Mariko's bargain with Alvito

Before dawn Naga leads Yabu, Blackthorne and Uraga out of the castle to the wharf, where the frightened Dutch crew are marched aboard Erasmus. Yabu, aping the pilot's stance, asks him samurai to samurai to forget all that went before: without him there are no wako from Nagasaki, and he will lead the charge on the Black Ship. Mariko finds them at the cathedral foundations and asks for Mass "from an empty cup"; before confessing she trades the Anjin-san's life for knowledge, telling Alvito that Toranaga's surrender is a hoax and revealing Zataki, Onoshi's poison plot and Uraga's betrayal of the confessional. At anchor Uraga makes every vassal stamp on an icon; one lunges at Blackthorne, leaps overboard and dies by his own knife. Blackthorne makes his Dutchmen stamp too, faces down Jan Roper, and remembers last night, Mariko's urgent loving, and Yabu at the door with orders: Yokohama, Osaka, Nagasaki.

Mariko's confession-that-is-not-one is the ethical centre of the book's second half: she trades everything she knows for a life, and withholds only her own sin. Clavell pairs it with Uraga's icon-stamping so that two apostasies are staged in one chapter. The orders at the end, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagasaki, are the itinerary of the ending.