Shogun (2024) Episode V

Mar 23, 2024

Catch up on Shogun:

Everything is far more intense in this adaptation when compared to the 1980 adaptation. There was a brightness and even lightness to much of the 1980 adaptation, including the events that overlap with this newest episode in 2024.

Buntaro is a terrifying warrior but there’s almost something companionable about their drinking contest in 1980.

Not so here!

There’s a vicious undercurrent to Buntaro. He is the ultimate badass. The kind of samurai people think about when the word samurai conjures images in their mind. A man built for war, for killing, with profound expertise with his weapons. Buntaro is famous for his archery and he proves it here while also demonstrating his regard for Mariko, his wife.

Which is to say, he threatens her and demeans her.

We see the near panic Mariko feels when she discovers Buntaro survived. A daring escape where he and a handful of ronin cut through Lord Ishido and Kamiya’s samurai and then progressed on a daring, harrowing journey through enemy territory where only two survived.

One of them being Buntaro.

And I linger on this scene because we see, at the beginning of this episode, how Blackthorne feels almost comfortable in Japan. He has a house. He has people who serve him, who keep up his home, and he’s learning more and more Japanese, able to finally communicate with the people around him. He wears his kimono as if he always had. He bathes and removes his shoes and on and on.

Japan is coming to feel like a home. Not his home. But a home.

I remember this feeling well when I lived in Ireland and Korea.

They would never be my homes. I would never become Irish or Korean.

And yet, I found a sense of peace and home at both places.

But the rest of the episode is a lesson to Blackthorne that he knows nothing. he understands so little. He misunderstands so much.

That Buntaro dislikes him is easy to tell, easy to see. But Blackthorne thinks his affability can soften him or that giving him a chance to brag will bring something out in him that he can flatter into a sort of softness, a warming of the frigidness between them.

Too, he believes he can understand Mariko. Believes, even, that he can save her from this cruel marriage, this hollow life they share.

Despite everything he’s seen and everything Mariko has told him, he still views the world like an Englishman. And how could he not?

But he believed he was understanding. Believed the Japanese could be understood as easily as if they were the Dutch he sailed with.

And they could be, can be. But not by the very first Englishman in that part of the world. A man who knew nothing of Japan except the word Japan. And even as he’s spent several months there, learning rapidly, concertedly, what he’s learned hasn’t sunk in.

And so he asks Toranaga for permission to leave.

He realizes he understands nothing. More than that, after seeing Mariko beaten by Buntaro and his gardener murdered through his misapprehension and insufficient communication, he decides that he does not want to understand.

The cruelty of Japan is too much for him. Too baffling.

And I think we see this most clearly when he chases after Buntaro.

He wakes in the night, still drunk, hearing Buntaro shout at Mariko and Mariko scream. He rushes through the house and finds her beaten and bleeding from the mouth.

She screams at him further to leave her alone. He cannot understand how simply witnessing her like this shames her so much further or what it means to her that she has broken the harmony of his house. And perhaps I could include an entire essay here about the important of harmony but there will never be time for that.

Furious, Blackthorne chases after Buntaro with the intention of killing him.

And I think this is where Blackthorne demonstrates his misunderstanding and misapprehension the most.

Buntaro knows that he has shamed himself by disturbing the peace of the house. This is why he leaves and does not want to face Blackthorne. If they meet, he must beg forgiveness.

To beg forgiveness from a barbarian.

How deep must the shame be to bow and beg forgiveness from this uncivilized foreigner?

But Blackthorne chases him, gun in hand, and forces him to stop. For a moment, Blackthorne believes Buntaro will attack and so he levels his pistol. And, for a moment, even we think we’re about to see what happens when a samurai comes up against a pistol. And because Buntaro has survived what he survived and is an expert with sword and bow, we wonder, ever so briefly, if he can get to Blackthorne before he’s shot down.

But, instead, he sets down his sword and lowers himself and bows and begs forgiveness.

This disarms Blackthorne more than anything else. He was prepared to kill Buntaro but he cannot shoot an unarmed man bowing down and apologizing.

But Blackthorne doesn’t see what happens when he turns and walks away.

For Buntaro will never forgive Blackthorne for shaming him this way.

The show often reminds me of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. For those who haven’t read it, it’s a story, essentially, of cultural misunderstanding. Our protagonist finds himself stumbling into political plots that he does not understand or even recognize. And because he himself acts in inscrutable ways to the native people, they assign great meaning to certain things he does without him even being aware.

And when the novel ends, the chasm between peoples makes us gasp.

Blackthorne finds himself in much the same situation.

He understands so little. And even when he believes the ground is stable and solid beneath his feet, it shifts away from him, like a mudslide in an earthquake.

Does Blackthorne try to save Toranaga out of bravery or friendship or some deeper plot, to bring himself closer to one of the most powerful men in the country?

Or does he save him simply because that’s the kind of man he is?

A pirate, yes. Murderer. Pillager.

And yet we understand that Blackthorne is a good friend and a kind man to those in his life.

And so he leaps into danger to save Toranaga and he immediately gives him swords to replace the ones lost and buried somewhere in the earth. Again, this is not out of guile. Or at least I don’t believe it is. Rather, he understands the signifier of the sword.

Toranaga cannot be seen without his swords.

And so he gives Toranaga swords.

He likes Toranaga, which is certainly part of it, but I think he would have done this even for Yabushige or Buntaro. While Blackthorne understands very little, he has also come to grasp quite a lot.

And that we’re presented these together in the same episode is a tremendous gift.

Consider the shape of Blackthorne’s narrative this episode:

Beginning to feel confident in his knowledge and ability in Japan.

He is struck in the face by all he doesn’t understand.

He gives up on Japan and simply wants to abandon everything, all of this.

A moment later, he demonstrates just how much he has come to learn and understand.

This is what makes Shogun—both adaptations—so intoxicating.

There’s a complexity to everything. There are layers of meaning and some of them are buried beneath ritual and custom that neither we nor Blackthorne understand.

Too, there are so many others who don’t understand all the layers they’re playing with.

Toranaga must admonish and punish his son for his foolishness in attacking Ishido’s messenger and vassal, telling him that he can have command once he can understand what it is to rule over men. He immediately understands that Yabushige likely manipulated his son, so he goes to confirm this.

Yabushige being the duplicitous dissembler he expects, he comes to learn what he wants, but he also uses this to punish Yabushige. Yabushige blames his nephew to try to keep his own head and offers to punish Omi, only to have Toranaga essentially promote Omi for his cleverness.

Toranaga understands and sees what Yabushige has done and he is trying to outmaneuver him by pulling away Yabushige’s nephew and bringing him into his circle of control. Even, in a way, putting him above Yabushige.

It’s like making a net. He holds it out into the water and Yabushige is the fish that darts straight into it, thrashing uselessly against the tightly bound ropes.

The episode ends with Lady Ochiba, the mother of the heir, essentially laying claim to the council of Regents. I’m very curious what this will mean, because all the Japanese politicking was incredibly opaque in the 1980 version, to demonstrate just how little Blackthorne was aware of and how little agency or power he had.

And so it’s been a treat to have so much clarity given to us as we watch.

But I think it’s the layers that stick with us, that keep us dazzled.

We are presented with the layered heart of Japan and, like Blackthorne, we believe we can kick through these fences to understand everything inside, not realizing that we’re only two layers deep and there are several more to go.

My novels:

Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Broken Katana - Sequel to Iron Wolf.
Libertatia; or, The Onion King - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse, The Blood Dancers, and Sleeping Giants
Noir: A Love Story - An oral history of a doomed romance.
House of Ghosts - Standalone sequel to Libertatia; or, the Onion King