Hulu’s Shōgun ends its war epic with brilliance and no war

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the end of Shōgun.]

Just before he’s forced to commit seppuku in the final moments of Shōgun, Yabushige demands to know how Toranaga’s plan to overthrow Ishido will play out. At this moment, Shōgun shows us a glimpse of tens of thousands of soldiers across five armies amassed on a battlefield. The entire series has seemingly been building up to this point — the training of the cannon regiment, Toranaga’s half-brother shifting his alliance, the Regents all signing a declaration of war — and yet just before the battle is set to begin, Ishido is delivered a note letting him know that the heir’s army will abstain from the battlefield. Without the heir’s banner, the other Regents will turn on him before the battle even begins. But this is just Toranaga’s plan; Shōgun never actually shows us any war.

It’s subversive never to have any war in a historical war epic, with Toranaga’s subversion delaying his impeachment vote (and any declaration of war) until the ninth episode. Most movies or TV shows in the genre set up the narrative to give the viewer a satisfying and violent conclusion to the tension that’s been building, like the final stand in The Return of the King, the faceoff in Braveheart, or even the last stand of The Last Samurai (which is also about a Western military man landing in Japan, and shares some crew with Shōgun). In essence, no matter how brutal and bloody the fight is, an explosive battlefield is the natural climax to the story arc. These movies and shows also often land on one implied conclusion: War, no matter how disgusting it may be, is a justified, even virtuous endeavor.

But while the war genre often posits a “good side” to root for over the evil one, Shōgun complicates the conception with Toranaga, who spends most of the series plotting in the background toward an alliance with key adversaries rather than preparing to fight them. Toranaga is cunning, ruthless, and willing to sacrifice his closest friends if it means he can avoid an all-out war. His motivations are what make Shōgun such a compelling show — while at the same time forcing audiences to reexamine their expectations of a historical war epic.

For Toranaga in Shōgun, there’s only one evil side: war itself. In his final speech to Yabushige, Toranaga describes his dream: “A nation without wars. An era of great peace.” Key to his calculus, however, is his willingness to sacrifice those dearest to him to achieve this peace. From the moment Ochiba returned to Osaka, Toranaga had been prepping Mariko (and her thoughts about death) to make a final appeal to gain allegiance from the heir’s army. And, knowing since the pilot that Yabushige was bound to betray him, Toranaga’s orchestration of Mariko’s sacrifice was his personal trolley problem — only in his version, the question is between sacrificing one life or setting 10,000 trolleys against another 10,000 trolleys on the same tracks.

Photo: Katie Yu/FX

Photo: Katie Yu/FX

In other shows, this setup wouldn’t quite work. Audiences are used to war being a mass of bodies hacking and slashing and shooting each other with the idea that sacrifice is necessary and just as long as both parties are armed. Individual deaths of beloved characters, however, are usually framed as the face for the heaps of lost lives. But Mariko walked into Osaka with a plan. With how close she came to committing seppuku, her sacrifice is likely one of the potential outcomes of the plan she discussed with Toranaga. When she willingly absorbs the blast of the bomb through the door, it’s absolutely heart-wrenching for the viewer and Blackthorne. His grief on screen, along with Father Alvito’s and Buntaro’s, is devastating to see unfold in the finale. In most media properties, the audience would walk away wishing the character was saved in time from their terrible fate, forced to be content with the revenge in their name. In Shōgun, we’re asked to accept her decision and not demand a bloodbath as retribution.

In this light, Toranaga seems ruthlessly Machiavellian, since he seems perfectly fine with innocent death. When Uejiro the gardener removes the rotting pheasant and is put to death by the village as a smokescreen to protect his spy, Toranaga treats Blackthorne’s distress as childish. Similarly, when the Erasmus is sunk at the end of the series, Toranaga routs the whole town of Ajiro, sticking severed heads of fishermen on a sign as punishment for the destruction of the boat — even though it was he, personally, who hired the men who spread gunpowder across the deck of Blackthorne’s beloved ship. Even his son’s graceless death is only audibly acknowledged by Toranaga as a way to buy time and delay the oncoming war.

Avoiding war seems to be Toranaga’s top priority throughout the series, though he never fully states it outright until his final confrontation with Yabushige. Throughout the show, he declines to share his feelings publicly, instead letting other characters in his council lead discussions — even if he’s manipulating their moves from behind the scenes. When his oldest friend and advisor threatens seppuku, Toranaga stands by his decision to surrender to Osaka, knowing that Hiromatsu’s death will set his battle-averse plans in motion. Even in his final interaction with Yabushige, who demands to know if Toranaga plans to reinstate the shogunate, triggering a return to a single military ruler for all of Japan, he forgoes the chance to monologue: “Why tell a dead man the future?”

Shōgun is sparing but decisive about the horrors of war that Toranaga wants to avoid. Violence is efficiently brutal in the world of the show. Even in the flashback to Toranaga’s early glory days, Shōgun is careful not to valorize war or his part in it; while his own soldiers brutally behead fallen enemies lying in bloody piles of limbs on the battlefield, a young Toranaga looks on, unwavering in his demeanor. Threatened by the arrival of Ishido’s main man Nebara Jozen in episode 4, Toranaga’s son Nagakado makes the rash decision to unload their newly minted cannon regiment on the interlopers. As the cannons in the distance roar, the camera cuts quickly to Jozen, his men, and their horses being torn to shreds in some of the goriest effects put to television. While there is a fair amount of swordplay skirmishes throughout the series, this cannon demonstration is one of the only depictions we get of mass warfare, and the results are truly terrifying. Amid the viscera, the audience can actually hear the feet of Nagakado’s men squelch in the blood-soaked mud as they creep in to finish everyone off. Compared to the hand-to-hand combat we’ve seen in the woods, where men drop from a single slash or stab, this preview of war is significantly more gruesome, particularly when you add in the full rifle regiments.

Photo: Katie Yu

Shōgun is careful to avoid the glorious charge into battle, upending the viewer’s relationship to political struggle. When Hiromatsu commits seppuku to protest Toranaga’s surrender to Osaka, he does so to prevent Toranaga’s other generals from sparking their own uprising. Toranaga clearly wants to stop him but can’t, the way Hiromatsu would do anything for him and must. Later, Toranaga reveals that he knew Hiromatsu’s actions would spark Yabushige and Blackthorne to head to Osaka on their own, which allows him to send Mariko with them as part of his true plan. Toranaga’s pained stoicism in this scene is revealing, and the tears in his eyes are the first time viewers see his facade crack. Even if Toranaga carries the weight of every death in service to his cause, he’s still unwavering in his ultimate goal.

That brings us back to Mariko’s standoff at the Osaka castle gates. As she tries to fight her way forward with her naginata, she’s relentlessly beaten back by Ishido’s men. After her defeat, she declares her intention to commit seppuku publicly for not being able to fulfill Toranaga’s orders, and it’s that moment that primes Ishido to release the Regents and their royal court as hostages — not her actual fight. In her actual fight, just before she picks up her own polearm, we see the pointless death of her armed escorts again and again as Ishido’s men slaughter them. Even when it looks like they may turn the tide, Mariko’s guards are cut down by arrows from men stationed on the castle walls. The battle is over in seconds, ending with one of Toranaga’s men bowing to Mariko while being speared directly through the heart from behind.

It’s hard to ignore the message of intentional protest by death. For those not directly involved, war — particularly period warfare like Shōgun — tends to be a tragedy that occurs in a faraway place, out of sight and out of mind. Even if her men remain nameless, Mariko’s sacrifice instead places tragedy immediately on the doorstep of Japan’s capital in the most unavoidable way possible. When looking to calculate what the cost of war is, it’s no longer a tally of nameless soldiers dying far away. It’s now the immediate loss of someone everyone in the show — and of course, the audience — holds dear to their hearts.

And the audience spends the entire last episode dealing with Blackthrone’s grief and acceptance. Shōgun defies the natural story arc by ending with a whimper; it’s in that precise moment of audience discomfort that viewers are forced to reckon with how much they want to see violence play out on screen, and perhaps even contend with how readily they are willing to accept war in real life.

In a way, Shōgun is both a critique of war and of the media’s portrayal of it. But the show is always clear that every decision demands some sort of sacrifice. “It’s hypocrisy, our lives,” Yabushige states, cliffside, as Toranaga draws his sword to second his seppuku. “All this death and sacrifice from lesser men just to ensure some victory in our names…” Yabushige in this moment exists almost as an analog for the audience, questioning Toranaga’s methods. “If you win, anything is possible,” Toranaga replies, echoing a sentiment uttered by Blackthorne earlier. And winning, Shōgun seems to imply, can happen before war even breaks out.

Shōgun is now streaming in full on Hulu.