"A sword to cut to through our ignorance, a noose to bind our desires"

Toranaga is sold out by his own brother, which is tantamount to a death sentence. Fuji's husband must commit suicide for yelling at Ishido while putting his hand on his sword, and Fuji's infant son is killed as well Buntaro's a wife beater who just barely stops himself from killing Blackthorne in cold blood. So it's not as if Yabushige is uniquely awful, and Toranaga and Ishido are just as duplicitous as Yabushige. Besides that the actor gives a great performance that conveys the absurdity of the politicking and sometimes of the social conventions; his desire not to throw his life away for someone else's cause while trying to get a little something out of it; the frustration of having a boss who makes what appear to be inexplicable decisions, etc. It's all quite relatable.

I’ve always thought Toronaga-sama’s cleansing of the village is a dual purpose thing. First, he is testing Anjin-San, but I suspect he’s also getting rid of a few people who were either working for Ishido or the other Regents, or who were undesirable in other ways. At least in the books Toronaga is usually not wasteful as he’s a bit of a penny pincher. This trait extends to human assets as well.

Fudo Myoo = Foodoh Meeyoh-oh

This is a bit of a special entry. Not only is it the first Fudo Myo-o statue I've covered on this series (took long enough), but it's the largest Fudo Myo-o in Japan, and at a very interesting location: Isshinji in Oita city. Standing in at around 20 meters (over 60 feet), the red Fudo Myo-o (Acala) here is incredibly imposing, in sharp contrast with the gentle golden Kannon on the other end of the temple grounds. Fudo Myo-o is the primary messenger of the cosmic Buddha Mahavairocana (Dainichi Nyorai), and the head of the Wisdom Kings, entities who represent the mighty secret powers of the Buddhas. I did some digging on the temple's history and found out that they are an independent esoteric sect. The head priest there, Toshio Imamiya, wrote this description on his blog (AI translated): "My grandfather, who built the temple, studied Buddhism on his own and established an independent school by interpreting the ideas of Fudo Myo-o and Kobo Daishi (Kukai) in his own way. With my grandfather's ideas and the cooperation of many people, construction of Isshinji Temple was completed in April 1960." The temple, with its many sakura trees, has become a highly-regarded spot for cherry blossom viewing.

Right. We can’t judge the behaviors of a medieval warring society by our standards. The West now has the Geneva Convention rules-which are regularly broken: GITMO, black ops, torture sites, etc. If there’s one thing we know, war causes atrocities. This period in feudal Japan is basically in a civil war.

Boiling people alive was rare but it did occur throughout that era in both Western and other cultures. The Netherlands have a kettle that was used to boil prisoners alive displayed actually. But in all cultures it was not used often at all.

It wasn't unique to Yabu. We have Omi randomly decapitating people, and in the book, Naga kills Jozen by feeding him to dogs, Toranaga has Ishido buried to his neck and invites people to take turns sawing at his neck with a blunt saw, where he takes 3 days to die . Clavell, probably influenced by his own experience and also with some historical truth, gave his Sengoku-era Japanese this element of sadistic cruelty almost as a mundane fact of life. And boiling people alive was a thing of the period; look up the story of the execution of Goemon Ishikawa. The story frames it kind of like a journey Blackthorne takes, first thinking he has encountered violent primitive barbarians, then eventually having this Stockholmian realisation that his people are the barbaric ones. Finding the poetry in this violent, ritualistic, death-obsessed culture.

People can be multidimensional. I do agree he's a somewhat comic character, but I think we are more supposed to be laughing at him than with him. He's a self-serving snake in the grass all the way through, and he pays the price for it. I also think the actor is simply so magnetic and expressive that he imbues the character with a certain charisma for many viewers. And many of the characters that we may sympathize with do fairly heinous things. Toranaga spikes the heads of a bunch of innocent villagers in punishment for something he himself did as a test for Blackthorne.

Aye. And what's more, the way Yabu is depicted in the show, his kink is understanding death. Boiling the crewmember alive is closest he can get to it without dying himself. And the man was gonna die either way, what a joy it is that his death can bring understanding to life, neh? That's also why I think he asks for a 'better' death, one that would take longer so he could appriciate it.

I think you are wrong about Omi being Toranaga's spy. Rather I think it was the scribe who stands silently with Yabushige at all relevant times. Omi played a very dangerous game when he influenced Toranaga's son to kill Ishido's envoy and to try to kill Toranaga's half-brother, something Toranaga was well aware of. I don't think Omi would have done this if he was Toranaga's spy.

Iove this new version of Yabu, but in the book he was as close to a serial killer as he could get. Even getting sexual gratification at the thought of killing. Book Yabu was deeply disturbed. Kinda glad they wrote him differently in this new version where he's more concerned about self-preservation and has way more charisma.

I mean don’t forget in the last episode, Toranaga killed random villager and put their heads on a fence to find who burned down Anjin’s boat as a rest of loyalty

There are different accounts on what happened, in one account he saves his son by holding him above his head and threw him over the edge when he himself went under, the child was permitted to live after that. in the other account he first tries to hold his son up above his head but when he can't hold it any longer he holds his son under the water to kill kim as fast as possible to spare him the torture.

Akuma

Originally the story was Mariko-centric and editors wanted a male protagonist instead so Clavell added a more Blackthorne-perspective to it. If you want to read about Japanese atrocities, check out The Rape of Nanking. Warning: not for the weak of stomach (as it's just as brutal, if not more disgusting than WW2 Jewish treatment). What the new version tries to do is cover up an old ethnocentric ideology that most civilizations have: outsiders are less than human. I can understand today's Japan wanting to hide that piece of their history as much as any other country. We are not responsible for the acts of our fathers. But at the same time, white-washing history does nobody any favors.

It's strange because I have a really good friend a 90 year old Japanese Buddhist teacher. I've asked her about evil she says it does not exist as we westerners understand it