The Amida assassin’s attack inside Osaka Castle turns Toranaga’s private quarters into a battlefield and exposes the danger surrounding John Blackthorne. The intruder passes through layers of guards by stealth and deception, reaches Blackthorne’s room, and nearly kills him. The attempt fails only when Blackthorne fights back and Naga arrives; the assassin’s death then reveals his connection to the Amida Tong.

Infiltration and Breach

In the darkest part of the night, a small, nearly invisible figure climbs over the garden wall. His close-fitting clothes, tabi, cowl, and mask are all black. At the stone inner fortress, he avoids the two guards at the main door by throwing a cloth-covered hook attached to a thin silk rope. The hook catches on an embrasure; he climbs, squeezes through the narrow opening, and disappears inside. The castle’s height and guarded entrances do not stop him: he moves across the battlements and through corridors while sentries remain unaware.

The assassin pauses in an alcove as Toranaga’s Brown Guard patrols pass. At a guarded door, he waits for a samurai to lean back and briefly close his eyes. He then slips a silk noose over the guard’s neck and tightens it. When the man struggles, the assassin stabs him between the vertebrae. He drags the body into an empty audience room, shuts the door, and crosses to a reinforced inner door. There he gives the first part of a password. A guard answers with its second part, apparently accepting the intruder as someone with legitimate business. The assassin instead lunges through the doorway and kills both guards with quick knife thrusts to the throat.

Kiri encounters him in an inner corridor while carrying a tray. The two cups are unused, the food untouched, and steam rises from the teapot. She drops the tray, reaches into her obi for a dagger, and tries to cry out, but the assassin is already racing away. Her alarm sounds as he rushes through an anteroom among waking women and maids and continues into the innermost corridor. The failed interception has now turned his covert entry into a castle-wide emergency, but it does not prevent him from reaching the room he seeks.

Blackthorne Survives; the Network Is Exposed

In the pitch-dark room, the assassin leaps at the figure on the futon. Blackthorne catches the knife arm in a viselike grip. The two struggle on the floor; the intruder breaks free and slashes, but the quilt tangles his attack. When he lunges again, Blackthorne twists away and drives a hardened foot into his groin, creating the opening to escape. Naga, wearing only a loincloth, rushes between Blackthorne and the attacker with his sword raised. As samurai crowd the doorway, the assassin turns his knife on himself and thrusts it beneath his chin. Naga then strikes off his head.

No one recognizes the dead man. Naga searches his clothing and finds the identifying mark: a small tattoo of Amida, the special Buddha, etched in the assassin’s armpit. The sign links the attack to the secret Amida Tong, while the intruder’s knowledge of the castle’s route and password suggests preparation beyond a simple breach. Toranaga calls him a ronin and doubts that he can be traced; Hiro-matsu blames Ishido, but Toranaga’s own questioning turns toward how the Tong can be approached and hired.

Toranaga concludes that he was probably not the intended victim: the assassin knew which room Blackthorne occupied, and Toranaga had guards outside his doors on both this night and the previous one. He orders Blackthorne’s guards doubled, declaring him worth ten thousand men. The attack thus changes Blackthorne from a valuable foreign captive into a target whose survival Toranaga treats as a strategic necessity.

Political Aftermath and Strategic Meaning

The failed attack also exposed a breach of trust inside the castle. Hiro-matsu, as commander of the bodyguard, accepted responsibility for the failure, but Toranaga did not answer with simple punishment. He asked how someone would find and hire the Amida Tong, shifting the discussion from the dead intruder to the network that had made the attempt possible. Hiro-matsu could not tell him; Toranaga’s question made clear that identifying the attacker mattered less than understanding how such violence could be commissioned and carried out.

Toranaga suspected that the assassin knew Blackthorne’s location, perhaps through information gathered within the castle. He considered the possibility of spies and concealed listening places, while discounting Kiri and Mariko as sources of a leak. Blackthorne had already revealed information that made him dangerous to Toranaga’s enemies, and Toranaga had arranged for him to receive a doctor, suitable food, and rest before questioning him further. The attack turned those precautions into an urgent security measure: Blackthorne’s survival was not merely a matter of hospitality or personal safety, but a condition of Toranaga retaining a strategically valuable source of knowledge.

Recognition, Anonymity, and the Limits of Security

The assassin’s passage through the password-guarded door exposes a weakness more unsettling than a missed patrol: he can perform the sign of authorized access and then use the opening to kill the men who accept it. The password works as a credential, but not as proof of loyalty. The castle’s defenses are breached not by force against its strongest entrance, but by a sequence of borrowed signals, concealed movement, and violence at the moment of recognition.

After the attack, the dead man’s face offers no useful identity. The small Amida tattoo beneath his arm is the only visible connection to the secret network, while Toranaga’s description of him as a ronin points to the difficulty of tracing an operative without an established allegiance. The contrast between an ordinary-looking stranger and a marked affiliation leaves the investigation with evidence of a system, but no clear path to the person who set it in motion.