Ubisoft’s upcoming historical fiction game Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is drawing a lot of attention with one of the main protagonists in the game being the legendary Yasuke, an African Samurai. This has caused an uproar online as a line has been drawn in the sand by armchair historians and gaming gatekeepers who are either for or against the character’s existence and cherry-pick facts from a tree that barely had any fruit on it to begin with.
So, who was Yasuke? After around a month of researching, this is what I was able to come up with.
Let’s first deal with the elephant in the room on this, Yasuke did exist as there are records both European and Japanese that talk about him, though his real name is unknown, but how he got the name “Yasuke” is coming up. Since he arrived in Japan in 1579 with Jesuit missionaries, along with Portuguese traders, he more than likely came from Mozambique before becoming a slave (the Portuguese colonized Mozambique at that time). Yasuke was serving a Jesuit priest who was inspecting Missions in Japan, this visit drew a lot of attention from the locals as word spread quickly about a Black man being seen among the white Europeans.
The rumors quickly reached the ears of Japan’s most powerful magistrate in the country, Oda Nobunaga, and in 1581 luck would have it that his path would cross with Yasuke. The Jesuit inspectors asked for an audience with Nobunaga while they were visiting Kyoto and the request was granted as Nobunaga wanted to meet them, along with their servant.
The meeting went well as Nobunaga was more curious about the black man than politics at that moment and wanted to make sure that he was not being tricked by the missionaries and made Yasuke bath himself in front of the Daimyo’s court. Impressed by the color of his skin, as well as his height (converting the old Japanese measurements used puts Yasuke at 6ft tall), requested to take over ownership of the African which the Jesuits allowed (more than likely to earn favors).
Nobunaga then gave the African the name Yasuke, along with a stipend, a private residence, and a sword. Giving Yasuke a sword was a BIG DEAL in Japan during this time as only people of certain social classes were allowed to wield a sword let alone own one. Yasuke was also allowed to carry Nobunaga’s weapons when he traveled, another big honor. So, to be clear, Yasuke went from being a slave to being part of Japan’s most powerful politician’s entourage and inner circle. Being part of Nobunaga’s inner circle also meant you had to protect the man’s life.
The Sumō yūrakuzu byōbu (1605) drawing is believed to depict Yasuke wrestling.
Depending on who you are talking to, or whose manuscripts you are reading, some say Yasuke was a Samurai and some say it was more of an honorary title since he was in Nobunaga’s entourage. Yasuka did not appear in written accounts again till a year later in 1582 when Nobunaga died after one of his vassals, Akechi Mitsuhide, betrayed him and used his forces to attack Nobunaga at Honno-Ji temple, it’s not clear how Nobunaga died (either while fighting OR by seppuku) but among those who were with him during the attack, was Yasuke.
Yasuke was said to have fled after his master died and tried to seek sanctuary with Nobunaga’s son, Oda Nobutada, and alerted him of Mitsuhide’s betrayal. After a long battle between the two forces, it was documented that Yasuke did fight in the battle but surrendered at the battle’s conclusion when Nobutada ended his own life.
After the battle, Yasuke’s life was spared by orders of Mitsuhide himself, the wording of his reasons I can’t really say word for word here as it is quite (by modern terms) kind of racist but in the simplest of terms, Mitsuhide did not think Yasuke deserved death since he was not Japanese and that he was no longer their problem and that they should hand him back over to the Europeans (Jesuit missionaries).
There were letters written by Portuguese missionary Luis Frois, who knew Yasuke before he was given that name, praising Yasuke’s recovery from injuries he suffered from the battle he fought in…and that was the last time Yasuke was historically mentioned both Japanese and European. Yasuke was in service to the Daimyo for a year and three months before vanishing from history.
So, there you have it. There are a lot of scholarly sources and essays out there on this topic that can be found (if you actually put some effort into looking). This is not some “Insert butt-hurt buzzword here” agenda, or people trying to rewrite history. What I wrote above is pretty much what many scholars and historians seem to agree on, and what we know is only what little information was written down in surviving letters and records from that time. If anything, I may have given some potential spoilers to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed game for any of you who decided to read this.
