Omi's hands stop the blade

Blackthorne walks numbly to his new house, where the old gardener Ueki-ya and Fujiko wait, and drinks saké without effect. Told Fujiko is now his consort, a nineteen-year-old widow whose husband and infant son Toranaga executed, he rages against a nation of murderers; Mariko, ordered to tame him like a hawk in three days, answers that there is always an easy solution: die. "This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist." Omi comes with twenty samurai to take his pistols; Blackthorne gives them to Fujiko, who levels one at Omi's face, then brings him two swords. Yabu makes Omi apologise, and Omi resolves to kill his liege lord. Blackthorne asks the village decree rescinded, is refused, and declares he cannot live with the shame. Yabu keeps the sentence to see him die. Blackthorne drives the short sword at his heart; Omi's hands stop the blade. He walks out alone. Yabu plots to keep Mariko as a hostage.

The attempted seppuku is the book's true midpoint conversion, and Clavell earns it with a chapter of humiliations: the unasked consort, the pistols taken, the village sentence. Mariko's sunset line gives the philosophy; Omi's hands on the blade give the plot. From here Blackthorne is treated as a man who has already died once.