Toranaga and Father Alvito meet at Yokosé at a moment when religious allegiance, trade, and the balance of military power converge. Alvito cannot deliver the Christian lords Toranaga needs against Ishido, and Toranaga sees that failure as potentially decisive: if they remain aligned with Ishido, he believes his own forces will be overwhelmed. Yet he keeps his promise to allow the Jesuits to build a temple at Yedo. The meeting thus turns on a sharp contrast between political failure and personal obligation: Toranaga grants a religious concession even as he confronts the limits of his leverage over the Church and its converts.

Setting and Participants

Toranaga receives Alvito in a clearing at night. Toranaga sits alone on a dais, with guards arranged in a semicircle beyond hearing. John Blackthorne is the only other person nearby, ordered to remain against the platform; he watches the priest closely, while Alvito appears not to notice him. The separation of the guards gives the encounter privacy without removing its political weight: this is a negotiation held under the protection of Toranaga’s armed authority.

Alvito approaches in an elegant orange Buddhist robe, with a rosary and cross hanging at his waist. At ten paces he stops, kneels, and bows before beginning the formalities. His clothing places the outward signs of two religious worlds in a single image, but his deference is also practical: he knows he is speaking to a ruler whose decisions can affect the Jesuits’ access to Japan and the lives of those under Toranaga’s power.

The Failed Appeal for Support

The central business of the meeting is Alvito’s report that neither Lord Kiyama nor Lord Onoshi will abandon Ishido to join Toranaga. The Jesuits have made their strongest suggestions, but the two Christian lords remain opposed to Toranaga. Alvito is distressed at having to deliver the news, and Toranaga responds that suggestions are not what he asked for. His rebuke exposes the gap between the influence Alvito’s position seems to promise and the limited authority he is willing, or able, to exercise.

Toranaga challenges that limit through the moral language of the faith. He contrasts the Jesuits’ treatment of a man cast out for the natural act of pillowing with their reluctance to intervene when converts behave, in his judgment, unnaturally and treacherously by refusing urgent help to a friend. He insists that the priests understand the seriousness of their refusal. Alvito answers that the two lords have committed no mortal sin, and that the Church’s rules do not give him grounds to punish them for a political choice.

Alvito explains the boundary more fully when Toranaga asks whether the Jesuits would cast someone out for sinning against their creed. He says they would, but insists that excommunication cannot properly be threatened merely to win temporal advantage. He would risk damnation by making such a threat without the necessary religious grounds and without intending to carry it through. The answer reveals both the force and the limit of Jesuit discipline: it can address violations of faith, but Alvito will not turn it into an instrument for compelling political allegiance. He says he and the Father-Visitor dell’Aqua have fulfilled their promise to try to persuade the lords, though they have failed.

Military and Institutional Stakes

Toranaga immediately translates the refusal into military arithmetic. If the Christian daimyō coalition sides with Ishido, Toranaga believes he must lose, facing twenty samurai for every one of his own. He asks when the attack will come and whether Alvito would tell him if he knew. Alvito says that he would; Toranaga privately doubts him. The exchange leaves intelligence and trust unresolved even after the priest has reported the failure of his mission.

The prospect of defeat sharpens Toranaga’s sense of confinement. He considers whether he must resort to Crimson Sky, a desperate advance toward Kyoto that he regards as bound to fail. His predicament is not simply a shortage of troops. Toranaga reflects that priests and Portuguese traders are joined in Japan’s commerce: the priests possess spiritual and temporal authority over their flock, while their language skills and standing make them important intermediaries in the Black Ship trade. Without the priests, there would be no trade; expelling them could also drive foreign traders away.

He recalls the Taikō’s earlier attempt to expel the priests while preserving commerce. For two years no Black Ship came. According to reports Toranaga remembers, the chief of the priests in Macao had halted trade in reprisal for the Taikō’s Expulsion Edicts. In the third year the Taikō yielded, invited the priests back, and ignored the edicts despite the treason and rebellion they had advocated. The remembered episode gives Toranaga’s present dilemma a historical pattern: a ruler can issue prohibitions, but trade gives the Church a means of making those prohibitions costly.

Concession and Outcome

Toranaga does not conceal his disappointment that the two lords remain with the enemy. He nevertheless tells Alvito that he believes the Jesuits kept their solemn promise, and says he will keep his own. The Jesuits may begin building their temple at Yedo at once; land has already been set aside. This permission is not a declaration of trust or an endorsement of Jesuit power. Toranaga says he cannot forbid the priests entry into the Empire, but can make them unwelcome in his domain. He extends the same warning to the new barbarians should they arrive, and leaves John Blackthorne’s position unresolved.

Alvito receives the decision as an unexpected reprieve and thanks God for it. Toranaga then apologizes for his harsh words, explaining that they were spoken in anger, and grants Alvito permission to say his service the following day. The meeting closes not with an alliance but with a limited accommodation: the Jesuits keep access to Yedo and a place to build, while Toranaga preserves his claim to judge how welcome they will be. His final reference to karma leaves the duration and consequences of that settlement open. The failed political appeal has not changed the balance of forces, but Toranaga’s choice to honor the agreement prevents the confrontation from becoming an immediate rupture with the priests whose influence he resents and whose commercial connections he cannot easily dispense with.