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Shōgun Explodes Into the Future
Cannon fire soundtracks a polite society being ushered into a new, more indiscriminately brutal age.
Exploding cannons and agonized screams are the soundtrack of a polite society being ushered into a new, more indiscriminately brutal age, one that Nagakado meets with foolish confidence, Omi with a nefarious grin, Blackthorne with outsider confusion, and Yabushige and Mariko with informed despair. The “eightfold fence” that Mariko told Blackthorne the Japanese build within themselves to guard their secret feelings from the outside world is rendered useless here; the cannon attack is too shocking, the danger it brings to Toranaga and his allies too dire, for anyone here to hide their reactions to it. Nagakado’s act not only breaks myriad societal rules and goes against combat protocol, but it heralds a destruction of the established order; there’s no intimacy, no comparison of merit or speed or skill, to a cannonball offensive lodged from hundreds of yards away.
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