The prison and Friar Domingo

Naked in a packed wooden cell-block on the edge of Osaka, Blackthorne fights a lice-ridden convict for a cup of gruel. Outside the walls, prisoners are lanced on crosses and hacked apart. In fever-dreams of cauldrons and Omi he hears the Last Sacrament in Latin and finds a scarecrow Franciscan, Friar Domingo, jailed since 1598, tending a flock of converts in the far corner. Taking Blackthorne for a fellow Spaniard, the friar pours out his grievances: Jesuits who run the silk trade and the million-gold Black Ship, who smuggle guns and beg Manila for conquistadores; the wreck of the galleon San Felipe on Shikoku; the twenty-six martyred at Nagasaki. Blackthorne volunteers nothing, weeps once in the dark, then for three days traces Japanese words in the dirt and drains the old man of everything he knows. On the fourth day his name is called.

The prison is a second cellar, and the second education. Friar Domingo is a device for delivering the Jesuit economy to a listener who never says who he is; Clavell lets Blackthorne learn by silence. Tracing words in the dirt begins the language plot that will make him useful.