Chief Admiral of the Kwanto

The quake has burned Fujiko's legs and back and killed her maid Nigatsu. Blackthorne sits in his wrecked garden and names the surviving rock Ueki-ya-sama, remembering Mariko on Shinto, "a nature cult in which no one believes wholeheartedly, yet everyone venerates totally." Omi offers his bath house and cha with his hard-faced mother and his wife Midori. At the fortress Blackthorne springs his plan: letters of marque, a crew of renegades from Nagasaki, and the Black Ship taken at sea and sold at Yedo. Toranaga refuses any war on Japanese soil, and Blackthorne traps Mariko into admitting the Jesuits run Nagasaki. Alone, Toranaga offers to divorce her from Buntaro; she says no, and he promises it once Ishido is settled. Before a hundred and fifty officers he announces Crimson Sky after the rains, gives Yabu Suruga and Totomi, and makes the Anjin-san Chief Admiral. Omi wonders whether the barbarian might kill Yabu for him.

After the quake, the book resets its board. Blackthorne's Black Ship plan is his first strategic proposal accepted in principle, Mariko's divorce is refused and deferred, and the officer parade turns Crimson Sky into public policy. The chapter's rock named for the gardener is Clavell's rare moment of grief allowed to stand.