Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1)

by James Clavell

A rat scurried in the shadows cast by the hanging oil lantern over his head.

“Is Mr. Omi-san the daimyo?” Blackthorne asked, afraid of the swords in spite of himself.

In Tudor times with its status consciousness, Blackthorne would have used the honorific Lord. If he assumed a commoner status, he would have used the term "Master".

‘Always remember, child,’ her first teacher had impressed on her, ‘that to think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort.

“Yes. But those are the cold lands. Their habits are different from yours, and mine. For instance, in my country, everyone believes baths are dangerous for your health. My grandmother, Granny Jacoba, used to say, ‘A bath when you’re birthed and another when laid out’ll see thee through the Pearly Gates.’ ” “That’s very hard to believe.” “Some of your customs are very hard to believe. But it is true that I’ve had more baths in the short time I’ve been in your country than in as many years before. I admit freely I feel better for them.” He grinned. “I no longer believe baths are dangerous. So I’ve gained by coming here, no?”

This is mostly nonsense. The Tudors washed. It is true that few people in the Tudor period were wealthy enough to immerse themselves in water and God knows the public baths had started to spread disease by the end of the late medieval and into the Early Modern period, but the English certainly WASHED.

She wears her hair long and flowing most of the time.”

A married woman? In Elizabethan England? Like hell she did.

Where Drake singed Philip’s beard, I’m going to cut off his testicles.

Phillip II was already dead at this point and Blackthorne would have known that.

“Our Queen’s the third of the Tudor line, senhora.

Fifth. And Blackthorne would have known this as well!

side of beef.

Half a COW?

Near the seabed his plummeting stopped and he twisted and played with the fish, then surfaced and began a seemingly lazy, easy, but very fast overarm stroke for the shore that Alban Caradoc had taught him.

Europeans did not use the front crawl until the late 1800s. Blackthorne would not have known it

‘Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today I will learn how to dive.’ ”

Anjin-san, forget the village. A thousand million things can happen before those six months occur. A tidal wave or earthquake, or you get your ship and sail away, or Yabu dies, or we all die, or who knows? Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.

“No. Fifteen or sixteen’s usual. My wife was seventeen when we were married.

Nope. Commoners married at 18-22.

“I’m afraid of the sea,” she said. “So am I. An old fisherman told me once, ‘The man who’s not afraid of the sea’ll soon be drownded for he’ll go out on a day he shouldn’t. But we be afraid of the sea so we be only drownded now and again.’ ” He looked at her:

True love, we call it duty, is of soul to soul and needs no such expression—no physical expression, except perhaps the gift of death.”

“Once another man said to me, ‘I don’t understand you at all,’ and my husband said, ‘Your pardon, Lord, but no man can understand her. Her father doesn’t understand her, neither do the gods, nor her barbarian God, not even her mother understands her.’

“A waste of time discussing ‘God-things.’ Neh?” “If you seek facts, yes, Sire.”

“If I can make her available, would five koban be acceptable?” A koban was a gold coin that weighed eighteen grams. One koban equaled three koku of rice. “So sorry, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t wish to buy all the Tea House in Mishima, only the lady’s services for an evening.”

Ah, Mariko-sama, your snark is strong.

I certainly prefer it to potatoes,

Anachronism. Potatoes weren't much of a foodstuff in England at the time.