Yabu's bath and the Regents

Yabu soaks in Omi's bath, exultant. The Erasmus has yielded five hundred muskets, twenty cannon, powder, shot and twenty thousand Spanish doubloons, and he orders Igurashi, his one-eyed chief retainer, and the quartermaster Zukimoto to smuggle it all to his castle at Mishima. He recalls slipping out of Yedo against Toranaga's orders and against the advice of his formidable wife, the Lady Yuriko, who mapped the coming war between Toranaga and Ishido over the seven-year-old Heir, Yaemon. Clavell lays out the Emperor, the three Shōgunal families and the Taikō's Council of Regents. The blind masseur Suwo tells of serving Toranaga's grandfather, Chikitada, killed by a Murasama blade like the one Yabu secretly owns, and considers snapping the sleeping daimyo's neck. In the cellar the crew swears an oath in God's name and draws straws; Vinck draws the short one and shrieks with laughter. The trapdoor opens on Omi, "his kimono blooded by the dying sun".

Exposition chapter, carried by Yabu's bath. Clavell stops the plot to lay out Regents, Heir and Shōgunate, then hides two long fuses in the same scene: Yuriko's strategic mind and the Murasama blade. Suwo's hands on the daimyo's neck give the lecture a pulse.