But Blackthorne’s decency toward Fuji clearly impresses Mariko. So does his naked body, of which she gets an eyeful when she stumbles upon him preparing to bathe in a hot spring. There they sit back to back, and using increasingly tender, sensual dialogue, he walks her through what it might be like to spend an evening in London as his guest. In part he’s joshing her, saying he’d take her right to the queen. But he’s not kidding about going to the theater and enjoying a good tragedy, just as she does. And his near-poetic reverie about walking along the Thames seems to transport her right there.

Yet it might be his praise of her fortitude that truly plants the seeds. When you look at a house that’s been knocked down and rebuilt by one of Japan’s natural disasters, he explains, you don’t see the ruins, you see the house. Whatever happened to ruin Mariko’s life in the past, including the recent death of her husband, she has managed to rebuild herself. The two face away from each other throughout the conversation so that solely words bridge the distance between them. Through this arrangement, the writer Emily Yoshida and the director Frederick Toye paradoxically heighten the sense that the characters are closer than ever.

I reviewed last night’s very good episode of Shōgun for the New York Times.