Shōgun Podcast Episode 6 | FX's Shōgun

Toranaga (Played by Hiroyuki Sanada): [Toranaga makes the order for Crimson Sky in Japanese]

Emily Yoshida: Welcome to Shōgun: the official podcast. I'm Emily Yoshida and I was a writer on the series. And each week, after every episode, I’ll be diving deeper into the biggest twists and behind the scenes stories from the FX series with co-creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, along with the cast and crew that helped bring this story to life.

This week, we're talking about episode six, “The Women of the Willow World.” So this is a quick heads up that there will be spoilers for this and the previous five episodes.

On the podcast today, I'll hear about what it took to film the sexiest scene in the whole series with director Hiromi Kamada, what was in a name for both high-born and low-born people in the Sengoku period with historian Frederick Cryns, and the scene so haunting that it found its way into Anna Sawai's dreams.

But first, let's talk about the flashback at the top of this episode and how the real history informed the story of Ochiba and Mariko.

Caillin Puente: I think it was all about getting experts in Japan to weigh in. We really needed to get people who had primary sources.

Emily Yoshida: This is Caillin Puente. Caillin had many jobs over the course of Shōgun's creation. Research coordinator, writer, and producer.

Caillin Puente: So we get to see a little bit of their childhood, of Mariko and Ochiba's childhood, and they're both loosely inspired by their historical counterparts. We get to kind of see them at this turning point in history where we've had approximately 200 years of civil war at this point, and all these different futile lords who are vying for power. And Ochiba's father, Kuroda, in history would've been her uncle, was the first warlord to be able to unite the country and almost take control. And we're kind of stepping in in a fictional moment where these two girls would've been growing up together. They're hearing everything that their fathers are saying, and we’re seeing this really powerful event of Mariko's father betraying his lord and ending what would be this dynasty that he was trying to create.

Emily Yoshida: But it's a really interesting situation because I think both historically, maybe, and also in the context of Shōgun our story, it was not an unpopular…

Caillin Puente: Yeah.

Emily Yoshida: …action, I guess? Can you kind of explain some of that honor, the reputation thing, even when it means assassinating a very unpopular person?

Caillin Puente: It's kind of recognizable from our point of view today as history is written by the victor. Like, if her father had been successful, then it would've been a completely noble act because there were a lot of horrible, violent things that he did.

But because Mariko's father betrayed his lord and then was only successful for a few days, he was not the victor. And I think he is like, looked upon as this like, horrible traitor. But, I think it is a little bit more complicated and we see like, the way that Toranaga reacts to it exemplifies it. Like he's not looking down on Mariko's family with shame. And there's some interesting historical records from Hosokawa Gracia's husband where the historical model for the Taiko invited her to his chambers essentially. And he was like, you should not invite my wife, she said if she was invited to your chambers she would kill you to redeem her father, essentially.

So she carried this with her just like Mariko did through her whole life and was very convinced of her father's honor and that he was doing the right thing. And for Mariko personally, I think we can see that really impacting her more in how she perceived her like failure of duty, like if she was able to live up to her father. It was less that she was ashamed that she was from a traitor's family, but more that she didn't think that she did right by him in dying with her mother and her siblings.

Emily Yoshida: You know, it also comes to bear in her relationship with Buntaro and there's the emotional abuse, there's physical abuse. We've seen him be like, quite monstrous to her and we kind of get a bigger picture of exactly what this rift is between them and how it kind of all also stems from that same conflict.

Caillin Puente: In terms of Mariko and Buntaro's relationship, there's so much. There's a lot of history that's been passed down and kind of turned a little bit more into legend. So we're not exactly sure how true certain things are, but there's so many anecdotes about their relationship and about this kind of, violence between them, about the tension. A lot of this stemming from her conversion to Christianity and her family's past and his relationship with that. But there is like a very interesting story called ‘The Snake and the Ogre,’ where there's a gardener who's like working for them, who is looking at Hosokawa Gracia and Tadaoki, who's the historical model for Buntaro, is notoriously very, very jealous. And he kills this man for looking at her, and he wipes the blood from his sword on her kosode and she doesn't change her expression and just continues to wear the same clothes for three days in a row without saying anything, acting like it's completely normal until he loses it and apologizes to her. And she changes her clothes and he kind of explodes and says that ‘you're a snake,’ and she says ‘a snake is an appropriate wife for an ogre.’ And that is like the legend of their relationship.

Emily Yoshida: Oh my gosh.

So we've kind of been teasing out Ochiba little by little over the course of the series. And you know, we first meet her in the flashback at the beginning of two. And she's somebody who comes with such a reputation before her. How do you think about the character of Ochiba as far as what she represents both as like a woman in this story, as a political figure? What was it important for you always to make sure we understood about Ochiba from the moment we met her?

Caillin Puente: I think that it's really useful in this episode that we meet Ochiba and Mariko when they're children and we kind of see this evolution of her character along with Mariko. Because we are kind of keeping her at arm's length compared to how much of Mariko's interiority that we're getting.

And, with Ochiba, I think this really helps us understand the mask that she's created, that she's like had to create because of the position that she's in, stemming from her father being this controversial, really violent warlord to all the people who are trying to control her in her life. We don't always have access to her intentions and we see just this meticulously crafted facade that she has worked really hard to kind of put in place to maintain some sort of control and power in her life. So I think that getting to see that evolution, even though we're not seeing all of it, we don't know fully what's behind it yet, I think that is really important to like understand about her, so much of her effort is going into this facade. But I do think we kind of discount some of the women in this time period and she is a really interesting example of someone who historically and in the show had like a really significant political sway. She's like probably the most powerful woman in Japan at this time and will continue to be for a while in history.

Emily Yoshida: Seeing these two characters as children not only gives us new insights into the women they become, it also had a profound effect on how the actors saw their roles.

Anna Sawai: I already had the story in my head, but seeing the girls shoot, it really changed something within me.

Emily Yoshida: Back to talk through the big reveals of Mariko's backstory in this episode is the actor who played her, Anna Sawai.

Anna Sawai: I guess the idea of Ruri became a little more vivid and the connection that I had with the actress that plays Fumi, it felt real and it felt bittersweet as I was doing it.

I know that I probably shouldn't have had those bittersweet emotions because Mariko wouldn't know what's gonna happen in the future but it was all real. And it even haunted me in my dreams. So I have a friend who I was really close with in elementary school to middle school. And for some reason we got outta touch.

And you know, I didn't really think too much about it, but I had a dream the day before I shot with Fumi that I was asking that friend, like, whatever happened to us? And I was like, so sad. I woke up crying. And I think seeing those two girls play Mariko and Ruri, it really shaped the scenes that were about to happen.

Emily Yoshida: Do you feel like there is some moment in which the politics that they're both surrounded in and the way they're kind of being used as pawns. Was there a moment that you feel like that dawned on her?

Anna Sawai: I think the day of the marriage when Mariko was sent off is when she has to kind of come to terms with it and we see that Mariko's not okay, and Ruri is trying to help her accept her fate. That is kind of the goodbye because they're no longer together and they have their own separate ways to go forward.

Emily Yoshida: So also in six, we have a sequence, I think everybody, everybody remembers from this episode, the Tea House visit, um, with Mariko and Blackthorne. And this scene, you know, Blackthorne and Mariko have already, you know, been intimate together, but this feels like a completely different way for them to connect and have a moment together. And it's very unconventional, I think, when we think of Hollywood love scenes or something like that. What's going through Mariko's mind in that whole scene?

Anna Sawai: I think she was in denial of everything that had happened. She wanted to kind of forget everything, restart. She's only here as a translator, but she also knows that this is a test. She knows that Toranaga has an idea and he has people watching her, or at least she feels that way from Gin and Kiku. And so I think she's very cautious but through Kiku and her words, she's able to tell Blackthorne what she wishes, but otherwise could not. And I don't even think that she expects it. And so as she's saying it, she's realizing everything that she's feeling. But it's also so interesting because when I was playing it, that's kind of what I was focusing on. But when I saw it, it felt like so much more was going on in her head.

Like she's kind of taken to the past for a moment and she's realizing her purpose and she's like, ‘no. Like I can't, I can't do this. I must leave right now before it's too late.’ So I love the way that they edited it, cause now I think it's all up to the audience and how they interpret it.

Emily Yoshida: Toronaga reveals to Mariko that her marriage was basically a way for her to be saved from this rebellion and from, you know, the fate that the rest of her family faces. And it feels like this is very much a kind of pattern of people making decisions for people to save them when it may or may not be in the end what they want. How does this information change the way Mariko sees her fate, or, you know, sees her situation?

Anna Sawai: I think that up until this point, she really didn't understand why she couldn't follow her father. She didn't understand why her father had married her off right before this. Not that he knew that this was gonna happen but she feels like there's no meaning in her living. But knowing that her father intentionally made her marry Buntaro to save her life so that she can keep continuing his fight, impacts her immensely. And I think from this point on, her will to get this done is just unbreakable. Like she, she knows what she's doing and she is just running for that after this.

Emily Yoshida: I like the relationship between Toranaga and Mariko a lot. It feels very nuanced. There's so much respect there. And just so much history as well. What was your kind of acting relationship like with Sanada-san and, yeah, what was, what was it like doing your scenes with him?

Anna Sawai: I feel like it's kind of similar to Toranaga-sama and Mariko. I felt like he really took care, like he took care of me so well because he knew that it was my first period piece. He also showed me that he wanted the best for me so that it would serve this whole show. I really felt like I could go to him at any time and he would have my back.

I think Toranaga-sama is a lot more serious than Hiro is. Hiro can be very, very, very friendly and he likes to crack jokes and he's always making everyone kind of smile. And it was nice to have that because Shōgun can be very serious and Japanese people are so professional and there's not a lot of joking around unless someone like Hiro starts.

Emily Yoshida: The flashback to Ruri and Mariko's childhood gives us a bit more insight into the mysterious Lady Ochiba. But who was Yodo-No-Kata, the historical figure who inspired her?

Before she would become Yodo no kata, a very young Azai Chacha found herself wrapped up in conflict. At just four years old, she would be caught in a violent three-year war between her father, and forces led by Oda Nobunaga. When her father finally found himself without the hope of a victory, he committed seppuku. And ultimately this led to Chacha's placement under the protection of Nobunaga – the very man who had defeated her father.

But Nobunaga himself was killed just years later by Akechi Mitsuhide – who is the real-life inspiration for Mariko’s father. And after that, both Chacha and her mother were married into the family of yet another nobleman – and when that nobleman clashed with the Taiko – aka the most powerful man in Japan at the time – Chacha became one of his concubines, the only one who was able to give him a son and heir.

But when the Taiko died – as we saw in Episode 2 of Shōgun – the raising of the heir to Japan fell to Chacha, now called Yodo-no-kata. Which made her one of the most powerful women in Japanese history.

What she does with this power though remains to be seen, at least in our story.

Emily Yoshida: While Ochiba and Mariko find themselves on opposite sides of a brewing war in this episode, two other women in a very different corner of Japanese society come into focus. The women of the willow world.

Fredrik Cryns: It was a mixture of entertainment, like playing the shamisen, dancing, and so on.

Emily Yoshida: Historian Frederick Cryns returns to help us understand the role of courtesans during the Sengoku period.

Fredrik Cryns: This part of the show was one of my favorites because now we have that idea of the geisha. It's a typical Japanese geisha, but at the time geishas weren't existing yet. And it was the start of what would later become the geisha culture. So they had a quite, uh, a function of entertainment.

So it was not just a brothel as such. It was much more than that. it was totally a community of women. So the courtesans of course were women, but also the, the leader of the group—which was Gin here—were women. And at the end of the Sengoku period, this started to change. First, it became more institutionalized. While in the Sengoku period, there was much more freedom. And, uh, the women were much more independent, and you can get some colorful, colorful people, colorful figures like Gin or Kiku.

Emily Yoshida: So I had a question about something that was always really interesting to me while we were writing the show, which was the names of characters. We’ve seen several characters who’ve had different names growing up and changed them, like Ochiba. And I’ve noticed that consorts and wives have “no kata” added to their names, like Kiri no Kata and Ochiba no kata. Then there’s some like Kiku or Gin who exist in a different social class and obviously have very different kinds of names. So how did people choose their names or who chose them?

Fredrik Cryns: Well in the Sengoku period, how you say, it's not that you have an administration, a country, and everyone is registered by name. So, uh, everyone was, was quite free to use the names they wanted to say.

If you have persons, very highly ranked women at the time, it was not polite to utter their names. So, they had to use a euphemism, and mostly they used the place where they lived. And no-kata means, ‘the direction.’ So it's really a euphemism. It's the person who lives there. For example, if you take Ochiba. Ochiba means ‘fallen leaves.’ So it could be that the room where she lives was called the ‘Room of the Fallen Leaves.’ And that's why they call her Ochiba no Kata, the lady who lives in the Room of the Fallen Leaves.

Emily Yoshida: There's so much fun history in this episode. we also get to see a little bit of the Noh theater when Ochiba and Ishido go to try to find their new regent and was this the most dominant form of entertainment at the time? Was this just how you would spend your afternoon if you were a noble person in Osaka?

Fredrik Cryns: Noh theater was, was enormously popular among the, the Samurai class. And, uh, you, you have, uh, Hosokawa Fujitaka, who, who is the model for Hiromatsu. He wrote in a poem, if I recall so, poetry, linked verse poetry, Noh theater. These are the things that a samurai has to, has to the skills for that, that makes a real samurai. We have Lord Ito performing, uh, Noh—perfectly possible. A lot of, a lot of warlords, they, they learned to perform Noh and, and they, they really loved it. And the most famous of them all was the Taiko, Hideyoshi. He, he was, he was really crazy about, uh, Noh, and he let compose, I think, ten Noh plays about himself, which he performed himself too. So, so that, that's what, what this Noh play was based on. It was ‘Akechi Uchi,’ so the slaying of Akechi. Uh, it's, it's the same as, as what Hideyoshi played 400 years ago.

Emily Yoshida: And for those who have maybe not seen Noh performed before and are seeing it for the first time in the show, you know, I think maybe a Western audience is more familiar with Kabuki.

Fredrik Cryns: Kabuki was already played in the Sengoku period, but it was played by courtesans. Noh theater was really for the elites, for the samurai. And it evolved even in the Edo period. It continued in its old way. I think Kabuki has changed very much from the Sengoku till the Edo period but Noh hasn't changed that much. It's still played nowadays as greatly as it was in the Sengoku period.

Emily Yoshida: As Frederik said, the Noh theater one can see in Japan today is largely unchanged from the style one would have seen in a court of the Sengoku period. While this means we had access to plenty of reference materials, it also meant there was the pressure to honor this long held tradition.

Hiromi Kamata: I felt blessed because my father would be for the first time proud of something I, I directed. No, kidding.

Emily Yoshida: This is Hiromi Kamata, director of episode 6. For her, this was one sequence she wanted to get absolutely right.

Hiromi Kamata: The Noh theater, it was a privilege as a Japanese Mexican, you know, the daughter of a Japanese man, to be able to witness a Noh play, you know, I've never seen one, you know, live and to have the honor of capturing it, it was, I think it's one of the highlights of my career for sure. It was a big responsibility, you know, because we were all really, and this is one thing that the whole show was, you know, was very cautious with was respecting, no, every single aspect and being as accurate possible in terms of culture and history and also make the scene work, which is a very complicated scene, you know? It's a political thriller, plotting, kind of, moment where everyone is suspecting about everything. And then you have this wonderful, beautiful, exquisite play happening while this whole scene is happening.

Emily Yoshida: So from what I understand, the play that we see in the show is inspired by an actual Noh play from that time period, but in the show we also see that it depicts the Taiko essentially meeting and wooing and marrying Ochiba. It’s like their love story. So what do you think is going through Ochiba’s head as she watches this highly stylized retelling of her own life?

Hiromi Kamata: I think what she's thinking is ‘Man, it wasn't like that, you know, like, it wasn't romantic, it wasn't beautiful, it was painful, it was dark, it was life changing.’ And you can see it, no, there's a beautiful shot of Fumi as we're pushing to her face and all these things are happening inside of her as she watches. Fumi is one of the actresses that I've worked with that her range is so wide. She's just a monster at what she does. She's a beast, you know, she's incredible. And she really has the talent to do an emotional strip tease while she's shooting a scene. So we were very clear about, how many layers are we letting go? And how many layers are we keeping in?

How protected is she? How, you know, how much she let her guard down at this specific moment? And it was a wonderful analogy, you know, because the more, you know, the more powerful that woman is, you know, she wears more layers on her costume, no, on her, on her, on the way she dresses. And Ochiba, especially on the Noh theater, I think she was wearing like five or six layers, something like that. So we kind of thought about it conceptually as layers.

Emily Yoshida: So another big piece in this episode is at the tea house in Ajiro with with Kiku and and Gin. And thinking about her kind of in contrast with Ochiba, and Kiku also in contrast with Ochiba, as women from very different classes that still kind of made their destiny in a way. Were you kind of thinking about building both of those storylines together, kind of, having them comment on each other like that?

Hiromi Kamata: What I always think about on this episode is the ladies of the willow world. No, it's the title of the episode. How they're all behind this fence, no, they wish they lived there in this place where they can be themselves, where they can have agency, you know, the whole theme of the show that I really love is that dual relationship between agency and entrapment, no? And every woman on this episode is fighting that.

There's this wonderful speech almost at the end of the episode by Mariko, where she says, ‘a woman is simply at war.’ Right? And they're all at war because they're all fighting. They all have something to fight for. Ochiba is fighting, you know, to get revenge, to avenge her father, to get back at Toranaga and she's on it. Mariko has a purpose, has a mission. She needs to finish her father's mission and be Toranaga's ally until the very end and let go of her feelings for Blackthorne. She has a bigger purpose than that. Kiku, she wants a career. She wants to be the best courtesan. Yes, she's in love with Omi. She has feelings for him, but she cannot give in to that because there's something bigger. Gin, the future of her business, you know, uh, so all of them, they have a secret war going on.

And it's, it was very interesting to see, you know, in different scenes with each different characters, how they all had to keep alive that battle, no, inside of them.

Emily Yoshida: And especially Mariko's battle to kind of, sort of resist the charms of Blackthorn, I guess. Um, the tea house scene between them is really kind of, there's a lot going on there. What was that kind of like, you know, coordinating this sort of very unconventional love scene?

Hiromi Kamata: It was a huge challenge, I must say. It was a huge challenge. Why? Because it had to be, in the words of Mr. Justin Marks, ‘the sexiest scene on the show’. And there's no physical contact, right?

So how do you build that? How do we make it sexy there? So everything around them had to be sexy. I made Anna watch Bergman's Persona. And, um, and In the Mood for Love. I tortured Cosmo making him watch again and again Remains of the Day because, uh, what was important is what, what's left unsaid. It's all in their connection. It's all in the way they look at each other. It's all in that beautiful moment where, you know, Mariko eclipses Kiku and on her translation and she kind of gets possessed. She gets pulled into the moment, into the confession. And everything that she's saying is way more sexier than anything I could have shot. I gotta give it to Anna, she did a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful job on this scene, really, honestly.

Emily Yoshida: So this is, like we've been talking about, an episode that very much focuses on our main female characters in the episode, but I think all of the themes that we've been talking about are obviously things that go back to Toranaga.

And the end of this episode, we get this declaration of Crimson Sky, this, this big sort of, this attack that they've kind of been keeping up the sleeve for a while on Osaka, this sort of last ditch plan. Where do you see Toranaga as he comes to this decision?

Hiromi Kamata: My two favorite card players of Shōgun are Ochiba and Toranaga. Every single piece that he moves has to do with something that's coming in the future. I think he's kind of in a corner now. His choices are limited to basically none, like to strike on Osaka Castle, and that's all he has. And we gave ourselves license not to make that ending muscular. It's the prelude to a big battle, to a big changing. We'll see what happens in the next episode but yes, we wanted to end it on that note. Something big is about to happen and Toranaga made a decision.

Emily Yoshida: I've heard a lot of stories from the set about just how deeply multicultural it is, multilingual and all of that and, you know, all the, kind of, different layers of communication that are going on. It's just so impressive. Did you have any favorite stories from on set or, um, or stuff from behind the scenes that you remember?

Hiromi Kamata: At my monitors, you know, there was this little tent where I had the monitors and I had my wonderful Japanese script supervisor, Katsu, and we had the wonderful Canadian supervisor who was Erin. And I had Caillin Puente with me all the time. She was, you know, the writer on set with me, producer as well. And we had Elise the trainee AD. So all of those ladies inside that tent, we were shorter than 5'1. So it was like this miniature little tent, you know, where all these short women, but powerful women were, were locked in. So we used to call it the ‘5'1 Club’ and Caillin even made, you know, sweatshirts about it. So we basically forbid anyone taller than that to step into the tent.

Emily Yoshida: That's all for this week's episode of Shōgun: the official podcast.

Next week: With Ochiba’s plan in motion, will tensions in Osaka reach a breaking point? How will Blackthorne and Mariko reckon with their impossible attraction to one another? And what will the declaration of Crimson Sky mean for team Toranaga? Tune in next week when we discuss episode 7 of FX's Shōgun.

You can find a link in our description to episodes 1 through 6 of Shōgun. And if you want to dive deeper into the world of our story, check out the official Shōgun Viewer's Guide. There's a link to that in the show notes as well.

Be sure to rate, review, and follow Shōgun: the official podcast, wherever you listen.

I'm Emily Yoshida, and I'll see you next week.