Shōgun Podcast Episode 9 | FX's Shōgun

Blackthorne (Played by Cosmo Jarvis): You have nothing to prove to these people, you've made your point, there's no need to die for it.

Mariko (Played by Anna Sawai): There is every need.

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 the FX epic to life.

Today, we’ll be talking about episode nine, Crimson Sky. And a lot went down this week so as usual, this is your spoiler warning for this and the previous eight episodes. Listeners should also be aware that there will be discussions of violence and suicide.

On the podcast today, I'll hear about Mariko's strained relationship with Catholicism from actress Anna Sawai, the inspiration behind the Shinobi assassins with writer Caillin Puente, and director Fred Toye will talk about Mariko’s intense scene at the gates and putting character before action.

But first, let's talk about Mariko's stand against Ishido and how it all ties back to her family history.

Rachel Kondo: It feels like everything has been building towards this moment, not only in our show, but specifically for her life and her life experience and the many years of pain.

Emily Yoshida: Co-creator Rachel Kondo returns to give us more insight into how Mariko got to this point.

Rachel Kondo: The scene that we see as the flashback for episode nine, we see what is the fallout of what Mariko had described in episode five about her family and the flashback takes place shortly after her father Akechi Jinsai committed this treacherous act of killing his liege lord out of love for the realm.

And so he is forced to execute his family and commit Seppuku himself. And yet Mariko, who has recently been married into Buntaro's clan, she is ordered to live. And at the time of the flashback, this is her third attempt to stop living, simply because she wants to join her family's fight. She wants to do this in protest of what injustice has taken place.

It's an interesting scene cause you know, first of all, we see her running kind of half clothed through this snowstorm. And there are these snow monsters and it's very eerie and other worldly. And you have to kind of wrap your mind around the fact that Mariko then was not the Mariko that we know today.

Emily Yoshida: One of my favorite concepts in this episode is the idea of this poetry contest. And it's such an interesting place to start it because in a way it is so esoteric, this thing that we know now Mariko is very good at, this idea of Mariko's words being almost her greatest weapon. How has that been present in her character up until now?

Rachel Kondo: She has moved between being a translator and an interpreter both language wise and culturally, and we have seen that words and language, it's kind of her only power at this point, and it is her way of expressing her own agency. What I think is interesting about Mariko and her words is when she chooses not to say anything. Like with Buntaro, that was her, that was the ice pick to the heart for him was that she just didn't give him anything. And so I think that a woman back in this time period didn't have many avenues to expressing herself or declaring herself, and so I think that was definitely one of the ways in which Mariko expressed herself.

Emily Yoshida: We get to see her in action with this Nagitata, which in a way is, you know, if you wanna about the pen and the sword is almost this polar opposite of the power we've seen her have up until now. What do you think is going through her psychologically with this physical show that we, you know, is not maybe something she's used to at this point?

Rachel Kondo: I think you're right. It's quite the showdown and it's all been building to this moment that we know Mariko is going to somehow gain resolution to all that she lost and all that she suffered over the years. And I think that we watch her in a few phases. In the ceremonial hall, we see this all powerful phase in which she declares herself the daughter of Akechi Jinsai and she will not be interrupted. She will not be glossed over. And this kind of causes a collective gasp of everybody else. And from there we moved from kind of that all powerful phase to then that almost like this all courage phase. And this is when we see her in her attempt to leave.

Emily Yoshida: Mm-hmm.

Rachel Kondo: Which is, as you know, a huge moment. Everything funnels into this scene. And I think that kind of, the final phase that we see her move into is this like all heart phase, where she encounters the people she loves and, in a way, asks them to understand certain things about her, or she simply says goodbye.

Emily Yoshida: She gets to her seppuku attempt and nobody shows up to second Mariko, which I just think is such a devastating little beat there. It's just so lonely. But Blackthorne eventually steps up and volunteers. And what does that mean? Like what does Blackthorne understand at this point? Like, why is he willing to do this and, and what does that mean as a gesture to Mariko in this moment?

Rachel Kondo: This was kind of a big point of discussion for the room. For the entire show, Blackthorne has always disagreed with Mariko's approach to death or her understanding of death.

And maybe it's just accepting that her approach to life is that she wants to choose what her life will stand for and this is the way she's gonna do it. And I think what you said earlier about how truly devastating the scene is when she is left alone and her hands shakily reach up at her rosary.

And she knows what this means and she's gonna see it through to the end. And maybe this is something that ultimately Blackthorne comes to understand that he, he, he loves about her. And so this is, I think, for lack of a better way to put it, possibly one of the most loving things he can do for her is set himself aside and help her on her way.

Emily Yoshida: So Blackthorne really kind of throws his full support behind Mariko and then, kind of on the other side of the spectrum, you have Yabushige who kind of sends her to her doom but he also just ends up being a huge part of her fate. And it’s kind of unexpected but their fates are kind of totally intertwined by the end of the episode.

Rachel Kondo: Yeah, Yabushige at this moment is essentially kind of an out of control yo-yo when it comes to, you know, he bows to Ishido offering up this gift of Blackthorne. And, in the very next scene, he's demanding that Mariko tell him the plans of Toranaga because guess what? He can help. And so I think he's kind of the embodiment of how out of control this whole episode feels and how close it is to all being blown up both figuratively and literally.

I think Yabushige has, it's, I'm sorry if this sounds insensitive, but it's kind of fun to watch how the great Tadanobu Asano performs this like feverish dance of Yabushige. He's just trying to figure out, okay, how will I survive today?

Emily Yoshida: So I guess while we’re talking about all these characters and their relationship to Mariko and how all their decisions have kind of impacted Mariko. This is the first episode where we actually see Mariko and Ochiba face-to-face, interacting as adults. You know, we saw a little bit of them in 6. But yeah, we’re episode 9 now and this is the first time we’re seeing them together in the present. Can you just kind of, talk a little bit about how you see this relationship and why it's so important at this point in our story?

Rachel Kondo: I think that the relationship between Ochiba and Mariko is, is basically the entire underpinning of, not only this episode, but strangely for the whole story. It's all going back to this girlhood friendship that they had. One of the scenes that is my favorite is the one between Mariko and Ochiba as they kind of parse out each other's intentions and their playing to the past. And ultimately, I think it's one friend saying, ‘I want you to stay alive.’ And it's another friend saying, ‘I want you to understand.’

And then it ends on that gorgeous line of poetry that is so Mariko.

Emily Yoshida: Mariko is well known for her poetry, for the power of her words, but even until the end she struggles to talk her way through the delicate balance between Catholicism and Japanese culture.

Anna Sawai: Because of her choices to be Catholic while being Japanese, she needs to make a choice and I think that's the hardest part.

Emily Yoshida: Here to discuss Mariko's alliances up until her final hours is actress Anna Sawai.

Anna Sawai: I had to kind of look at it not just as a religion but something that just helped her. Something that saved her and that is why she's here. And so that is something that she needs. Without it, she would be gone. At the same time, she's also Japanese, and so she's walking a very fine balance of both. But before she makes a choice, in the end, I think she is able to do both as long as she's also trying to fulfill her duty to Toranaga-sama. And Toranaga-sama is understanding of that.

Emily Yoshida: At the top of the episode, we get this flashback of her, you know, how she kind of first came into the church and her first meeting with Alvito, which has obviously been a huge relationship in her life. How much do you think that this decision kind of sets her apart from, I guess, her peers, for lack of a better word?

Anna Sawai: When we see her at the top of the episode, like there's like there's only one way that she can go.

Emily Yoshida: : Mm-hmm.

Anna Sawai: Which is follow her father's death.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Anna Sawai: But Alvito shows her that someone cares. And I think it could have been anything. I don't even think it had to be Catholicism, but it happened to be that, and that saved her, and that's why it's such a big part of her now because when no one was there, when there was nothing to look forward to, he gives her a cross and she feels the warmth of it. She feels like maybe she can still go on. So I think if someone saves your life, like, it could be anyone, but you'll always be thankful for that person. You'll always trust that they'll always be there now. So I think that's what Catholicism was for her.

Emily Yoshida: This whole episode is like this one big fight for Mariko, even from that very first flashback. She’s fighting—we see her fighting with her words, with her actions, and also just like physically fighting by the end there. And that scene at the gate with the Naginata is so incredible. It’s just so raw. What was it like shooting that and filming an actual fight scene like that?

Anna Sawai: It was so empowering because Mariko never gets to fight like that. I had a lot of fun with it, but I also cracked my tooth.

Emily Yoshida: Oh my God. Really?

Anna Sawai: Yeah. That's how, that's how much I was grinding it as I was doing it. It like, there was no holding back. And also the stunt guys that we had were so amazing that I would try to be safe and I would tell them, ‘I'm gonna go front, so can you just step back a little more so that I don't hit you or at I'm hitting you very minimally?’ but then they were like, ‘no, just do it.’ And so I was actually yeah, I swear I wasn't being dangerous but they allowed me to just do it for real.

Emily Yoshida: It also just seems emotionally exhausting as in, as well as physically exhausting. Likeyou really feel that there.

Anna Sawai: And women also, they never got the chance to do that, but they're all training so they can do it. So to be able to show that women had the ability to fight against these men, I think is also something that I really want people to know.

Emily Yoshida: I mean, it comes up here again, I think it came up a little bit in the previous episode, but Mariko's poetry and her skill with it is such a huge part of, you know, the scene and her relationship with Toranaga, they're kind of trading these lines. How did you make that feel natural for Mariko and make, you know, sell her as this? Like, she's the best, you know, everybody's just like, Mariko's the best at poetry.

Anna Sawai: I had to kind of see it as— poetry is so foreign to us right now. Like, we don't recite poems to our friends. So I knew that that was the way they communicated and that was also a tool to say what you couldn't really, like women couldn't really say, like she would never be able to say it to Ishido unless she was reading a poem.

Emily Yoshida: And even with Ochiba, she recites a poem to her in the end as well.

Anna Sawai: It's an actual poem that Hosokawa Gracia

Emily Yoshida: Oh wow.

Anna Sawai: had also recited or left. *poem in Japanese* I think is the poem. It basically means flower flowers are only flowers because they fall.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah.

Anna Sawai: And I think it's just so beautiful because Mariko knows what's gonna happen right after this. Death is awaiting but that is what makes life so beautiful is that it's not lasting forever. There's always gonna be an end.

Fumi is, by the way, so amazing. She was like the perfect person to play my old friend, but when I looked into her eyes, I could not, like, it was, the emotions were so high because that was like saying goodbye to a long, lost friend.

I think it's so sad because they have such a strong bond, but they're not able to be truthful to their relationship because of society and because of the men and being put in this position. It's so bittersweet the scenes that they do have, but I think till the end, they just care about each other. They want each other to kind of wake up.

Emily Yoshida: What's the one thing you hope people take away from Mariko's story?

Anna Sawai: I don't know if there's like one message that I want them to take home. If anything, I think it's, I kind of want people to realize what is truly important to them and to realize that our time on this, I know this is gonna sound so cheesy, but our time on Earth is so, is finite. Like it's not gonna last forever. So what do we do with the time that we have and who do we spend it with? I would love for people to think about that stuff.

Emily Yoshida: "While the snow remains

Veiled in the haze of cold evening

A Leafless branch..."

This is how Mariko begins her poem in Ishido’s court. The words hold meaning. Words from Mariko to Ochiba. One woman speaking directly to the other in a room filled with people, but in a way that only they can fully understand.

To be a samurai in the Sengoku period was to be many things. One of the more surprising expectations of the samurai was the ability to compose poems. The skill of poetry was prized among warlords and the Samurai class and proficiency was essential.

First came the structure of Waka and Tonka poetry, the favorite among the women of the Samurai class, which consisted of five lines with a particular syllable pattern. This evolved into Ranga Poetry, a collaborative structure that involved two people, one writing the first three lines and the other following with the final two. This became the foundation for the poetry parties like the one held by Ishido and Ochiba.

A poem composed in the Ranga format usually adhered to a particular structure. Poems had to feature words that related back to nature and the seasons. A poet’s command of metaphor was always highly regarded, as well as references to classical poetry. In fact, knowledge of the classics was crucial, as a samurai who could not respond to a reference was thought a barbarian.

Ranga parties were an important part of samurai culture, much like the tea ceremony. The invited samurai would sit in a circle of five-to-10 poets, as well as a scribe to take down the poems. A Ranga master would be present, sitting beside the scribe and acting as the host. The words and rhythms of the poems would take on an echo as the poet would recite a line and the scribe would repeat it back. Poems put together at parties would often follow a theme, which could be nature or the seasons, but it could also be love, lament, transcendence, or even reflection.

Over time, some poets no longer wished to contain their creativity to a mere five lines. The poems grew to include several verses and multiple poets. One party could produce up to 100 poems in a sitting.

But more than anything, the writing of poetry created a place of peace for a samurai. For a moment, their minds—troubled by the war and the death that plagued their lives—could relax into a more reflective and serene state. The practice sharpened their minds, and the combination of knowledge, wisdom, and skill all served to help them better communicate with their peers. In the Sengoku period, poetry was the calm in the eye of the storm.

As Mariko said in her own poem, "if I could use words like scattering flowers and falling leaves, what a bonfire my poems would make."

While Mariko was praised by those of the Samurai class for her way with words, there were other facets of her life that were less commonly understood or accepted.

Caillin Puente: We have this complicated history with Christianity during the Sengoku period, right? Where it was banned at certain points.

Emily Yoshida: Writer Caillin Puente returns to tell us more about Mariko's real life counterpart, Hosokawa Gracia, and the role Christianity played in her life.

Caillin Puente: It wasn't terribly common for someone of her rank. And she heard about it through her husband originally, and she kind of learned more about it from her ladies in waiting and ended up going out to a like mission in a church and learning about it herself and becoming really interested in it because this was after the tragedy with her father and after she was exiled, she was very depressed in Osaka at that time.

She's like an interesting example. She's, I think, a little bit of an outlier in how passionate she was about her religion, but for high ranking women, I think it was a lot of their husbands who kind of brought it back to them inadvertently because they were the ones who were traveling around and hearing more about this, especially since a lot of the Europeans were coming into like Nagasaki, they weren't completely spread across the country at that point. So, she lived kind of an isolated life and may not have heard about it if it wasn't for her husband.

But at this time, when Christianity was a little bit controversial, as we see in episode one when Omi beheads that Christian because he's kind of defying him. I think the reason that Mariko and Lady Gracia were able to maintain this relationship with their religion that was essentially forbidden, but wasn't being enforced as against the law at this point. It was just her status that was protecting her. Like she was so high ranking and she was so respected that no one can kind of question her, and that's why she was able to live so openly as a Christian.

Emily Yoshida: I mean, all that kind of comes to a climax with her essentially almost committing seppuku. And this has always been, this has been an ongoing theme of how common and, and constant death is in this culture and how that kind of jives with her Christian beliefs and her Christian values.

So, how do you feel like Mariko is sort of balancing those two things in this very, very intense moment in the seppuku scene?

Caillin Puente: It's interesting when she realizes that Kiyama isn't there. She does take off her cross. So I feel like that could be interpreted a little bit as if she has to choose, she is kind of making a decision, or rather like, because she's such a firm believer, she might be just accepting the reality of going to hell because this was like what she believed in and she still wanted to do it.

For women, they usually didn't call it seppuku, they just said suicide. If it was like a male samurai, then it was seppuku, but she would probably symbolically stab herself and then wait for the second to actually kill her. So then she wasn't technically committing suicide. She would've been like, killed, which is what would've happened to the real Lady Gracia, she was like killed by a loyal attendant.

Emily Yoshida: What does that look like?

Caillin Puente: The way we did it in the show is the approved Shosa way, which is the kind of theatrical movement training that is what all the actors and actresses were kind of trained in by our Shosa advisors, which is not always completely in line with reality. And that is she holds the dagger up to her heart. Whereas in records, the women usually fell on the dagger on their heart. So they would kind of position it low and then put their whole body weight into it to go down. And then if they didn't have a second to finish the job, they would cut their neck with their kaiken, their little dagger.

So it was, it depended on the situation kind of heavily. But, in the case of women, they didn't always have a second because for men committing seppuku obviously they're cutting their stomach, that's not necessarily gonna kill them. It could be this suffering for days and everything. So the second for a woman is normally kind of for moral support essentially, kind of giving you the courage to do it, to say there is a backup in case you don't succeed, someone can help you. So I think historically that's the case and Mariko is a little bit different in that she wants to not commit suicide if possible, because then she can maintain the allegiance to both her religion and her loyalty to her father and Toranaga.

Emily Yoshida: So the end of this episode ends with this kind of think we're all in the clear. Everybody's gonna get to go home at the end, and then we've got this Shinobi attack that happens at the very end. And I, as I remember, like it's kind of gone back and forth, you know, how we were gonna have the shinobi represented, what kind of nature this attack was gonna be...

Caillin Puente: It's really interesting and we got to like dig in a lot. I think especially when we were looking at the assassin in episode two and that was kind of like a good doorway into the Shinobi because as we dug into it further, there's so much lore and there's so much like popular culture about Shinobi dating back to the Edo period when the image of them started to become like, even though ‘Ninja’ wasn't a term until like after World War II, the image of all black Shinobi was in the Edo period.

So it was kind of difficult to learn a lot about them. But essentially, they were a lot of different things and they were mostly spies. They were gathering information, they were dressing just as normal maids and just as people just gathering information, they were assassins and they were, a lot of the time, they were Ashigaru, who are the foot soldiers.

So whenever we're seeing a big army behind Toranaga, Yabu, the vast percentage of people in that are the Ashigaru, the like low ranking foot soldiers. And if they're not at war, they're kind of working for hire. They're farmers, they're doing whatever, depending on their rank. But there was a group that would be shinobi. If they would be sieging a castle, they would wear their armor, or they would wear dark clothes if they were sneaking in at night, or they would wear servant clothes. They filled a lot of different roles and it became this huge mythology that's a little bit difficult to pick apart, but, and we definitely veer a little closer to the legend because we need them to come in at night and be this incredibly like deadly, scary kind of force. But we tried to keep a little bit of the realism by, Carlos, our costume designer, built in like little, they would have little pieces of armor because they'd be kind of too poor to have a full armor on. But they would have like a section here or there. They would have a mix of dark brown and dark blue clothes.

Emily Yoshida: So the episode ends in this storeroom, and we end this with this huge cliffhanger of an explosion, what do you feel like Yabu is going through in that scene? Do you feel like there's any point at which Yabu does actually believe in something or start to appreciate something past his own, his own skin?

Caillin Puente: We do see Yabu struggling in a way that I don't think we have before. I think like the reality of what he's gotten himself involved in when he realizes there's no escape, and the goal of the attack was to have the Shinobi capture Mariko, which she says kind of really quickly as she's fighting them off, you see them kind of carry her out. They're not trying to kill her, like because of the diplomatic consequences of that. They really need to keep her alive. And that's the only way she's valuable is a hostage. And that's the only way Ishido won't be blamed for her death and have this huge stain on him. So I think Yabushige's like kind of facing the consequences for the first time of seeing, like, he's betrayed people, he's dabbled in all of this different treachery, but Mariko is this unimpeachable, honored, revered, famous figure and he's just put her in so much danger and it's his fault.

And I think he's realizing there is not a lot of paths forward from this. And it's interesting because we haven't really seen Yabushige considering consequences as much as we've seen in like these couple moments in the storehouse.

Emily Yoshida: For an episode that ends in chaos, episode 9 begins in relative formality as Mariko presents herself to the newly engaged Ochiba and Ishido.

Fred Toye: When she comes into that beautiful setting, we are led to believe that she's coming in as a greeting and to see Ochiba again and to welcome them for their engagement. So understanding what she's really going through in her head emotionally, I think that we're purposely left out of that

Emily Yoshida: You’re now hearing the director of this episode, Fred Toye.

Fred Toye: As a matter of fact, this was a complex bit of, performance for Anna because she needed to be completely focused on the mission to be able to tune out the words from everyone that she trusted and cared for in the sense that she would only shared the secret with a few very select people who needed to know but otherwise she had to be completely hell bent on seeing through Toranaga's plan.

But as that scene develops and as she sort of prods away at the idea that she's going to be leaving regardless and Ishido starts to push back because it's the last thing that he wants, she comes out with this tremendous performance where she says, ‘this is how it's going to happen and it's not gonna be any other way.’

Emily Yoshida: We do sort of keep going deeper I guess with Mariko throughout this episode, just through her actions. And it all leads up to this just full on action set piece at the end of this already relentless episode. So how did you go about constructing that final scene, the shinobi attack, and just kind of composing it?

Fred Toye: What was really important to me when I read that sequence and I was trying to kind of figure out how to present it. Like I felt as though action in this particular series has been, both in the writing and in the execution, been done in a kind of very subtle way. Like we weren't going for action pieces.

So to me it was, writing the story of every one of the characters and trying to present each one of those stories. So each thing that happens, Yabu allows the team to come in the back door, making that a Yabu moment, that was the critical thing, was like, okay, there's gonna be a little humor all of a sudden out of all of this here, you cut to Yabu, cruising around the hallway, acting very suspicious. Like there's a sense of humor to that. So it's like, okay, think something's gonna happen, right? So I wanted the inroad to it to be a Yabu moment, then he lets these guys in, each one of them had a story, like we wrote a story for everything that was happening, but it was effectively: infiltrate the castle and find Mariko and take her hostage. What we're hoping for was this mixture of like subtle action, but also humor, being able to kind of cut back to Yabu and be part of it.

But then ultimately when you get to the room and Blackthorne and Mariko, of course, are together in that scene, that that not be, that Blackthorne has the upper hand on everybody and that like all of a sudden it becomes a, a hero sequence, that they still be totally in peril.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. And then in that, in that storeroom there, there's just so much happening on a character level that happens in just such,rapid sequence. What, to you, is going on between Mariko and Blackthorne in those final moments with them together?

Fred Toye: It's a sad moment, you know, I really do feel saddened that their relationship, you know, at least in a physical world ends in that moment. But I think that Blackthorne begins to understand the gravity of her role in this basically change of hands that happens that, you know, if you become a student of this era, you know that the Edo period begins after that and that like her role in that experience was massive and that her sacrifice was for a much greater cause. She believed so much in her lord and, and Toranaga's plan that she was willing to give her life for it. She was willing to give up the things that were her dreams of freedom and the, and the other things that, you know, made her close to Blackthorne.

But that ultimately, in that moment you are seeing physically and literally that her role in the history of Japan is cemented with this sacrifice that she makes

Emily Yoshida: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there's also a moment, I feel like, with her seeing in Blackthorne in those final moments and just, you know, he's still furiously trying to get them out of this room and he's, you know, in true…

Fred Toye: I don't think he's ever gonna give up. He's always gonna be fighting for the practical. I mean he has some wonderful conversations with her where he says I don't understand. He fortunately in the story, for us as an audience as we begin to understand the culture and we understand how these cultures come together. He articulates questions that the audience has on a regular basis. ‘Why do you have to live with this man? Why do you have to make this sacrifice? Why are you sacrificing yourself for your Lord? Why is that so important?’ He asks these questions and it allows us to contextualize them because though she may not answer it literally, she answers it with her actions and it it gives you the context that you need in order to understand how important this period was in Japanese history.

Emily Yoshida: Yeah. Yeah.

Fred Toye: I was gonna tell you a funny story about Anna that we did to her

Emily Yoshida: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Fred Toye: We had a, so in that scene where she's in the store room and she stands in front of the door and the door blows, right? I had this idea, which is not in the cut, but it was like, I had this idea that I wanted to kind of like, suspend time, you know, that I wanted to have time stand still.

And so we set up that shot and it took hours to set it up because it was a really complex shot now, it's just so happened that it was her birthday and the shot, the way we set it up was we would do a countdown of like 3, 2, 1 bang, and we were hitting her with an explosion and a bunch of wind.

So she had natural wind and light being flashed at her and her hair kind of flew in the air and she had to play this action in this moment. So, you know how you always do like a birthday thing? Well, we waited for the first take of this and she had been waiting for hours to do this shot where she had to actually like basically die on camera.

And we did ‘three, two, one. Happy birthday…” and we brought out a cake. And it was the, it was the cruelest, it was the meanest thing you could ever do to an actor to, to have her have to prepare for her on camera death in slow motion. And then we, um, we embarrassed her with a cake

Emily Yoshida: Oh my gosh. And then you had to break for cake, right?

Fred Toye: And then we had to, then we broke for cake and then we had to,

Emily Yoshida: Then get the phantom set back up again. Oh my gosh.

Emily Yoshida: Well, as we are left on this very intense cliffhanger at the end of our penultimate episode, we’ll be looking forward to the finale, to episode 10. What do you think the viewers can look forward to in the final episode?

Fred Toye: Well, I think that the finale is very subtle and I think that it's a place that you don't expect to go in the finale of something so epic and huge as this show. And I think the loss of Mariko is felt, not only in Blackthorne and the other characters and Toranaga’s experience, but it also has this kind of impact on history that you feel when you watch the episode because the final episode starts to bring in the historical context of all of these events that we've been watching from a character standpoint.

And I think that seeing the scale of it, and of course we touch on Sekigahara and other historical events, but I think that learning the history as a person who knows nothing about it, myself being that person also, and seeing the context of the events of these characters over the last nine to now 10 hours that we've been watching it, I think that it has an incredible impact.

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

Next week: How will the aftermath of Mariko's death ripple through Japanese history? Will Yabushige’s treachery come to light? How will Blackthorne get by in Japan without Mariko? Tune in next week when we discuss the final episode of FX’s Shōgun.

You can find a link in our description to episodes one through nine of Shōgun. And if you wanna dive deeper into the world of our story, check out the official Shōgun viewers 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.