Shogun Episode 3 Review, “Tomorrow Is Tomorrow”

8.5/10

Shogun returns with its best but most uneven episode yet. With that said, let’s dive right in (pun intended). Read in Japanese.

Not Today, Yabushige

Near the end of “Tomorrow is Tomorrow”, the third episode of Shogun, Toranaga gives instructions to his son Nagakado on working with Yabushige to establish a new regiment of musketeers. Shocked, Toranaga Jr. asks how Dad can continue to rely on Yabushige after his proven treachery. Toranaga answers:

“When will you understand, you’re still playing a game of friends and enemies, when all you have in this life is yourself?”

-Toranaga

This is a critical theme of this episode, the bloodiest outing of Shogun by far, and yet simultaneously its most politically  complicated. We’ve seen Toranaga plan and plot up to this point. Now we begin to see the consequences.

After Blackthorne’s revelation of the Portuguese’s secret base in Macau, the last episode concluded with Lord Kiyama’s failed attempt to assassinate the Anjin using a shinobi sleeper cell disguised as a palace maid. This episode begins with Yabushige writing his will in anticipation of meeting Toranaga, where he expects to be executed over his complicity in the attempt. Put to the test, Toranaga gives Yabushige an out, explaining that since the assassin who struck at the palace (a member of the elite Society of Amida Buddha) only attempted to kill Blackthorne, they’re (mostly) cool. 

Yabushige, who is quickly turning into this shows puckish, incompetent answer to Littlefinger, argues he only gave Ishido and Kiyama intel on Blackthorne in return for control of Suruga Province, which Toranaga promises to him in return for escorting Blackthorne and Toranaga’s main wife Kiri no Kata back to Ajiro. So Yabushige has dodged a katana, but right now nobody’s head is safe.

Escape From Osaka

With no liberty to depart Osaka, Toranaga concocts a plan to escape. As the litter carrying Kiri no Kata prepares to depart with Yabushige’s convoy for Ajiro, Toranaga will swap places with his wife and ride out of Osaka in disguise. There’s just one problem—Ishido know’s something’s up, and so for good measure Toranaga conceals the plan from almost everyone. Sure enough, Ishido and his lieutenant Jozen roll up with their samurai in tow and demand the right to farewell Kiri no Kata on her way, which serves as a convenient excuse to search the litter and accompany Toranaga’s own men to Osaka harbor. 

In a moment of confusion, Toranaga exploits a fake pregnancy scare by his concubine Shizu to trade places with Kiri. The convoy moves out, now accompanied by Jozen and Ishido’s troops along with Yabushige and Toranaga’s men. Blackthorne and Mariko are now the only ones in the convoy (including Yabushige) who know their VIP is actually Toranaga, not Kiri, but when Ishido orders a second inspection, Blackthorne is forced to improvise. Engaging in a histrionic rant about the violation of Kiri not Kata’s honor and the Kazunari troops’ “vile” and “vulgar” affront to feminine dignity, Blackthorne effectively confuses everyone with his buffoonery, distracting Ishido’s troops from discovering Toranaga. So far so good. Toranaga is now inbound to Osaka harbor under the noses of his mortal enemies. What could go wrong?

Fires and Forestry

Well, everything. As Mariko and Blackthorne take some tentative steps towards their inevitable relationship, the convoy is attacked by Kiyama and his men, who being jackasses, are still hellbent on killing John, White Boy “Heretic” of the Month, because he’s no partisan of the pope. Seriously, get a life.

Kiyama et al. shoot fire arrows at everyone, forcing Mariko to rescue and reveal Toranaga, sending everything into chaos when Jozen’s men and Toranaga’s men start fighting each other in the middle of Kiyama’s goddamn ambush. This gives Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai a good excuse to carve shit up with swords and a naginata, respectively, while John just tries not to be  totally useless, being unversed in Japanese blades. 

The company escapes to the harbor after Mariko’s husband Toda “Buntaro” Hirokatsu, a badass archer suffering from intense toxic masculinity, holds off the assembled forces, but tragedy strikes when he arrives too late to the boats and is condemned to an uncertain off-screen death. Now backed by the crew from Ajiro Blackthorne saved in episode 1, Toranaga and his men board the Portuguese Black Ship and negotiate their escape.

Toranaga offers the Padres and Ferreira a 10,000 gold taels bribe and a church mission in Edo in return for safe passage, which they accept with the addendum of Blackthorne’s life, who is left behind to expect certain death from basically every direction.  “Fuck this”, he decides, and races the Black Ship out of the harbor on Toranaga’s boat, his life and his crew spared as a favor from Rodrigues, who refuses to ram them. Toranaga calls it good and returns to his own ship. He did his bit. If the Anjin escaped anyway, not his problem.

Anjin Phelps

The episode ends nicely on a mix of bromance and, back in Osaka, legalistic fuckery. Toda Hiromatsu interrupts the Council of Regents to announce his lord has “resigned” his post for “personal reasons”. Clearly he wants to spend more time with his family (who…are uh,  all still in Osaka…), and so he technically can’t be impeached. “Fuck that”, Ishido says (not really, but in so many words), until Toda points out that as the Taiko’s will demands a five-Regent Council rule untill his heir comes of age, there’s only four of ya’ll, so….and Kazunari-sama exchanges an icy glare with Hiromatsu, who has a certain elderly chap in mind to fill the vacant position (no, not Joe Biden…).

Meanwhile, Toranaga bestows the Japanese military title hatamoto (“bannerman”) on Blackthorne and signs him up to help train Yabushige’s new regiment of Samurai-Musketeers (supplied of course by the guns from the Erasmus). Now Blackthorne is kinda sorta not a soldier, much less an infantry officer who has any idea how to teach samurai European gun tactics,  but he declines to have Mariko translate that bit. Toranaga instructs Blackthorne to dive again and again, and after learning through observation, challenges John to a race. “Do not let my lord win, he hates that, ” Mariko says, and they’re off to the races.

Turn-Based Toranaga

There’s a lot of good in this episode, which turns double edged in that through its very strengths, “Tomorrow is Tomorrow” occasionally overplays its hand. For one thing, while Toranaga has displayed both power and cunning in the past, this episode gives Sanada the liberty to play Toranaga slightly less regal and above the fray. He shows no compunction about keeping the charmingly sociopathic Yabushige onside, manipulating and lying to him even as he extends mercy, and more than ever, in a manner that reminds me of the turn-based or time-based combat systems common in Japanese RPGs, we see Toranaga forced to use stealth, swordsmanship, deception, and ruthlessness in realtime to respond to a multiplicity of challenges, each requiring a different approach with only muscle-memory-based windows to reach a decision. 

In many ways, the entire episode deepens his characterization, demonstrating his martial and political acumen on many levels and reminds me of the vagaries of The Witcher 3‘s more elaborate quests, where quick time actions and dialogue decisions can be as or more important than skill with a blade to survival.

Some leaders plot, others fight. Some are noble and value the lives of their men; others treat them cynically as disposable pawns. Toranaga manages all of the above, showing mercy to Yabushige and Blackthorne after the latter is implicated in piracy, but also unhesitatingly sacrificing Blackthorne and Buntaro as the situation requires. It is a pleasure to watch Sanada slice and impale people, and age hasn’t slowed the flair he brings at 63 to the action sequences which brought him fame in Japan long before he broke through to Western film.

A Lady of Violence

Mariko’s naginata moment is likewise satisfying; though the cinematography in the forest fight lags at times, she adeptly cuts open five or six guys before Blackthorn has half-way figured out how to use this hockey stick-esque weapon. Incidentally, Shogun‘s online show guide on FX, which serves as a sort of wiki for the “lore” of 17th century Japan, identifies the naginata as weapon commonly used by noblewomen, allowing Mariko her badass feminist moment in the fight without straining the show’s commitment to historical accuracy. 

There is a delicate rope to walk between accurately representing period-specific patriarchy without rendering the show’s female lead helpless and inert, and so far Anna Sawai’s performance, as well as Marks and Kondo’s script, has done a masterful job of conveying Mariko’s agency as well as her limitations in equal measure. She’s not submissive or docile in the manner of the worst stereotypes of Asian women, but her fearlessness, coupled with her expert modulation of her varied roles within the social structure, paints Mariko as a sort of semi-conservative heroine, one who knows her “place” consists not in deference to men but in fulfilling her obligations within an aristocratic system of honor to which everyone in her social world is variously subjected. 

This agency coexists side by side with the difficulties  and contradictions inherent in her marriage to Buntaro, who is just a sexist asshole despite his respectability as a warrior. There are no flawless superheroes in Shogun, no characters immune to a certain level of human fallibility and hypocrisy, forced or otherwise. More than anything I’ve seen recently, Shogun is mature. It’s a show for intelligent and attentive adults capable of grasping representation through complexity, not slogans, and it knows it.

Seriously, Stop Shouting

Speaking of maturity, this is not Blackthorne’s best episode in my opinion, for the simple reason that Jarvis is not as gifted a comedic as he is in other respects, and this episode, from the diversion he creates to his verbal sparring with Rodrigues during the boat race, requires way too much shouting. This is logical in both cases—the one as distraction, the other because they’re on two different boats—but Blackthorne is at his best in this episode when he’s having awkward conversations with Mariko about sex, confusing the doctor treating his wound as a pimp/warlock, or just generally navigating the fish-out-of-water effect.

 His more heroic moments, notably the boat race, fall flat to me, in part because the boat race is very dark (in a not so fortunate Game of Thrones comparison), but also because there’s only so fast a 17th century boat can move, which is not very. While this is meant to be a gripping and dramatic sequence, no one watching this a first time can seriously doubt Blackthorne will prevail, and it feels more like an excuse for him to trade banter with Rodrigues than anything else (which, admittedly, is fun to listen to in a manchild sorta way).

Conclusion

Overall, while less poised than previous episodes, “Tomorrow Is Tomorrow” takes Shogun into ambitious new territory, delivering the series’ highest highs so far despite some occasional missteps.

All photos are property of FX, all illustrations property of The Path/Natalie Bielat

Benjamin Rose is a poet from Washington D.C. and the author of Elegy For My Youth (2023) and Dust Is Over All (2024).  He studied English at the Catholic University of America and is the winner of the 2023 O’Hagan Poetry Prize. From 2019 he has edited The Path. Buy his books here.

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