Kiku's dawn, Masijiro's cup

The screams stop before first light. Kiku lies awake beside the sleeping Yabu, recalling her teacher's rule of the Willow World, to train the mind on sweet things, and the night's pillowing with the daimyo and the fisherman's boy, over in a shuddering instant; afterwards she gently took the boy's virginity for his comfort. She leaves at dawn under a crimson parasol, feigning a delicate limp, and Mura's mother Saiko spins it at once into a rumour about teeth. On the funeral hill Omi bows to Pieterzoon's shrouded body. In the cellar Blackthorne rations the last water, refusing the crew's vote to deny the captive samurai, Masijiro, who knocks the cup away, then kneels and begs Blackthorne and Sonk to strangle him with his sash. "Kinjiru," Blackthorne says. The man tries to drown himself in the latrine bucket and fails. At noon the trapdoor opens: the priest orders the pilot up, alone.

Kiku's interior gives the Willow World its charter and makes the first female consciousness in the book a professional one. The cup of water refused by Masijiro is the chapter's real argument, a captive samurai's honour set against a Christian crew's vote. The ending narrows the cast to one man climbing alone.