Shogun (2024) Episode VIII
Catch up on Shogun:
Consider Toranaga.
Remember Toranaga’s face as his best and only friend commits seppuku before him and all his vassals.
A pitiless death.
Many would have broken. Many would break. Many would have stopped the madness before it came ot this.
Toranaga thanked his son, essentially, for dying, for giving him time.
Who is this man?
Who is Toranaga?
Should we love him or hate him, admire him or despise him?
Does such a question even matter, ultimately?
We are captivated by him.
Enraptured.
We cannot look away.
And so they forced him out of our sight for much of the episode. An episode that is most pointedly about him.
We do not see him mourning and we do not see him fighting with advisors or even contemplating his own next move. Rather, we see him cloistering himself. He is Prospero, crafting an illusion, a grand play for Ishido and his backers. All the world a stage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But on Toranaga’s stage, people kill themselves. People die. He sentences them to death, even, while forcing others to live.
The lengths Toranaga goes to convince his enemies that he has given up is staggering. A tremendous, brutal act of will. A man without counsel, without equals, without friends.
A man alone, atop his own mountain, where none can touch him, where all must judge him.
I do have issues with this adaptation the further we go. I’ll drop them in this footnote1 and this one2 because there are spoilers for the 1980 series, which may have eventual relevance here. Who can say.
We don’t know where this story leads (well, I do and anyone who knows the history also does) or what Toranaga will do, but we’re presented some possible paths.
Ally with Lady Ochiba.
This seems difficult to figure out since we know so little about Ochiba, but if the heir is Toranaga’s son, as I hypothesized, this would be an interesting turn of events. He’s sending Yabushige and Blackthorne to Osaka—though the two of them believed they were escaping together—which may lead to some interesting developments. Possibly even Blackthorne using his ship and canons effectively as a weapon from the port.
The death of Nagakado allows Toranaga to gather his forces in Edo, which seems almost ideal for his plans. Now all his vassals and soldiers are together, united in a single place. That he may take the land journey, along with his army, across most of Japan would not go unnoticed, but it may allow him to gather strength as he approaches the castle.
But we can only speculate for now.
In the meantime, Mariko has denied Buntaro any affection, seemingly for the last time. Since nothing has happened between Mariko and Blackthorne, Buntaro can only seem jealous.
But there was a cold brutality in this scene that took my breath away.
Perhaps only I would see love in this scene. Buntaro, who denied Mariko love and affection for so long, now attempts to rebuild and salvage what he broke.
But he finds that he is too late.
Blackthorne finds his old crew and is disgusted by them and finds that he belongs neither in Japan nor with them.
And so we’re at a point where our position characters are lost.
Well, except Toranaga, who plays a game none but him understand.
Yabushige feels trapped by circumstance, as do Blackthorne and Mariko. But all of them must choose, and in choosing, they hope to break free.
And Toranaga sees them all. Knows what they’ll do. Or at least he believes he knows what they’ll do, since he so accurately and simply predicted exactly what Yabushige and Blackthorne did.
But will his plan fall to pieces, or will it remain in hand?
This is the magic, yes?
And so we return to Toranaga’s face as Hiromatsu slits his belly open, while Buntaro cuts his father’s head off. He caused this and Hiromatsu, understanding the play at hand, fulfilled his role, sacrificing everything to Toranaga.
And Toranaga sat there on the edge of breaking to pieces. But he held firm. Held strong as he stared at his best friend’s severed head.
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Noir: A Love Story - An oral history of a doomed romance.
House of Ghosts - Standalone sequel to Libertatia; or, the Onion King
Have we given up entirely on the romance between Mariko and Blackthorne? I think so. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, but even if their romance does begin next episode, I think they’ve done too little to establish why this would happen now and not episodes ago. If anything, the narrative is driving us away from the romantic elements of the story.
I think this is a shame, honestly. I imagine the reasoning behind it was to ensure that Mariko remains a strong female character, as if that could only happen if she remained romantically isolated. But what could signal a strong independent woman more than shucking off social requirements? But I also think this plays out in the sort of sexlessness of modern media, which I may write about more eventually. Others have commented on this.
I also think people are terrified of a problematic relationship in media right now, and so we must keep Mariko and Blackthorne apart.
So it goes.
Along with the missing romance, it’s quite sad to remove the friendship between Blackthorne and Toranaga. Their comraderie was a highlight of the 1980 version, and it made certain aspects of Toranaga more mysterious to the audience and Blackthorne. Because of the clear and genuine friendship between the two, it felt even more brutal for Toranaga to keep Blackthorne from ever getting what he wants.
Also, since this is based on real history, it’s worth noting that the real men did become friends and remained quite close.
Totally agree with you about what is missing in this version of the story. The love story and friendships are what made the story so dear and memorable for many of us.