Suwo

Suwo is a blind masseur whose hands serve both as a skilled instrument of perception and, in Yabu’s bath, as cover for a concealed political purpose. His account of blindness, wandering, and the Yoshi clan’s past draws Yabu into sleep while leaving Suwo free to weigh whether to kill him.

Identity and Background

Introduced at Omi’s house, Suwo has been sent to massage Yabu. He is tall, very thin, visibly old, and blind; when Yabu asks how long he has served Omi, Suwo says three years and describes his employer as kind to him. Before that, he wandered from village to village, staying for days or half a year at a time. His experience has made him attentive to what a listener wants: he waits for Yabu’s questions and uses his touch, as well as his ears, to judge the man beneath his manner.

The Past Beneath the Massage

As Suwo works, he tells Yabu that he once served Yoshi Toranaga-noh-Chikitada, when the clan’s fief was no larger than the village below them. He remembers being present at the camp where Chikitada was assassinated: Obata Hiro, the son of Chikitada’s most powerful ally, killed him with a single blow from a Murasama blade. Suwo connects that murder to the superstition that Murasama blades bring ill luck to the Yoshi clan, giving Yabu a piece of clan history while drawing his attention away from the massage.

Suwo also recounts how a bandit blinded him. The last image he remembers is the attacker’s rotting teeth and the arc of a sword; after the blow, he recalls perceiving the scent of flowers as a vision of colored perfume. A blind monk then taught him massage and how to perceive through touch. Suwo regards blindness as a small price for the fleeting vision of nirvana and Buddha that followed the attack, while his practiced fingers now read other people with an acuity he says exceeds his former sight.

The story is truthful except in one politically consequential detail: Suwo lets Yabu believe that the monastery was near Osaka, when it was actually across Yabu’s western border. Its teacher, Su, was the uncle of Yabu’s enemy, Ikawa Jikkyu. The revelation recasts the soothing personal history as a deliberate performance, one that places Suwo within the reach of a rival’s family while Yabu listens without suspicion.

By the end of the massage, Yabu has fallen asleep, as Suwo intended. The old man privately considers whether to snap Yabu’s neck, reasoning that his death might benefit Omi, the village, and the patron whose gift Suwo seeks to repay. He postpones the decision rather than acting at once. The scene leaves his gentle, attentive manner in sharp contrast with his capacity for violence: his hands can interpret a body, lull a dangerous lord, and potentially kill him.

The Scene's Dramatic Irony

The massage takes place while Yabu is privately turning over how to spend twenty thousand pieces of silver: rebuilding his castle keep, buying special horses for the cannon, expanding his espionage network, or bribing Ikawa Jikkyu’s cooks to poison him. At Kasigi Omi’s hilltop house, with its view over the village and harbor, the political schemer submits to the hands of a blind old masseur. Yabu has feared blindness for as long as he can remember, dreaming of waking in darkness and being unable to see; that fear makes the massage more pleasurable to him, even as it leaves him exposed. The contrast sharpens when Suwo’s touch puts Yabu to sleep and Suwo silently weighs killing him. The scene turns the comfort Yabu takes in the blind man’s hands into a vulnerability: while Yabu calculates how to reach an enemy through poison, the man tending him is already weighing a far more immediate act of violence.

Tactile Judgment and Mortality

Suwo’s touch also functions as a private form of diagnosis. As his fingers work, he reads Yabu as dangerous and volatile, about forty, an excellent horseman and swordsman, and already burdened by a failing liver. He predicts that Yabu will die within two years, with saké and probably aphrodisiacs hastening the end. The forecast gives the massage a second, unsettling measure: Suwo is not only deciding what Yabu’s body will permit him to do now, but discerning how little time the lord may have left.