“Ladies of the Willow World” is now streaming on Hulu ahead of its premiere on FX tonight at 10 p.m.
To this point, it’s been easy to read Shōgun as a story about powerful men making important decisions. “Ladies of the Willow World,” however, invites us to reckon with how the show’s women have dealt with the ramifications of these decisions. This perspective shift is rooted in an opening flashback to a young Mariko being introduced to Ruri, the daughter of the lord that Mariko’s samurai father, Akechi (Yutaka Takeuchi), now serves. The two girls forge a bond as they grow up together, running through bamboo groves and walking through the castle halls while their fathers argue in private chambers.
But when Mariko is married off to Buntaro to form an alliance with the Toda clan (one she considers worthless), the two young women are separated. Through the tension in this household, their friendship was the place both of them could find refuge, sharing a bed at night when their fathers’ tempers boiled over. With their support system now fractured, it’s no wonder that neither woman has been able to find peace in her new life.
It doesn’t help that Ruri’s father is the corrupt and brutal leader that Mariko’s father assassinated. With his death, Ruri loses her royal status and has to start anew as a concubine to the Taikō, renamed Lady Ochiba. Mariko’s father’s death (after being forced to execute his own family) also stains her family name and leaves a generational scar. The assassination’s ripple effect has shaped these two women in opposite ways: While Mariko has withdrawn further inside her eightfold fence each year she’s denied the right to avenge her father, Lady Ochiba has become vengeful, furious at what she had to endure to reclaim her status.
And the man at the center of the decision that fractured the lives of these women? You guessed it: Toranaga. As Akechi’s confidante, Toranaga learned that marrying Mariko off was intended to preserve his family lineage so she could continue his fight. At the same time, Lady Ochiba is certain that Toranaga was behind the assassination plot, and her hatred of him seethes onscreen. And yet Toranaga still can’t help but meddle in these women’s lives. He outright kidnapped Lady Ochiba as collateral for his initial visit to Osaka Castle in the pilot (“just visiting her pregnant sister,” my ass), and in his demand to have Mariko translate Blackthorne for him, he’s completely railroaded her marriage to Buntaro (not that there was much happiness there to lose).
This makes it even more troublesome when, at the beginning of “Ladies of the Willow World,” Toranaga forbids Buntaro from seeing Mariko for seven days and then immediately afterward commands Mariko to take Blackthorne to a brothel to engage a courtesan who will “settle his mind.” Blackthorne has just been named chief admiral and general of the cannon regiment for saving Toranaga’s life during the earthquake, but his request to be given back his ship so he can sail against the Portuguese is scoffed at by Mariko. She is still Catholic, remember, and Toranaga can’t afford to lose a potential ally — especially one as wealthy as the Portuguese. Having Mariko escort Blackthorne to the tea house covers a lot of bases for Toranago, who can see the obvious tension between these two members of his clan: It’s punishment for jeopardizing his plans, but it also provides good cover for their affair — if Blackthorne is seen leaving the brothel in the company of the village’s finest courtesan, prying eyes might be directed elsewhere. And there are indeed prying eyes in Ajiro: “I’ve heard you and the Anjin are never seen apart,” notes teahouse proprietor Gin (Yûko Miyamoto) as she negotiates a price with Mariko.
While Mariko is stuck enacting Toranaga’s latest plot, Lady Ochiba is doing some plotting of her own. Under her new alliance with Ishido, Osaka castle has been locked down under a false threat against the heir’s life, and the regents are all being held hostage. But now that she’s back at Osaka Castle, she’s also resumed her life of looking after her son and attending royal gatherings, like a nōh performance in the castle’s courtyard. The actors’ portrayal of the Taikō slaying Akechi and then wooing a masked version of herself gives Lady Ochiba violent flashbacks to the Taikō’s wife, Lady Iyo (Ako), taking her in and telling her that “a woman may lose everything she’s ever had — but she may also take it back.” There is a price for this return to power, however. We watch as Lady Ochiba is drugged with bitter herbs and forced into bed with the Taikō for the sole purpose of conceiving a male heir. The brutality of her flashbacks clashes with the stylized romance playing out on the stage, which is further exacerbated when the true purpose of this scene comes to light: The actor portraying the Taikō, Lord Ito, is to be recruited as the fifth regent. To exact her revenge on Toranaga, Lady Ochiba must once again turn to the Taikō for power — or at least someone who plays him onstage.
Even with the castle on lockdown, Hiromatsu manages to escape to Toranaga’s camp to share the news of the regents being held hostage. In a meeting of Toranaga’s vassals, he broaches the possibility of enacting Crimson Sky: “A single, violent rush on Osaka Castle. We would eliminate the council and form a new government. With Toranaga as sole regent.” Nagakado correctly identifies this move as a restoration of the Minowara line to the title of shōgun, the ultimate military leader of all of Japan. It’s a drastic move, one that just about everyone save the ever-eager Nagakado recognizes as bound to fail. Toranaga, still claiming he does not desire the title of shōgun, seems more inclined to Omi’s suggestion of trying to buy more time — perhaps being held hostage will flip the other regents to his side. If Sugiyama, Ohno, Kiyama, and the Portuguese all lose faith in Ishido, maybe Toranaga won’t have to go to war at all.
Either Toranaga guessed right about the regents protesting or he was somehow able to plant the idea in their heads. Sugiyama calls out Ishido’s lies while voting no on the proposed fifth regent, capping off his speech with a public declaration that the regents are being held hostage. It’s a bold move from the most milquetoast of the regents, and one that ultimately gets him killed in the woods by Ishido’s men under the cover of another suspicious bandit attack reminiscent of the one in the second episode.
All’s fair in love and war, and while Toranaga is planning war games, his love games play out at Gin’s teahouse in the centerpiece of this episode. After Gin directs Mariko and Blackthorne to a room, Kiku herself comes gliding across the garden in full grace and elegance. Blackthorne bumbles through complimenting her appearance and sake pour while Mariko is clearly nervous about being watched. Kiku seems to recognize what’s bothering the other woman, assuring her, “Where we are is a private place. Dark … if one wants it dark. A woman cannot look away when another suffers.” Kiku’s gracious offer seems to unlock something in Mariko. Outside of her lost friendship with Ruri, Mariko’s relationships with the other women in her life — especially Fuji — are formal and strict. But when Kiku offers to explain the Willow World to Blackthorne, she and the camera move so that only Mariko is in his sightline. As Kiku speaks, it’s seemingly Mariko who describes how the Willow World of the teahouse offers an escape to those seeking not only physical pleasure but a refuge from the pressures of the outside world. Inside the Willow World, there are no expectations but privacy.
As Mariko speaks through Kiku, she and Blackthorne exchange passionate glances, his gaze tracing the edges of her kosode. Kiku has not only found a way to let Mariko and Blackthorne express their shared desire, she’s also found a way to penetrate Mariko’s eightfold fence. Kiku’s speech seems to connect to Mariko in a way nothing else has, showing her that the escape offered by the Willow World is indeed more than just physical pleasure. When the courtesan ends her speech by saying, “I ask you into my openness. I ask you to be here now,” Mariko quickly flashes back through the traumatic moments of her life. The eightfold fence, it seems, is no match for the Willow World. But when Kiku invites Blackthorne to a private room, asking if Mariko will join them, she responds, “It must be only you,” and Blackthorne and Mariko share a brief, longing touch of the hands as he is led away.
Later, Mariko is summoned by Toranaga, who inquires about her childhood friendship with Lady Ochiba. “The way she wars against us. What could have turned her into the woman she is today?” he asks, before implying that her tactics pitting the council against him are dishonorable. Mariko then explains that men have many reasons to go to war, “But a woman is simply at war.” It’s a small line that delivers a huge gut punch. While the men of Shōgun are battling to satisfy their ambitions, the women are left to battle their own desires. It’s here that Toranaga reveals to Mariko her father’s grand plans for her, creating even more grief that Buntaro has denied her suicide mission every year. “I’ve failed him,” she says, crushed, but Toranaga assures her, “Your war isn’t over.”
Later, at Osaka Castle after Lord Ito’s confirmation fails, Lady Osaka confronts Ishido one last time. He implores her to be patient, but she tells him they cannot delay facing Toranaga. “You’re playthings. You have no idea the enemy you face …” she reprimands Ishido. She then describes how she believes Toranaga orchestrated her father’s killing, how she was forced to be the Taikō’s concubine, and how she eventually did what no other woman could: bear the Taikō a male heir. And does he want to know how she did it? “By compelling fate to look at me. So I could scratch out its eyes.”
While the episode technically ends with Toranaga declaring Crimson Sky is a go, this episode is really about Mariko and Lady Ochiba’s overlapping trauma. Both women desire justice for what happened in their pasts, but only Mariko seems to have found any amount of relief in processing her feelings. Maybe Lady Ochiba needs a visit to the Willow World herself. Or maybe, with all the chatter about switching allegiances to Toranaga, she feels trapped, ready to compel fate to look at her once again.
Feudal Gestures
• Shōgun can be tricky to follow if you don’t have a cursory knowledge of Japanese history, like, say, what a shōgun is. This classic video from Bill Wurtz does a good job of being both funny and explaining the political history of Japan leading to the Sengoku period.
• We’re up to two on the official Yabushige “I should write a new will” count. After surveying the damage done to Toranaga’s forces and without a peace offering from Ishido, Yabushige seems certain he’s going to meet his end on the battlefield.
• Buntaro is a fairly pathetic character in this episode. When Toranaga confronts him about his sake-fueled rage in the last episode, he’s absolutely heartbroken. He refuses to divorce Mariko, even when Toranaga suggests it, and says that after all these years he hoped she would finally open up to him — something she’s immediately been able to do with Blackthorne. We get a better sense here than any time previously that he’s madly in love with Mariko, which is one of the reasons why he won’t honor her death wish.
• Both Anna Sawai and Cosmo Jarvis had extra homework assigned to them for this episode by director Hiromi Kamata. On the official podcast, she mentions that she asked Sawai to watch the Wong-kar Wai film In The Mood for Love and Cosmo Jarvis to watch The Remains of the Day to prepare themselves for the tension and restraint in the teahouse scene.
By Jesse Raub , 2024-03-26 21:31:18
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