Toranaga announces surrender

At the second meeting Toranaga stuns everyone: he will go to Osaka and submit to the Council, leaving today. "The realm takes precedence." Buntaro resolves to kill Mariko and their son; Naga sees the end of the Yoshi line; Omi imagines taking Toranaga's head; Yabu bellows "You're giving up?" Toranaga tells Zataki privately he is safe only until their mother is free. In pouring rain the column leaves; Mariko is to carry a dispatch to Hiro-matsu at Mishima, then travel to Yedo with the Anjin-san. Buntaro: "Sayonara, until Osaka." Blackthorne recalls the morning's hawking, when a rude oil seller was cut in two with his own sword, and Alvito's printed dictionary with the prophecy that he will never leave these islands. Mariko traps Gyoko into offering a thousand koku off, proposes forgetting all outside problems for the journey, and watches him watch Kiku. "No," he says.

The surrender announcement is Clavell's boldest misdirection, and he lets every character misread it in turn so the reader has no anchor. The oil-seller's death, told in flashback, names Blackthorne's sword and shows what casual violence has become to him. The journey to Yedo is set up as a sealed private world.