Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Crimson Sky’
It’s a deception by which even the ingenious Lord Toranaga would be impressed. Step one: Spend several episodes of your prestige-drama period piece touting “Crimson Sky,” a battle plan for an all-out assault on a medieval castle the brutality of which frightens even Toranaga himself.
Step two: Use “Crimson Sky” as the name for the penultimate episode of your 10-episode mini-series, when both you and the audience know that the penultimate episode is where massive battles tend to happen in prestige-drama period pieces.
Step three: Don’t have a battle.
Put that way, “Crimson Sky” is a bit of a bait and switch. But to deride it as such is to ignore all the episode delivered in exchange for putting off a climactic confrontation of samurais. It is a riveting look at a woman in extremis, channeling a lifetime of pain into one final incandescent act of strength and sacrifice.
After opening with a flashback that shows young Lady Mariko’s desperate to follow her family in death, the episode proper begins with Mariko, Lord Yabushige and John Blackthorne’s arrival in Osaka. The rascally Yabushige continues playing each side against the other, to mixed results, while deepening his unlikely friendship with Blackthorne.
Mariko, it soon becomes clear, is there on a very specific mission. Addressing the shocked Council of Regents, led by Lord Ishido but ruled by his fiancée Lady Ochiba, Mariko declares her intention to leave the city the next morning, with Lord Toranaga’s consorts and infant son in tow. Ishido comes up with procedural reasons to delay their departure, or at least he tries to, largely based on Mariko’s own shockingly indecorous behavior in court.
Proudly declaring herself the daughter of the disgraced Lord Akechi Jinsai and heir to a thousand years of samurai tradition, she declares, “I will never be captive, or hostage, or confined. I am free to go as I please, as is anyone.” She says this from the center of the frame, with her eyes pointed at the camera. The staging is clear: It all comes down to her.
Mariko, acting in concert with Toranaga, has placed the rival lord in a terrible bind. If he refuses to allow Mariko and the ladies to leave, then he’s shown to the nation that all the nobles and their families gathered in Osaka aren’t his guests, but his hostages: As long as he holds so many lords and ladies, no one in Japan, including Toranaga, can rise against him.
Ishido and Ochiba know how bad stopping Mariko’s departure will look. They also know that she’s right, that she and all the other nobles are hostages, hostages they badly need. Letting Mariko and company go will open the floodgates for everyone else.
Two incredible sequences follow, demonstrating both Mariko’s bravery and her determination to use her own death for a cause — to “walk into a sword just to prove the blade is sharp,” as Blackthorne despairingly puts it. First, she uses her warrior training to personally lead a battle against Ishido’s guards at the gate. As an audience of nobles and their retinues gaze down from the rooftops, a screeching, exhausted Mariko swings her naginata against a phalanx of spear-wielding soldiers, forbidden from harming her but also from letting her pass.
Finally, the lady gives up. Since she cannot obey her lord’s instructions to return to Edo with his family, she also cannot live with the offense of failing him. She will kill herself at sunset, she announces. Since Mariko is Christian, this is a mortal sin, unless she can find a second willing to deliver the death blow. It’s a grim honor — one that the Christian regent Lord Kiyama (Hiromoto Ida) refuses, despite his own beliefs. The lords are not yet ready to make a public break with Ishida and Ochiba, whose control of the Heir gives her incredible power.
But Mariko’s resolve gives her power of her own — a terrible sort of power. When Kiyama fails to show up at the ceremony to serve as her second, her ultimate reward for all this suffering seems to be the damnation of her immortal soul.
It’s all too much for Blackthorne to take. Grabbing a sword, he takes his place by her side, preparing the fatal stroke that will slice off her head after she thrusts a blade into her belly.
Ironically, this is one of the show’s most intensely romantic moments. Such is Blackthorne’s love for Mariko that he is willing to kill her in order to grant her death the honor she believes it will hold. Mariko believes she is damning herself to hell for eternity. Whether he also believes this is immaterial. He simply cannot allow her to experience that anguish in her last moments. He cannot let her die alone and afraid.
This fleeting but real emotional intimacy, profound beyond words, is conveyed by Cosmo Jarvis and Anna Sawai with minimal speech and movement. It’s all shown with their eyes.
They are spared the ordeal, however, when Lord Ishido bursts in and stops the ritual, tossing a permit at Mariko that will allow her and the other ladies to leave as requested. Her act of protest works.
Or does it? The shifty Lord Yabushige has been doing some maneuvering of his own in Osaka, and Ishido has given him one last chance to prove his worth. Yabushige turns on his own men, killing several guards, and allows a force of shinobi, or ninjas, into the palace. These highly trained mercenaries have been sent by Ishido to infiltrate the hostages’ quarters and stop the escape by any means necessary.
After their intense near-death moment, Mariko and Blackthorne can’t resist their feelings for one another. But they are awakened from post-coital sleep by Ishido’s hired swords.
Mariko dodges their attempt to capture her and flees. With her are Blackthorne, the other ladies and even Yabushige, who of course is pretending to be as surprised by the attack as anyone. The group hole up in a storage room with a heavy door, and can hear the enemy plotting to blow it open. Blackthorne tries to push heavy furniture in front of the door to block the blast, but he can’t do it without the help of the cowardly Yabushige, who refuses.
Then Mariko makes her last stand. Using her own body to blunt the explosion, she presses her back against the door and begins one final speech of protest against Ishido — this time using her maiden name of Akechi, in her heroic father’s honor — before the blast hits. The last thing we see before flames engulf the screen is her face coming straight at us. It’s a fitting end to an episode in which Mariko was so often centered.
So no, there’s no battle for the future of Japan to be found here, or at least not the kind we’ve been conditioned to expect. There’s just one woman, her mind and soul stretched to their limit by the overlapping dictates of her faith, her family, her society, and her own heart, pulling herself together for one final defiant act. In death, she finds the purpose she felt she lacked in life. It is both a triumph and a tragedy.
The post ‘Shogun’ Episode 9 Recap: an Army of One appeared first on New York Times.