blackthorne’s complete inability to talk to his consort Lady Fuji about it without Mariko around to translate. (His inability to make himself understood absent Mariko’s aid will become important later.)The miscommunication, however, turns fatal. Seizing the few words he knows, Blackthorne hyperbolically says that anyone who touches the pheasant in defiance of his wishes will die. The servants have no choice but to take his words literally, just as they have no choice but to remove anything that upsets the harmony of the village as much as that stinking bird.So it falls to Blackthorne’s favorite employee, the old gardener Uejiro (Junichi Tajiri), to dispose of the bird, and then kill himself for disobeying the Hatamoto. Blackthorne is naturally horrified. Had anyone asked him — had anyone been able to ask him, that is, and had he been able to reply — he would have simply said it was no big deal. Instead, Uejiro died for nothing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Lord Yabushige has managed to split his loyalties between Ishido and Toranaga. A play by younger lords will force his hand.Episode 4: ‘The Eightfold Fence’Last week’s episode dropped the ball when it came to depicting visceral combat. This week’s fired it straight at the enemy and pulped them.In the bloody climax of this episode, Lord Nagakado (Yuki Kura), the untested young son of Lord Toranaga, decides to make a name for himself by blowing the visiting enemy forces of the Lord Ishido to bits with John Blackthorne’s frighteningly precise cannons. Virtually every witness to the slaughter, including Blackthorne and Lady Mariko, is aghast, the double-dealing Lord Yabushige most of all.The exception is Yabushige’s equally calculating but somewhat less comical nephew, Lord Omi, who was by Nagakado’s side when he made the fateful decision to ambush the Ishido samurai, a distraction that keeps his dad’s battle plans under wraps. The young lords have drawn first blood in a war that threatens the entire nation — Nagakado for family pride, Omi for pure ambition.Where this leaves Blackthorne is anyone’s guess. He’s fulfilling the bargain he made with Lord Toranaga to train a regiment in the Western ways of war. To the best of his abilities, anyway. Since he doesn’t know anything about infantry tactics, he shows them how to use English cannons instead, arguing that a naval bombardment can breach walls faster than any besieging army can.But Toranaga does not appear to be honoring his end. He departs Lord Omi’s village almost as soon as he arrives, leaving Blackthorne without the access to his men and his ship that Toranaga promised.Blackthorne can hardly believe what he’s offered instead. Befitting his status as hatamoto, he’s granted a house of his own — a prison with better accommodations, he says — and a consort in the form of Fuji, the bereaved mother and widow. Neither is thrilled by the arrangement, but they make the best of it, culminating in an exchange of gifts — his best pistol, her father’s swords — that leaves them both fumbling for words.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More