Yasuke

For the anime based on him, see Yasuke (TV series).

Yasuke
Bornc. 1555[1]
Portuguese Mozambique (most likely)
DiedAfter June 1582
AllegianceJesuits, Alessandro Valignano
Oda clan, Oda Nobunaga (1581–1582)
Battles/wars

Yasuke (Japanese: 弥助 / 弥介, Japanese pronunciation: [jasɯ̥ke]) was a man of African origin who served as a samurai[2][3] to the Japanese daimyō Oda Nobunaga between 1581 and 1582, during the Sengoku period, until Nobunaga's death in the Honnō-ji Incident.

There are few historical documents on Yasuke. From the fragmentary accounts, Yasuke first arrived in Japan in the service of Jesuit Alessandro Valignano.[4] Nobunaga summoned him out of a desire to see a black man.[4] Subsequently, Nobunaga took him into his service and gave him the name Yasuke. He was granted a sword, a house and a stipend.[5][6] Yasuke accompanied Nobunaga until his death and was present at the Honnō-ji Incident. Afterwards, Yasuke was sent back to the Jesuits.[7] There are no records of his life afterwards.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lockley_Britannica was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Academic sources on Yasuke's samurai status include:
    • Lockley, Thomas (16 July 2024). "Yasuke". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 17 July 2024. Due to his favor with Nobunaga and presence at his side in at least one battle, Yasuke is commonly held by Japanese historians to be the first recorded "samurai" of foreign birth, although this has been disputed by some people [...] In an unpublished but extant document from about this time, Ōta states that Nobunaga made Yasuke a vassal, giving him a house, servants, a sword, and a stipend. During this period, the definition of samurai was ambiguous, but historians think that this would contemporaneously have been seen as the bestowing of warrior or "samurai" rank.
    • Atkins, E. Taylor (2023). A History of Popular Culture in Japan: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-350-19592-9. Impressed with Yasuke's height and strength (which "surpassed that of ten men"), Nobunaga gave him a sword signifying bushi status. Yasuke served as Nobunaga's retainer and conversation partner for the last year of the warlord's life, defending Azuchi castle from the traitorous Akechi forces in 1582, where Nobunaga committed ritual suicide (seppuku). Although there are no known portraits of the "African samurai," there are some pictorial depictions of dark-skinned men (in one of which he is sumo wrestling) from the early Edo period that historians speculate could be Yasuke.
    • López-Vera, Jonathan (2020). A History of the Samurai: Legendary Warriors of Japan. Tokyo; Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing. pp. 140–141. ISBN 9784805315354. The name given to this black slave was Yasuke (until recently the reason for this was unknown—investigations carried out in Japan not long ago claim his real name was Yasufe) and from then on he always accompanied Nobunaga as a kind of bodyguard. It is worth pointing out that henceforth he was no longer a slave, since he received a salary for being in the daimyō's service and enjoyed the same comforts as other vassals. He was granted the rank of samurai and occasionally even shared a table with Nobunaga himself, a privilege few of his trusted vassals were afforded.
  3. ^ Journalistic sources on Yasuke's samurai status include:
    • Small, Zachary (11 September 2024). "The Fight Over a Black Samurai in Assassin's Creed Shadows". New York Times. Retrieved 17 September 2024. experts say that Yasuke was possibly enslaved as a child before arriving in Japan and later ascended into the samurai class during the Sengoku period [...] Yu Hirayama, a historian at the Japan University of Health Sciences who specializes in the Sengoku period, said that Yasuke's samurai status was not in question. "There are very few historical documents about him, but there's no doubt that he was a 'samurai' who served Nobunaga," Hirayama wrote on social media.
    • Ziegler, Owen (25 May 2024). "Gaming's latest culture war targets Yasuke, Japan's Black samurai". The Japan Times. Retrieved 17 September 2024. The act in which a medieval European warrior kneels, is anointed with a sword and rises a knight (itself an invention of later observers) had no equivalent in the Sengoku Period, Lockley explains. In a country embroiled in a civil war with dozens of belligerent fiefdoms, "there was no clear division between 'samurai' and others" until 1588, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga's successor, began prohibiting the possession of weapons by all but the hereditary nobility. Being samurai, then, was defined by other means. Whether Yasuke was ever ceremoniously endowed with the rights, privileges and responsibilities of a samurai, he was addressed as "tono" (literally, "lord" or "master"), received a stipend from Nobunaga and carried Nobunaga's arms, itself a rank of immense honor for the era. "There's no piece of paper that says Yasuke was a samurai," Lockley says, noting that some critics are simply misunderstanding how to interpret the historical record. "But then there's no piece of paper that says anybody else was a samurai." Most telling to Lockley, however, is that no reputable Japanese historian has raised doubts about Yasuke's samurai bonafides.
    • "Yasuke: Der legendäre "schwarze Samurai"". www.japandigest.de (in German). Retrieved 17 September 2024. Within a few months, Nobunaga rewarded him with an estate at Azuchi Castle, but above all, he presented him with a katana sword in gratitude for his hard work. A katana was not only a means of defence, but also had a deep symbolic meaning in Japanese culture. It was a symbol of the moral integrity of the warrior and represented his honour, virtue and commitment to justice. Thus, Yasuke was the first samurai of African descent, if not the first non-Japanese samurai in Japanese history. (Translated from German)
    • Germain, Jacquelyne (10 January 2023). "Who Was Yasuke, Japan's First Black Samurai?". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 27 June 2024. In 16th-century Japan, the title of samurai spoke to rank and was loosely defined as a warrior in the service of a lord or another warrior. By 1581, Nobunaga employed thousands of samurai—yet Yasuke was the first foreign-born warrior to enter their ranks.
    • Moon, Kat (30 April 2021). "The True Story of Yasuke, the Legendary Black Samurai Behind Netflix's New Anime Series". TIME. Retrieved 27 June 2024. Yasuke was a real-life Black samurai who served under Oda Nobunaga, one of the most important feudal lords in Japanese history and a unifier of the country
    • "L'histoire (vraie) de Yasuké, le samouraï d'origine africaine". Franceinfo (in French). 12 April 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2024. His rise in Japanese society was prodigious: in the space of a year, he became a samurai, the first foreigner ever to receive this honour in Japan. (Translated from French
    • Mohamud, Naima (14 October 2019). "Yasuke: The mysterious African samurai". BBC. Retrieved 17 September 2024. Known as Yasuke, the man was a warrior who reached the rank of samurai under the rule of Oda Nobunaga - a powerful 16th Century Japanese feudal lord who was the first of the three unifiers of Japan.
    • Jozuka, Emiko (20 May 2019). "The legacy of feudal Japan's African samurai". CNN. Retrieved 27 June 2024. Today, Yasuke's legacy as the world's first African samurai is well known in Japan, spawning everything from prize-winning children's books to a manga series titled "Afro Samurai".
    • Lepidi, Pierre (24 June 2018). "La légende retrouvée de Yasuke, le premier samouraï noir du Japon". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 17 September 2024. This is the story of a man who was swallowed up by time. So much so that even his birth name has been lost. All we know about him is the Japanese nickname he was given: Yasuke. A former slave born on the East African coast in the mid-sixteenth century, Yasuke became the first foreign samurai in Japanese history. (Translated from French)
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference JapanForum was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kaneko2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Jozuka, Emiko (20 May 2019). "The legacy of feudal Japan's African samurai". CNN. Retrieved 27 June 2024.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference huffingtonpostyasuke was invoked but never defined (see the help page).