When Toranaga asks Yabushige to watch the morning with him, the sun piercing through the window of his quarters in Osaka Castle, Yabushige flinches at the cresting rays while Toranaga stands proud, ready to face the coming future. Just moments earlier, Toranaga confronted Yabushige about conspiring with Ishido and betraying his trust, but instead of asking for Yabushige’s life, Toranaga presented a counteroffer: get Blackthorne and Lady Kiri safely to the Ajiro fishing village, and Toranaga will expand Yabushige’s fiefdom.
It’s a tense negotiation in the wake of the previous episode’s assassination attempt, but Toranaga knows exactly how to play Yabushige, asking him, “Aren’t you my reliable friend?” Yabushige of course has to say yes, but agreeing to Toranaga’s statement is both an affirmation of his loyalty and an admittance that he had been conspiring with a chief rival. It seems that neither Ishido nor Toranaga fully trusts Yabushige, who now has to make a choice about which side he’ll land on. And so with this sunrise confrontation, Shōgun’s political machinations kick into a higher gear.
Toranaga’s proposition isn’t something that would surprise Lady Mariko, who tells Blackthorne, “My lord is famous for his trickery.” Apparently, when Toranaga was only 6 years old, he was bartered away to his family’s rivals. “As a hostage, he learned one truth: that enemies are everywhere and friends nowhere,” Mariko adds. It’s a truth it seems Toranaga hasn’t yet been able to instill in his son, who near the end of the episode balks at the idea of working with Yabushige in Ajiro to train a new regiment. “You are playing a game of friends and enemies, when you only have yourself in this life,” he explains to Nagakado. Picking and choosing allies is something Toranaga can’t afford at this moment, a point made clear when he appoints Blackthorne as his Hatamoto (a high-ranking military leader) toward the end of the episode.
The action in “Tomorrow Is Tomorrow” is not all about forging alliances, however. We also get a daring escape, a frantic ambush, and a tense chase sequence, all things viewers have likely been waiting to check off their historical-epic Bingo cards. First, we get a taste of Toranaga’s legendary trickery when he swaps places in the litter with Lady Kiri to be escorted out of the castle. After Ishido inspects both carriers, Lady Shizu fakes labor pains to create a distraction, and only Mariko and Blackthorne take note that their lord is now the secret cargo about to be smuggled out of Osaka castle right under Ishido’s nose. When a gatekeeper later stops the procession and demands to verify all travelers, Blackthorne makes a scene to prevent Toranaga from being discovered. It’s a smart move, and it works: Blackthorne’s hysterical screaming — “Am I the only man present who treasures the purity of a woman?” “A woman’s virtue is her glory!” “You, sir, are a silly little man! And your hair looks like the tail of a pony!” — and attempts to physically prevent the gatekeeper from looking inside the litter create enough of a scene that Ishido’s right-hand man, Jozen (Nobuya Shimamoto), declares an end to the “buffoonery” and that they should all be let through.
Before reading too much into Blackthorne’s allegiance to Toranaga, however, remember what Lady Mariko said to him about the guards potentially discovering Toaranga’s ruse: “He will be killed … and all of us.” Shōgun understands that the interwoven relationships between characters need to be directly tied to each of their individual motivations. Even though Blackthorne and Toranaga are being pushed toward a shared destiny, Shōgun doesn’t push them toward an easy friendship. As we see later when Toranaga makes a deal with the Portuguese priests and the Captain General of the Black Ship to help him escape in exchange for silver, the promise of a church in Edo, and, oh yeah, the Anjin, Toranaga has been keeping Blackthorne around as a bargaining chip, and he’s willing to cash it in. Remember, Toranaga is not playing a game of friends and enemies, and we see here his willingness to sacrifice an ally to keep himself alive.
“I’m sure my lord has a plan,” Mariko tells Blackthorne as they’re being marched by Ishido’s escort towards the harbor. Blackthorne is concerned about what will happen when they reach their destination and Toranaga is found out, but his worries won’t come to fruition: Lord Kiyama’s men, still after “the heretic,” are waiting to ambush the procession from the high ground in the woods. A flurry of flaming arrows rains down, forcing Toranaga to abandon his litter, and the men in Ishido’s escort immediately shift their focus to him. Mariko and Blackthorne jump into the fray to help push back Ishido’s men, and the ambush becomes a melee: It’s nearly pitch black, everyone is surrounded by trees, and it isn’t entirely clear who is attacking whom. (“Are they fighting … each other?” asks one of Kiyama’s men.) On the official companion podcast, stunt coordinator Lauro David Chartrand-Del Valle pointed out that they wanted the action on the show to feel historically accurate, so there are no flourishes, no kicks, no flips, and no flashy moves. The blade of a katana is long and razor-sharp, and if you get slashed, you’re done for. Every sword swing is a calculated action and movement is limited to preserve energy, but it’s this sort of precise action that makes fights like this so compelling to watch again and again.
Just when things look most dire, Yabushige joins in to aid Toranaga, showing his true loyalty, even amid his frustration: “One of these days, I’d like to know your plan before it happens,” he tells his lord, who merely responds that he’ll keep it in mind. Their only hope is to flee for the harbor, and when Mariko’s husband Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe) sees a rider heading off to warn Ishido, he tells everyone to hurry while he holds off the two armies now on their tail.
Toranaga’s faction arrives at the harbor, and Blackthorne recognizes a friendly crew on the docks who get them safely aboard their ship. The camera briefly switches to an overhead shot of the city’s grid as torches flood the streets in straight lines, an extremely effective visualization of the mighty force pursuing them. Then, against all odds, Buntaro arrives at the dock, fighting off (and slaying) eight different men who come at him. Blackthorne implores the boats to turn back and save him, but Buntaro recognizes that he’s past saving, as does Toranaga, who honors Buntaro by calling out his formal name — Toda Hirokatsu — and exchanging bows with the doomed samurai. Buntaro runs directly into the wall of waiting soldiers, fighting them tooth and nail until he disappears from sight, and Mariko does her best to look strong in the face of her husband’s certain death. Her relationship with Buntaro has thus far been fraught, carrying the threat of violence in every interaction we’ve seen. But even though he’s brutish to her and her son, he’s still her husband, and Anna Sawai does incredible work expressing a sort of conflicted sadness in Mariko’s eyes.
Kiyama’s men have blockaded the harbor, however, and Toranaga’s galley won’t be able to break through. So the aforementioned deal is made with the Portuguese, and Toranaga, Yabushige, Mariko, and company sail off on the Black Ship, leaving Blackthorne — not to mention the guns — on the galley to be captured by Kiyama’s men in the harbor or Ishido’s men on shore. Except it turns out there’s a third option. Blackthorne has already worked this galley crew through a deadly storm and he knows what they’re capable of. “Fuck this,” he states, shouting at the caption to get the crew rowing. Blackthorne creates his own destiny, and he’s going to use the Black Ship as cover to clear the harbor himself. As the Black Ship decimates Kiyama’s fishing boat armada, the Captain General orders Rodrigues to run Blackthorne aground. It’s a boat race, and even though the galley’s oars hit the rocky shores at one point, Blackthorne manages to thread the needle and escape. “That’s a debt repaid,” Rodrigues says under his breath.
With the galley now clear, Toranaga, et al. depart the Black Ship and return to the galley for their journey on to the fishing village of Ajiro. In his dealings with the Portuguese, Toranaga was given the Erasmus’s logs detailing acts of piracy, but when he confronts Blackthorne about it, he tells him, “It will take a very long time to translate.” In the show so far, every character has been committed to the idea that piracy is a crime punishable by death, with no exceptions. But we already know Toranga’s deal: he has no time for friends and enemies, and the boat chase has shown him that Blackthorne possesses the same sense of self-preservation that has driven his entire military and political career. Blackthorne is named Hatamoto, with orders for him to take those weapons he saved and train a regiment in “foreign tactics,” with assistance from a dubious-seeming Yabushige and Nagakado.
The next title Toranaga bestows on Blackthorne — “diving instructor” — is perhaps less of a great honor, but still characteristically tactical on Toranaga’s part. After seven launches from the rail of the ship and return swims, Blackthorne asks Mariko how many more times he needs to demonstrate. “Until he is satisfied,” she answers, with a brief smile, the first we’ve seen from her. Blackthorne is being tested for his loyalty now. “Perhaps he can try tomorrow,” Mariko says to Toranaga, who delivers the episode’s title: “Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today I will learn how to dive.” And then he challenges Blackthorne, now fully exhausted after all that diving, to a swimming race to the beach.
The episode ends with Mariko’s smile, hinting at a new start for her now that her husband is gone. But Toranaga has also had a weight lifted off his shoulders. Not only did he successfully escape Osaka Castle, Hiromatsu has delivered the (obvious) news to the Council of Regents that Toranaga has officially resigned. Since the Taikō declared every council vote needs five members, they are now locked in a stalemate and cannot impeach him until they add a new member. Toranaga’s craftiness has bought him a little more time. His potential death sentence is tomorrow’s problem.
Feudal Gestures
• The captain general of the Black Ship is named Ferreira and is played by Portuguese-born Canadian actor Louis Ferreira. It’s a fun little fact, but the character is only referred to by his title in this adaptation.
• When the escort is attacked, Lady Mariko and Blackthone pick up naginata, a type of polearm with a curved sword at the end. According to Chartrand-Del Valle on the official podcast, the naginata was the traditional weapon used by female samurai, as its longer reach made it better for protection and defense rather than full-on assault.
• Blackthorne and Rodrigues’s uncouth exchanges during the boat race are a hoot. In a show where everyone’s enthusiasm is exhibited cautiously, hearing Rodrigues shout, “Your lips are on the devil’s arse!” as he pretends to sexually service the till is a welcome moment of comic relief.
• We see Yabushige preparing for his sunrise meeting with Toranaga by writing a new will — one we’re told is his “best yet,” in Shōgun’s morbid version of a running bit. His seeming resignation to death is interesting when you recall how he boiled a sailor alive in the first episode, wanting to pinpoint the moment when the man crossed over. His fascination points to a man trying to conquer his fear of the inevitable, which is maybe why he works so hard at self-preservation.
Jesse Raub , 2024-03-06 04:22:50
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