Yabu tries the crew

Kasigi Yabu, daimyo of Izu, arrives from Yedo and tries the crew in the village square, with Father Sebastio as hostile interpreter and the sick Captain-General Spillbergen lying in the dust. Blackthorne taunts the priest ("Spaniard!"), claims an English fleet is attacking Manila, and, as Yabu pronounces the death sentence, leaps up and snaps the Jesuit's crucifix. Yabu, who hates barbarians and has been savouring the thought of torturing eleven of them, is stopped by Omi's counsel: these men are anti-Christian and may unlock the provinces of Ikawa Jikkyu, Ishido, even Toranaga. The crew is packed into a fish cellar, where Blackthorne, ignoring the men's blame, remembers Felicity and the children and the bath house at Mura's, where the women applauded him and a blind masseur unknotted him. When the men howl for water, Omi has fish offal poured on their heads and, through the priest, sets the terms: behave, and one of them, chosen by themselves, dies at dusk.

A trial staged so the reader learns the political map before the hero can. Omi's counsel to Yabu is the book's first demonstration that the barbarian's value is leverage, and the fish-cellar ultimatum sets the moral machinery: the crew will now choose among themselves.