‘Shogun’: Anna Sawai on Her Character’s Final Transformation

Anna Sawai in “Shogun.” Her character makes a fateful decision in the most recent episode.

This interview includes spoilers for the ninth episode of “Shogun.”

Her character on “Shogun” has just died, but Anna Sawai doesn’t seem to mind much. If anything, she’s glad we’ve hit the sweeping period drama’s high point. “The last two episodes are very special,” she said, smiling, during a video chat earlier this week. “The men have been physically fighting. The women are fighting their own battles.” Sawai’s character, Lady Mariko, has just fought her last.

As a vassal of the powerful Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), Lady Mariko serves as the translator for Toranaga’s unlikely ally, the shipwrecked English navigator John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). But her reputation has been in tatters ever since her father violated Japanese feudal law and slew the tyrant he was sworn to serve.

When she is held captive by the scheming Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira), Lady Mariko threatens ritual suicide — demanded by tradition, yet an anathema for a devout Catholic such as herself — until her release is granted. When assassins intervene, she makes one last defiant protest, calling herself by her father’s name and blocking a door rigged with explosives. It’s the moment to which the series, and Mariko’s entire life, has built.

When Blackthorne volunteers to kill Mariko so she doesn’t have to kill herself, “she realizes that this is an act of love,” Sawai said.

This explains Sawai’s fondness for such a dark moment. “We get to see Mariko transform,” said the actor, who also currently stars in the generational family drama “Pachinko” and the Godzilla spinoff series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.” “She really makes a difference.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

In her dying declaration, Lady Mariko refers to herself using her father’s surname, Akechi, for the first time in the series. Why was now the moment?

In the book, it was “Toda Mariko” — Toda is [her husband] Buntaro’s last name — but we really wanted to feel the presence of her father in why she was doing this. She’d learned that her father wanted her to continue the journey he could not live to do. Until then, she doesn’t really realize what that is.

But standing in front of [the explosion], she is not only answering to her lord’s needs, but she is protesting her father’s death too — the whole family legacy. Even though all of Japan sees her father as disloyal, she’s still standing up for what he did. She would never be able to do that in front of Ishido-sama; she would get killed that moment. This was the best opportunity just to say his name, to make sure that people understood why she was doing this. If she’s going out, she will always be her father’s daughter.

Lady Mariko introduces the viewer to the concept of the Eightfold Fence, inner barriers erected to conceal one’s true feelings within feudal Japan’s demanding cultural conventions. But especially in the last few episodes, the fence comes tumbling down.

I think she knows that the end is coming soon, because of Lord Toranaga-sama. It’s giving her so much meaning and a reason to live a very purposeful life in being able to avenge her family. We see her coming to life. She’s really starting to bloom, toward the end.

In addition to her claiming the family legacy in her dying moments, she had that painful heart-to-heart with her husband, Buntaro, when he asks her to join him in committing ritual suicide following Toranaga’s apparent surrender. To hear her speak so honestly was shocking.

If she said yes there, their death is not going to mean anything. It’s just dying because they think their lord is giving up, not dying for a greater cause, and she has lived knowing that she wants to fulfill her purpose. Maybe there was a way to politely decline, but that was the one moment she could truthfully say, “This is not what I want. You really don’t understand. I almost feel sorry for you.”

Mariko’s need to hold back makes her romance with Blackthorne fascinating. She wants to express her desire for him, but can’t.

Yes. In modern Japan, people say “I love you” or “I really, really like you.” But I remember hearing that long ago, they would look up at the moon and say, “Oh, the moon is beautiful,” and that meant “I love you.” When I started learning about these things and looking at it from that lens, it made more sense.

Also, considering every element that makes her, this is not a good idea. She is a Catholic and he’s a Protestant. She’s a wife — although she does think her husband died. She’s his interpreter. Everything is wrong about it. But Blackthorne is the only one who sees her as a human being, who really respects her for who she is. The other men look at her like property, or as someone who is three steps behind.

I know that, for some viewers, it might feel like it’s not enough. But I think it makes it that much more romantic. Despite everything that’s trying to pull her away, they’re naturally drawn to each other.

In this episode, Blackthorne steps up to serve as her “second” during ritual suicide, which would entail beheading her to spare her from killing herself, which as a Catholic she believes to be a mortal sin. He would be killing the woman he loves, but at her own request, to save her immortal soul.

With that scene, I was obviously walking into it thinking that Mariko was going to take her life — I couldn’t play it as, “But she’s going to be saved!” Then Blackthorne comes up, and that’s when she realizes that this is an act of love. He has to kill her, so that she can die a proud Catholic and a samurai. There’s nothing more powerful than that.

You and Cosmo Jarvis have to communicate all this entirely with your eyes.

Cosmo really gives you his energy as an actor. I was so supported by him. It would have turned out very differently if it was anyone else.

What attracted Lady Mariko to Catholicism?

That was one thing I was really trying to understand. I didn’t know how you could be Catholic and a samurai, because they feel so opposite. But it’s not because Mariko believes in the power of the religion, or the money, or the politics. She wasn’t interested in any of that. It was more that the Catholic priest reached his hand out when she really needed something to hold onto. It could have been anything, but it happened to be that. She found light where she couldn’t see any.

Lady Mariko serves as the show’s translator. Did you find the character, or your performance, shifting depending on the language she was speaking?

I speak both languages fluently, so it’s something I can do without thinking too much, but my personality changes. I’m more friendly when I’m speaking English, because Westerners are more outgoing in general. Japanese people are more closed-up and formal, so that’s what I tend to do when I speak Japanese.

In Mariko’s case, she is a very professional, formal character. So there was always this wall, whether or not she was speaking Japanese. But with Blackthorne, in the beginning especially, there was a little bit of, “I don’t really care what you think. I don’t have to show you the same respect that I show the Japanese men.” There was a little bit more frankness in English, I think.

Surprisingly, people are more interested in our culture and the language. Viewers are looking things up, things that feel so foreign to them. They’re showing the interest. But I will say that the show is in period Japanese, not modern Japanese. If people are trying to learn the language from the show … [laughs]

“M’lord, m’lady, thee, thou, thy?”

Oh gosh, yes. They’ll be speaking a very different language from what we know now.