Mariko translates the world

Ishido, having lost face when his Grays were slaughtered and Yabu took the barbarian, apologises to Toranaga. Both know the "bandits" were staged. Ishido reveals that his mother's stay at the Johji Temple has been noticed, then springs his own blow: the Regents' meeting is postponed because Kiyama is "sick", four seals attached. In the garden Kiri greets Toda Mariko, tiny, Fujimoto-born, Christian, wife of Hiro-matsu's brutal son Buntaro, and carrying sixteen years of guilt over her father's assassination of Goroda. Mariko swears silence and hides her crucifix. On the sand before the tea house, with the boy Heir Yaemon and ten Grays watching, Blackthorne abandons a disastrous King Arthur and draws the world instead: Magellan's Pass, Laplanders who never bathe, and the papal lines of Tordesillas and Saragossa that hand Japan to Portugal. Mariko, shaken, translates faithfully. A cowled Buddhist nun approaches with four Grays.

The chapter that introduces Mariko does so sideways, through Kiri's eyes and a hidden crucifix, before the lesson on the sand makes her the book's interpreter. The world-drawing scene is Clavell's cleverest exposition: geography as provocation, the Tordesillas lines turned into a weapon against the priests.