We Need to Talk About Yasuke: Fact, Fiction, and History with the ‘African Samurai’ Part 1
by Robert Tuck
In 1579, a man of African origin came to Japan in the retinue of a group of Jesuit missionaries. We don’t know what his original name was, but in Japan he went by the name of Yasuke. Within a few years, Yasuke would enhance his status significantly, entering the service of the most powerful warlord in Japan, Oda Nobunaga.
This sounds like a movie script, but Yasuke’s existence and service to Nobunaga are well-attested in multiple reliable historical sources such as Jesuit letters, the near-contemporary Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, and the diary of the warrior Matsudaira Ietada, a retainer to future Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nevertheless, Yasuke was a relatively obscure figure in Japan until recently. In 2019, Thomas Lockley published African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, A Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan from Hanover Square Press, an imprint of Harper Collins. Lockley’s book enjoyed positive reception among mainstream media after its release. For instance, it was one of the Washington Post’s Books to Read for April 2019 and celebrated in a 2021 book talk at George Washington University, co-sponsored by Howard University. However, the book was mostly ignored by English-speaking professional academics.
In May 2024, the video game company Ubisoft announced that Yasuke would be one of the co-stars of a new game, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Online outrage ensued in Japan and elsewhere, with Yasuke’s inclusion criticized as historically inaccurate, culturally disrespectful, or simply “woke.” Lockley’s book, too, was caught up in the controversy, with commentators accusing Lockley of distorting his sources or excessive speculation to make Yasuke appear more significant than he actually was. The abuse apparently forced Lockley to shut down his social media accounts.
Some of the criticism directed at Lockley’s presentation of Yasuke appears rooted in anti-Black racism, reflecting a desire to deny or downplay the notion that a Black man could have played a role in Japanese history. The demand for “historical accuracy” seems dubious, given that Yasuke’s co-star in the game is a female ‘ninja’ named Naoe, and her inclusion has not drawn the same level of criticism. Recent scholarship in Japan has shown that female ninja did not exist and were a product of the imagination of 1960's pulp fiction writers. It’s hard to comprehend a notion of “historical accuracy” that views a character based upon the lived experience of a Black man as unacceptable but has no problem with a fictional female character in a role that women did not assume historically.
A second question remains as to whether Yasuke can be called a ‘samurai’ or not. This is trickier than it might seem, because despite the free use of the term ‘samurai’ in modern pop culture, the word was not widely used in medieval Japan (roughly 1185–1600) in the sense we now understand it. Strictly speaking, ‘samurai’ means simply ‘one who serves,’ and in medieval sources it’s just as likely to refer to a servant (even a female one!) as to a warrior, so scholars often prefer the more precise term bushi, meaning simply ‘warrior.’ Yasuke is not referred to as a bushi in the historical sources, but that doesn’t tell us anything, because as Paul Liu and Romulo Ehalt have pointed out, until the establishment of the specific social class of ‘warrior’ (shi) in the early Edo period (1600–1867), very few people were explicitly referred to as bushi in primary sources, even those now regarded as famous ‘samurai.’
It’s worth noting that several academic historians in Japan have weighed in on this topic, many of whom have suggested that it’s not unreasonable to call Yasuke a samurai, even by the loose definition of the time. Hirayama Yū, for instance, notes on X that one copy of the near-contemporary primary source Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga refers to Yasuke being granted a sword and a stipend by Nobunaga. This suggests that Yasuke was in Nobunaga’s direct service and, while he carried some of Nobunaga’s weapons, was treated better than a servant or low-ranking foot-soldier would have been. Goza Yūichi has likewise noted that based on the primary source evidence, Nobunaga certainly treated Yasuke as if he were a ‘samurai.’ Goza also cautions, though, that we should be careful drawing conclusions from a single source and finds Lockley’s description of Yasuke as a “legendary samurai” incongruous.
We don’t have all that much evidence about Yasuke, but what we do have suggests that he became a vassal of a major warrior house and was recognized as such at the time. If Yasuke wasn’t a ‘samurai,’ then a lot of other people frequently referred to as ‘samurai’ in popular culture wouldn’t be either, such as the English sailor Will Adams, the real-life inspiration for Shōgun’s John Blackthorne. Other arguments, such as the idea that Yasuke wasn’t a ‘true samurai’ because he surrendered to Nobunaga’s enemies after Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582, seem based on modern misconceptions. Surrender was far from unknown among medieval Japanese warriors, so again, if Yasuke wasn’t a true samurai for surrendering, lots of other ‘samurai’ weren’t ‘samurai’ either. Given the imprecision of the term, we might quibble with its use, but it’s hardly the egregious misrepresentation Lockley’s critics might claim.
Does this mean African Samurai is in the clear, then, and the whole controversy is baseless? Unfortunately, no. There are some serious problems with Lockley’s book, and it’s to these we’ll now turn in Part 2.
Robert Tuck is an Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature at Arizona State University. Tuck studies 19th-century Japanese literature and culture, especially Sino-Japanese literary genres and cultural relations. His first book, “Idly Scribbling Rhymers: Poetry, Print, and Community in 19th-Century Japan,” was published in July 2018 by Columbia University Press. His next project is a complete translation of and monograph on arguably the most widely-read text of 19th-century Japan, Rai Sanyo’s “Nihon gaishi” (An Unofficial History of Japan, 1827).
