Thank you very much for your thoughtful attempts to not surprise peopel with spoilers. I sincerely appreciate that attitude. My mother scarred me for life when I was in 9th grade. I was 1000 (yes, one thousand) pages into Shogun when Mom casually mentioned the ending. "You know, he ______ , right?" AAAAAAA! No! I didn't know! And now I don't want to know why, either! .... I never finished the book.