Buntaro on the jetty

The ronin clear the galley and hold a breakwater against the Grays while Toranaga, in armour again, walks aboard. Blackthorne orders the cast-off. Then Buntaro fights his way onto the jetty with the maid Sono, arrows in his armour. Toranaga refuses to turn back. Blackthorne screams "Swim!", wrecks the oar-beat and launches an oar to the wharf; Sono jumps, loses her grip and drowns. Buntaro strips, hurls his killing sword into the sea, bows to the galley and kneels with the short sword. Mariko, wounded in the arm and propped by her niece Usagi Fujiko, explains that a samurai must not be captured; Blackthorne calls them all animals. Toranaga shouts "Go with them now" as Brown horsemen gallop up with a spare horse. Buntaro, who craves death, rides off. The ship roars with laughter, until the lookout cries out: the harbour mouth is blocked.

Buntaro on the jetty is the book's first seppuku almost performed, and Clavell lets Blackthorne's disgust carry the scene so the reader can share it before being taught otherwise. Sono's drowning is the cost of the pilot's improvisation. The laughter that ends the chapter is cut off by the blocked harbour mouth.