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Shōgun Series-Premiere Recap: Turning the Tide
This is a show best digested scene by scene, trusting that the seeds in this premiere will blossom in due time.
It can be difficult to parse the greater meaning of cold opens for an epic story like this, but it starts to come into focus later in the episode, as Blackthorne watches Lord Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano) unsheath his wakizashi and prepare to honorably kill himself instead of succumbing to drowning. The culture clash in Shōgun has more give and take to it than other onscreen attempts to tell this sort of tale, but at the same time, Blackthorne is painted as a man of unwavering bravery and unmatched skill: he single-handedly saves Yabushige, Toranaga’s lead advisor Hiromatsu (Tokuma Nishioka), and the Spanish pilot Rodrigues (Néstor Carbonell) when the ship carrying them all runs into a dangerous squall on the way to Osaka. In some ways, “Anjin” reinforces a gasping look at some of the more brutal elements of Japanese life in the year 1600, established early on when Tadoyoshi impulsivelyspeaks up during the Council of Regents meeting to defend Toranaga, and then in orderto prevent immediate war promises to commit seppuku, also sacrificing his infant son in the process to end his family name.
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