Episode 8 was Toranaga’s story, and this one is all Mariko. The writers did her justice, and her symphony comes in four movements: (1) her declaration to Ishido in the audience hall, (2) her attempt to leave the castle with Toranaga’s ladies, (3) her aborted seppuku attempt, and (4) her sacrifice during the shinobi attack. I’ll go through each. The material is adapted from chapters 52-57 in the book.
Back in Osaka: No impending visit from the Emperor
The set up is a bit different from the source material. In the book Yabu takes Blackthorne to Osaka with intentions to stay there only briefly, so that he can prepare for Toranaga’s arrival in the city, and then go straight to Nagasaki with Blackthorne so that Anjin-san can be set loose there against the Black Ship. Mariko, meanwhile, travels to Osaka by land. When she arrives, she finds Yabu and Blackthorne still there, because their plan to go to Nagasaki has been aborted by the announcement that the Son of Heaven himself (the Emperor) is on his way to Osaka and will arrive in nineteen days, having been petitioned by Ishido. 
So in the book the regents’ summons for Toranaga is now officially a divine mandate which is absolute. Yabu has been invited as well, and with only a nineteen-day window, he can hardly bring Blackthorne to Nagasaki, turn him loose on the Black Ship, and then be back to Osaka in time.
The TV series dispenses with the emperor drama and has Yabu, Blackthorne, and Mariko all traveling to Osaka by ship. Though as in the book, Yabu and Blackthorne are in the dark as to what Mariko has been ordered to do. Like Hiro-matsu, she is a precious soul to be sacrificed in the cause of Toranaga’s destiny. She wastes no time cutting to the chase when received in the audience hall, repeatedly insisting that she’s leaving Osaka the next day with Toranaga’s ladies. Ishido keeps refusing her but she won’t back down, and it’s at this point Blackthorne realizes that her purpose in coming to Osaka was to use her death as a bargaining chip to expose that Ishido’s guests are indeed hostages.
Mariko’s procession: Operation Crimson Sky?
Mariko begins her march, and her retinue of browns is slaughtered by Ishido’s grays. It follows the book pretty closely, though the TV-Mariko is more proficient with weapons. Not that she actually kills any of the grays. Somewhat puzzling to me is the episode’s title “Crimson Sky”, which is the code name for Toranaga’s military raid on Osaka Castle. 
(In the book, it refers to his raid on the cultural capital of Kyoto, where the emperor holds court, but as I mentioned, almost everything about Kyoto and the emperor has been dropped from this series.) In the book operation “Crimson Sky” still hasn’t been launched by the end of the novel, and obviously by the end of this episode no battle has yet been initiated. Has “Crimson Sky” become a different operation altogether, referring now to Mariko’s gambit and sacrifice? I doubt it. I think rather that “Crimson Sky” is a metaphorical title, as there is plenty of blood spilled in this episode regardless. Mariko’s sacrifice is the crimson sky that will rain down hard on Ishido.
A surprising second
If the show writers are trying to apologize with this scene, I half accept. Remember, they unforgivably scrapped Blackthorne’s attempted seppuku back in episode 4 — the pivotal moment in the book when he “becomes Japanese”. With Mariko’s attempted seppuku, he offers to do something likewise unthinkable by western standards: assisting Mariko with her suicide. In the book, Yabu is her second and here’s how it plays out:
She looked so tiny sitting there motionless, a splash of white on the square of crimson. She reached forward and touched the knife and straightened it. Then she gazed once more through the gateway to the far end of the avenue but it was as still and as empty as it had ever been. She looked back at the knife.
“Kasigi Yabu-sama!”
“Yes, Toda Mariko-sama!”
“It seems Lord Kiyama has declined to assist me. Please, I would be honored if you would be my second.”
“It is my honor,” Yabu said. He bowed and got to his feet and stood behind her, to her left. His sword sang as it slid from its scabbard. He set his feet firmly and with two hands raised the sword. “I am ready, Lady,” he said.
“Please wait until I have made the second cut.”
Her eyes were on the knife. With her right hand she made the sign of the cross over her breast, then leaned forward and took up the knife without trembling and touched it to her lips as though to taste the polished steel. Then she changed her grip and held the knife firmly with her right hand under the left side of her throat. At that moment flares rounded the far end of the avenue. A retinue approached. Ishido was at their head.
She did not move the knife.
Yabu was still a coiled spring, concentrated on the mark. “Lady,” he said, “do you wait or are you continuing? I wish to be perfect for you.”
Mariko forced herself back from the brink. “I — we wait … we … I …” Her hand lowered the knife. It was shaking now. As slowly, Yabu released himself. His sword hissed back into the scabbard and he wiped his hands on
his sides.Ishido stood at the gateway. “It’s not sunset yet, Lady. The sun’s still on the horizon. Are you so keen to die?”
“No, Lord General. Just to obey my Lord….” She held her hands together to stop their shaking.
A rumble of anger went through the Browns at Ishido’s arrogant rudeness and Yabu readied to leap at him, but stopped as Ishido said loudly, “The Lady Ochiba begged the Regents on behalf of the Heir to make an exception in your case. We agreed to her request. Here are permits for you to leave at dawn tomorrow.”
“Sire?” Mariko said, without understanding, her voice threadbare.
“You are free to leave. At dawn.”
“And Kiritsubo-san and the Lady Sazuko?”
“Isn’t that also part of your ‘duty?’ Their permits are there also. Why should we keep anyone against her will? Are we jailers? Of course not! If the Heir’s welcome is so offensive that you wish to leave, then leave.”
Ishido turned on his heel, shouted an order at the Grays, and walked off. At once captains echoed the order and all the Grays began to move off.
“Lady,” Yabu said huskily, wiping his damp hands, a bitter vomit taste in his mouth from the lack of fulfillment. “Lady, it’s over now. You’ve… you’ve won. You’ve won.”
I love this scene from the book and Yabu was true to form. Even if he had secretly allied with Ishido, he was instantly ready to slay Ishido for his public display of rudeness to Mariko in her final moments of life. And he genuinely “wanted to be perfect” as her second. But the show writers hit on something even better. When Kiyama doesn’t show, Mariko doesn’t call for anyone, Yabu or otherwise, determined to go through with killing herself without the aid of a second — the most brutal way to die committing seppuku. Then Blackthorne steps up. Not only does this violate the heart of his Christian conscience, it forces him to kill the woman he has fallen in love with. This is the moment, in the Shogun TV series, in which Blackthorne “becomes Japanese”, if there is such a moment. It’s not as compelling as when he tried to kill himself in the book, but it’s something.
And of course, Mariko’s shaming of Ishido is masterful. From her unrelenting defiance in the audience hall to her aborted seppuku, she made him look like a thug in the eyes of his people.
Hold the door
The ninja attack on Osaka Castle is a mind-blowing scene in the novel, but it’s hopelessly anachronistic. As I mentioned in my review of the first two episodes, I’m glad to see the show writers discarding acrobatic ninjas and using the more mundane shinobi — covert mercenary agents proficient at infiltration and ambush, but certainly not wall-crawling spiders who throw shurikens and smoke bombs and perform impossible gymnastics.
The attack of the shinobi is shown sparsely in fact; just enough to drive the point home that the castle is being overrun by assassins. Blackthorne gets to fire his pistol a few times and nail his targets.
The way I see it, the show has been building to episodes 8 and 9. In the former we saw what Toranaga is made of. In the latter we get the paradox of Mariko resolved as it only can be. Ever since her father’s treachery she’s been a living contradiction, embodying the worst shame while doing the most difficultly honorable things in service to her liege lord. She’s samurai but Christian too; a loyal wife to the worst husband, but an adulterer in love with a foreign barbarian. Only death can bring peace to such a person, and there’s something fiercely triumphant about Mariko holding the door and getting blown to bits, if also heartbreaking. For this reason, I withdraw my earlier complaints about Sawai’s performance. It’s true that she’s more glacial and off-putting than the Mariko of the book, though perhaps more realistic that way, given her baggage.
An interesting post-script about Mariko. This series has almost completely sidelined the romance between her and Blackthorne. They had their first affair in episode 4 and in this episode finally another good fuck (before she got blown to bits) but very little elsewhere by way of intimate moments, whether physical or not. But though I would have preferred to see a bit more of that, I find the treatment in this series vastly preferable to the 1980 mini-series that allowed the romance to become so all-consuming that it completely overshadowed everything else in the story — the politics, the scheming, and the other important characters. So I’m not really complaining on this point. If you have to err, err on the side of holding back. Shogun is about lot of things besides a romance, and the 1980 miniseries essentially gave us a soap opera.
Verdict
A splendid episode as good as the previous one: 9 ½ out of 10.
Update: see my review of episode 10.
The Busybody 