We Was Samurai
“When Cleopatra was forced to commit suicide for being a black woman when she was supposed to be Yugoslavian, her eldest son and heir Black Caesar fled to the Far East where he settled in Nippon which had been colonized by black people after the Fall of Atlantis, these were the original Japanese. Who were then driven out of Japan by racist Polynesians. They fled to Mozambique, where they fiercely maintained their Samurai traditions. Finally, the greatest of them, Yasuke, returned to their lost homeland. Japan, not Atlantis.”
That made-up bullshit is surprisingly, not the stupidest thing I’ve read this past week.
Ever since Assassin’s Creed was launched in 2007, fans of the series have been clamoring for an Assassin’s Creed set in Japan.
Yeah, be careful what you wish for.
Japanese assassins automatically mean Ninjas and the best-known period for that was during the Sengoku era (The Warring States era). More specifically during Oda Nobunaga’s regime.
That dictator’s son, Nobuo managed to muck up an invasion of Iga province which had effectively become a shinobi stronghold. Nobunaga had more or less been ignoring Iga and Koga as something that could be dealt with later. However, his son’s failure meant that serious resources would now have to be expended or else he’d be facing rebellions everywhere. Nobunaga launched an invasion of Iga with 40,000 samurai. The Iga Ninja made the fairly serious mistake of being unconventional warfare specialists fighting a conventional war. Thousands of Iga were killed but hundreds escaped. Presumably swearing vengeance on Nobunaga and all his house.
It’s a great setup for an assassin’s story unless you are Ubisoft.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has screwed up this easy slamdunk in the most spectacular way they could. A treatment that featured two male JAPANESE antagonists was scrapped in favor of a DEI-drenched version of the story where it’s a conflict between a Kuniochi and a black Samurai. A woman ninja can work, maybe, but a black samurai was utterly ludicrous.
Ubisoft and its supporters honestly believed they had some kind of historical win because their black samurai was based on a real person.
Well, kind of.
The records regarding Yasuke are fragmentary but granted there are enough fragments to state with certainty that he actually existed although it is not even absolutely certain that he was African.
The only documents that mention Yasuke are the letters of the Jesuit missionary Luís Fróis, Ōta Gyūichi’s Shinchō Kōki (信長公記, Nobunaga Official Chronicle), Matsudaira Ietada‘s Matsudaira Ietada Nikki (松平家忠日記, Matsudaira Ietada Diary), Jean Crasset‘s Histoire de l’église du Japon and François Solier‘s Histoire Ecclesiastique Des Isles Et Royaumes Du Japon
The man who would become Yasuke arrived from India (raising the possibility that he wasn’t an ethnic nego) as a servant (or possibly slave) of the Jesuit Inspector Alessandro Valignano on, 17 August 1579. Yasuke stayed in Kyushu with Valignano until 1581, when Valignano secured an audience with Oda Nobunaga. Tales of this servant with black skin had reached Nobunaga and it is possible that Valignano got the audience at all was because Nobunaga wanted to see this man with black skin. However, Oda was trying to maintain good relations with Christians so maybe not.
Nobunaga seems to have taken an almost childlike interest in Yasuke. On the off chance the gaijin missionaries were messing with him by dying this man black, he had Yasuke strip the waist and scrubbed raw. He stayed that color.
When Valignano was going to leave, Nobunaga demanded that he give the black man to him. Which he did (thus my suspicion that he was a slave).
The Shincho Koki document notes that: “A black bōzu (黒坊主, kuro-bōzu) from the Christian country has arrived. He appears to be 26 or 27 years old. The blackness of his body is like that of a bull, and he is healthy and of fine physique. Moreover, he has the strength of more than ten men. The padres came with him and thanked Lord Nobunaga for his permission to proselytize.”
This document further states (and this is the important part): “A black man was taken on as a vassal by Nobunaga-sama and received a stipend. His name was decided to be Yasuke. He was also given a short sword and a house. He was sometimes made to carry Nobunaga-sama’s tools.”
This paragraph is the entire basis for the theory that Yasuke was a samurai. There were periods in Japan’s history where the ko-wakazashi was restricted to the samurai but the Warring States era wasn’t one of them. Banidtry was so endemic that even merchants were allowed to carry the wakizashi although not the katana.
Luis Fróis mentions Yasuke in the annual report of the Jesuits:
“The black man understood a little Japanese, and Nobunaga never tired of talking with him. And because he was strong and could do a few tricks, Nobunaga took great pleasure in protecting him and had him roam around the city of Kyoto with an attendant. Some people in the town thought that Nobunaga might make him as tono.”
This doesn’t sound to me like a feared warrior, more like a circus freak. Regardless, Yasuke didn’t have this job for long.
On 12 June 1582, Oda Nobunaga was betrayed by Akechi Mitsuhide. For reasons unknown to this day, Mitsuhide attacked his lord when Nobunaga was at his most defenseless at the Honnō-ji temple in Kyoto. Nobunaga committed Seppuku in the burning temple. Nobunaga’s body was never found. Or at least never identified as there were a lot of charred corpses in that temple.
Upon hearing that his lord was dead, Yasuke headed for Nobunaga’s son’s house. This is the last detailed record we have of him.
From Frois’s annual report.
A black man whom the visitor [Valignano] sent to Nobunaga went to the house of Nobunaga’s son after his death and was fighting for quite a long time, when a vassal of Akechi approached him and said, ‘Do not be afraid, give me that sword’, so he gave him the sword.
Not exactly, the living embodiment of Bushido if you ask me. The account continues:
The vassal asked Akechi what should be done with the black man, and he said, ‘A black slave is an animal (or possibly bestial) and knows nothing, nor is he Japanese, so do not kill him, and place him in the custody at the cathedral of Padre in India.
My own guess (and it’s only a guess) is that Mitsuhide didn’t view Yasuke as being entirely human. Consequently, he had no idea what form Yasuke’s kami would take when it was freed from its flesh. Killing Nobunaga gave him enough corporeal enemies, why have a weird foreign supernatural one following him and making trouble? Mitsuhide had also put himself in the position of rule or die, and if he was going to rule he’d need Christian support.
Yasuke was sent to the Christian mission in Nanban-ji. The only other record of Yasuke is a brief mention by Frois praising God that Yasuke survived his injuries.
I’m not going to state categorically whether Yasuke was or was not legally a Samurai. This was the Sengoku Period and the class system was a bit more fluid than it would become under the Tokugawa regime. There was still some degree of social mobility. It was even possible for a peasant to become a Samurai, the most famous of these was easily Toyotomi Hideyoshi who became Shogun in all but name.
As I mentioned, Nobunaga is recorded as giving Yasuke a wakazashi. I think that this is the nub of the argument for him being a Samurai. On the other hand, he was not given a fief, or a second name like William Adams was, (Miura Anjin). Or a katana or anything else that would have raised his status.
Bluntly, Yasuke appears to have been a pet more than anything else so far as Oda Nobunaga was concerned.
This hasn’t stopped an entire cottage of Yasuske grifters from cropping up. There is currently an online war going on to inject as much speculation disguised as fact into Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and every other internet repository of knowledge and wisdom regarding the life of this increasingly legendary samurai. My favorite is on the basis of absolutely nothing that Yasuke was a Muslim. Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) was and remains Roman Catholic. So was Jesuit Inspector Alessandro Valignano
There’s a mod war going on between SJWs and people with a passing respect for history. The market for racism today far outstrips the available supply so declaring people with a respect for history or good taste in fiction a raciiiiiiiiist makes the purple-haired weirdos feel powerful. However, since this is the I love science sexually crowd, so they feel a profound need to claim history is on their side, they are doing that by quoting academic sources like Thomas Lockley, who is at Nihon University…
As an associate professor…
Of law.
Everyone is blaming the lead writer for making Yasuke a full-on karuta-gane-wearing samurai complete with daishō and tetsubo (granted the war club would have made the most sense).
I, on the other hand, blame Frederick Duguet, Ubisoft’s Chief Financial Officer.
When the lockdown was well and truly underway, the forces of darkness discovered that the only form of mass entertainment that was selling was video games. Consequently, they began investing heavily with their usual Stakeholder Capitalism (read Commie Capitalism) strings attached. Companies like Sweet Baby Inc. were created to destroy long-established franchises.
This DEI tree has been bearing rotten fruit for a while. Hogwarts Legacy got away with it because a shit ton of people bought the game to own the Woklings. However, Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League was a disaster.
The problem of Sengoku era Japan as a source of multi-culturalism was pretty obvious, you are limited to either the Portuguese or Anjin-san. And as we all know, white culture is never multi-culture. This is where fiction comes in. So long as you have something that could be accused of being historical precedent you’re good. Or at least you’re good if you live in the bubble. Since Wokeites can’t really think about how others think, the harsh reaction just didn’t occur to them.
I will not be playing this game myself. And it honestly has nothing to do with Yasuke. It’s because Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a total fucking ripoff!
They are starting this game out of the gate with locked content that you have to pay a ludicrous amount of money to unlock. Ubisoft wants $130 for an Assassin’s Creed game?!?!
This is why DEI is failing so badly with the gamer community. Games cost too much as it is. We literally can’t afford to buy a bad one and the Ultimate Edition costs as much as three Helldivers 2 games.
