About

Mariko Translates Blackthorne's Rant refers to a series of caption memes that parody the scenes in which the Shogun character Lady Mariko translates Portuguese to Japanese for John Blackthorne. In memes, which use a reaction image of the two standing next to each other in traditional Japanese garments and the caption above, Mariko gives an abridged translation of Blackthorne's rants about sports and other topics.

Origin

On March 5th, 2024, episode three titled "Tomorrow Is Tomorrow" of the limited drama series Shōgun premiered.^[1] In the episode, the character John Blackthorne (portrayed by Cosmo Jarvis) pretends to be outraged to create a distraction, with the character Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai) giving an abridged version of his indignant speech.

- This is unacceptable. Peering into ladies' private quarters?! It's not proper! Worse than that, it's vulgar! Unholy perversion!
- I think the barbarian is offended. In his country, it is improper to … leer at women.

On April 16th, 2024, X^[2] / Twitter user @FanSince09 posted a still image of Mariko and Blackthorne from an earlier scene from the episode, captioning it with a humorous rant about hockey by Blackthorne and an abridged interpretation of it by Mariko. The post (shown below) garnered over 580 reposts and 6,500 likes in two days.

Spread

On April 17th, 2024, users shared more versions of the meme on X / Twitter. For example, on April 17th, X^[3] user @oeste posted a meme about association football that received over 3,600 reposts and 11,000 likes in one day (shown below).

More memes based on the format were shared in the following days. On April 18th, X^[4] user @DaveMcNamee3000 posted a meme about Red Lobster that gained over 3,000 reposts and 21,000 likes in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References