Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Shōgun Episode 5.
The Big Picture
The dinner scene between Blackthorne, Mariko, and Buntaro is a highlight of this week’s
Shōgun
episode.
Anna Sawai delivers another powerful performance as Mariko reveals her family’s tragic history.
Language and translation are wielded in creative ways, adding depth to the series’ drama and comedy.
FX’s new historical miniseries Shōgun hasn’t shied away from illustrating the fact that violence often goes hand-in-hand with the era — and, in many ways, that death is just another part of life — but last week’s episode still managed to end on a surprisingly grisly note. While Pilot-Major John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) committed to lend his ship’s cannons to Lord Yoshii Toranaga’s (Hiroyuki Sanada) budding war efforts, he surely only did so with the understanding that they’d be used on the field of battle, not as a reckless provocation of violence carried out by Toranaga’s son Nagakado (Yuki Kura). Now, the gauntlet has all but been thrown down, and it becomes increasingly apparent that Toranaga simply has to commit himself to the path that his son forced them all into, even if it means war looms on the horizon a bit more closely than everyone would like.
Before all that happens, however, there’s still the complex interpersonal tangling that needs to be addressed between Blackthorne and Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai), especially in the wake of last week’s “pillowing.” It seems more and more apparent that it was Mariko herself who snuck into Blackthorne’s room that night, despite her efforts to convince him otherwise the next morning. Her reasons for secrecy are myriad and definitely play into the “eightfold fence” we keep hearing about — and as we learn this week in “Chapter Five: Broken to the Fist,” Mariko’s need to compartmentalize her own feelings for an outsider may be critical to both her and Blackthorne’s very survival.
Shogun (2024)
When a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village, Lord Yoshii Toranaga discovers secrets that could tip the scales of power and devastate his enemies.
Release Date 2024-02-00
Main Genre Drama
Seasons 1
Mariko Is Confronted by Ghosts From Her Past (in More Ways Than One) on ‘Shōgun’
Now, I don’t know that anyone can say they were successfully surprised when Mariko’s husband Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe), a man whom previous episodes really attempted to convince us was dead, rode out of the mist and into Ajiro. I, on the other hand, was completely giddy by this reveal-that-wasn’t, and not only because my TV-viewing goggles had been tuned to the right theory frequency this time around. What proved more surprising wasn’t the fact that Buntaro was able to make it to Edo and rendezvous with Toranaga, but that he was only believed to be dead and gone for the last twenty days. (Why did it feel like much more time had passed before Mariko and Blackthorne actually gave into the tension behind all those glances of longing?) On the heels of these two knocking boots, the return of her husband is an opportunity rife with delicious drama, and while this week’s episode didn’t try to rival the previous installment in terms of visceral gore, it did advance things forward by way of revealing at least one very important backstory.
Since Mariko has already been tasked to live with Blackthorne in the house Toranaga gifted him in Ajiro, that means Buntaro — looking a little more cut-up and bruised in spite of having survived death — is also begrudgingly forced to shack up under the same roof. Considering that Blackthorne’s idea of hospitality involves letting a dead pheasant stink up the house while serving the most unappetizing rabbit stew for dinner, there’s no faulting any of the Japanese for turning up their noses in favor of their preferred dishes. Blackthorne and Buntaro’s weird, defensive energy only starts to get weirder and full of barely tempered machismo when a little more sake gets introduced into the meal, while Mariko attempts to act as a go-between in translating their words. Soon, the two men are downing bowlfuls of the fermented beverage, both visibly intoxicated and seemingly on a crash course for something disastrous.
But the only person who ends up baring more than even she likely expected to is Mariko herself, as the dinner reaches a fever-pitch of tension once Blackthorne continually asks Buntaro to regale them with a story of how he survived. Mariko, having already endured years of being married to this man, warns him against inciting Buntaro’s temper further, but it’s too late. Buntaro orders a servant to bring his bow to him and requests that Blackthorne choose which post in the entryway he should aim his arrows at. Unthinkingly, Blackthorne chooses the right one — which also happens to be the post Mariko is sitting directly in front of. Buntaro has been progressively getting drunker and drunker all night, barely capable of seeing straight, but Mariko ignores Blackthorne’s pleas to move out of the way. Her husband fires two arrows, one after the other, so close to her face that the fletching practically skims her nose, to hit the post, before he collapses in a tipsy heap on the floor.
While everyone sits stunned in the wake of that display, and Buntaro calmly pours himself another bowl of sake, Blackthorne requests that Mariko tell her husband that “his wife merits better” treatment than what just happened. Buntaro laughs at the idea of treating Mariko with any real courtesy, a statement that confuses Blackthorne — until Mariko proceeds to tell him, at her husband’s order, the truth about her family history. Her father, who had been in service to a cruel and tyrannical taikō, murdered his lord for the greater good; however, this resulted in Mariko’s family being hunted down and murdered as a repercussion for his actions. All of her brothers, sisters, and even her own mother were forced to kneel before her father as he carried out their swift execution before committing seppuku himself. Mariko, by contrast, as a newly married woman, was not permitted to take part in the ritual, but every year, on the anniversary of her family’s murders, she begs her husband to “let [her] take action against this injustice.” Unfortunately, Buntaro forbids her from joining her family in death, as Mariko tearfully explains: “My husband orders me to live.” Yet she brings up the eightfold fence when it comes time for Blackthorne to process all he’s heard, asking him to bury his own feelings about it — for both their sakes.
Later that night, when Blackthorne hears Buntaro physically beating Mariko in their room and attempts to intervene, even going as far as to chase Buntaro out into the streets of the village in a misguided effort to challenge him, Buntaro refuses to fight, claiming the sake they drank that night was to blame. As Blackthorne realizes that he can’t, in good conscience, strike an unarmed man, and proceeds to walk away, it’s clear that this isn’t the last clash between these two that’ll play out over the course of the show.
Blackthorne Learns That Words Carry Meaning in ‘Shōgun’ Episode 5
While all of this is going on, there’s also the matter of that dead bird to address. After Toranaga gifts Blackthorne a pheasant as a token of his gratitude, the pilot declares he wants the house to prepare the bird properly to be eaten later on. As far as English customs are concerned, however, that means hanging the pheasant up outside, where it’s meant to “mature” for up to a week, before presumably dressing it and enjoying it as part of a meal. The only problem is, as Fuji (Moeka Hoshi) so astutely points out at the beginning of the episode, that the pheasant will start to rot — and once that happens, it’s going to give off an absolutely horrendous stench. But Blackthorne is insistent that things are done his way for once, and in his broken Japanese, he tells all the servants of the house, including the eavesdropping gardener, Uejirou, that it is “forbidden” to touch the pheasant before then: “If touch — die!”
Since its very first episode, Shōgun has been skillfully utilizing the use of language — and, by extension, the cultural divide that exists between Blackthorne and the Japanese — as a way to heighten drama, offer moments of levity, and provide a more in-depth understanding of this new realm. In many ways, someone like Mariko, who has leverage in more than one sphere thanks to her knowledge of both Japanese and Portuguese (which is illustrated as English for audiences), is among one of the most powerful characters in the series solely because of her ability to comprehend what everyone is saying in a given scene. We’ve witnessed moments where everything being spoken is accurately translated to the letter, as well as instances where someone has blatantly chosen to misconstrue another’s words to make them look worse by perception. Slowly, we also see Blackthorne begin to develop a familiarity with the Japanese language — at least, he’s communicating enough in order to get by — but “Broken to the Fist” is the first real instance in which he discovers he can’t simply utter the first thing that pops into his head.
Although the dead pheasant could risk skewing a bit heavy-handed in terms of its symbolism, it’s also somewhat intriguing when paired with Buntaro’s return — especially when he seems to be the only one the black flies are actually circling around, apart from the rotting bird itself. He might have narrowly survived death before, but we’re only halfway through the series now, and this could be a harbinger of the very real ending that awaits him. But this week, it isn’t Buntaro who meets death, whether untimely or otherwise; that fate belongs to Uejirou, the gardener. While Blackthorne’s order to the rest of the house meant no one was permitted to touch the rotting bird, Mariko informs him later that Uejirou, knowing any trespass of that order meant death, volunteered to steal it. He’d been ill recently, and took the pheasant while fully aware of the consequences. “The bird meant nothing to me,” Blackthorne numbly insists. “Your words gave it meaning,” Mariko counters.
But Uejirou’s death also serves more than one purpose, unbeknownst to many, and even while Blackthorne grieves his perceived role in sending an old man to his demise, the gardener proves to be a helpful loose end all on his own. Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) and his nephew Omi (Hiroto Kanai) have been investigating the evidence surrounding a hidden spy in Ajiro — someone who’s been sending messages to Toranaga this entire time. Said messages are conveniently planted in Uejirou’s home and unearthed only after the man has already died, leaving the door open for Toranaga’s real spy, the fisherman and former samurai Muraji (Yasunari Takeshima), to continue operating unchecked.
As If Things Couldn’t Possibly Get Any Worse on ‘Shōgun’…
In the wake of Uejirou’s death and that absolute disaster of a dinner with Buntaro, you can hardly fault Blackthorne for coming to the conclusion that he wants to leave Japan permanently. It’s a sentiment he doesn’t hesitate to express to Toranaga when given the first opportunity for some face time with his lord. However, Toranaga, seemingly sensing the tension going on between Blackthorne and Mariko (even going as far as to reference a “shadow” hanging over both of them), declares that he “can’t be bothered with this nonsense” and strides across the field to let the two of them hash it out. But a flock of suddenly dispersed birds from the treeline (more birds!) signals that everyone’s about to have an even bigger disaster on their hands.
Remember the baby earthquake that Blackthorne experienced a little while ago? That’s nothing compared to the big kahuna that suddenly hits. The ground shakes and splits, men are swallowed up by the earth in an instant, and amid it all, Toranaga himself is carried over the edge by a landslide. Blackthorne, Mariko, and Nagakado manage to successfully dig him out, but the lord has lost his swords in the aftermath — until Blackthorne decides to gift him the ones he was given by Fuji in the episode prior. Most of our main characters seem physically unscathed, but the earthquake has left Ajiro in shambles, and when Blackthorne stumbles back to his house, he finds Fuji has been injured in the chaos. As he wordlessly surveys the destruction left in the wake of that phenomenon, he strides out to the garden and begins reassembling the rocks in their proper place, the way he once watched Uejirou moving them around. Seems like Blackthorne won’t be booking his one-way departure from Japan any time soon.
Back in Osaka, however, Toranaga’s enemies only seem to be growing in number, especially after Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira) opens up his latest delivered package to find none other than Jozen’s (Nobuya Shimamoto) head in a box. Around the same time, Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido), the consort of the late taikō and mother of his young heir, returns to the city and has a late-night face-to-face meeting with Ishido to thank him for reuniting her with her son. With all that in mind, it seems as if these two putting their heads together is only going to spell disaster for Toranaga, especially since Ochiba only seems to be operating to ensure her son’s future as the new ruler. But what does she have up her impressive sleeves, now that she’s telling Ishido — in no uncertain terms — that the Council of Regents has to do what she says? We’ll have to wait until next week’s episode to find out exactly what Ochiba’s plan could entail, both for Ishido and Toranaga himself.
Shogun (2024)
Mariko and Blackthorne fight to hide their connection as the Council of Regents gain a new ally in the newest episode of Shōgun.
ProsThe dinner scene between Blackthorne, Mariko, and Buntaro is one of the strongest moments of the episode.Anna Sawai gives another stunning performance as Mariko relays the brutal truth of her family’s history.The series continues to utilize language and translation in exciting ways that up the ante for both drama and comedy. ConsBuntaro’s return from the dead isn’t as surprising or unexpected as the show attempts to make it.
New episodes of Shōgunpremiere each Tuesday on FX and Hulu in the U.S.
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