‘Shōgun’ Episode 7 Recap — Don’t Run With Swords

Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Shōgun Episode 7.

The Big Picture

• Toranaga seeks an ally through his half-brother in this week’s episode of
  Shōgun
  .
• Shōgun
  gives us a deeper look into Toranaga’s past, humanizing the character.
• Shōgun
  proves it can still pull off a masterfully surprising ending with one character’s shocking death.

With the final trio of episodes looming for FX’s epic historical miniseries Shōgun, there will no doubt be much more ahead in terms of loss and defeat — but there’s also a potential road to victory, too. Now that Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) has declared his intention to move forward with his “Crimson Sky” directive, he’s steadily growing his army in order to combat the resistance he knows will be waiting for him at Osaka, courtesy of Lord Ishido’s (Takehiro Hira) own forces. In the wake of Episode 5’s devastating earthquake, though, Toranaga has fewer men in his garrison to help him fight his war than he expected to — and in this week’s episode, “Chapter Seven: A Stick of Time,” he decides to seek allegiance from someone who could turn the tide of Crimson Sky in the coming weeks: his own half-brother.

Toranaga’s Potential Ally Has Other Plans in ‘Shōgun’ Episode 7

That isn’t to say that Toranaga’s reunion with said brother is anything but tense. This is Shōgun, after all, where the path to success certainly isn’t paved and rarely runs smoothly. As Toranaga and the rest of the group, including Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), Mariko (Anna Sawai), Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), Hiromatsu (Tokuma Nishioka), and Toranaga’s son Nagakado (Yuki Kura), await their guest’s arrival in a foggy stretch of woods, there is no indication of exactly how this meeting will go. This week, even Toranaga proves to be much less of a mysterious cipher than he has in prior episodes — especially thanks to the flashbacks that “A Stick of Time” wields to remind us of just how long he’s been in this fight.

As a child, Toranaga was thrust into power before he could have fully been prepared to grasp the responsibilities that came with it. But he was also known by the title of the “boy warlord,” which meant shouldering the responsibility of assisting with his enemy Mizoguchi’s seppuku after claiming a sizable win during his first-ever battle. In the 46 years following, Toranaga’s successes became the stuff of legend, but as we come to learn through the arrival of his half-brother Saeki Nobutatsu (Eita Okuno), not only is Toranaga less impenetrable than he often seeks to be, but the realities of his past are much less glamorous and heroic. Nobutatsu’s presence in Izu is designed to shake up the series in more ways than one, as well as humanizing Toranaga in many respects, turning him into less of a giant and more of a man with endless weight and expectations to bear.

Nobutatsu might initially present himself as a willing ally to his half-brother’s cause, but his motivations are revealed to be in direct contrast to Toranaga’s aims. Perhaps it comes as less of a surprise after a particularly tense dinner — in which Nobutatsu has already regaled the group with a somewhat embarrassing story about the time Toranaga was taken as a hostage — when it’s revealed that Nobutatsu has accepted Ishido’s offer of an open spot on the Council of Regents. (Remember: they’re another member down, after Sugiyama’s death last week.) He’s not here to join Toranaga in his plan for Crimson Sky; he’s here to personally apprehend the wayward lord and escort him and his allies back to Osaka himself.

Understandably, things become a bit tense in Ajiro after that, with Nobutatsu’s army keeping careful watch over Toranaga and his garrison until the lord makes his formal decision about whether to surrender or resist. Even despite those tensions, there’s at least one particularly delightful interlude featuring Yabushige making himself comfortable at the local hot springs, while the madam of the local brothel, Gin (Yuko Miyamoto), also seizes advantage of her opportunity to approach Toranaga with an offer to fund a teahouse district, so the courtesans can essentially form a recognized guild. Although Toranaga initially dismisses her “novel distraction” in the midst of… everything else going on, he later orders for acres of land in Edo to be set aside for Gin to do with as she sees fit. Of course, given what happens later in the episode, Toranaga’s generous gesture might very well never come to light.

Mariko and Blackthorne Are Under Scrutiny in ‘Shōgun’ Episode 7

If you thought that Blackthorne and Mariko’s increasingly complicated relationship would see any form of respite this week, you’ve got another thing coming. The dynamic between the Anjin and the translator has become more fraught with tension after their trip to the brothel last week, and they’ve also drawn increased attention from Mariko’s husband, Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe), who has requested an audience with Toranaga to express his thoughts on the situation. The thing is, there’s no concrete evidence of adultery that anyone can point to — and while Buntaro is more than adamant that he wants to claim Blackthorne’s head, he is less convinced when confronted with the possibility of Mariko’s unfaithfulness. Toranaga points out that if Buntaro believes the hatamoto has been soliciting the affections of his wife, the law essentially dictates that he’d have to take Mariko’s head as well as Blackthorne’s.

As we know from weeks prior, however, Mariko would readily welcome death if it meant joining her family, believing that she’s been denied that honor for the entirety of her marriage to Buntaro. It seems to matter little that Toranaga reminded her of the importance of carrying on her father’s fight last week; she’s still holding onto the mindset of waiting for her end, which feels like a strange stagnation for her in the wake of that previous conversation. As Buntaro numbly professes that he can’t confidently accuse his wife of any wrongdoing and then excuses himself, Toranaga decides to directly question Mariko about whether she and Blackthorne have been intimate.

Even though Mariko’s character growth proves frustratingly inert this week, it still makes for a quietly powerful scene between Sawai and Sanada. In Toranaga’s eyes, Mariko has “confused her priorities” through whatever relationship these two have — interestingly, he reverts to referring to Blackthorne as a barbarian in this moment, perhaps signaling that their alliance is on shakier ground than we may have realized. “We are one thing or the other,” Toranaga asserts, and then presents Mariko with a choice: is she allied with him in the fight against her father’s enemies, or is she allied with Blackthorne? Not only that, he orders her to choose, asserting his authority over her as lord. Mariko tearfully professes loyalty to Toranaga, insisting that she’s only ever served him faithfully — but beneath that lies the agony of waiting for the day when she can claim her own demise. She even presents a dagger from inside her kosode and offers it to him, begging him to end her “cursed life.” Toranaga’s response is to smack the blade out of her hands before striding away through the freezing rain. This discussion between them is far from resolved, even if a return to it might be shifted in the wake of the episode’s most surprising moment yet.

(Going back to the Buntaro of it all, do we really think he’s going to wait to claim Blackthorne’s head on the battlefield when he’s already put a sword to the other man’s throat? Fortunately, Yabushige intervenes before anything worse happens — though whether that’s because he’s harboring a softer spot for the Anjin these days or merely wants to avoid the headache Blackthorne’s beheading would cause is unclear.)

‘Shōgun’ Episode 7 Ends With a Shocking Loss

In hindsight, maybe we should have always expected that something bad would happen to Toranaga’s reckless young son Nagakado. Even before his impulsive decision to fire that grisly cannon chain shot at Ishido’s men, killing the lord’s retainer Nebara Jozen (Nobuya Shimamoto) and several others loyal to his father’s rival, Nagakado displayed a kind of blunt, naive political understanding that directly contradicts Toranaga’s crafty game of subtleties. When we take into account Shōgun‘s decision to show us more of Toranaga’s past this week, it’s a disparity that casts Nagakado’s ultimate fate in an even more devastating light. Toranaga essentially had to become a master strategist out of necessity and bloody battles; Nagakado was never assigned that much responsibility, and therefore believes the only qualities required to be a powerful leader are lofty delusions of grandeur and brute displays of strength.

Nagakado’s mindset coalesces even more distinctly this week through his chats with Omi (Hiroto Kanai) at the springs and Fuji (Moeka Hoshi) in the woods. In the former, Omi mourns the way things used to be, before they had to claw and scrape for more power, and when Nobutatsu happens to overhear their exchange, his words about considering one’s legacy when making hard choices do seem to register with his heedless nephew. By the time Nagakado encounters Fuji later on, he confesses that he should have been the one to assert himself against Ishido’s insults to Toranaga in Episode 1, rather than her husband Tadayoshi. Nagakado is a fascinating conundrum of a character, the type of man to make a rash decision but only when he’s convinced it will work out in his favor. Pair that with the fact that Toranaga shocks everyone — including a disparaging Blackthorne — by agreeing to surrender himself to Nobutatsu and return to Osaka the following day, and it’s a recipe for foolhardy disaster.

Gaining the upper hand, so to speak, means catching Nobutatsu when he’s at his most vulnerable. In a display of generosity — one that’s clearly soured a bit since Nobutatsu’s betrayal — Toranaga had coughed up the money (12,000 monme, precisely) to pay for Kiku (Yuka Kouri) to entertain his half-brother for the week, and Nobutatsu is making the most of his time with the prized courtesan. Kiku, for her part, is going through the motions of tolerating Nobutatsu’s pillow preferences, even as he professes a desire to make her his seventh consort and build her a palace of her very own. By the time Nobutatsu finishes up, Kiku suggests tracking down a few items to “enhance” their next round and makes herself scarce. It seems she’s been given a heads-up on what’s coming, but by the time Nobutatsu dons a robe — only to be confronted by Nagakado stepping out of the shadows — he appears less surprised and more resigned to the fact that his nephew is “trying to finally become a man.”

After that, it’s a blur of swords between Nobutatsu’s samurai and the ones who are loyal to Nagakado, and at first, it looks as though the fight is going to be decisively one-sided. Nobutatsu stumbles his way through the brothel, barely avoiding the slashes from Nagakado’s sword, into the garden pond in the courtyard, unable to get his feet underneath him as he crawls through the water. Nagakado, all but certain victory lies within his grasp, follows, raising his blade to take his uncle out of the equation once and for all — but as he steps forward to deliver the killing blow, he slips on a wet rock, bashing his head against another. Judging by the decisive (and rather squishy) sound design in this sequence, Nagakado has suffered a mortal injury, and all he can do is die, wetly gasping for air and choking on his own blood as the pond slowly turns red.

Throughout Shōgun so far, we’ve been privy to this world’s belief that death is simply just another stage of life, the final piece of a puzzle that is so often defined by acceptance rather than grief. Yet as Nobutatsu stands over the body of his nephew, almost disappointed by this ending, we’re reminded that there are moments when death takes an equally bleak form, one that holds no honor and beauty at all. Sometimes, death is just a lonely path in the woods — or a slow drowning in the shallow depths of a pond.

New episodes of Shōgun premiere each Tuesday on FX and Hulu in the U.S.

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