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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[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

 

[Dan Sherer]

Hello everyone,

First off I want to say, 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. I can only read the Jesuit sources in translation, but unless every translator who has worked on this in English or Japanese has erred badly, they also support this. This has been borne out in previous emails in this chain.

I read African Samurai perhaps 3 or 4 years ago in search of a book that could be assigned to undergraduates, and I think Professor Tuck has more or less nailed it. I also think that this tendency to look for an entertaining way to tell the story colors the argument such that Yasuke's narrative is always the most interesting, rather than most fitting the evidence (scant though it may be). There were also some arguments that I found problematic, notably where the use of visual evidence were concerned.

I do think that a potential good outcome of this controversy could be an easily accessible English-language collection of sources on Yasuke. Even including the "possibly Yasuke" sources, this probably would be a small pamphlet, but it could be interesting and useful for teaching.

Regards,

Dan Sherer

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[Nick Kapur]

Dear colleagues,

Just to add a bit to this discussion, I'd like to point out that Lockley wrote a Japanese version of his Yasuke book first: 「信長と弥助：本能寺を生き延びた黒人侍」 (太田出版, 2017). A solo-authored work, it is much more academic (although I don't think it went through peer review), and while it still makes some speculative stretches, it is much more closely bound to the (extremely limited) historical record than Lockely's 2016 English book African Samurai, which was co-written with an American novelist and is basically historical fiction. If you directly compare relevant passages from the two books, Lockley is way more guarded and conservative in his claims in the Japanese-language book, so this seems to be a case of thinking he could get away with a lot more in English than in Japanese (in the service of selling more copies, I assume?), and that nobody in Japan would notice. I'll also add that the English book is riddled with numerous errors of basic fact, romanization errors, and bad or overly tendentious translations of Japanese terms, which makes me question the extent to which Lockley is qualified to be writing about premodern Japanese history at all. The excessive credulity about "ninja" (which even Stephen Turnbull himself has now largely rejected as myth) is just the tip of the iceberg here.

I do want to be very clear that the backlash against Lockley and the Ubisoft video game is largely (although not entirely) being carried out by an odious alliance of anti-black racists in both the West and inside Japan, with some truly appalling racism being thinly veiled (or even not veiled at all) by supposedly academic discussions of what constitutes a samurai. It's hard to wrap my head around claims of Japanese national pride somehow being "insulted" by the suggestion that a black man might have attained something akin to samurai status as being anything else. But 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.

Best,

Nick

Nick Kapur, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies
Department of History
Rutgers University, Camden
429 Cooper Street, Room 105
Camden, New Jersey 08102-1521

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[lopezverajonathan]

Hello, professor Sherer, and everyone,

You said "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". To this, 1) there are also European sources we should consider, I did read them in their original language, and they point to the opposite direction 2) there is also Ōta Gyūichi's chronicle, the version kept in the Sonkeikaku library, that also seems to say he was a samurai, in the 1581's standards. Regarding Lockley's book, I think we agree, and he kind of played a trick on us, since all these angry racist kids on the Internet are using his book to defend their poor arguments, they throw it at me all the time, like "oh, I see, you're just another Lockley", etc. Anyway, I think your idea of a collection of sources on Yasuke is a great idea.

Best,

El dia dimarts, 23 de juliol del 2024 a les 9:47:07 UTC+2, Dan Sherer va escriure:

[Leonardo Wolfe]

Dear members,

Thank you for your enlightening contributions to this topic thus far.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to correct a couple of, minor, typographical errors in my original post:

"[...] a* sudden surge [...]"

"[...] Wikipedia page* [...]"

Kind regards,

Leonardo Wolfe

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

[Or Porath]

Dear All, 

Thank you for the fascinating discussion. I would appreciate it if anyone could clarify two points:

 1. What term is used to describe "Yasuke" in the Sonkeikaku variant of Shinchō kōki? Is he referred to as a bushi, samurai, or something else? The version I found does not indicate he was a warrior at all. Dan Sherer claims the other way around, so I’d be interested in an clarification.

 2. Where does the name "Yasuke" come from? Is it mentioned in any credible sources? From the little I know, it is made up.

Many thanks,

Or

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[Dan Sherer]

Hello Or,

Happy to clarify my position:

 1. What term is used to describe "Yasuke" in the Sonkeikaku variant of Shinchō kōki? Is he referred to as a bushi, samurai, or something else? The version I found does not indicate he was a warrior at all. Dan Sherer claims the other way around, so I’d be interested in an clarification.

The Sonkeikaku variant includes the following text not present in other variants:

然に彼黒坊被成御扶持、名をㇵ号弥助と、さや巻之のし付並私宅等迄被仰付、依時御道具なともたさせられ候

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.

 2. Where does the name "Yasuke" come from? Is it mentioned in any credible sources? From the little I know, it is made up.

In terms of whether they actually called him that name, yes, the name appears in the above source as well as the Ietada Nikki. In terms of why he was given that name, there is no evidence as to why. I believe some have suggested that it is an attempt to render his original name, either a name in an African language, or even the name Ishak (with the suggestion that Yasuke was originally part of Mozambique's Muslim community). Personally, I suspect that Nobunaga gave him a common Japanese name to make life easier (How common? I have documentation of at least one other Yasuke in Nobunaga's service!). The Jesuits did not bother to record the name as far as I can tell.

Hope that helps,

Dan

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[Paul Liu]

Dear members,

Just to add onto what Dan has said

1) Incredibly few historical figures whom we know as samurai or bushi, even the really famous ones, were directly labeled as such in the primary sources. This is not really all that surprising since "samurai" wasn't a formal court rank or title. At least as far as I have seen, when the term was used more often than not it was used as a general label for certain groups of people rather than to describe a specific person, though sometimes it was used as a specific rank (for example as a cook at a temple) which often had nothing related to the term we're discussing currently, other than the word itself, which literally means servants. It's possible that by the time of Yasuke the term was no longer used to refer to people of incredibly high rank, though I haven't had the chance to dig through all the sources to confirm that. In any case, we are left with no choice but to infer whether a person was a bushi/samurai based on tertiary information, and how they compared to other people who actually were labelled bushi or samurai.

2) The sort of treatment Yasuke received per the Sonkeikaku version is far above that many samurai received. Besides the previous mentioned scholars, Goza Yūichi, also of the University of Tokyo, has also made a statement, while he cautioning against drawing conclusion from a single source, as far as Sonkeikaku version's depiction is concerned it's unthinkable for a non-samurai servant to receive such a treatment from Nobunaga.

3) Jesuit sources tended to treat Yasuke like a servant (I would say a de facto slave, but Oka Mihoko thinks otherwise). However Luis Frois' letters actually supports the Sonkeikaku version's depiction in two important ways:

One, he tells us Yasuke received 10 kanmon from Nobunaga's nephew Tsuda Nobuzumi. Lockley theorized this was money from Nobunaga, just passing through Nobuzumi's hands, which I find plausible. Whether or not that's the case, it is unlikely that Yasuke received less than 10 kanmon from Nobunaga as Nobuzumi was one of Nobunaga's subordinates. Depending on the method of calculation we can make using other contemporary sources, 10 kanmon could have been as high as an equivalent of the annual income from 100 koku worth of land (at least on paper), which would be in line with what we know Nobunaga gave to the winners of sumo tournaments that he hired. However, even if it was not, even the equivalent to the income of 50 or 60 koku worth of land would be considerably more than that which many low-class samurai of the Sengoku period had that we have on record.
Two, he tells us Yasuke fought at Nijō with a katana. Like the timing of his entry in the Ietada diaries strongly implying he went on the Takeda campaign of 1581, this supports the Sonkeikaku version's depiction that Yasuke was given a sword and hired into Nobunaga's services.

Also note that I am not saying Yasuke was a highly ranked Oda vassal. Rather, the term "samurai" referred to a far wider range of people, many of whom were low-class warriors that popular image probably wouldn't consider as "samurai" but were treated as or even explicitly stated to be such in the sources.

[Rômulo Ehalt]

Dear PMJS members,

Since I have a foot on both worlds (Japanese and Western scholarship) and, according to Academia.edu, the number of times my name has been searched in the last week in Japan has skyrocketed, let me try to clarify a few things.

On Or’s question, here is a helpful summary by Hirayama Yu posted on X:

まずは、根拠となった史料を提示する。太田牛一の『信長公記』には、複数の別本が存在し、その集成と紹介はいまだに実現していない。全文が公開されていない尊経閣文庫本には、世間に流布しているものとは別の記述が存在している。 （1）『信長公記』（陽明文庫本）天正九年二月廿三日条 きりしたん国より黒坊主参り候、年の齢廿六・七と見えたり、惣の身の黒き事牛のごとく、彼男健やかに器量なり、しかも強力十の人に勝たり、伴天連召列れ参り、御礼申上ぐ、誠に御威光を以て、古今承り及ばざる三国の名物、か様に希有の物共細々拝見有難き御事なり （2）『信長記』（尊経閣文庫本）同右条 きりしたん国より黒坊まいり候、齢廿六・七と相見へ、惣之身之黒キ事牛之ことく、彼男器量すくやかにて、しかも強力十人に勝れたる由候、伴天連召列参、御礼申上候、誠以御威光古今不及承、三国之名物、かやうに珍寄之者拝見仕候、然に彼黒坊被成御扶持、名をハ号弥助と、さや巻之のし付幷私宅等迄被仰付、依時御道具なともたさせられ候　

So yes, Yasuke was named as such in the Sonkeikaku variant of Shinchō Kōki.

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. Some reading on Zōhyō research should suffice.

One could also question whether Yasuke could have not been a slave at all. Mexia’s letter (Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la História (Madrid), 9/2663, 280-282v) states that he was Cafre, which of course denotes his geographical origin (Black African) but does not necessarily mean that he was an enslaved individual. As Catholic priests, Jesuits were served by famuli, which in Canon Law terms means something completely different compared to servi (slave). Famuli are generally translated as servants, and their legal status is much less severe than that of slaves who, legally speaking, lost their ingenuity upon enslavement and became forever marked by slavery, even when freed. This had severe effects on their rights and duties concerning Canon Law and Roman Law, as well as changing the way they could access a number of sacraments (especially matrimony and confirmation). Now, of course, I am aware that the possibility of finding a Black African person that was not enslaved in the Iberian empires in this period is slim, but labor arrangements in East Asia––between Europeans and Asians, Europeans and Africans, among Asians etc––were extremely variegated. Yasuke could have been a free merchant, a hired soldier, a mercenary. After all, as I have written elsewhere, the practice of 年季奉公 in Japan influenced slavery practices among Europeans in East and Southeast Asia to the point that Dominicans in mid- to late-seventeenth century Manila debated on the validity of these contracts between Europeans and Filipinos without even mentioning the Japanese (and we know that they did not have these contracts before). This is a context of numerous worldviews in constant conflict.

In sum, there are a lot of assumptions here taken from very scarce historical materials, and this includes all the attempts to answer whether Yasuke was a samurai or not. His geographical origins (Mozambique? Why not Ethiopia?) and his legal status are, in the end, the result of educated guesses based on context. Lockley is, apparently, a linguist trying his best to write historical fiction. Maybe the editor was the one who convinced him to go with the “non-fiction” or “true story” thing? As it has been said here before, everything could have been avoided if he did not try to sell his work as the result of historical research. I am happy, though, to see people suggesting we go back to the sources, and I find the idea of a critical edition of the very few references we have to this specific individual would be much welcome.

Just my two cents.

Best,

Rômulo Ehalt

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAHuB9GwdQCmZtwGdsCgWq30CMXVu7nwKsrp%2BNBFyGCktK71iFA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Or Porath]

Dear all,

This is fascinating. Thank you for clarifying these points for me. While Yasuke does sound like a typical Japanese name, it could have been based on a similarly sounding foreign name.

I am aware of the hesitation to use the word “samurai” in contexts that might be inappropriate, which is why I also included “bushi” in my question. If there is a better term that can refer to a wider range of people who took up arms, please enlighten me.

At any rate, if we consider why this issue has been raised in the last few months on X (Twitter), video game forums, and even in political discourse in Japan, it’s clear that the trolls claiming there couldn’t have been an African person carrying a sword in medieval Japan are mistaken, given the evidence we have about Yasuke.

Thank you again for your insights.

Or

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/179B74D1-3ACD-4EE3-9222-B7828094C7F0%40gmail.com.

--

Or Porath, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor 

Department of East Asian Studies

Max Webb Building, Room 517
Tel Aviv University

P.O. Box 39040

Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel

Vice-President, Society for the Study of Japanese Religions

Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan: Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts (with Fabio Rambelli)

Japan’s Forgotten God: Jūzenji in Medieval Texts and the Visual Arts

[Paula R. Curtis]

Dear all,

In light of the overall need for clarity on this topic, about which we have received some inquiries to the Moderation Team, I think it is important to trace several intertwined threads that have led to this moment, including many prejudiced and racist responses. Please allow me to tease this apart a little, as I believe it in many ways helpfully shows why scholarly knowledge about premodern Japan and its accessibility to the public is indeed important. Apologies in advance if anything is in error or unclear, this is a complex series of events.

Lockley’s Yasuke: The True Story of the Legendary African Samurai was released in 2019, and I admit that as a historian of medieval Japan I gave it only a cursory look and found it to be more historical fiction-oriented than aimed at a scholarly audience. But aside from several people asking me about it, it did not make that big of an impact in scholarly circles to my knowledge. There was a bit of hubbub about it in 2019, partly because the actor Chadwick Boseman (of Black Panther fame) was slated to play Yasuke in a film adaptation of the story before his death in 2020.

Meanwhile, there is the extremely popular Assassin’s Creed video game series, an action role-playing game by Ubisoft, which is known for its mix of fictional characters with historical events, including settings from ancient Egypt to the French Revolution and 16th century Italy. Despite having plenty of ahistorical vignettes you would expect in video games (plenty of Illuminati and Knights Templar lore, fighting mythological Greek creatures, etc.), fans have overall been particularly pleased with the amount of research and paired historical commentary that goes into the games to give it a historical feel. In fact, it has been reviewed in the American Historical Review more than once over the last decade (see here and here, for examples).

In 2022, it was announced that their Sengoku Japan game would be released in 2024. When released, the game appeared to depart somewhat from previous ones in foregrounding ninja and less historically grounded information. The game also included a Black lead characters inspired by the historical Yasuke. Responses included displeasure at the Japan-focused game drawing from Orientalist tropes and being “so much lazier,” as one colleague and player noted, than other games in the series in its attention to the complementary historical information. There was also a racist and gendered response to the appearance of a Black lead.

The focus on the Black lead and an upswelling of responses can be seen in a Reddit thread earlier this summer, when a subreddit on Asian masculinity included a post claiming that a Black main character was “Asian emasculation” and supposedly robbed Asian men of opportunities to be represented. These comments were woven into commentary by some Youtubers about how Ubisoft had “gone DEI.” As a result of these online pile-ons, our colleague Sachi Schmidt-Hori (Dartmouth), who was a consultant on the game, received thousands and thousands of hate messages and threats. Her department released a statement in support of her, and Ubisoft also condemned the online harassment. The harassment received (and still happening in many online forums) became entangled in a storm of current dog whistles in global politics and extremist communities, making accusations about racism (while exhibiting it), claiming the game reflects trends of “going woke,” and even, particularly in light of Dr. Schmidt-Hori’s research on sexuality, chigo, etc. making outlandish claims about the game’s consultants and creators condoning pedophilia. I can personally attest to the fact that online harassers dug through years-old posts on Twitter to leave hateful messages on tweets I made congratulating Dr. Schmidt-Hori on her book release, etc. These events are very much a product of online extremism and broader racist, misogynist, and homophobic rhetorics circulating in our present moment far beyond the context of Japan Studies.

We can NOW add to this the more recent outbursts that have gained a great amount of attention on the Japanese side. The central issue that has emerged among many Japanese users, but particularly right-wing netizens (neto uyo) is whether or not Yasuke was a samurai. Jeffrey Hall (Kanda University of International Studies) pointed out a few days ago on Twitter that a great deal of internet rage was stirred up after Japanese posts about Lockley went viral, claiming Lockley spread the idea of Yasuke = samurai via Wikipedia editing. As Paul Liu noted in an earlier reply, there have been historians like Oka Mihoko (U Tokyo), Goza Yūichi (Nichibunken), and Hirayama Yu (Health Science University, Yamanashi) who have weighed in on the debate about Yasuke having samurai status from the perspective of historical documents (Dr. Hall translated a number of these here and here, for those interested).

In this segment of the controversy, responses are focused on anti-Blackness and nationalist claims about race and ethnicity; to be a samurai, one must, they argue, be “Japanese.” There are also claims that Japan never had slaves of any kind. Tied up in these claims is also much anti-foreign sentiment about who gets to write about Japan, which is exacerbated by the questions of whether what Lockley has written is strictly true. This recent post that has been circulating, for example, on “Perfidious Historian, Thomas Lockley” is an excellent example of a lengthy bilingual examination that frames the controversy around Lockley purportedly attempting to deliberately trick or insult Japanese people, along with many other dubious statements interlinked with some legitimate critiques. 

This is not an issue confined to premodern history or even video games/popular media–with the steam this has gained from extremist conservative communities online, who are pushing politicians and political offices to make statements. This kind of online protest (often by a small group of very vocal netizens) is commonly seen among neto uyo. Enough urgings from this vocal minority have taken place that Ubisoft has released renewed statements in English and Japanese as of yesterday and some politicians have made personal statements on Twitter. This is a prime example of intersections between modern social and political movements and the role of history and public intellectual engagement. Those following only the premodern history side of this (and who are not on social media) may not have noticed, but many neto uyo invested in historical denialism have linked this to the Ramseyer comfort women controversy (my article on this and its role in the social media sphere can be found here) and are now drawing connections between those issues and Lockley’s Yasuke depictions to support further criticisms of “woke Western academics” while championing Ramseyer’s work. These connections resulted in a curious resurgence of uyo in my feed. At the height of the online harassment I and my colleagues experienced in relation to comfort women, I personally received many harassing messages about the illegitimacy of ancient female emperors (a topic I presented on in our “Teaching Against Modern Myths: Premodern Japan in the Classroom” at the American Historical Association this year along with Nadia Kanagawa and Elijah Bender).

All of this to say: the premodern past, and claims to who was a part of it, who gets to write it, who gets to assert racial or ethnic identities in light of it, and who it belongs to, are all intimately and irrevocably entangled with our contemporary moment, and the Yasuke controversy in its many threads over the last several years is part of that tapestry. I hope this overly-long explanation has clarified more than it has muddled and provided some perspective on where the distortions of history and authorial intent are occurring across temporalities.

Best,

Paula

PS: A recommended reading to follow this thread would be John G. Russell’s “Excluded Presence: Shoguns, Minstrels, Bodyguards, and Japan’s Encounters with the Black Other.”:

https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/71097/1/40_15.pdf

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAHuB9GykrLuGhqJL8vZ-3FDj02663PX1YpK7hOkh%3DS9EOPRJcw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Howell, David L]

Dear all,

I’ve been reading this thread with morbid fascination. I got an inquiry from a stranger some months ago about whether Yasuke was a samurai. I replied that, on balance, I would count him as one, while cautioning my correspondent that the category is not always clear cut. Before getting the inquiry I had not even heard of Lockley’s book. And I had no idea about all the controversies, so I didn’t give it another thought. Many thanks to Paula for enlightening us about the broader context of the issue in all of its profoundly distressing dimensions. I would also like to express my sincere sympathies to Paula, Sachi, and others targeted by the hateful trolls. 

Best,

David Howell

Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of Japanese History
Professor of History

Acting Director, Program on US-Japan Relations, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

Harvard University

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
2 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
dho...@fas.harvard.edu

まずは、根拠となった史料を提示する。太田牛一の『信長公記』には、複数の別本が存在し、その集成と紹介はいまだに実現していない。全文が公開されていない尊経閣文庫本には、世間に流布しているものとは別の記述が存在している。（1）『信長公記』（陽明文庫本）天正九年二月廿三日条きりしたん国より黒坊主参り候、年の齢廿六・七と見えたり、惣の身の黒き事牛のごとく、彼男健やかに器量なり、しかも強力十の人に勝たり、伴天連召列れ参り、御礼申上ぐ、誠に御威光を以て、古今承り及ばざる三国の名物、か様に希有の物共細々拝見有難き御事なり（2）『信長記』（尊経閣文庫本）同右条きりしたん国より黒坊まいり候、齢廿六・七と相見へ、惣之身之黒キ事牛之ことく、彼男器量すくやかにて、しかも強力十人に勝れたる由候、伴天連召列参、御礼申上候、誠以御威光古今不及承、三国之名物、かやうに珍寄之者拝見仕候、然に彼黒坊被成御扶持、名をハ号弥助と、さや巻之のし付幷私宅等迄被仰付、依時御道具なともたさせられ候　

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAL1MDVQ1g5t50z7w7-tirc_7MBCJ-kFH%3DtfRO5U_6sASpaSO6g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Richard Bowring]

From someone who would not touch social media with a bargepole, many thanks for an informative posting.

Ubisoft is, I believe, a French company. In January 2018 the Franco-Ivoire journalist and author Serge Bilé published as book on this subject with the simple title Yasuke. I wonder whether this book had more influence than Lockley’s.

Bilé has made his name writing on the hidden history of people of African descent turning up in “unusual” circumstances.

Richard Bowring

まずは、根拠となった史料を提示する。太田牛一の『信長公記』には、複数の別本が存在し、その集成と紹介はいまだに実現していない。全文が公開されていない尊経閣文庫本には、世間に流布しているものとは別の記述が存在している。（1）『信長公記』（陽明文庫本）天正九年二月廿三日条きりしたん国より黒坊主参り候、年の齢廿六・七と見えたり、惣の身の黒き事牛のごとく、彼男健やかに器量なり、しかも強力十の人に勝たり、伴天連召列れ参り、御礼申上ぐ、誠に御威光を以て、古今承り及ばざる三国の名物、か様に希有の物共細々拝見有難き御事なり（2）『信長記』（尊経閣文庫本）同右条きりしたん国より黒坊まいり候、齢廿六・七と相見へ、惣之身之黒キ事牛之ことく、彼男器量すくやかにて、しかも強力十人に勝れたる由候、伴天連召列参、御礼申上候、誠以御威光古今不及承、三国之名物、かやうに珍寄之者拝見仕候、然に彼黒坊被成御扶持、名をハ号弥助と、さや巻之のし付幷私宅等迄被仰付、依時御道具なともたさせられ候　

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pmjs/CAL1MDVQ1g5t50z7w7-tirc_7MBCJ-kFH%3DtfRO5U_6sASpaSO6g%40mail.gmail.com.