Yasuke - Separating Fact from Fiction

[Leonardo Wolfe]

Dear members,

Recently, some controversy surrounding Thomas Lockley's account of the history of Yasuke, as detailed in his book, 'Yasuke: The True Story of the Legendary African Samurai', has been making the rounds on the Internet, both in, and outside of, Japan. As for why this is the case, there has been sudden surge of interest in Lockley's book due to Ubisoft's upcoming video game, 'Assassin's Creed Shadows'. Whilst I won't directly link to the controversy in question, here is a link to a relevant interview from 2020. You will also notice that the Japanese version of Yasuke's Wikipedia has been locked due to an "edit war".

Personally, I have never met Thomas Lockley, nor have I read his work, and so I have no criticism to offer. Likewise, I do not believe that this is an appropriate place to engage in such personal criticism. In the interests of academia, however, perhaps I can begin a healthy and respectful discussion on what we objectively know about Yasuke, separating fact from any fiction, and especially since this isn't a topic that appears to have been discussed, here, before.

Kind regards,

Leonardo Wolfe

BSc (Hons) (SOAS) - International Management (Japan & Korea)
MA Student (SOAS) - Buddhist Studies and Intensive Language (Japanese)

[Paula R. Curtis]

Hello all,

Our colleague Jonathan López-Vera is having some technical issues with posting to PMJS we're working to get resolved, so I post the following reply about Yasuke on his behalf.:

De: Jonathan López-Vera <lopezver...@gmail.com>
Fecha: 20 jul 2024, 15:06 +0200
Para: PMJS: Listserv <pm...@googlegroups.com>, pm...@googlegroups.com
Asunto: Re: [PMJS] Yasuke - Separating Fact from Fiction

Dear all,

I have been so into the controversy, at least in the Spanish-speaking world, since my field is Japan-Europe contact in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it’s been crazy since the day they published the first trailer. I made a short video on Twitter the next day, just clarifying some stupid things I read from the thousands of sudden-experts-on-the-topic, and it had 500k views in just a couple of days. As usual, it's been all about racism. They say they are just angry because of the lack of historical accuracy, but it's just racism. If you have played some AC games, you know they have never cared about historical accuracy... and they shouldn't, because it's a video game, not a history book. But this time, all of a sudden, there are thousands of angry defenders of historical accuracy. And it's so funny, because the other main character in the game is a ninja, and that doesn't seem to raise any problems related to historical accuracy for them.

On the other hand, I have not read Lockley's book, but when I learned about it, I was so surprised, because we have so few sources about Yasuke. With the few documents we have, there is plenty of room for movies, video games, etc., since he's such an amazing character, for sure, but I don't think there's enough to write a good history book on it.

So, maybe it could be interesting to summarize what we know about Yasuke. We know he arrived in Japan with Jesuit visitor Alessandro Valignano in 1579, after joining his party in Mozambique as a slave, in the Jesuit documents, they are called "criados", but they were slaves. We know they went to Kyoto in 1581, and we know his presence caused such a commotion that Oda Nobunaga, as always, full of curiosity for anything new and different, asked the Jesuits to pay him a visit and bring this strange person with them. So they did, and then we have this famous scene of some maids trying to wash Yasuke's color with different oils, soaps and ointments. And then, when Nobunaga was sure that Yasuke was not painted, he was so happily surprised, also because of his tall size, that he asked the Jesuits for the boy to remain with him. And the Jesuits were so interested on pleasing him that they accepted his demand. So, from this moment on, Yasuke was not a slave anymore but a retainer, and he was given a stipend, a house and swords. He became something like a bodyguard for Nobunaga, and sometimes Nobunaga even invited him to eat at his table. I'm sure the reason was that Nobunaga thought it was so cool to have this exotic, big black guy with him, just like he loved his Portuguese chair and velvet hat, because he just loved foreign and new stuff. So, we know Yasuke was in the Honnō-ji Incident and that Akechi Mitsuhide decided to pardon his life out of racism, because he said he was not a man but a beast, so he didn't have any responsibility. And that's all we know, then we assume he went back to Nagasaki with the Jesuits and that, at some point, he returned to Mozambique, but that's not 100% sure.

We have this information in some reports written by the Jesuits –Luís Fróis, Lourenço Mexia– and also in Ōta Gyūichi's chronicle, the "Shinchō kōki" –some parts in the most common version and some other parts only in the one kept in the Sonkeikaku library, owned by the Maeda Ikutokukai.

And I'd say that's all, but in case someone has more information about all this topic, I'll be so happy to know about it... the game will be published in November and I guess there will be more controversy about it, so, information is always useful.

Best,

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Dr. Paula R. Curtis

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Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA

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[Susan Tsumura]

> 2024/07/20 02:40 JST に Leonardo Wolfe <leonardo...@gmail.com> が次のように書きました:
>
>
> Dear members,

I do not believe that this is an appropriate place to engage in such personal criticism. In the interests of academia, however, perhaps I can begin a healthy and respectful discussion on what we objectively know about Yasuke, separating fact from any fiction, and especially since this isn't a topic that appears to have been discussed, here, before.
>

Some years ago I wrote a little on "Yasuke" based on Jesuit letters published in the 1598 Cartas, in the translation by Matsuda Kiichi in the 十六・七世紀イエズス会日本報告集. He is also mentioned in the 1622 信長公記.

Susan Tsumura

Yasuke (c. 1556-?) is mentioned in 1581 letters of the Jesuits Luis Frois and Lorenço Mexia and in the 1582 Annual Report of the Jesuit Mission in Japan. He arrived in Japan in 1579 as the servant of the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano, who had been appointed the Visitor (inspector) of the Jesuit missions in the Indies, i.e. S. and E. Asia, so he must have been quite trust-worthy. He accompanied Valignano when the latter came to the capital area in March of 1581 and caused something of a sensation. Nobunaga heard about him and expressed a desire to see him. He thought the black color might be paint, so he had him strip from the waist up. Nobunaga's nephew gave him money. In May, Yasuke accompanied a group of Jesuits on a short trip to the province of Echizen. Yasuke could speak some Japanese, so Nobunaga enjoyed talking with him and was also impressed by his strength. At Nobunaga's request, Valignano left Yasuke with Nobunaga before Valignano left central Japan later that year. Nobunaga treated Yasuke with great favor. "People even say he will be made a 'tono' (lord)," but this certainly did not happen.
Just a little less than a year later, in July of 1582, Nobunaga was attacked and killed in Honnôji Temple by the army of Akechi Mitsuhide. Yasuke was there at the time. Immediately after Nobunaga was killed, Yasuke went to the lodging of Nobunaga's heir Oda Nobutada, apparently withdrew with him to Nijô Castle, and when that too was attacked by Akechi, fought for a long time. Finally he surrendered his "katana" (Japanese-style sword), to Akechi's men. They asked Akechi himself what to do with him. Akechi said that black man was a beast and did not know anything, and furthermore, he was not Japanese, so they should not kill him but take him to the church in Kyoto of the Visitor from India, so they did, much to the relief of the Jesuits there who had worried about him.
The "Lord Nobunaga Chronicle" (Shinchô-kô-ki) has a description of Yasuke's first meeting with Nobunaga. "On the 23rd of the 2nd month [March 23, 1581, so matches the Jesuit reports], a black page ("kuro-bôzu") came from the Christian countries. He looked about 26 [24 or 25 by Western count] or 27 years old; his entire body was black like that of an ox. The man was healthy and good-looking. Moreover, his strength was greater than that of 10 men."

[Maribeth Graybill]

Dear Susan,

Fascinating. Thanks.

Maribeth Graybill 

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[Paul Liu]

Dear members,

If on the off chance you have followed the controversy closely (I hope not) you might have seen links to Reddit's Askhistorian being thrown around.
I am the one who compiled that information on Reddit, mostly long before the controversy. While I can not vouch for my own translation, the primary sources both Japanese and Portuguese are linked:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/flgpph/history_of_blackafricans_in_japan/

When the controversy started, I made an additional post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/was_yasuke_a_samurai/l4bghbu/

examining Yasuke's entry in the Sonkeikaku version of the Shinchōkōki as well as the meaning of "stipend" which I felt was missing in the first post above.

I have also compiled together various information on how the word "samurai' was used, and what that label meant to people as its meaning changed based on time and context in Japanese history here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cy64wr/were_all_samurai_bushi_or_warriors/

Lately both Oka Mihoko and Hirayama Yū have come out on twitter in support of Yasuke's status as a samurai. The former have given some translation of Portuguese sources as well as point out textual evidence of other (possibly) African servants in the service of quite a few other Japanese lords. The latter has examined what it meant to be a samurai at the time, and compared Yasuke's treatment by Nobunaga to that. If you're interested in the subject, then their posts are both worth reading.

https://x.com/mei_gang30266/status/1814272582222557241

https://x.com/HIRAYAMAYUUKAIN/status/1814356500326035650

Best regards,

Paul Liu

Sophia University Masters Student Second Year

Reddit's Askhistorians Contributor

[Robert Tuck]

Dear Members,

I may be able to add to this discussion, as I have read Tom Lockley’s book. Up until now my impression was that a fair number of academics had heard of the book but very few had read it, as confirmed by the first two posters. Popular-facing books like those by Lockley are often deliberately ignored by the scholarly community, and that’s part of the story of how this situation has arisen. (I get it, we’re all so busy that we have to be selective in what we read, and nobody wants to get into a protracted argument with certain sections of the terminally online, but still.) As far as I am aware, no academic journal has reviewed African Samurai, for instance, even though it was one of the Washington Post’s “Books to Read” in April 2019 and Tom Lockley gave a book talk at GWU in 2021, co-sponsored by Howard University, a prominent HBCU (‘historically Black college or university,’ for those not familiar).

Anyway, I read Lockley’s African Samurai, and, curious about a number of episodes therein, I did a certain amount of source-checking. It’s often hard to identify the precise source for any given claim, since the book has only a general bibliography after each chapter, so I also corresponded briefly with Lockley himself about his sources.

With all credit to Paul Liu, the key problem with African Samurai is much more simple and fundamental than whether Yasuke can properly be called a ‘samurai’ or not. The problem is that the book contains a number of sections that could reasonably be classed as historical fiction, but the book doesn’t frame itself this way. If the publishers had simply subtitled the book “A Historical Novel,” I doubt we’d be having this conversation.  

As Jonathan López Vera has pointed out, there isn’t all that much historical evidence concerning Yasuke (though what there is has been very helpfully summarized by Susan Tsumura and Paul Liu). To get to a 400+page book, then, there’s a need for additional material. This additional material in African Samurai falls along quite a spectrum. It includes details well-supported by historical evidence concerning Nobunaga, Jesuits, or other Warring States figures, but it also includes a lot of speculation about what Yasuke, Nobunaga etc might have done, thought, etc. Some of this speculation is supported by Japanese-language sources (occasionally apocryphal or otherwise dubious), while some of it appears to be based on what could reasonably be plausible given the known historical context. We might object to this kind of conjecture on general principle, but there is at least an argument that conjecture may be excusable in a popular-facing book, especially with a figure about whom little is known, so long as – and this is crucial – it is clearly identified as such.

To be fair, in many cases Lockley does make it clear that he is presenting conjecture, such as when he posits a possible sexual encounter between Yasuke and Nobunaga (p. 208, and addressed again in the unpaginated bibliography to Ch. 14). Where African Samurai pushes into more problematic territory is when it presents things that might have happened without such qualification. So far I can identify at least two occasions in the book where this happens, the first an account of Yasuke going hawk-hunting with Nobunaga (pp. 214-16), an event for which I have yet to locate any historical evidence. The second, more interesting case is a supposed ‘ninja’ ambush in which Yasuke kills a young ‘ninja’ boy (pp. 232-234).

This latter is a compelling if lurid passage – as Lockley tells it, the ‘ninja’ conceal themselves amid the bodies of the slain from a previous battle, then attack Nobunaga’s party at close quarters after opening up with rifle fire. Yasuke engages the assailants and nearly decapitates one of them, leaving him dead at his feet, “head severed and hanging from a few sinews of flesh” (p. 233). The book itself doesn’t make it clear what the primary source for this episode is, but several details in it match an account in the late 17th C Iranki 伊乱記 (‘Chronicle of the Uprising in Iga’), and Iranki is mentioned in one of the secondary sources Lockley includes in his bibliography, Stephen Turnbull’s 2003 Ninja: AD 1460-1650. Having checked the Iranki, the text doesn’t mention Yasuke at all, still less a bloody duel with a young ‘ninja.’ There’s also no mention of ‘ninja’ concealing themselves among the corpses from a previous battle, or that hand-to-hand fighting ensued after the initial attack; in fact, the attackers in the Iranki are described as making a clean getaway.

So the details of Yasuke’s duel appear to be, as it were, hypothetical – something that might have happened had Yasuke been there, though there’s no evidence he was. The same is true with the hawk-hunting episode – Yasuke might have gone hawk-hunting, but as far as I am aware there’s no evidence he did. I’ve read both of these episodes over several times in the pages of African Samurai, as well as the accompanying notes, and I cannot find any indication anywhere that these details are pure speculation, unsupported (even contradicted?) by the available textual evidence. I can’t see how a general reader could read these passages and not come away thinking that they were historical fact.

So basically, some sections of African Samurai appear to be unacknowledged historical fiction, despite the claim that it’s a “True Story.” There’s therefore a disjuncture between what African Samurai claims to do and what it actually does, and it’s easy to see how this could cause all kinds of problems. Incidentally, African Samurai’s issues have been known for quite a while; the British writer Jonathan Clements pointed them out shortly after the book was published in May 2019, and there are plenty of other earlier examples if you care to look for them online.

To echo Jonathan López Vera’s other point, it’s pretty obvious that a lot of the recent attacks on Lockley and Yasuke have a very unpleasant agenda behind them. That said, in all good faith African Samurai genuinely does appear to have some major problems in the way it goes about narrating Yasuke’s life and times. Of course, this in no way justifies the online abuse that Lockley or Ubisoft appear to be getting.

With apologies for the length of this post,

Rob Tuck

Robert Tuck, PhD

Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Culture

School of International Letters and Cultures

Arizona State University

 

405 C Durham Hall

rjt...@asu.edu

 

MA Co-ordinator, AY 2023-24