Blackthorne is permitted to take Erasmus out of Yedo in a departure that joins official permission to covert preparation. Toranaga gives Yabu authority to move the ship and take Blackthorne with him; before dawn, Naga guides the party through guarded passages to the wharf. Blackthorne boards, reunites with his waiting crew, and begins to take Erasmus into Yedo harbor with Yabu and Naga’s forces alongside. The episode turns access to a ship into a political and navigational question: permission opens the way, but disciplined passage and Blackthorne’s command are needed to make the departure real.

The plan behind the permission

Earlier that evening, Yabu asks Toranaga to let him go to Osaka ahead of his lord, presenting the journey as a matter of ceremony and preparation. Ishido, he says, does not understand proper ceremony; arrangements might take weeks if they are not made correctly. This explanation gives Yabu a plausible reason to travel and a way to make delay seem like a practical consequence rather than a political maneuver.

Yabu adds a second proposal: the foreign ship should be moved to Yokohama in case of a typhoon, and the Musket Regiment can guard it there. He suggests going by sea, which would be quicker, and asks to take Naga along, leaving him in charge at Yokohama. Toranaga agrees and leaves the decision to Yabu. The permission is therefore broad but not empty: Naga is assigned a responsibility, the ship is to be relocated, and Yabu receives discretion over the arrangements.

Yabu also tells Toranaga that Tsukku-san is angry and might turn his converts against Blackthorne. He presents protection as an urgent concern, then proposes taking Blackthorne with him while he makes arrangements in Osaka and, if needed, continues to Nagasaki to recruit foreign sailors. Toranaga accepts this proposal too. The journey can thus be explained as protection and preparation for a possible future voyage, even as it gives Yabu control over Blackthorne’s movements and the ship’s immediate destination.

Passage through the castle and to the wharf

The departure begins in darkness just before dawn. A side-gate portcullis rises, and ten men cross the narrow bridge over the innermost moat. The sentries deliberately turn their backs rather than challenge them. Naga leads Yabu, Blackthorne, Uraga-noh-Tadamasa, and six samurai through little-used corridors, staircases, and side passages. When they encounter patrols, Naga displays a silver cipher, and the party passes without being questioned.

At the main south gate, the only crossing over the castle’s first great moat, another company of samurai waits. The group is surrounded and screened as it crosses, then proceeds toward First Bridge and down through the alleys toward the sea. At the Erasmus wharf, the escort stops outside the cordon. The ten men pass through the barriers and are admitted to the jetty despite the guards and flares. The route is not an unguarded flight: it depends on controlled access, coordinated escorts, and a signal that allows the party through successive checkpoints.

Yabu takes charge at the wharf and confirms that the arrangements are ready. Blackthorne sees his samurai assembled nearby and directs Uraga to join them, as previously planned. He boards Erasmus and checks the ship as he makes for the quarterdeck. His attention is practical as well as jubilant: the sky is still dark, and he assesses the signs for the day before casting off. The crew, by contrast, arrives apprehensive, stumbling into the clearing under guard. Blackthorne calls them aboard, turning the controlled transfer at the wharf into the beginning of a shared voyage.

Blackthorne’s command and the first movement

The departure depends on more than getting past the gates. Blackthorne checks the wind and knows that even the broad, sheltered waters of Yedo harbor could become dangerous if a sudden squall arose. Once the bow hawsers are secured to the other craft, he orders the departure. The other captain lets his galley ease away from the jetty; Naga is aboard with samurai and the rest of Blackthorne’s retainers, while Yabu stands beside Blackthorne on Erasmus’s quarterdeck.

The ship heels under the pull of a current. Ginsel, leaning from a small platform roped to the starboard side, swings the lead and calls out the depth. Blackthorne orders the other vessel to slow, and both ships feel their way toward the harbor stream under riding lights. Their movement is deliberate rather than a sudden dash: the depth is being sounded, the vessels remain in communication, and Blackthorne attends to the conditions around them as they leave the jetty.

That care reflects a wider problem established in Blackthorne’s experience as a pilot. Available charts can be too vague to guide a voyage, and longitude cannot be fixed by the methods available to him. A rutter offers another kind of navigation: a pilot’s accumulated observations of courses, depths, water, seabed, winds, currents, hazards, and places to find water or shelter. Such knowledge is valuable but not infallible; errors can enter through the pilot, copyist, printer, or translator, and a navigator cannot be certain of a route until he has sailed it himself. In Yedo harbor, his checks of the wind and Ginsel’s lead-line soundings make that larger dependence on practical observation immediate.

Political and maritime significance

Blackthorne’s earlier voyages in Japanese waters have already shown why control of the sea is inseparable from political power. On the journey along the Izu Peninsula, Rodrigues chose an open-water course from Cape Ito toward Cape Shinto rather than following the coast, because speed mattered. A coastal route would have been safer, but it would have cost time; the decision placed navigation, risk, and political urgency in the same calculation. Blackthorne’s later handling of a galley under pressure from a faster frigate similarly required him to judge wind, available sea room, and the other vessel’s next tack. His departure from Yedo takes place in harbor rather than in that earlier collision danger, but it again makes seamanship part of the action rather than mere background.

The immediate result is a transfer of Blackthorne, his crew, and his ship into a movement organized by Yabu and Naga, with Toranaga’s authorization behind it. The departure does not itself establish that Erasmus has reached Yokohama or that a later voyage to Nagasaki has begun. What it does establish is that the ship has left its berth and is moving into the harbor stream, with Blackthorne back aboard and directing its handling. Political permission has set the route in motion; from the jetty onward, the ship’s safe progress rests on watchfulness, coordination, and the pilot’s judgment.