Score: 9.5/10
Shogun continues its breathtaking opener with episode 2, “Servant of Two Masters”.
The Taiko is Dead…Long Live The Council
“The man who stands at the greatest height is the loneliest man in the realm”
-The Taiko
This episode opens on the eve of peril. In a flashback to 1599, Nakamura, the father of the boy heir Yaechiyo and the reigning Taiko (based on the historical Taiko Toyotomi Hideyoshi) lies dying amid a candlelit meeting of the lords of the realm. As his senior wife (soon to take religious orders as the Buddhist nun Daoyin from episode 1) tells him to call upon Amida Buddha to be welcomed into the Pure Land, he calls for his son. When Yaechiyo asks how he will know his father in the Pure Land, the Taiko, stung by his innocence, proclaims life “a dream of a dream” and asks all but Toranaga to depart. As the Father-Visitor of the Jesuits warns lord Kiyama that the Taiko will be damned unless he receives the sacrament before his death, Lady Ochiba (whose residence in Edo will ultimately provide Ishido the pretext he needs to open hostilities against Toranaga) scoffs, “Or maybe God’s Kingdom is up your ass”.
Now Toranaga and the Taiko are alone. After Toranaga declines the Taiko’s offer of sole regency over Yaechiyo and the realm (which would immediately cause the others to unite against him and kill both him and the boy), the Taiko provides him with his will demanding a five regent council in order to stalemate the balance of power. “My lord is the cleverest man in the realm” Toranaga declares. But he knows at once he will be the only lord loyal to the Taiko’s intent, and now Toranaga will be forced to act as both the cleverest man in the realm, the greatest, and the loneliest all at once.
A Real Savage
Meanwhile, on the Portuguese Black Ship, Rodrigues turns over Blackthorne’s rutter to Father-Visitor Dell’acqua and Fr. Martin Alvito (henceforth “The Jesuits”) detailing Blackthorne’s piracy in Manila. With this it should be simple enough to have the Japanese authorities hang Blackthorne, yet there’s a problem—Toranaga, as President of Foreign Relations, will want a full translation of the rutter, which also unfortunately describes the Portuguese attempt to raise an army of Catholic-converted ronin in Macau for use in a colonial takeover. Not so nice.
Blackthorne is brought before Toranaga and interrogated through the intermediary of Fr. Martin (Tsuji, or “Translator” to the Japanese) why he has washed up on their shores with twenty cannon, of all things. In this tense exchange, Blackthrone reveals he and the Portuguese are enemies and claims he and his crew are merchants empowered by the Dutch to trade the world over and resist any who would dare to stop them. “What if it’s us who dare to stop you?” Toranaga says, clearly unimpressed. “I cannot conceive of being an enemy to you, lord” Blackthorne parries. “I can, very easily.” Toranaga replies.
Blackthorne’s clock is ticking down, and he knows it, so he goes all in. “Then I would commend my soul to God. For surely I would die by the hand of a teki [enemy] like you”. He bows. And then everything goes sideways. Ishido, come to see “The Freak from the West ” (“So ugly!”), gloats over Toranaga’s coming impeachment and reveals his knowledge of the religious difference between Blackthorne and the Jesuits. Seeking to keep his new pawn in play and out of the hands of Ishido, Toranaga immediately commends the Anjin to prison. “This is fucking great” Blackthorne grunts as he’s led away. Well, we’ll see.
Behind Closed Doors
The scene shifts to a more domestic setting. We see a brief glimpse of Mariko’s shitty married life with the thuggish Toda Buntaro, son of Toda Hiromatsu and just an all-around grumpy 50s dad who’s pissed his son is too lively and his wife was out of the home for one day. Their miserable family dinner is interrupted by Hiromatsu, who says Toranaga has called another meeting and ordered—you guessed it—Mariko, not Buntaro’s, presence. This leads to a more pleasant domestic scene, where Mariko catches up with Kiri, Toranaga’s wife, and Shizu, one of his younger concubines. Kiri (“Kiri no kata. I’m an old woman and I need lots of respect before I’m dead”) and Toranaga engage in a bit of marital banter before Toranaga asks Mariko to give her analysis of the convo between himself, Tsuji, and Blackthorne.
The Jesuit is trustworthy, she says, but the Anjin looks like bad news. At this point Hiromatsu asks what the point of all this Christian nonsense is, so, being the quicker one, Mariko lays out the plan for the first time in detail: with the council required to vote as one in an impeachment, every day Toranaga can sow division between Ishido and the Christian lords keeps him and the rest of his household from being killed. So the Anjin, currently rotting in the castle prison, is useful, for now.
Of Bandits, Barking, and a Bunch of Bureaucrats
That, Ishido realizes, is precisely the problem. After Kiyama, Ohno, and Sugiyama reject his demands to impeach Toranaga until Blackthorne is dead, Ishido plays his wild card—Yabushige. Yabu is in disfavor, having been disinvited from lodging with Toranaga due to his shiftiness back in Ajiro. He knows blood is in the water and Ishido makes a point of reminding him that, as Toranaga’s vassal, Yabu’s head will also be on the chopping block once the impeachment goes through. But, he cautions Ishido, once Toranaga is dead, Ishido, as the most powerful lord standing, will immediately become the focus of the combined forces of Kiyama and Ohno, a fight he would lose. So Ishido has as much to gain from the Anjin as Toranaga. It’s a shame he’s already had to assent to Blackthorne’s death. Indeed. But fortunately, Yabushige says…in return for immunity, he’s got a plan.
Blackthorne is called from prison to be executed by Kiyama’s men—who walk into a nest of bandits en route through a forest and are summarily killed, only to be killed themselves by a certain befeathered lord and his men, who has Blackthorne kneel and repeat “I am a dog” in Japanese over and over again (seems a bit of an insult to dogs, all things considered. They didn’t burn Manila…). Yabu brings Blackthorne to Toranaga, who thanks him for conveniently stopping by at the right time, and the episode moves to its climax.
Our Common Enemies
Toranaga has Mariko translate as he questions Blackthorne a second time on his purpose in Japan. Blackthorne explains his mission from Queen Elizabeth I and England’s war with Portugal and Spain (In real life, currently united under one crown). Then he drops a bomb. In 1494 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing all non-Catholic and non-European lands between themselves for colonial control. At their secret base in Macau, the Portuguese have raised an army of ronin for the conquest of Japan, which they already consider theirs by right. They even facilitated an earlier Christian rebellion against the Taiko. Shocked and enraged, Toranaga takes the Anjin into his service while revoking the Portuguese Black Ship’s authority to depart. With Portuguese control of the silk trade at risk, Kiyama volunteers to “handle” the problem. “Let this be my burden, Father.”
Let This Be My Burden
That night, the palace maid Kayo, a sleeper agent of the Amida Tong society of assassins, is paid and activated by Kiyama. Stalking through room after room with steady efficiency, she cuts down samurai and servingwomen alike before bursting in on Blackthorne, only to be immediately throat-slashed and killed by Toranaga. As his retainers rush to his side, Toranaga disuades them from blaming the hit on Ishido. This was Kiyama’s work. Having swapped quarters with the Anjin, his suspicions were confirmed: the Amida Tong were hired to kill Blackthorne, not him. Having protected Blackthorne, however, he has revealed his hand. He needs to get Blackthorne and, more importantly, himself, out of Osaka now. As the Taiko said, “vultures are circling”. With the opening shots fired, the battle for Japan has begun.
A Masterful Episode
Beyond historical accuracy and visual splendor, this episode surpasses its predecessor through the sheer maturity and power of Shogun’s script. While violence, when it occurs in this show, is by turns horrific (as in episode 1) or thrilling (as in the assassination attempt), it is a commodity employed sparingly in the double-part premiere (not so in episode 3). As someone who never cared much for the most scheming-heavy sections of Game of Thrones, Shogun does it better, largely because amidst the ceremony, circumlocution, and misdirection, the series is surprisingly easy to follow.
The Catholic lords want Blackthorne dead to preserve their wealth and influence with the Portuguese. Toranaga wants Blackthorne alive to divide the Catholic daimyo and Ishido. Ishido needs Blackthorne both to kill Toranaga and prepare for the day after Toranaga’s death. Mariko wants to do her bit for the Toranaga cause and avoid Buntaro as much as possbile. And Yabushige wants to save his own untrustworthy head while acquiring more land, money, and power in the balance-when he’s not examining the mysteries of death and sexual voyeurism, that is.
Shogun thrives on presenting a deceptively simple system of alliances and opposition and then letting the thread unfold, so that the pleasure in its scheming has less to do with figuring out who is really on whose side or any major detective work but seeing how the crew’s preordained moves play out in practice. For those who read Clavell’s novel and/or know the outcome of the events Shogun mimes in the real world, the destination is not in doubt. And with only one season in the offing, we’ll never have to rewatch 60+ hours of television to get from point A to point B as in Game of Thrones. So it is then, as the cliche goes, the journey that matters. Shogun moves at a stately pace with supreme self-confidence. Like a royal progress, all roads may lead to Edo, but if the series continues at the level of quality it has set, all of us, blue-eyed and brown-eyed peasants alike, must bow before its majesty as this Barbarian-quelling Generalissimo rides towards its inevitable conclusion.
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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