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But Toranaga does not appear to be honoring his end. He departs Lord Omi\u2019s village almost as soon as he arrives, leaving Blackthorne without the access to his men and his ship that Toranaga promised.<\/p>\n
Blackthorne can hardly believe what he\u2019s offered instead. Befitting his status as hatamoto, he\u2019s granted a house of his own \u2014 a prison with better accommodations, he says \u2014 and a consort in the form of Fuji, the bereaved mother and widow. Neither is thrilled by the arrangement, but they make the best of it, culminating in an exchange of gifts \u2014 his best pistol, her father\u2019s swords \u2014 that leaves them both fumbling for words.<\/p>\n
Defending the household is one of a consort\u2019s many duties, and Fuji shows her mettle by pointing a gun at Lord Omi on Blackthorne\u2019s behalf when there\u2019s a dispute over him carrying his own weapons. Disputing with the Anjin is one thing, but a high-ranking woman like Fuji is no one to trifle with, whether or not she actually knows how to use the gun she points.<\/p>\n
While Fuji does not bed down with Blackthorne, at his insistence, Lady Mariko eventually does. Her feelings for the Englishman fluctuate wildly throughout the episode. Early on, she becomes righteously angry at Blackthorne for putting his beef with the Portuguese Catholics above serving Toranaga\u2019s interests, whatever they may be.<\/p>\n
But Blackthorne\u2019s decency toward Fuji clearly impresses Mariko. So does his naked body, of which she gets an eyeful when she stumbles upon him preparing to bathe in a hot spring. There they sit back to back, and using increasingly tender, sensual dialogue, he walks her through what it might be like to spend an evening in London as his guest. In part he\u2019s joshing her, saying he\u2019d take her right to the queen. But he\u2019s not kidding about going to the theater and enjoying a good tragedy, just as she does. And his near-poetic reverie about walking along the Thames seems to transport her right there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Yet it might be his praise of her fortitude that truly plants the seeds. When you look at a house that\u2019s been knocked down and rebuilt by one of Japan\u2019s natural disasters, he explains, you don\u2019t see the ruins, you see the house. Whatever happened to ruin Mariko\u2019s life in the past, including the recent death of her husband, she has managed to rebuild herself. The two face away from each other throughout the conversation so that solely words bridge the distance between them. Through this arrangement, the writer Emily Yoshida and the director Frederick Toye paradoxically heighten the sense that the characters are closer than ever.<\/p>\n
That night, Mariko sneaks into Blackthorne\u2019s bedroom, wakes him up, undresses and makes her move. Having been roused from snoring slumber, it\u2019s seemingly all he can do to convince himself he\u2019s not having some kind of erotic dream. After the back-to-back conversation at the hot spring, Mariko\u2019s forwardness, and the blustery, seen-it-all Englishman\u2019s shock, are a seductive departure from their norms. The actor Anna Sawai, who plays Mariko, is also a leading player on one of the most romantic shows of recent memory, the Godzilla-based series \u201cMonarch: Legacy of Monsters,\u201d where she also expertly communicates intimacy, affection and attraction.<\/p>\n
Even so, her finest moment in the episode \u2014 a necessary precursor to her eventual softening to Blackthorne \u2014 sees Mariko\u2019s thoughts take an entirely different direction. Echoing earlier dialogue from Lord Toranaga, she explains the concept of the eightfold fence, an impenetrable psychological-emotional wall she says Japanese people are taught to construct within themselves. Never mind the smiling and bowing, she tells Blackthorne: Inside their heads, the people he sees performing cruel or obsequious acts may well be miles away. Even as Mariko says all this, a look in her eyes obscures her true feelings about what she\u2019s saying, and to whom she\u2019s saying it.<\/p>\n
You can see why she comes to Blackthorne in the dark, and why she and Fuji have agreed to the polite and utterly transparent lie that it was a courtesan, not Mariko, who visited him. Letting your heart out from behind that fence for any length of time is a bad idea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Episode 4: ‘The Eightfold Fence’ Last week’s episode dropped the ball when it came to depicting visceral combat. This week’s fired it