#yoshii toranaga

[cinematic-phosphenes]

Shōgun (2024) | Chapter 7: A Stick of Time + Aesthetic 14/∞

[lafiametta]

What's so fascinating about Toranaga's plan to employ Mariko as Crimson Sky is that it was all there right from the beginning.

When Toranaga first arrives in Osaka the regents demand that he release Ochiba, the mother of the Heir, from where she is being held in Edo. Nothing scares Toranaga quite like Ochiba (no doubt why he held her in the first place), and he knows that once she is able to return to Osaka, she's going to do everything she can to destroy him.

Enter Mariko.

Mariko is perfectly placed: she shares a history with Ochiba, a girlhood bond that grew distant due to time and circumstance, but she is completely loyal to Toranaga, willing, in fact, to die for him and his cause. If the time comes for him to have to negotiate with Ochiba — or he has some need to soften her desire for vengeance — Mariko will serve as the crucial middle ground.

Once he realizes Ochiba will soon be free to move against him, Toranaga summons Mariko, requesting that she serve as a translator to the foreign barbarian. But even more important than her role as a translator, Toranaga wants to bring her closer and cement her place in his inner circle of followers. (As a woman, she is easily overlooked, not being a general or a vassal with an army of retainers, but her importance might be even more vital.) He reminds her of his great admiration for her father and acknowledges that for many years she has been robbed of her purpose. What if he could give it back to her? Like Mariko, we assume that her purpose is to serve as a translator, but Toranaga knows it is far larger: to play her part against the regents and serve as a bridge to Ochiba, when the time comes.

Toranaga is a falconer. He knows the value of caring for a bird, feeding it by hand, having it learn to trust you until it sees you as its only master. And as Toranaga describes his falcon, Lady of Steel, he could also be describing his plan for Mariko: “Conceals herself against the sun. Conserving energy, waiting for her moment.”

[signalburst]

Shōgun writers on Blackthorne's journey, A Dream of a Dream's theme of letting go

Emily Yoshida (writer): "Blackthorne's fate is so interesting, and totally unexpected. People are going to see in it what they wanna see, because there's a lot of ways you can read it. It could be somehow worse than death, like a purgatory of some sort. And then there's a way in which you can read it as a life of devotion to something beyond him, which has been something that has been a struggle for him. How do you view Blackthorne's fate?"

Justin Marks (co-creator): "I think Blackthorne's journey in this episode to the place where it lands, in such a beautiful and powerful scene between Blackthorne and Toranaga - on that hill where he offers up his own life. That's the journey that I hope all of us are on, if we're trying to understand how we interact with cultures we don't know. We want to forge relationships with people that go on, but we don't necessarily speak the same cultural or spiritual - or literal - language.

Which is to say, Blackthorne has been a prisoner of his own ambition. Which one might call the disease of colonialism - or capitalism, too. This idea of a man who is so bound by his ambition and where he belongs in this world, and what is owed to him, that he is the worst prisoner of all. So is Yabushige. They're both like this. And Yabushige never comes to that awakening, and finds himself dying here.

But for Blackthorne, it revolves crucially on this idea of what we call the 'false dream'. We wanted to open this episode on what feels like the beginning of a flashback structure, where we jump forward into the future, and we meet Blackthorne as an old man, and we tell the story of an old man looking back. And looking back with regret on the life that he led.

Only to realise that that was not the dream of an old man looking back - it was the dream of a young man looking forward to one possible version of his life. A version of his life that he has to draw to an end by killing that path. What Blackthorne is trying to kill there isn't himself, it's the version of himself that he's always been.

When Toranaga knocks that knife out of his hand and looks down at him, he's looking at a man reborn now, to a completely different life.

What is powerful is the idea of a man finally, spiritually, letting go. And this is something that we talked about from the very beginning, Cosmo and I. This whole story for Blackthorne is really just a story of a man learning to let go."

Shōgun official podcast Episode 10: A Dream of a Dream

[animusrox]

SHŌGUN - Chapter Seven: A Stick of Time

[lousolversons]

Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga in Shōgun (2024)

[isabellaofparma]

Shōgun | 1.03 - "Tomorrow is Tomorrow"

[yocalio]

SHŌGUN Chapter Ten: A Dream of a Dream

[kazz-brekker]

each week i tune into shogun in order to see toranaga do the political equivalent of sticking out his leg and making eye contact with yabushige while yabushige trips over him

[iwasnotaslasher]

[maxanor]

SHŌGUN (2024) Chapter Ten: A Dream of a Dream

[dindjarism]

Crimson Sky is already finished. With the Regents united, I could never send an army to Osaka. It would have meant certain death. So I sent a woman to do what an army never could. SHŌGUN | 1.10 A Dream of a Dream

[cinematic-phosphenes]

“So I sent a woman to do what an army never could.”

Shōgun (2024) | E10 | Dir. Frederick E.O. Toye

[lafiametta]

The fact that Blackthorne turned out to be a total red herring may be my favorite way that Shōgun subverted expectations.

Because the show followed his journey, we assumed he would have some greater importance as part of Toranaga's eventual victory. Maybe he would have come to the rescue, heroically using his ship and the guns to attack Osaka castle, giving him prime of place as an ally and as a vital part of Toranaga's plan.

In the end, though, Toranaga had Blackthorne's ship destroyed — and was prepared to destroy any others he might build. Blackthorne himself turned out to be a funny foreign distraction, unimportant to the cause beyond just making headaches for Toranaga's enemies, kept around simply because he made Toranaga laugh.

[kyliafanfiction]

Anyway, Shogun is really fucking good, and actively works to subvert the conventional 'white samurai' or 'white man in asian country' tropes. Blackthorne does have a noteable role in the story, but ultimately that role is to be used and directed by Toranaga - the story is about Blackthorne, but it's driven by Toranaga.

And unlike the 1980 miniseries, this version makes that much more clear.

(The 1980 miniseries was pretty good, IMO, and definitely fair for it's day, but by actively working to avoid the problematic orientalism of the original book and the greater orientalism of the miniseries - having read the book and seen the 1980 miniseries, the 1980 miniseries does ramp the orientalism up compared to the book, IMO, the new FX miniseries makes a version that frankly beats out the book in some ways, and is much more respectful to Japan and the Japanese)

[ladynamie]

SHŌGUN (2024) - Chapter Ten: A Dream of a Dream

[lousolversons]

Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga in Shōgun (2024)