Buntaro's cha-no-yu

Alvito kneels on a cushion in the dirt while Blackthorne, swords in his sash, lolls against the dais. The priest confesses his failure with Brother Joseph; Toranaga orders the renegade brought to him at noon. Then the message: neither Kiyama nor Onoshi will leave Ishido. Toranaga's fury turns to a long, bleak reckoning. The priests cannot be expelled without losing the trade; their real plan must be Kiyama and conquistadores. There is no plan. He keeps his word anyway, grants the Yedo temple and tomorrow's Mass, and orders Naga to become a Christian at New Year. In the cha house Buntaro, having scrubbed the hut himself, gives Mariko a perfect cha-no-yu: a single white wild rose with one drop of water, the character "ai" on the towel, a tear caught on a sprig of thyme. He sends her to sleep alone and, when she is gone, weeps with rage, certain she has betrayed him.

Two negotiations that fail: Alvito cannot deliver Kiyama and Onoshi, and Buntaro cannot reach his wife. Clavell puts the cha-no-yu at the centre so that Buntaro's perfect ceremony reads as the love he cannot speak. The single wild rose is the book's most precise image of a marriage.