Attempt on Blackthorne’s life in Osaka prison

The attempt on Anjin-san’s life in Osaka prison is a brief but consequential episode: the attack fails, and Toranaga immediately surrounds his prisoner with protection. The episode also exposes the double purpose of the prison. Anjin-san is vulnerable there, yet his conversations with a Spanish monk are valuable to Toranaga—and potentially to Ishido.

Setting and Vulnerability

Toranaga had deliberately sent Anjin-san to the prison. The old, sick monk held there was Spanish and hostile to the Portuguese, and Toranaga hoped the pilot might draw out what the monk knew. Toranaga also meant to make Ishido believe the foreigner was worthless. The arrangement placed Anjin-san inside a space Toranaga could not directly control: as Toranaga understood it, he had no jurisdiction over anyone in Osaka.

The Foiled Attempt and Its Response

The first attempt on Anjin-san’s life inside his cell was clumsy and was foiled. Toranaga’s response was immediate: he put a protective screen around him. The account does not identify who made the attempt, so its precise origin remains uncertain; what it establishes is that Anjin-san’s confinement carried a real threat and required active protection.

That protection extended to Toranaga’s spy, Minikui, a kaga-man, who had helped safeguard the prisoner. Toranaga rewarded him by extracting him safely from Osaka, granting him four kagas of his own, and giving him the hereditary right to use a stretch of the Tokaidō Road between the Second and Third Stages, in Toranaga’s domains near Yedo. Minikui was sent secretly out of Osaka on the first day. The reward shows that Toranaga treated the prison operation not as a minor precaution but as valuable service deserving lasting privilege.

Friendship and Political Contest

In the following days, Toranaga’s other spies reported that the two prisoners had become friends: the monk talked, while Anjin-san asked questions and listened. Ishido probably had spies in the cell as well, but Toranaga was not troubled by that surveillance because he believed Anjin-san was protected and safe. The cell had become a channel through which knowledge could pass, even under observation by rival powers.

That confidence was tested when Ishido unexpectedly tried to spirit Anjin-san away and place him under alien influence. The later move shifts the danger from an attack within the cell to a struggle over who could control the prisoner. The failed attempt thus marks the beginning of a protective contest around Anjin-san, whose value to Toranaga lay not only in what he knew but also in whom he might influence.