Warning: This article contains spoilers fromShogunepisode 8, “Abyss of Life.”
“I remember the first day Tokuma-san came to Vancouver.
The first word was about, ‘How shall we make that scene?
Tokuma Nishioka as Toda Hiromatsu in ‘Shogun’.Katie Yu/FX
I took this role just for this thing and showing real spirit to the world.
That’s my mission.
That’s why I’m here,'” Sanada recalls of Nishioka in an interview withEntertainment Weekly.
Tokuma Nishioka as Toda Hiromatsu, Tadanobu Asano as Kashigi Yabushige, Shinnosuke Abe as Buntaro in ‘Shogun’.Katie Yu/FX
“We know the feeling and emotion of each other so easily.
I could read the subtitles from his eyes, and he read mine too.”
Katie Yu/FX
“I blocked out the writing of it.
It was too painful,” writer Rachel Kondo says of that scene.
In an attempt to dissuade him from his current path, Hiromatsu threatens to perform seppuku.
Toranaga solemnly accepts the act, watching as his favored general and closest friend takes his life.
Through conversations with the writers and the actors, the events evolved.
“We really wanted to personify it with a character we had gotten to know,” Marks says.
Of course, the performance turns into something else."
This theater needs to happen.
“His eyeline had not lined up with the camera until that point.
It is a devastating scene.
It is my favorite scene in the whole show.”
“It was so tense, and so many takes we took,” Sanada recalls.
“But every take [there was] so much emotion coming.
It was hard to avoid to cry.”
Shogunstreams every Tuesday on Hulu and FX.
