Shōgun recap: "A man may go to war for many reasons, but a woman is simply at war"

If you guessed that an episode called “Ladies Of The Willow World” would primarily feature the stories of the women of Shōgun, you would be right. And they have really been through hell, man. Sure, the guys have a pretty brutal time of it, too, but at least they have agency. Even John Blackthorne, an Englishman who barely even knows Japan, has now been granted the title of hatamoto, given his own house and personal consort, command of Toranaga’s cannon artillery unit, a new position as chief admiral of the kanto, and a fief near Kanagawa with a 600 koku salary attached—not to mention a pheasant that could have been a yummy meal for him if the townspeople had just let it stink up the place so that he could age it and eat it. Command of that cannon unit, the admiral title, and that sweet, sweet land were just granted this episode, too, as Toranaga delivers an address to his remaining men following that big earthquake that killed a bunch of them. Because Anjin has saved his lord’s life a couple of times now, he keeps getting special privileges heaped upon him. (My advice: Maybe keep doing that? I’d say it’s going well for you, Blackthorne.) The ladies aren’t so lucky.

We spend time this episode with our girl Mariko, Lady Ochiba, and Kiku, the courtesan we’ve seen engaging with Yabushige, his little assistant guy, and Omi up to this point. In this episode, we get to see her again, and she gets to make a new friend/business associate: Blackthorne himself. After Buntaro speaks to Toranaga and informs the lord that, due to jealousy, he can’t bear to stay in Blackthorne’s house with his wife and “the barbarian” anymore, he orders him to go elsewhere for seven days. Separately, he orders Mariko to arrange a brothel visit for Blackthorne…and accompany him there.

Unless you have through-the-roof capacity for compersion—or maybe, like Yabushige (as Kiku intuits early in the season) it’s your kink to watch other people get busy—seeing your crush/lone confidant indulge in a dalliance with a pleasure expert is a heartbreaking prospect. It really is for Mariko, but she dutifully sets things up for Blackthorne and whisks him off to “Willow World” for his special night. Because Kiku is incredibly good at what she does, she discovers quickly that there is something between Mariko and Anjin, and sits just behind Mariko as she has her interpret passionate, lusty phrases for him, Mariko’s voice shaking as she recognizes in real time how true it all rings for her as each word leaves her lips. It is in this way that she can fully articulate her feelings, and it is an emotional earthquake of a scene, punctuated with Blackthorne brushing his fingers against Mariko’s in recognition of their bond as she exits and leaves him with the courtesan. Phew! And ouch!

It’s really worth wondering what’s up with Kiku, though. Of course, making people comfortable and happy is a tactic often employed by marginalized people, including women and those in helping professions, to keep themselves safe and/or earn a living. However, there’s also the possibility that she could be leveraging her unique role in society, and access to men at their most vulnerable, to act as an agent of the patriarchy as a further means of self-preservation. She has been sent, so far, to Yabushige and Anjin, and she seems to have an organic, loving relationship with Omi (but who can really say). Does this intel she gathers simply aid her in satisfying her clientele, or could she be working with someone (like Toranaga) to discover weaknesses? It’s not an uncommon strategy; there are plenty of women like that in the world, so why not Willow World?

Someone who has definitely leveraged her position and proximity to power to gain a foothold for herself is Lady Ochiba. We learn gradually, throughout the episode, about her background: her girlhood days palling around with Mariko, her own father’s death (influenced, she’s convinced, by the whispers of Toranaga and, sadly, Mariko’s dad), and her ultimate strategy to down a psychotropic tea to dull her senses and steel herself for sex with the Taiko to bring him an heir. She tells Ishido she was the only one to bear him a child because no one else could endure the kind of stuff he’s into. Ew—and/or ouch.

While Ochiba hates the shit out of Toranaga and puppet-masters Ishido into making an actor the fifth regent just to vote for the guy’s impeachment and bring him down, Mariko has a much more tender relationship with the warlord. He tells her that her father often lamented that she had not been born a boy so that she would have more of a voice in the world and better prospects. He often talks with her about her father, and this understanding of her family seems to be the source of her loyalty to him. With her childhood friend reentering the picture with opposite aims, we’ll see how each woman’s motives influence the other’s. Will either change their perspective? Maybe they’ll fight (though they should really be fighting these dudes). We’re just constantly upping the drama here.

Now back to the macho stuff. As Ochiba has essentially imprisoned people at Osaka Castle and things are on fire, Toda Hiromatsu (Toranaga’s general/Buntaro’s dad/Mariko’s father-in-law/Fuji’s grandpa), encouraged by Lady Kiri who has to stay behind with preggy Shizu, gets his ass out of there. He hops on horseback and rides to Izu to warn everyone. This is where he floats the idea of Toranaga trying out “Crimson Sky,” essentially the plan that Toranaga join forces with his half-brother to amass more of an army to kill the other regents (and probably more people) so that he can stand alone as Shogun. Of course Nagakado freaking loves it, and they all agree to it by the episode’s end. Ishido (or as he likes to call himself “bandits”) has murdered Sugiyama for refusing to vote for the actor guy becoming a regent, so things are looking grim, and they’re probably about to get grimmer. Because it’s Crimson Sky time.

Stray observations

• Don’t you just love how guys like Toranaga insist that members of their military “will not have died in vain” in any instance of mass death? He actually kind of uses this language to manipulate Mariko at the end of the episode, too, encouraging her to finish what her dad started. Man, these dead guys can’t consent to this stuff!
• Buntaro is a little shit yet again. He confides in Toranaga regarding his jealousy of Mariko’s warmth toward Blackthorne when with him she has been “ice,” and it’s almost funny that he’s puzzled by this. In his eyes, he has been so generous by letting her live following her father’s treason and execution. Never mind that she’s been begging for death ever since he died, so he’s directly contradicting her own wishes as well as showing her no tenderness to make her feel comforted at all. This freaking guy.
• It’s a little sad, but I guess accurate, when Toranaga asks what’s going on between Mariko and Anjin and she answers “only words.” On that note, though, for those of you who had doubts, it seems pretty dang confirmed at this point that they’ve been intimate. I thought it would be fun to remain open to the possibility that it wasn’t Mariko who slept with him back at the hatamoto house, but…nah.
• One of the sexiest scenes thus far in this show comes when Blackthorne hears Mariko reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, and kneels opposite her, a wall between them, to join her in his own tongue. Their whispered prayers overlap as they kneel before each other, and it’s beautiful.
• Toranaga’s little story about Lady Ochiba being at his castle to help her sister give birth is looking pretty made-up right about now. She really hates that guy. She hates the Catholics, too, which could get interesting.
• We get a little tidbit about Ishido, too. He tells the actor they recruit to be fifth regent how his performances inspired him to “rise above his circumstances.” So I guess he used to be a little poor boy. That’s a pretty different background to Toranaga’s. We have some interesting character oppositions all around in this show.
• When Toranaga and his men were talking about “Crimson Sky,” I knew it sounded familiar: I’ve heard similar phrases used as euphemisms for periods since girlhood! Remember when Cher contests an alleged tardy by telling Mr. Hall that she had been “surfing the crimson wave?” Anyway, Toranaga’s big scheme sounds like he’s talking about a particularly painful period—and in an episode centered on the show’s female characters no less. (Also, let’s just call a period a period, yeah? It really is time to break that stigma.)
• I love when the Taiko’s elder consort tells Lady Ochiba that “a woman may lose everything she’s ever had, but she may also take it back.” I also love when Mariko says, “a man may go to war for many reasons, but a woman is simply at war.” Ochiba gets a good line, too! She says she conceived the heir “by compelling fate to look at [her] so [she] could scratch out its eyes.” We need to make shirts.

Shōgun is available to stream now on Hulu and Disney+.