Shōgun Podcast Episode 4 | FX's Shōgun

Mariko (Played by Anna Sawai): Before you meddle with our politics, just remember: we live and we die. We control nothing beyond that.

Emily Yoshida: Welcome to Shōgun: The Official Podcast. My name is Emily Yoshida and I was a writer on the show. And after each episode, I dive deeper into the different elements that went into making Shōgun 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 four: The Eightfold Fence. So, this is a quick heads up that there will be spoilers for this and the previous three episodes. And yes, as you might have noticed, I’m a credited writer on this episode, so trust me, I’ve been waiting a long time to get into it.

On the podcast today, I'll hear about what Mariko sees in Blackthorne from actress Anna Sawai, what Fuji's role as consort really meant with historian Frederik Cryns, and what it was like to open up the world of the village of Ajiro with director Fred Toye.

But first, let's talk about where the episode gets its name: a space where someone like Mariko might hide their emotions and reactions from the world.

Rachel Kondo: I mean the eightfold fence is where our characters are taught to retreat to when the chaos of the world becomes a bit too overwhelming.

Emily Yoshida: Showrunner Rachel Kondo returns to help us understand why this idea of privacy, and keeping your emotions close to the vest, was so important to our characters.

Rachel Kondo: The eightfold fence is a very lovely moment. I mean, I like that Mariko starts it off with, ‘have you, have you heard of the eightfold fence?’ Like it's this very common thing and it's not. I think it's this amazing cultural tool that they had. It's this private, protected space that allows them a sense of agency and it's the only way to control the chaos is to kind of retreat to a place in which you exist on your own terms.

Emily Yoshida: It's such an interesting idea cuz when you describe it like that, I think of how it's almost inverse for somebody like Blackthorne. The sense of agency, the drive to be his own person and set his own course, is very externalized and we see it, you know, it's not hidden at all. And that is, you know, kind of a constant sort of contrast between him and Mariko. They're very, very different in that way, culturally and just personally.

Rachel Kondo: If she is saying nothing, he's like speaking through a loud speaker, you know, they, he wears his Blackthorne-ness on his sleeve. And it's hard for him to not be himself. And I think as Westerners we get that.

Emily Yoshida: Well that's what we recognize as a hero is just somebody who's not afraid to be themselves and be out there. And it's just such a very different approach to Mariko, who's one of our, I mean Mariko and Toranaga and they're in very different ways, kind of have a similar complexity or kind of, you know, hiddenness to them, I guess.

Rachel Kondo: Yeah. I mean, I think if we, as in westerners, slash Blackthornes of the world, we have our plans, right? And then, we have reactions for when plans don't work out. And I think that the Toranagas and the Marikos of our story rely more heavily on the reaction part. It's not that they're on their heels, and it's just that there’s a quietness to the watching and the waiting and Blackthorne is a little more stormy, I would say.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. Yeah. We also in this episode really start to get a sense of Nagakado's position as Toranaga's son and the pressure that that puts on him and his real ambition to live up to his dad's name. And a lot of this we get through his sort of relationship or rivalry with Omi. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about their very special friendship and how these two young men kind of in sort of similar but, you know, very different positions define themselves in contrast to each other.

Rachel Kondo: So Nagakado is, he's in that tough and not so tough position like you put it, um, pressurized position of being born into great wealth and acclaim essentially. And in those circumstances, I think it's normal that, you know, Toranaga as his father, this great leader, is gonna be what he fixates on right? As a source of resentment but also the one person he reveres more than anybody else.

So what’s interesting about Nagakado's relationship with Omi though is that Omi has had to, I, I feel like Nagakado could have been an Omi almost if given a different birthright, if he hadn't been born into this grand lineage, maybe he would've be been like an Omi. And Omi had to learn how to scheme. He had to learn how to think outside the box. He had to learn how to make himself a value to more powerful men. And so that's what's so fun about bringing these two characters together, is that the all vulnerable Nagakado is kind of read like a book by Omi, and it's very, um, clear that Nagakado kind of is saying to Omi what he wishes he could say to his father. And he can't, and this is the instance in which maybe he might want to slip behind his eightfold fence, you know, and not spill it all.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah, makes me wonder what kind of Father Toranaga is and how much he, how much he's teaching his—because Toranaga’s obviously, even at this point, like the master of this sort of you know, very strategically concealing his plans and his motivations and, and everything. And, and it doesn't seem like Naga has inherited all that wisdom quite yet. But, you know, he's, he's young, so.

Rachel Kondo: Well, it goes back to that line, I think it was in episode three, where Nagakado's like, ‘come on dad, I'm your son. Why am I so unworthy of you sharing what the plan is or, you know, whatever it is.’ And Toranaga's response is, ‘why are you playing this game of friends and enemies?’ You know, this is like a young, unthinking person's mindset. ‘You have only yourself in this world Nagakado and i.e., once again, your eightfold fence. If you could just take a breather and slip behind there.’

Emily Yoshida: Obviously he doesn't do that in the end of this episode. He kind of sets out on his own and, basically without telling anybody, turns the canon that they've been training with on Jozen. What is gonna be the fallout from this? This seems like a pretty impulsive action that could have some consequences.

Rachel Kondo: There's no turning back from this. I mean, you are, this is Nagakado making the choice that ‘I'm going to choose this moment in which to release all this pressure that I have on myself and just be who I want to be and do what I want to do. And I'm just gonna hope that my father Toranaga sees that I had courage in this and that I had an idea.’ And, we'll have to wait and see what Toranaga's reaction is.

Emily Yoshida: Well, Mariko, I believe at the end of the episode says, ‘it's war.’ You know, she puts that out there. But it's been interesting talking about this period of time and how common war was that that statement, you know, maybe somebody says it's war every week Japan at the time.

Rachel Kondo: Oh it’s just Tuesday at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Emily Yoshida: As Nagakado's actions throw our characters into the risk of a violent conflict, Mariko stands strong and resolute in the face of war.

Anna Sawai: I think Mariko is the most graceful yet immensely powerful figure that I've ever come across, and I just fell in love and I told them that I, I really wanted to do it.

Emily Yoshida: This is Anna Sawai, the actress that portrayed Toda Mariko.

Anna Sawai: We've seen a lot of Japanese-based shows or movies, but I really believe that nothing has been this accurate in the past. Justin, our showrunner, he wasn't afraid to trust our Japanese producers and advisors. And I think that's huge. I think that's what makes this so special, is that it's really the marriage of Western and Japanese.

Emily Yoshida: This is the episode where Blackthorne kind of gets installed as Hatamoto in Ajiro. And Mariko has to kind of facilitate it and introduce him to Fuji and kind of basically be the presence of Toranaga there, and at the same time she's going through, you know, grief. There's just so much going on. How do you think Mariko balances the duty and her, and what she's going through emotionally in this episode?

Anna Sawai: I think she's going through grief in a way that, yes, she lost her son's father. But I don't think she really loved him because he was the one that was kind of stopping her from doing what she wanted to do. And he had a very purposeful death. So I think she grieves the loss of a honorable samurai, but in a way it's a relief because once her mission is accomplished, she won't have anyone stopping her from doing what she wants to do.

Emily Yoshida: And her position is so unique then. But it kind of feels like she's a career woman or something in a world where that's very uncommon and she's got this very important and specific job that she has to do.

Anna Sawai: I think by this point though, she's starting to feel like she wants to do it. She's feeling useful and, before that, she didn't have any mission. She wasn't given any job, and now she's kind of amongst the men and feeling like there's something to live for in a way. I think the reason why she was doing it before was because she has her son and she wasn't allowed to make her own choices, but Toranaga-sama has promised her that once this is over, she'll have what she wants. And so she's moving straight forward right now.

Emily Yoshida: We've discussed in previous episodes just, uh, Mariko's real life inspiration, Hosokawa Gracia. How much did you kind of, uh, research and study her? Was that a big part of your prep for playing Mariko?

Anna Sawai: It was a big part of playing Mariko. But at the same time, I didn't want to do too much. I didn't want to be precious with all the facts because this is based on James Clavell’s novel, and it's based on those figures, but it's not a historical book.

Emily Yoshida: Right.

Anna Sawai: So I talk to Rachel Kondo a lot. She's been researching for years. I heard stories of her grandma. So Mariko, I think is a little bit of all these figures. Uh, Hosokawa Gracia, Rachel's grandma, Rachel, my mom—all the women that have fought in order to bring us here today.

Emily Yoshida: For you, what, what's the moment where you think that Mariko really starts to see something in Blackthorne beyond just being the Anjin that she's sort of charged with?

Anna Sawai: I dunno if there's a specific moment, but I think throughout the course of interacting with him, she starts to see that he sees her as a human being. That he's not looking at her as a woman who should be silenced and ignored like the other lords or men. I think she doesn't agree with a lot of what he says, but what he is saying is very intriguing to her. And so it's a very slow, gradual burn.

Emily Yoshida: But it is interesting that their exchanges are kind of more, well, I guess exactly that, like exchanges.

Anna Sawai: And I think because with the other lords, she would have to pay respect. There was always a wall, whereas when she first meets Blackthorne, she's kind of like, who the hell is this person? And she doesn't really have to be anything that she's not, she doesn't really care what he thinks, which also allows her to get close to him.

Emily Yoshida: What do you think she ultimately sees in him?

Anna Sawai: Opposites attract. I mean, um, I think it's so foreign. How he views the world is so foreign. And she wishes that she could see it in the way he does, knowing that she can't, and maybe that's why she even wants it more.

I think she'll always believe in her core that, you know, your life is not meant to be what you want to do, but it's supposed to serve a purpose. She'll always believe that, but he's showing her that there could be more, and that he cares. He cares about what she wants, and I think that itself is enough to really get into him.

Emily Yoshida: But there is also still a degree to which Mariko is hiding who she is from Blackthorne. And I've been really interested to talk about this with some of the other actors, just this actual idea of the Eightfold Fence—and also the idea of the Three Hearts that’s kind of been discussed in previous episodes—of being kind of an interesting metaphor for how to get into a character. Did you find any of those ideas useful when you were sort of imagining Mariko and all of the layers of her character?

Anna Sawai: I feel like it definitely is something that is true to every character. Obviously the ones that the public sees, the ones that the closest people see, and then the true self that you only have. And I don't know about you, but I think that that's very true for me as well. So it wasn't hard to, like, think about, it just naturally happened. And I think, to her, Blackthorne was not who she expected to really open up to, to show maybe the second heart. But, um, he ended up being that, and so I think being able to share that with him was also a relief in a way.

Emily Yoshida: The oldest collection of mythologies and histories in Japan – dating back to 712 AD – is called the Kojiki. The name “Kojiki'' translates to “Records of Ancient Matters”, and it contains everything from legends to biographical accounts of historical figures. Most importantly, it tells the creation myth of the islands of Japan and the origin stories of the deities that look over them.

And it includes one of Japan’s first recorded poems:

An eightfold fence I make

An eightfold fence to protect my wife

The eightfold fence of Izumo

Where eight clouds rise

The poem is attributed to Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the stormy, unpredictable god of the sea. A son of Izanagi, the god of creation who is said to have created the islands of Japan, Susanoo stands among a family of gods. His siblings were sun goddess Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, the god of the moon.

In one story, Susanoo saves a family from a many-headed beast that was terrorizing them and devouring their daughters. In exchange, Susanoo asked for their only remaining daughter to take as a wife. As he took on this fearsome beast, he kept his new bride close, transforming her into a comb that he wore into battle. Emerging victorious, he built his new bride Kushinada a palace, a fortress of safety surrounded by a manyfold fence.

Though in translation the poem reads eightfold fence and eight clouds, the translation does not fully encompass the meaning. In ancient Japanese writings the number eight was used to represent “many” or “from all directions”. So an eightfold fence is no ordinary protection, a manyfold fence protects from every direction. The perfect place to hide.

The poem and its fences have been interpreted in many different ways. Perhaps Susanoo looked up into the sky and saw the host of clouds as a sign of good fortune; shelter over his palace surrounded by its many layers of fences. Or perhaps he looked up and saw the gathering dark clouds as a threat, as an omen that danger could come from all directions - and so Kushinada must be protected from all directions.

But beyond the protection from dangers outside, the fortress created a private place, a place where two newlyweds could be kept in seclusion, alone and at peace.

Mariko sees the eightfold fence in herself, a place where she can find shelter from her family, from her past, from the pressures of society, where she can store the feelings that she can’t wear on her sleeve. And though Mariko is a Christian, she seems to see herself in the words of this ancient Shinto god.

Frederik Cryns: If you are a lord in the Sengoku period, you always have a lot of people around you. There, there was no privacy at all and you can see that in the houses it's, it's mostly open, to say so.

Emily Yoshida: Back on the podcast to discuss the lives and titles of Feudal Lords and their households is historian Frederik Cryns.

Frederik Cryns: And you have, for example, diaries of lords at the time who say that ‘we are never alone. Even if we go to the toilet, there are Koshos coming with me and, and so, so there's no privacy at all.’ And that was really one of the great aspects of the show and realistic aspects that they always had a lot of people around.

Emily Yoshida: I mean, it's interesting because I feel like that goes hand in hand then with the title of this episode and the theme of the Eightfold Fence and the Three Hearts and kind of, if you're going to be in a world where you're never alone and where everybody's listening and, you know, the walls are literally made of paper. You have to preserve something inside of yourself that can be your own and that's such a big theme for so many of the characters.

Fuji comes back in this episode and we meet her again after she's had this very tragic loss in the first episode and now she is enlisted by Toranaga to be a consort to Blackthorne who has now been given the title of Hatamoto. Can you kind of explain that role of consort and how is it different from, say, a wife?

Frederik Cryns: That's a little bit different in, in the Japanese and the English, because in Japanese they call her seishitsu, which means legal wife because Blackthorne, to become a hatamoto, he has to be part of a samurai family. So, in a way, when he marries Fuji, he's adopted into Fuji's family. So now he, he has the credentials to become hatamoto.

That's really a nice aspect because William Adams too, he was married to a Japanese wife. He had two children with her, but we only know about her that she also came from a samurai family. So, most probably, Tokugawa Ieyasu arranged the marriage. So, Toranaga arranging the marriage between Fuji and Blackthorne is quite accurate too.

Emily Yoshida: So Fuji as his consort is basically his legal wife but she also has this responsibility of being the manager of the household basically. And at the time of the story, what were some of the responsibilities of a person like Fuji?

Frederik Cryns: The legal wife of the, uh, lord, was called Okugata. Okugata means the person who is in the innermost room of the house. So there, she was the one mostly who did all the management of the household. In some cases, when her husband dies in battle or something, sometimes those wives took over the clan and administered it. So the women had, had quite important roles in the Sengoku period. And this is something which is quite different from the Edo period. In the Edo period, the women are really in the back of the house. They are almost imprisoned there, and, uh, all, all political power goes into the hands of the man.

But in the Sengoku period, the wives still had much more power and influence then afterwards. And this is also a nice aspect of the show. Uh, women are playing important roles and I, I like that part very much.

Emily Yoshida: A big change that happened, um, from both the book and early drafts of the episode was that originally Blackthorne's assignment in Ajiro was to train Yabushige's army with the muskets. This got changed for historical reasons, as I understand. So can you kind of walk me through that, that change and, and what, you know, what the historically accurate thing was in this case?

Frederik Cryns: Oh, yes, I remember. That's one thing I brought up to Justin because guns, matchlock guns, were already introduced in Japan in the 1540s. So, half a century before Blackthorne came. So, what can he teach the Japanese then? It's, uh, they already know. So, then I came up with the canon. Because, uh, cannons were also introduced into Japan by the Portuguese already, but those were much smaller, and the cannons on the ship cannons, they were much larger and, and much more powerful.

Canon became a game changer in the siege of Osaka in 1615. 1614-1615. And those canons were supplied by the English and the Dutch. So that could have been, from my point of view, an option for Blackthorne to instruct and, historically, seeing the Dutch who washed ashore in Japan on Blackthorne's ship, they instructed Ieyasu's forces in the use of cannons, so it would be historically accurate to do that. So there is a continuity in this story. Afterwards, canon will become important.

Emily Yoshida: As Toranaga and Blackthorne arrive in Ajiro, the whole town has come together to put their best foot forward for their lord.

Fred Toye: I think that was kind of the whole idea of the show for me, is this idea of sort of like opening up an ideology, opening up a whole other world that was seemingly so foreign.

Emily Yoshida: You're hearing Fred Toye, the director of today's episode.

Fred Toye: This was our opportunity to open that up. This was our opportunity on the arrival of Toranaga, the ceremonial nature of it, and also the energy of the village. And now these two cultures ultimately can coexist in this very small period of time in which they come to understand each other. And so for me it was opening up Ajiro in a way that I could understand what it was like for such a big event to happen.

Emily Yoshida: Also while we’re opening up Ajiro, we’re kind of introducing it again basically from the ground up. And also, at the same time, we get to see the house and sort of the inner workings of a household. And this is all kind of mostly seen through Fuji, who’s Blackthorne's consort. But what was important to you to convey about the house and the dynamic, all the little dynamics in it?

Fred Toye: I think in the first scenes when they come into the house, there's an awkwardness by intention that was Blackthorne feeling completely out of place, not understanding what Fuji's role was going to be and how important she was to the household, not understanding what everybody did, not understanding how Mariko was gonna fit into that world for him.

And so between the amazing design, you know, Helen Jarvis, who was our production designer designed all of that, that was built obviously those houses were built for the production. And, uh, Ajiro, the Upper Ajiro village was built in an RV parking lot at a place called the Swiss Gun Club, which is in Coquitlam in British Columbia. And she had the vision to be able to come in to literally like where people park their campers for vacation and say, ‘you know, if I just cleared all of this stuff out and I put down, you know, I could create a village here.’

And so the Blackthorne house was built there, along with all of the other houses in the village. And over the course of the 10 episodes, we shot it like crazy. So that was a practical house. It wasn’t on the soundstage. We were at the mercy of the elements in filming that house. So we had snow, we had rain, we had heat, we had cold. We had every possible iteration that I believe, when I watch the show now, plays a huge role in creating a real sense of character for that house.

Emily Yoshida: So I wanted to talk a little about Toranaga's plan here, you know, he’s leaving Yabushige and Blackthorne behind and Blackthorne is to teach this army how to use the cannons from his ship. But in the book, if people have read it, and also in the original drafts of our script, it wasn't cannons, it was muskets. And this obviously got changed and now we have cannons in the show. But I was wondering if the change from muskets to cannons sort of changed how you saw, I don’t know, the shape or the direction of this episode?

Fred Toye: I think that what was interesting about the fact that we ended up with cannons was there's a brutish nature of that that's so completely unsubtle and goes against what the samurai believe. And the fact that the canons were chosen to me is a great way of saying like, this is what it was like having these, you know, both the Portuguese and the English and the Dutch show up in Japan at this period of time. It was brutish.

Emily Yoshida: It's a very bloody scene in the book with, with the whole Jozen massacre scene all the same, even without it being cannon. But that's the point is that it's really ugly and it's horrifying to everybody on the ground what, what that kind of warfare looks like. And everybody, you know, there's this feeling of this kind of curse of the presence of these weapons. Yeah.

Fred Toye: Well, we tried to make it pretty horrifying when he gets it, when he gets it with the cannon.

Emily Yoshida: It’s a lot. It's just sort of like, just, you know, disassemble a body on contact.

Fred Toye: Yeah. It's pretty nasty.

Emily Yoshida: The other major development of this episode is Mariko and Blackthorne kind of growing closer together and kind of the first sort of romantic moments of their relationship.

So how did you kind of build that connection between Anna and Cosmo and how, how did both of their characters individually, how did you see them kind of changing the way they saw each other, I guess in this episode?

Fred Toye: Cosmo and Anna were very close, and I think that they had a really wonderful working relationship. So we did a lot of rehearsals. So we spent a lot of time together just offline, just talking about the experience for each one of them. But in some ways I think that I was benefiting from both the way that the interpretation of the relationship was depicted in the script and also the approach we were taking in the sense that I think that we wanted to understand Mariko's point of view in a way more than we did Blackthorne’s. And, whether that's a case of seeing that like it's natural with her strength how he would feel about her, but also the fact that we wanted to understand from the Japanese point of view how a person coming in from the outside like this could be an interesting person, a person who was offering something that had never been seen before.

And so for me, I think that I focused very strongly on getting inside of Mariko's head, both visually and from a story standpoint. Trying to understand in like, for example in the eightfold fence scene that we had this benefit of the rain and the elements to play with, that we would have an introduction kind of for the first time of presenting from an extremely uh, intelligent and sensitive point of view, an ideology that we have yet to have really understand and understanding how that plants a flag for Blackthorne to begin to change his perspective.

Emily Yoshida: That's all for this week's episode of Shōgun: The Official Podcast.

How will Toranaga react to Nagakado's assault on Ishido's troops? Can Mariko and Blackthorne's newly blossoming romance withstand their circumstances? And how will Yabushige’s newest play for survival pan out? Tune in next week when we discuss episode five of FX’s Shōgun.

You can find a link in our description to episodes one through four of Shōgun. And if you wanna 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 get your podcasts.

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