What Yasuke Deserves
How a video game sparked a historical controversy
For years, Assassin’s Creed fans have been clamoring for a game set in feudal Japan when the ninja were at their height. Ninja, after all, are perfect for a game all about assassins and stealth. In the latest entry, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, you can not only play as a female ninja, Naoe, but you can also play as an African samurai based on the historical figure of Yasuke. The controversy around the latter choice has been so strong that it’s made for an interesting debate about the true history of Yasuke himself.
Woke Or Racist?
Now I won’t deny that there are anti-black racists and right-wing culture warriors inciting outrage over this game for their own personal glee. These jerks don’t account for everyone upset or confused by the inclusion of Yasuke. I can even see where they’re coming from. First of all, playing as a samurai seems to run counter to AC’s themes of stealth and assassination. A more ninja-centric story would be more appropriate. Secondly, in most AC games, you are thrust into the shoes of the average person of the era. It’s interesting that out of all the samurai they could’ve picked for you to play as, they just happen to pick the one who isn’t Japanese. It feels a lot like Ubisoft was looking for an awkward way to pander to Western audiences. Thirdly, I can also imagine that there were many gamers of Asian descent who were looking forward to playing an Asian male character in an AC game. Now they won’t get that chance, at least until the inevitable DLC comes out.
I can also understand the defenders. Firstly, we already have tons of samurai games with Asian protagonists. A single black protagonist in this setting is rare and won’t take away from that. Yasuke is also based on an actual person, and while the game exaggerates his status for dramatic effect (we’ll get to that later), are we really going to pretend that no previous samurai games have ever been prone to exaggeration? Are we also going to pretend the AC series hasn’t exaggerated things before? I distinctly recall Leonardo Da Vinci building assassination tools in ACII. Secondly, the game still allows you to play as an Asian protagonist through the female ninja, Naoe. Does she no longer count because she’s a woman? I do find it curious that Naoe’s depiction (which appears to be drawn more from pop culture than from the historical ninja) hasn’t elicited the same level of outrage as Yasuke’s exaggerations. Thirdly, the idea of experiencing feudal Japan from both an insider and outsider perspective could make for good storytelling. The addition of Yasuke may justify itself when the complete game is released.
As with most culture war slapfights, this controversy is a little more complicated than everyone who hates this is “racist” and everyone who loves this is “woke.” Yasuke led an interesting life which could make for a great game, but shoehorning him into a stealth game at the cost of a Japanese man may not have been the way to do it. Again, throw the samurai out altogether and keep the focus on the ninja. Yasuke’s story could always be added later as a DLC. These simple choices might have cooled down some of the controversy. That said, while there seems to be legitimate criticism of historical and cultural errors in the game, some people are clearly overreacting, with a Japanese petition to cancel to game reaching over 100,000 signatures, and a Japanese politician trying to get it investigated by the Diet!
The imagery of Yasuke decked out in full samurai armor has sparked intense discussion around how much our ideas of Yasuke are based on myth versus how much of them are based in fact. In the popular imagination, Yasuke’s samurai status has long been assumed, but others argue that he was never more than a vassal or retainer. What is the truth?
Who Was Yasuke?
Yasuke is a minor figure in Japanese history. He came onto the scene during Japan’s turbulent Warring States Period (1467–1603), known in Japan as the Sengoku, when various warlords fought for domination of the whole island. This era also saw Japan’s first interactions with Europe and Christianity. Yasuke himself came to Japan under the service of Italian Jesuit priests, led by Alessandro Valignano, who first arrived in Japan in 1571. After their arrival, Yasuke eventually caught the interest of the warlord Oda Nobunaga, who would later become known as one of Japan’s three great unifiers.
The sources on Yasuke are few and don’t take too long to read. I’m going to copy all the sources that we have on him below, so that we can all be clear on what the facts are. The following sources have been translated by Reddit user ParallelPain on a r/AskHistorians thread:
From The Chronicles of Lord Nobunaga:
2nd Month 23rd Day [March 27, 1581]. A black monk* came from the Christian countries. He looks about 26-7 of age and his entire body black as a cow. He’s body is really well-built, and furthermore has the strength of over ten men. The padre brought him here to see Lord Nobunaga. I’m really grateful to be able to see such rare things among the three countries that’s never been seen before, and in in such detail, all thanks to Lord Nobunaga’s great influence.”
Letter from Luis Frois, April 14, 1581:
“The Monday after Easter, Nobunaga was in the capital, but a great number of people gathered in front of our casa to see the cafre [black slave], creating such a ruckus that people were hurt and almost died from thrown rocks. Even though we had lots of guards at the gates, it was difficult holding people back from breaking it down. They all say if we showed for money, one would easily earn in a short time 8,000 to 10,000 cruzado. Nobunaga also wanted to see him, and so sent for him, so Padre Organtino brought him. With great fuss, he couldn’t believe this was the natural colour and not by human means, so ordered him to take off all his clothes above his belt. Nobunaga’s sons also called him over, and everyone was very happy. Nobunaga’s nephew the current commander of Ōsaka also saw this and was so happy he gave him 10,000 coins.”
Letter from Lorenzo Mesia, October 8, 1581:
“The padre brought one cafre with him, and no one in the capital has see before, and they all admired him, and countless people came to see him. Nobunaga himself saw him and was surprised, and thought it was painted with ink and did not believe he was black from birth. He see him from time to time, and he knew some Japanese, so he never got tired of talking to him, and he was strong and knew some tricks so Nobunaga was very happy. Now he’s his strong patron, and to let everyone know he has has a someone show go with him around the city. The people say Nobunaga would make him a tono.”
Matsudaia Ietada’s diary, tenth year of the Tensho, the fourth month:
Nineteenth [May 11, 1582], day of Teibi. Raining. His highness gave him a stipend. They say deus [the Jesuits] presented him. He had the black man with him. His body was black like ink, 6.2 feet tall. They say his name’s Yasuke.
Luis Frois’ report to the Jesuit Society, November 5, 1582:
And the cafre the Visitador [Alessandro Valignano] gave to Nobunaga on his request, after his death went to the mansion of his heir and fought there for a long time, but when one of Akechi’s vassals got close and asked him give up his sword, he handed it over. The vassals went and asked Akechi what to do with the cafre, he said the cafre is like an animal and knows nothing, and he’s not Japanese so don’t kill him and give him to the church of the Indian padre. With this we were a bit relieved.
From these sources, we can conclude that Yasuke was a man of certain renown. He served the Jesuits under Valignano, excited the interest of the Japanese, was handed over to Nobunaga, given a stipend and a sword, fought to defend Nobunaga’s heir, surrendered to Nobunaga’s enemies, and was finally returned to the Jesuits. A remarkable life, no doubt, but is it fair then to call him a samurai?
African Samurai?
The answer to Yasuke’s samurai status is complicated by the fact that the only book-length biography about him is factually questionable. Published in 2019, African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, A Legendary Black Warrior In Japan by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard, made Yasuke’s name more well-known internationally. African Samurai may be marketed as non-fiction, but it reads like fan-fiction (the Japanese version was apparently a more factual work). While Lockley is an associate professor at Nihon University who lectures on Japanese history, his co-author, Girard, is a novelist who specializes in historical fiction. That’s not a good sign, and given how little we know of Yasuke, it’s a little odd that the book is nearly 400 pages long!
Lockley’s work not only popularized Yasuke in the West, but it also pushed the idea that Yasuke was not simply a vassal or retainer, but a samurai. Previous writings on Yasuke do not label him as such. As recently as 2007, John G. Russell, a professor of cultural anthropology at Gifu University, described Yasuke only as an “attendant” in his essay on black people in Japanese history (24). Lockley himself said in an interview on Black Experience Japan that the basic facts around Yasuke haven’t changed, but that he reinterpreted Yasuke’s duties and privileges as deserving of samurai status. He specifically argued in the book that Yasuke may have reached the rank of hatamoto:
“It is not known which rank Yasuke held, but it probably would’ve been equivalent to hatamoto. The hatamoto saw to the lord’s needs, handling everything from finance to transport, communications to trade. They were also the bodyguards and pages to the warlord, traveling with him and spending their days in his company” (254–255).
Of course, the title African Bodyguard sounds a lot less sexy than African Samurai. It’s a bit disingenuous for Lockley to insist in interviews than Yasuke was definitely a samurai, when his own book is a tad more agnostic on the matter. Even as late as this year, he referred to critics of Yasuke’s samurai status as knowing nothing about Japan. Though there’s plenty more guesswork to be found in the book. The bulk of the book relies on too much speculation as to what Yasuke could have done or could have seen. As you might imagine, these guesses range from the plausible to the highly suspect.
Among the boldest assertions are that the Japanese associated Yasuke with the Buddhist black god Daikokuten because of his dark skin (40, 158), that Yasuke may have fought the Mughals in Gujarat (228–232), and that Yasuke fought at the Battle of Okitanawate in 1584 (411–426) only to concede in the very next chapter that “the African warrior sent by the Jesuits may have been another man entirely” (427). This is nothing to say of the numerous conversations invented from whole cloth, such as Nobunaga telling Yasuke “You are my black warrior” (249). With absence of clear footnotes in the text, the average reader won’t know fact from fabrication.
Lockley deserves credit for spreading Yasuke’s story to a wider audience, but he did the man no service with these fantasies. He would’ve been better off making African Samurai into a novel like James Clavell’s Shogun or Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi. As academic of Japanese manga, Johnathan Clements, wrote in his review of African Samurai:
“The authors can sometimes be a little too ready to proclaim cases closed and mysteries solved with glib assurance — fine for novelists, frustrating for historians. Although the Japanese edition of Lockley’s book offered four possible places of origin for Yasuke, the English version, with no new evidence, gives him a birthplace and a backstory, loaded with many a probably and a might-have-been.”
What The Scholars Say
Lockely’s fan-fiction has poisoned the well of popular discussion around Yasuke, but that doesn’t mean academics can’t try to have a frank discussion of the facts and what they mean. From what I’ve read, the facts around Yasuke are ambiguous enough that one could plausibly come to the conclusion that he either was or wasn’t a samurai. I recommend that anyone interested in this debate read the Google Groups discussion “Yasuke: Separating Fact from Fiction.” I should also note that they all agree that Lockley overreached in African Samurai, to quote historian Nick Kapur:
“Lockley has not done the collectivity of scholars any favors by playing so fast and loose with the facts to sell books while holding an academic position in Japan, so the proper reaction here is most likely calling out the racism where it occurs, rather than any sort of knee-jerk circling of wagons around Lockley.”
These scholars have interesting reasons for their conclusions, and they are all worth reading, if only to see how easily the same facts can be interpreted by different people. It is also to highlight that people of good faith are on all sides of this discussion.
Dan Sherer, a historian of pre-modern Japan, said that Yasuke would be considered a samurai by the standards of the time, “purely based on the Japanese sources the answer to the question of whether Yasuke was a samurai is that by any reasonable definition Yasuke was.” Sherer bases his opinion on a passage on Yasuke in the Sonkeikaku variant of Ota Gyuchi’s Chronicle of Oda Nobunaga, where he infers the following:
“So he is made a vassal of a military family, given a stipend and a sword (さや巻之のし付) and a house and carries Nobunaga’s (military) equipment. So while we don’t have Gyuichi giving us a specific title, the suggestion is that he is being treated as a member of the samurai class, such as it was in the late 16th century. This tracks with Ietada Nikki (the other Japanese language source that describes him) and with the Jesuit sources, at least in translation.
“I should note, there’s is no indication in any source that he was involved in any fighting except when he fought at Nobutada’s last stand during the Honnoji no hen, so I am not arguing that he was expected to lead men into battle.”
Romulo Ehalt, researcher of Early Modern Japan at the Max Planck Institute, adds that given how ambiguous the definition of “samurai” could be during the Warring States Period, he doesn’t think Yasuke, or most low-ranking warriors, should be given the term:
“Personally, I do not agree even with using the term samurai to describe bushi in this period. Anyone familiar with Fujiki Hisashi, Takagi Shōsaku and, more recently, Fujii Jōji’s works will see how difficult it is to pinpoint the meaning of this and other correlated terms for the Oda-Toyotomi period. However, considering all the things that were given to Yasuke when he was given to Nobunaga (a house, a katana etc) he was certainly not carrying Nobunaga’s zōri around. I hope I don’t get misunderstood here. I am not saying that a black person could not have become a samurai (let’s remember Matsui Yōko’s research, showing how even the meaning of the term 日本人 in this period could be questioned). What I am saying is that even calling a Japanese person a samurai in this period is highly risky, especially when dealing with low-ranking soldiers.”
Jonathan Lopez-Vera, a PhD in Japanese history who wrote one of the definitive books on the samurai, argued in his book that Yasuke was distinct from other paid vassals due of his closeness to Nobunaga, “He was granted the rank of samurai and occasionally even shared a table with Nobunaga himself, a privilege few of his other vassals were afforded” (198).
In his YouTube video on the AC controversy, Lopez-Vera further argued that even if Yasuke was simply a “vassal” to Nobunaga, so once were Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Akechi Mitsuhide, and their status as samurai is not in doubt. As he said in the video (translation mine): “All samurai were vassals of someone.”
Japanese historian Yu Hiramaya, who wrote over a dozen books on the Warring States Period, argued that Yasuke was a samurai on the basis that he received a stipend, was given a sword, had a residence, and closely served Nobunaga:
Japanese historian Yuichi Goza was less enthused, telling Sankei Shimbun that Yasuke was likely a samurai in name-only, and not expected to fight on the battlefield (translation mine):
“With regard to the historical record on Yasuke, there isn’t a lot written on him, so it’s quite difficult to say much for certain. His personal history is generally not one of the major topics of historical study, nor does it often come up as a subject of research. Nobunaga’s biography, the Chronicle of Nobunaga, is one existing manuscript, and there’s a mention of Yasuke in the fifteen volume Sonkeikaku version. According to this version of the text, Nobunaga is described as giving Yasuke a sword and a residence. The text then indicates that this means he was treated as a samurai.
“However, there are tens of copies of the Chronicle of Nobunaga, and there are things that don’t show up in this version, so I won’t deny the possibility of interpolations during the transcription.
“Furthermore, even if he was a samurai, he was a samurai in “name-only.” For example, in the Edo Period, there were sumo wrestlers employed by daimyo who loved sumo. Formally, they were retainers, but they were employed as samurai and given permission to wear a sword. However, even if a battle were to occur, I believe that these hired sumo wrestlers would not be expected to fight on the battlefield.”
Japanese historian Daimon Watanabe, a samurai expert, is also skeptical. He wrote in Yahoo Japan that while Yasuke served Nobunaga as a warrior, his closeness to the warlord was more due to Nobunaga’s curiosity than to any elevated status on Yasuke’s part (translation mine):
“Although he did receive a residence, a short sword, and a stipend, I have my doubts as to whether that’s enough to call him a samurai.
“Based on what little information we have on Yasuke, it seems that Nobunaga brought him along whenever he went out and liked seeing the looks of shock on people’s faces. Yasuke was more of a servant in this way, and showing him off in public allowed Nobunaga to present his curiosity about anything new or foreign.
“Now, if we look to the English samurai, Miura Anjin, he was also appointed to be a vassal of Tokugawa Ieysau and was given a fief. However, he also helped out Tokugawa in matters of shipbuilding, navigation, and trade with future foreigners. This signals that he was a man of high standing.
“Yasuke, on the other hand, did not seem to have similar merits. Rather, he was treated primarily as a curiosity. While he did receive a residence, a shortsword, and a stipend from Nobunaga, these factors alone do not necessarily correlate to being a samurai.”
Japanese historian Oka Mihoko, from the University of Tokyo, suggested on Twitter that Yasuke could be a samurai based on the ambiguities of the term in the Warring States Period (translation mine):
“Even though the definition of “samurai” is ambiguous in the Warring States Period, there is a common understanding of them in Japanese historical research. Basically, if a person serving their lord is holding a sword and fights to the very end, I think it would be fair to call them a samurai.”
Due to the lack of information we have on Yasuke and the vagueness of the term “samurai” during the Warring States Period, we cannot say for certain if he was a samurai or not. It would be wrong to be dismissive or disparaging of those scholars who hold an opinion on either side. Experts sometimes disagree on historical figures. Think of the biblical scholars who have different interpretations of the historical Jesus. That said, the many of the scholars I cited believed that it was possible that Yasuke was a samurai, though probably a low-ranking one. It hardly seems that offensive to treat him as a samurai in a fictional context. Even if Yasuke wasn’t a samurai, he was still an interesting figure whose life should be taught and celebrated. His title, ultimately, isn’t all that important and doesn’t take away from his deeds.
What I hope we can get out of this is a more factual history of Yasuke for everyone. Something more reliable that people can point to instead of Lockley’s fan-fiction. I hope that we can do so in the interest of truth and not abuse history to further trivial culture wars. Yasuke deserves better and so do we.
Bibliography
Lockley, Thomas and Geoffrey Girard. African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, A Legendary Black Warrior In Japan. Little, Brown and Company, 2019. 40, 158, 228–232, 249, 254–255, 411–427.
Lopez-Vera, Jonathan. A History of the Samurai: Legendary Warriors of Japan. Tuttle Publishing, 2020. 198.
Russel, John G. “Excluded Presence: Shoguns, Minstrels, Bodyguards, and Japan’s Encounters with the Black Other” Zinbun 40, Kyoto University, 2007. 24. https://web.archive.org/web/20240517061605/https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/71097/1/40_15.pdf
