Even if one of Mariko’s (Anna Sawai) ladies-in-waiting had not spied Yabushige (Todanobu Asano) letting ninja assassins into Team Toranaga’s castle in Osaka, the dude’s goose would still have been cooked in the series finale of FX‘s Shōgun. That’s because, as his nephew Omi (Hiroto Kanai) explains, word of Yabushige’s profound guilt and grief in the wake of Mariko’s death made it to Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada). Yabushige’s complete horror realizing he was responsible for the lady’s death indicted him more than anything else.
For months, now, we’ve watched as Yabushige blithely betrayed his lord in secret, enjoyed stewing a man alive for kicks, and happily killed people left and right. So what was it about Mariko’s death that rattled the shifty character so much? Why was this the sin that damned him in his own eyes? Well, according to Shōgun showrunner Justin Marks, Yabushige’s realization that he helped kill Mariko was a moment that evoked Fredo in The Godfather Part II or even Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems.
“First of all, I don’t think he expected her to die. That was a big part of this, right? [He expected] imprisonment [for her],” Marks said. “So it’s kind of the classic, like Fredo in Godfather II, ‘You didn’t say you were gonna hurt Michael’ [scenario]. Like the betrayal that you don’t think is gonna go that far.”
“And it’s like, what were you thinking was gonna happen?!”
Yabushige decided to team up with Ishido (Takehiro Hira) because he wrongfully believed that Toranaga was essentially defeated. Mariko had become a thorn in Ishido’s side, publicly challenging his assertion that he wasn’t holding any of the lords and ladies in Osaka hostage. While Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido) was seemingly able to convince Ishido to give in to Mariko’s demand to leave the city — as the alternative would be she would commit seppuku — Ishido decided to use force to solve the problem. Using Yabushige, he hired assassins to kill many of Toranaga’s loyalists in Osaka with the aim of capturing Mariko.
However, when Mariko and her friends, including Yabushige, find themselves barricaded in a shed with the ninja assassins prepping explosives to kill them, Mariko sacrifices herself to take the brunt of the blow. She saves everyone else and foils Ishido’s plan…and exposes Yabushige’s ruthlessness.
“Part of [Asano’s] change in his performance and what he was charting, which I think is very clear in Episode 10, is this sort of shell-shocked physical component,” Marks said. “Like you know, his own Regarding Henry moment of being able to look at his life from afar.”
Shōgun co-creator Rachel Kondo said, “And now you’re seeing your life from afar realizing, ‘Oh shit, I’m the bad guy.’”
“I think he was just feeling truly the totality of the weight of all these lies finally crashing down,” Marks said. “You know, it was funny we were talking and catching up with some of the writers lately and Emily Yoshida reminded me the Uncut Gems reference that we always used to use in the writer’s room for Yabushige. Like he’s just got one lie against another, against another, and when is this all going finally fall?”
“The ending of Uncut Gems is very much a relief for Sandler because he’s finally liberated from his lies. And I think that, you know, there’s a hint of that with Yabushige where he’s just so sick of it and he just finally sees himself in that way. And, and can’t take it anymore because Mariko.”
Mariko, Kondo said, was one of the few characters in all of Shōgun who represented a purity of belief and intent. With her passing, Yabushige hasn’t just betrayed a friend, but someone who brought integrity to the world. “That’s you,” Kondo reiterated.
That’s who Yabushige truly is. Not a great man, but a destroyer of goodness.
