OFH Throwback- Episode #171- Who Was the African Samurai? (Part I)

Hello, and welcome to a very special throwback episode of Our Fake History.

This week, I'm not throwing you back very far at all.

We're headed back to season eight to revisit episodes 171 and 172.

That was the series entitled, Who Was the African Samurai?

This week I am re-releasing part one, and next week I will drop part two, along with a brand new introduction, like the one you're hearing right now.

So, why have I chosen to re-release something from season eight?

Usually, I pull from a little deeper in the catalog when I do these throwback episodes.

Well, as some of you might know, Yasuke, the so-called African samurai from the late 16th century, century, has been back in the news lately.

If you are a gamer, then you might know that the latest installment of the wildly popular Assassin's Creed video game franchise is going to be set in 16th century Japan.

And notably, one of the playable characters is Yasuke.

Now, when the first trailer for this new game dropped, some of the franchise's fans reacted angrily when they discovered that a game that was set in feudal Japan was going to feature a playable character who was a black man.

From their perspective, it seemed like Ubisoft, the company that makes the Assassin's Creed games, were misrepresenting history to shoehorn more diversity into their video game.

Or, you know, so goes the argument.

Now, I'm not really a gamer, so I don't really follow video game controversies all that closely.

But the podcaster Alexander Rader von Sternberg, the host of the podcast History Impossible, suggested that I take a look at it.

And honestly, he was right to do so.

Not only have I covered Yasuke on this show, but this controversy deals with the very complicated history that surrounds that figure.

It turns out this might just be one weird internet flame war where my podcast can add some helpful context.

Now, one thing I will say is it seems to me like the historical accuracy of this particular Assassin's Creed game has received considerably more scrutiny from the gaming community than any other installment of the series.

The Assassin's Creed games are known for creating historically realistic environments for their adventures.

For instance, the game set in Renaissance Italy quite faithfully renders the streets of Florence as they would have looked in the 1500s.

But let me say this: while Assassin's Creed has no doubt gotten many people interested in history, these games have never been about realistically reconstructing the past.

In fact, the Assassin's Creed games are all about embracing pseudo-historical ancient astronaut theories and the wider mythology of the so-called Hashitian sect of assassins that we have covered before on this podcast.

These games involve hunting for long-lost ancient alien artifacts.

So, you know, maybe you shouldn't be getting your history from Assassin's Creed.

Now,

Gamers and fans of the series can correct me on this if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like in the past there's been much of an uproar over the many historical inaccuracies that appear in the Assassin's Creed games.

So what's the difference this time?

I think I have a hunch, but I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions there.

Now, with all of that said, many of the game's critics have seized on an issue with the scholarship about Yasuke that I pointed out in this series that I'm about to re-release.

And that issue is that the one English language book we have about Yasuke is part history and part historical fiction.

The scholar behind the only book on Yasuke available in the English language is a British professor who teaches at Japan's Nihon University.

His book, African Samurai, The True Story of Yasuke, a legendary black warrior in feudal Japan, elaborates on the scraps of historical evidence that we have about the real 16th century East African warrior who found himself in Japan near the end of that country's Warring States period.

Now, in my series, I did my best to point out all the moments where Lockley was guessing at things, creating fictionalized moments, or speculating.

When you listen back to this series, you'll hear me saying, Lockley is guessing here quite a lot.

His book is not a scholarly monograph and should not be treated as such.

Now, normally, I don't think that would be a big deal, but the problem is, in the book, Lockley is not always clear about when he's guessing or imagining the details of a scene that he could not possibly know about.

If you know that you're reading a book that's dabbling with fiction, then you know to be on the lookout for it.

But a more casual reader might easily confuse Lockley's speculation with solid historical fact.

And to be clear, I don't think that's the reader's fault.

That's Lockley's fault.

It seems like Lockley's book has deeply influenced the non-Japanese understanding of Yasuke.

It also seems to have informed the portrayal of Yasuke in the Assassin's Creed game, but both Ubisoft and Lockley have been cagey about that.

The truth is that there are some very real criticisms of Thomas Lockley's work.

In interviews, Lockley has insisted that his work should be understood as history.

But he's not always been forthcoming about just how much of his work is based on speculation speculation or guesses based on shreds of evidence.

Thomas Lockley has also done a few interviews in recent months that have been a little sketchy.

Because of the attention generated by the Assassin's Creed controversy, he's been asked to discuss the historicity of Yasuke by a number of publications.

The most high-profile of these was in the Japan Times on May 25th, 2024.

The author of that article paraphrased Lockley, writing, quote, Most tellingly to Lockley, however, is that no reputable Japanese historian has raised doubts about Yasuke's samurai bona fides, including Sakujin Korino, who served as a fact-checker for African samurai and is one of the country's foremost experts on the 1582 Honoji incident, for which Yasuke was believed to be present.

End quote.

That little little passage caught the attention of the Japanese expert who was mentioned as the alleged fact-checker.

Sakujin Kirino later clarified in a tweet that the Japanese translator of Lockley's book, quote,

asked me to read through it and provide my thoughts.

I gave a few comments, but it was nothing as grand as a fact-check.

End quote.

So the Japanese expert who Lockley claimed fact-checked his book did not, in fact, give that book a proper fact-check, beyond some cursory notes.

Oof.

Not a good look, Thomas Lockley.

But perhaps it should also be pointed out that that expert did not raise any objections to the premise of the book, which is that Yasuke could be considered a samurai.

All of this is to say that the Assassin's Creed controversy created a situation where Yasuke, the African samurai, needed a defender, and Thomas Lockley has not been great.

Now, in this episode, you will hear me make many references to Lockley and his work.

Hopefully, I did a good job of making it clear when and where Lockley was guessing or speculating about things.

But if I did not make it clear enough, let me say it again.

Lockley's book must be handled with the utmost of care.

Now, at the heart of this debate is the question of what it means to be a samurai and who can claim samurai heritage.

That is something I get into in detail in part two of this series and something I will comment on even more in the new introduction for the re-release that comes out next week.

In the meantime, if you want to hear me speak even more on this topic, then you should check out the History Impossible podcast.

I was recently on that show speaking about Yasuke, Lockley, and the Assassin's Creed controversy with Alexander Rader von Sternberg.

So if you want to hear that, then please seek out the History Impossible podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

In the meantime, please enjoy episode number 171, Who Was the African Samurai, Part 1?

When I was little,

my father was famous.

He was the greatest samurai in the Empire,

and he was the chauvin's decapitator.

He cut off the heads of 131 lords.

It was a bad time for the Empire.

The Shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out.

People said his brain was infected by devils.

If you've heard that clip before, then you either love Japanese film or you love hip-hop.

Maybe your love of hip-hop led you to a love of Japanese film.

Or perhaps an obsession with gory samurai cinema got you curious about a certain group of Staten Island rap gods.

It's hard to say.

But even if that clip is totally new to you, you have to admit, it sets a mood.

That little piece of voiceover was clipped from the 1980 film Shogun Assassin.

Shogun Assassin was the English language mashup of two popular Japanese films, 1972's Lone Wolf and Cub Sword of Vengeance and Lone Wolf and Cub Baby Cart at the River Styx.

The Lone Wolf and Cub series started off as a popular manga or graphic novel and was eventually adapted into six wildly violent but super entertaining action films set in 18th century Edo era Japan.

This series follows the adventures of Ogami Ito, a wandering samurai or Ronin, who once worked as the shogun's executioner.

Through a series of misfortunes, Ito finds himself disgraced and hunted by his former master.

The fun twist is that as he wanders Japan cutting down would-be assassins with his blade, he is accompanied by his three-year-old son, Daigoro.

In some installments of the series, Daigoro rides in a tricked-out baby stroller fitted with hidden guns and other nasty surprises.

The father-and-son samurai team are essentially an unstoppable two-man army.

These movies are pure grindhouse fun.

If you like swordplay and buckets of fake blood, then it really doesn't get much better than the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

But that voiceover clip is perhaps just as well known for opening one of the best-loved hip-hop albums of the 1990s, the Jizza's Liquid Swords.

The 1995 hip-hop album was technically the second solo outing for the Wu-Tang clan's Jizza, or the genius.

Produced by fellow Wu-Tang clan member and production mastermind, The Rizza, Liquid Swords is in many ways a continuation of the unique aesthetic developed on the eternal 1993 Wu-Tang Clan statement of purpose, Enter the Wu-Tang, 36 Chambers.

A key part of this aesthetic, of course, was an embrace of 1970s Asian action cinema.

The clan, and in particular the Rizza, was enamored with Hong Kong Kung Fu films.

The name, Wu-Tang Clan, is a direct reference to the 1983 martial arts film Shaolin vs.

Wu-Tang.

Not only did the Staten Island rappers use these films as a jumping-off point to create their own rich mythology for the group, the Rizza famously sampled sounds and bits of dialogue from these films to create the music.

For the album Liquid Swords, the artists involved continued broadcasting their love of Asian cinema, but instead of mining Hong Kong Kung Fu films for sonic inspiration, they they instead looked to nearby Japan.

On Liquid Swords, the Jizza presented himself as a type of philosophical swordsman.

As an MC, he wanted to evoke the deadly precision and stoic cool of a character like Ogami Ito, one of Japanese cinema's best-loved samurai.

Music writer Robert Berry explained it like this: quote, In Liquid Swords, the Jizza has transposed the legends of the samurai onto the parallel mythology of American gangster rap, reflecting the fatalist preoccupation behind the theme of being born inescapably into a life of violence.

The track, Duel of the Iron Mike, juxtaposes sword battles with battle rhyming, the voice as weapon, in a three-way contest for supremacy, with old dirty bastard presiding as its Saturnine umpire.

End quote.

Oh man, I love flowery music writing.

Points awarded for calling ODB a Saturnine umpire.

That's too good.

But jokes aside, I do think Robert Berry managed to capture something there.

I think he quite concisely articulated how an artist like the Jizza was able to play with the pop culture conception of the Japanese samurai.

Jizza, the Rizza, and the Wu-Tang clan are obvious examples when you're looking at how African-American artists have borrowed, some might say appropriated, elements of Asian culture in their art.

But this has a history reaching back beyond Wu Tang's 1990s heyday.

In 2013, academic Ken McLeod published an article examining the relationship between African-American hip-hop artists and Japanese culture.

In that article, he pointed to the work of the cultural theorist Kim Hewitt.

Hewitt saw a connection between how Asian martial artists were portrayed in the films of the 1970s and 80s and what he called the African-American aesthetic of cool.

Specifically, Hewitt takes the idea of cool back to the mid-century jazz scene.

He writes,

The cool aesthetic is, in one sense, composed violence.

This musical performance style parallels the martial arts ideal of relaxed intensity in the face of physical and mental challenges.

Martial arts, in its ideal form, is nothing if not cool, end quote.

I like that idea.

Coolness as relaxed intensity.

And indeed, the platonic form of both the legendary samurai and the legendary MC is someone who is both supremely at ease, but also controlling deadly power.

Hewitt would connect this dot explicitly, writing, quote, when self-expression embraces composure, it reflects the aesthetic of the cool.

As detailed in the code of the samurai, the samurai warrior is at his peak service as a warrior when he maintains an absolute composure in the face of death, the thought of which he must hold in his mind at all times.

The myth of the unflappable, serenely deadly samurai was only enhanced by movies like those in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

Ogami Ito is very cool, and the Jizza was happy to present himself as the Ogami Ito of rap.

Now,

it can be tricky to talk about this kind of cultural interplay.

When does homage become appropriation?

Does anyone really have the right to take elements from a culture that isn't theirs?

I'll let you make up your own mind about these thorny questions.

What's clear is that the cultural exchange between Japan and Black America doesn't just flow one way.

There are many examples of African-American artists who have played with elements of Asian culture in their art, but there are also Japanese artists who have taken inspiration and aesthetic elements from Black America.

The most obvious example of this is the popular manga and later anime series Afro Samurai.

Afro Samurai was created by the Japanese artist Takeshi Okazaki.

Takeshi Okazaki created the titular Afro Samurai as an homage to his love of hip-hop, soul music, and black American culture in general.

He was also fascinated by how Japanese culture was often presented in North America.

His Afro Samurai is a Japanese reflection of an American reflection of Japanese culture.

Oh, how's that for a brain breaker?

The character is a black samurai living in a fictionalized Japan that is simultaneously a mythical past and a hyper-technological future.

After witnessing his father murdered by a gunslinger named Justice, Afro Samurai embarks on a single-minded quest for revenge.

It's a simple story, but I'll say it: Afro Samurai is very badass.

Clearly, I'm not the only one who thought so.

When Samuel L.

Jackson saw a trailer for an anime treatment of Afro Samurai, he immediately got on board to bring the story to American audiences.

A collaboration between Jackson, the Japanese anime producers Gonzo, and Spike TV led to the creation of a five-episode animated miniseries telling the tale of Afro Samurai.

This came out in 2007.

The title character was voiced in English by Sam Jackson himself.

And of course, the score for the miniseries was composed by who else?

The Rizza.

The hip-hop samurai circle remained unbroken.

Most of us watching Afro Samurai understood that it was a fantasy that had little to do with real history.

The character was meant to symbolize the ongoing love affair between hip-hop and samurai lore.

There never could have been a real African samurai during Japan's medieval period.

Could there?

Believe it or not, Afro-samurai, for all its fantastical elements, has a surprising link to real history.

In the late 1500s, a man from Africa living in Japan rose to the rank of samurai.

His name was Yasuke.

And as best as historians can tell, he was the first non-Japanese person to ever be given a ceremonial sword and bestowed the rights due to a traditional Japanese warrior in service of a lord.

Even more incredible, Yasuke wasn't sworn to some long-forgotten petty lord.

Oh no.

Yasuke was a samurai.

sworn to Oda Nobunaga, arguably one of the most important figures in Japanese history.

In the late 1500s, Oda Nobunaga was instrumental in bringing the Sengoko Jidai, the Warring States period, to a close.

He was one of three figures who is often given credit for reunifying Japan after a century of civil war.

If we can trust our sources, then standing beside Oda Nobunaga during some of the most dramatic moments in his life was a tall, dark-skinned African man who carried the sword of a samurai.

Who was this Yasuke?

How did a man from East Africa find himself in Japan in the 1500s?

How did he rise so quickly within Japanese society?

Given how few sources there are concerning this remarkable figure, how much about him can we really know for sure?

Let's see what we can find out today on our fake history.

One, two, three, five.

Episode number 171, Who Was the African Samurai, Part 1.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

Before we get going this week, I want to remind everyone that an ad-free version of Our Fake History is available through patreon.com slash our fake history.

If you start supporting at $5 or more every month, you get access to an ad-free feed and all the other extra episodes that I have on offer.

It's the best way to support what we're doing here at Our Fake History.

So if you dig the show and you're done with the ads, you want the extras, then please head to patreon.com slash our fake history.

This week, we are starting a new series of episodes on a historical figure that quite honestly feels like he should be a historical myth.

That is the African-born samurai known only as Yasuke.

Now, when I embarked on this research, I'd thought that Yasuke was a fairly obscure historical figure.

But as I've been digging into this, I've learned that he's recently had a bit of a pop culture moment.

Before his passing, the great actor Chadwick Boseman was talking about playing the black samurai in a live-action film.

There's also a popular anime series featuring Yasuke currently streaming on Netflix.

The resident artist here at Our Fake History, Frank Fiorentino, was working on today's episode art and was surprised when his art students recognized that he was drawing Yasuke, the African samurai.

They apparently loved the anime.

So there you go.

Those of you who have been listening to Our Fake History for a while now know that this is not our first foray into Japanese history.

Over the course of our past eight seasons, we've looked at the history of Japan's ninjas, we've explored the legendary life of the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, and we've explored some of the legends associated with Japanese martial arts.

But what's interesting is that almost every time the podcast brings me back to the history of Japan, I get pulled towards one particularly complex and fascinating part of that nation's past.

This is the period that extends from 1467 to 1603, known as the Sengoku Jidai, or Japan's Warring States period.

Now, I don't think this is some wild coincidence.

It's clearly because this era in Japanese history is particularly rich in mythology.

This was a period when centralized authority in Japan broke down, leading to a nearly constant state of war between hundreds of competing local lords known as daimyo.

Violent conflict has a way of breeding legend.

Acts of warrior prowess, strange battlefield occurrences, surprising turns of fate, they all lend themselves nicely to historical myth-making.

When the Sengoku Jidai finally ended and power was centralized once again in the hands of a powerful shogun or military leader, Japan entered a 250-year period of relative peace, but also rigid conservatism.

As a result, the era of conflict in the 15th and 16th centuries would loom large in Japanese historical memory.

The Warring States period was often romanticized as a time of heroes, bravery, and samurai virtue.

Now, we will come back to that idea of samurai virtue.

In fact, as we will explore in this series, there's a ton of debate around exactly when the samurai, Japan's legendary warrior caste, became proper samurai.

Now, this warring states period is sometimes presented as the heyday of the samurai.

This seems logical.

During a time of war, the warriors would reign supreme.

And in one sense, this is very true.

But the tricky question is: when does a warrior become a samurai?

To understand the life of Yasuke, that's a question we're we're going to have to wrangle with.

Still, to this day, the key figures in the Warring States period, like Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Aiesu, and of course the legendary ninja Hattori Honzo, are among the best remembered names in Japanese history.

Oda Nobunaga, who is a key figure in the story of Yasuke, is so well represented in Japanese historical fiction and pop culture that he's even a playable character in a Pokemon game.

I'm not joking.

You can be the 16th century warlord in the game Pokemon Conquest, where he's partnered with three powerful Pokémon.

There's historical name recognition, and then there's being a playable character in Pokemon.

What else needs to be said?

The man known only as Yasuke arrived in Japan at a particularly dramatic moment in the Warring States period.

And this is a big part of the reason why he's been remembered.

But despite that, sources concerning his life are quite few.

Honestly, in the history of this podcast, this has been one of the most challenging stories I've ever had to research.

This is mainly due to the fact that there are only a handful of primary sources that mention Yasuke at all.

These sources give us only the most basic outline of this East African warrior's experience in Japan.

From there, we're left with a handful of fascinating but potentially unreliable legends.

But of course, fascinating, if unreliable, legends are our bread and butter here at Our Fake History.

The story of Yasuke is so surprising that once I came across it, I couldn't let it go, despite the dearth of sources.

So in the creation of this podcast, I've had to rely heavily on the work of one particular historian, a man named Thomas Lockley.

Lockley is an associate professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo and is the world's leading expert on the life of Yusuke.

Lockley has done more research into the life of this remarkable figure than perhaps anyone else, or at least anyone who's publishing in English.

But the tricky thing is that Lockley's book on Yasuke, African Samurai, co-authored with Jeffrey Girard, is kind of unusual.

It's one-part history book and one-part historical fiction.

Everything in the book is supported by historical research, but the authors use the looseness of fiction to make guesses about how particular moments may have played out.

Scenes are written with novelistic detail, with the authors imagining what the characters may have been thinking.

Battle scenes are punctuated with gory details that, while realistic, have been invented by the authors.

It makes for a real fun read, but it's not really a typical history book.

Now, the authors are very clear about what their book is,

but it needs to be used very carefully as a historical source.

Now, the difficulty of these sources almost convinced me to abandon this topic altogether.

But this story is just too cool not to tell.

Come on, who doesn't want to know about the African samurai?

So...

I need to be very careful not to get carried away with speculation.

Also, I'm going to have to give you a whole lot of historical context to help make this story make sense.

So, buckle up.

This one is context heavy.

Okay,

so who was Yasuke?

And how did he find himself in Japan in the late 1500s?

Let's see what we can find out.

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The man the people of Japan would come to know as Yasuke arrived on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu on May 21st, 1579.

One of the many challenges in exploring the life of this figure is that his voice is entirely absent from the historical record.

It would be amazing if somewhere, somehow, we found Yasuke's diary or some other historical source that records his journey in his words.

There's no doubting that the series of events that took him from his birthplace in East Africa to his adopted home of Japan was remarkable.

In all likelihood, it was probably quite harrowing.

But sadly, we don't know for sure.

None of the primary sources used to reconstruct the life of Yasuke record his thoughts or his version of events.

We only see him in history through the eyes of others.

And those others were either Europeans or Japanese.

This means that reconstructing his life is largely about understanding the people around him that we know more about.

This can sometimes make it feel like Yasuke is a supporting character in his own life story.

So as I move forward and I try and color in the world around Yasuke, I hope it doesn't seem like I'm neglecting the man who should be at the heart of our tale.

To understand his life, we have to understand his context.

So here's where we start.

Yasuke first appears in the historical record thanks to the writing of the Jesuits.

We know that he was employed in the service of a high-ranking Jesuit named Alessandro Valignano, who came to Japan in 1579 as part of a tour that he was conducting of the Jesuit missions in Asia.

Now, if you're someone that listens to our fake history as it comes out, you may be picking up on the fact that the Jesuits have become recurring characters in this season of the show.

The Jesuits were a key part of the Galileo story.

They also played an important role in the strange tale of George Salmanazer, the fake Formosan.

I assure you, this has not been intentional, but every season, themes just seem to emerge.

Season 8 is the season of the Jesuits, I guess.

But despite the fact that the Jesuits have been hovering in the background of many of these stories, I don't think I've properly introduced them.

In the mid-16th century, the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuits were formerly known, emerged as an all-new Roman Catholic monastic order.

They were very much a product of the religious upheavals that shook Western Europe in the 1500s.

The Protestant Reformation was reshaping the spiritual map of the continent.

Officially founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus was, in many ways, a Roman Catholic response to the challenge presented by the new Protestant denominations.

Where many monastic orders had traditionally encouraged their brethren to retreat from the world, live away from secular temptations, and focus on their inner spiritual development, the Jesuits took a different path.

While they also embraced monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, their mission was far more active.

In their founding documents, the Jesuits declared that their ranks were open to, quote, whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God, end quote.

They saw themselves as protectors of the Roman Catholic faith and believed passionately that their version of Christianity needed to be propagated throughout the world.

As such, the Jesuits became some of the most intensely dedicated missionaries of the era.

This meant evangelizing aggressively in corners of the globe that had previously not been exposed to Christianity or had only had limited contact with the faith.

This included places like India, China, Japan, and throughout North and South America.

Many have noted that the Jesuit mission to act as soldiers of God seems to have been a bit more than metaphorical language.

Many of the founding Jesuits were military men before they committed themselves to a monastic lifestyle.

Before he was called to religious service, Society of Jesus founder Ignatius Loyola had distinguished himself as a soldier and had also earned a bit of a reputation as a street fighter.

One biographer would describe him as a, quote, fancy dresser, an expert dancer, a womanizer, sensitive to insult, and a rough, punkish swordsman who used his privileged status to escape prosecution for violent crimes.

End quote.

Now, I bring this up partially because it's interesting.

I mean, we don't have too many saints who were at one point described as womanizers and rogue punkish swordsmen.

But also, Loyola's history would influence the character of his religious order.

Many early Jesuits were cut from the same cloth as Loyola.

Many were former military men with rough pasts, but they found their calling with the Society of Jesus.

But scandalous stories aside, there's no denying the early successes of the Jesuit order.

You could make the case that they were the most effective Christian evangelists of the early modern period.

However, they weren't without their critics.

Some worried that the order had become too powerful too quickly.

The far-flung Jesuit missions also operated with little oversight from Rome, which had some concerned that the Jesuit brothers were playing by their own rules while overseas.

The Jesuit mission in Japan had been founded in 1549, not long after the Portuguese first made contact with the Japanese.

In the 20 years before Valiano and Yasuke's arrival, Jesuits working in the country had steadily built up a community of Japanese converts.

The Jesuits had also gained a reputation as helpful allies for some of the local Japanese lords, or daimyo.

The Jesuits were an important conduit through which European goods and most significantly European weaponry could be acquired.

With the country at war, the Daimyo were eager to get an edge over their adversaries.

Through the Jesuits, they could be guaranteed access to European-made guns, armor, and other weapons of war.

Some Japanese leaders were also genuinely interested in the Jesuits' spiritual message.

But the role that the Society of Jesus played as an arms dealer in Japan should not be overlooked.

The Jesuits happened to arrive in Japan during a period of tumult, violence, and constantly shifting alliances.

They were able to use this lack of central authority to gain a foothold in the country.

However, they also became a player on the chessboard of the Sengoku Jidai, the country at war.

The Jesuits were a potential ally that could help or hinder an ambitious daimyo looking to grow his power.

By the same token, the Society of Jesus needed to carefully court these Japanese lords to ensure that their presence in Japan was not threatened.

In 1579, Alessandro Valignano came to Japan as part of his role as the Jesuits' official visitor of missions in the Indies.

Now, the name Visitor of Missions may not sound all that impressive, but it was was in fact an incredibly important role.

The visitor reported only to the Jesuit Superior General, who in turn reported only to the Pope.

When the visitor was visiting a particular foreign mission, he had absolute authority.

Valignano's title essentially gave him authority over the Jesuit missions stretching from East Africa all the way to Macau and Japan.

In 1579, he was arguably the most important Jesuit in Asia.

A man this important, understandably, traveled with protection.

And that is where Yasuke came in.

When Volignano arrived in Japan, many noted that he was accompanied by a very striking bodyguard.

This was Yasuke.

Yasuke stood well over six feet tall.

One Japanese diarist would guess his height at six shaku tu sun,

which is roughly six feet two inches, or a hundred and eighty-eight centimeters for my metric folks out there.

He's also described as having very dark skin.

Now I bring this up because both his height and his skin tone made him a bit of a curiosity in 16th century Japan.

Now, it's hard to know what the average height for a Japanese person was in the 1500s.

I'm sure you've heard people say that in the past, everyone was just shorter, right?

Well, it turns out that that might be a bit of a historical myth.

One of the biggest factors that contributes to the average height of a population is nutrition.

In periods when nutrition is relatively good and people are relatively relatively healthy, folks tend to grow taller.

In periods when living conditions are more difficult and nutrition is worse, people tend to be shorter.

Turns out that in the early industrial era, European people were shorter on average than they were in the early medieval era.

My point is, just because we're talking about the 1500s doesn't necessarily mean that people were super short.

Now, with all that said, we know that at the turn of the 20th century, the average height for a Japanese person was around 5 feet 2 inches.

Does that mean that Japanese people were around the same height in 1579?

Maybe, it's hard to know.

But...

It's quite possible that at 6 feet 2 inches, Yasuke was a solid foot taller than most people living in Japan.

What we do know is that pretty much everyone who wrote about Yasuke commented on his height and strength.

A Japanese chronicle from this period would describe Yasuke like this, quote, this man looked robust and had a good demeanor.

What is more, his formidable strength surpassed that of ten men, end quote.

Now, obviously, that's a bit of an exaggeration.

Yasuke probably didn't have superhuman strength, but it shows us that from a Japanese perspective, he seemed big, strong, and quite formidable.

His skin tone also seemed to fascinate the Japanese.

Now, it's important to note that he was not the first dark-skinned African person to come to Japan.

By 1579, the Portuguese had been regularly trading with the Japanese for over three decades.

We know that these Portuguese vessels that arrived in Japan, sometimes called the Black Ships by the Japanese, carried people from all over the world.

The crews weren't made up exclusively of Portuguese sailors.

These ships regularly carried people from all over Europe, India, Indonesia, and Africa.

Some of these people were slaves, others were indentured servants, while others were paid sailors, valets, or mercenaries.

Contemporary Japanese art dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, depicting the Portuguese, also often shows people in their entourage who appear to be African.

Some of these African figures also seem to be armed and are acting as guards for the Portuguese merchants.

If you want to see an example of this, I'll post a particularly illustrative screen painting that most experts believe dates to around the year 1600 that's called Arrival of a Portuguese Ship.

That painting shows a diverse array of people accompanying the Portuguese in Japan.

If you're curious about it, I'll have it up on the Facebook page and on the website at the page for this particular episode.

All of this is to say.

that if you were a Japanese person living in a port city, especially those port cities in southwestern Japan frequented by European ships, then you would have likely encountered people from Africa, India, and Southeast Asia before 1579.

Nevertheless, the story of Yasuke demonstrates that outside of these cosmopolitan port towns, a dark-skinned African person was still a real novelty.

As we will see, as Yasuke traveled through Japan, many locals, including some well-educated aristocrats, were bewildered by the color of his skin.

But we'll come back to that.

So where exactly was Yasuke from, and how did he become Valignano's bodyguard?

Well, this is a question that does not have a clear answer.

However, Thomas Lockley, the foremost Yasuke expert, does have some guesses.

First, it's written in a Jesuit source that Yasu was originally from Mozambique.

This is entirely possible.

The Portuguese had a presence in Mozambique going back to 1498, when the navigator Vasco da Gama first visited the area.

Over the course of the early 16th century, the Portuguese had steadily built a colony along the coastal area of Southeast Africa.

In Mozambique, the Portuguese also engaged in the slave trade.

This meant that many of the African people found on Portuguese ships in the Indian Ocean during the 16th century were Mozambicans who had been forced into slavery.

As such, many of the early Africans to reach the shores of Japan were likely enslaved people who had been taken from Portuguese Mozambique.

Now, it's possible that Yasuke was originally one of the Yao people, who are traditionally from a more inland area of what is today modern Mozambique.

In an early paper on Yasuke's life, Thomas Lockley suggested that it was possible that Yasuke's name was a combination of the word Yao and the Japanese suffix tsuke.

From what I understand, the Suke suffix is meant to designate a helper or one who serves.

Yao Suke or Yasuke could mean the Yao helper.

This is an interesting possibility.

But Thomas Lockley doesn't actually think that Yasuke was originally from Mozambique.

He believes that the Jesuit who recorded that Yasuke was Mozambican assumed that simply because most Africans on Portuguese ships were from that Portuguese colony.

Instead, Lockley believes that Yasuke was someone who had been trafficked as a youth through Ethiopia before being sold as a slave soldier in India.

The sources seem to suggest that Yasuke first came into the employ of Valignano while the Jesuit was visiting one of the Indian missions.

We know that Valignano arrived in Goa in 1574 and stayed in India until 1577.

In that time, Yasuke came into his service.

The point is, it's fairly certain that Yasuke did not meet Valignano in Mozambique.

Lockley believes that Yasuke was actually one of the Dinka people from South Sudan.

Now,

To be fair, he doesn't have a ton of evidence to support this.

Lockley believes this primarily because of Yasuke's height and skin tone.

The Dinka are on average some of the tallest people on the African continent.

They also happen to have a very dark skin tone.

It's Lockley's guess that as a child Yasuke was kidnapped by fellow Africans and forced into slavery.

He believes that he was then taken to Ethiopia where he was sold to Arab or Persian slavers who transported him to India.

In India, he would have been bought and then trained as a soldier.

Lockley's big theory on Yasuke

is that he was part of a group in India sometimes known as the Habshi.

The word Habshi translates roughly to Abyssinian or Ethiopian, but it was used to loosely refer to many people of African descent living in India at that time.

Among the Habshi were a large contingent of people who had been trafficked specifically to act as slave soldiers.

Companies of Habshi became known as some of the most effective and deadly soldiers in India.

While most Habshi started their existence in India as slaves, many were able to rise through the military ranks, get posts as trusted advisors in Indian courts, and eventually buy their freedom.

The best-known Habshi of this era was a man named Malik Ambar, who started out as a slave soldier, but eventually rose to become the prime minister of an Indian sultan.

Lockley suggests that Yasuke was a man much like Malik Ambar.

He was clearly a well-trained warrior.

His future as a samurai attests to that.

He also clearly had some level of education.

His later proficiency with the Japanese language demonstrates that if he was not educated, then he was, at the very least, quite intelligent.

Yasuke also knew how to comport himself around lords and other high-ranking officials.

All of this suggests that he received training that would have been common among the Habshi soldiers.

Further, Lockley believes that by the time Yasuke met Valignano, he was no longer a slave.

Like many Habshis, it's likely that he had either bought his freedom or had been freed by a former master after exemplary service.

Lockley argues that since the Jesuit order was technically opposed to human bondage, it would not have been a good look for Asia's highest-ranking Jesuit to be protected by an enslaved man.

Now, I say technically because the Jesuits had a habit of turning a blind eye to the slave trade and even engaging in it in themselves when it served their purposes.

But still, it would have been uncouth for Valignano to be accompanied by a conspicuous slave.

Lockley guesses that in Goa, Volignano sought out some hired muscle and was introduced to Yasuke by a middleman.

If he needed a reliable bodyguard in India in the 1500s, Ahabshi was considered the best.

And so, around 1577, Yasuke became a paid bodyguard in the employ of the Jesuits.

Now, once again, it's worth remembering that all of this background on Yasuke is basically just a series of guesses.

We don't know any of this for sure.

But given Yasuke's later career in Japan, it's reasonable to assume that he was well trained in various martial arts and he knew how to serve powerful lords.

Okay, so that's likely how this East African man got to Japan in the first place.

He was an enslaved person trained as an elite soldier in India who eventually won his freedom.

He was then hired as muscle for the Jesuits and was taken with them to their easternmost mission in Japan.

But it's one thing to step foot on the Japanese home islands, and it's a very different thing to be accepted as a samurai.

How did Yasuke go from being a Jesuit bodyguard to being a man sworn to a daimyo?

Well, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll try and get a step closer to answering that question.

Yasuke is one of those figures whose impact on the historical record was brief, but notable.

We can only trace his life and movements for at most five years.

We don't even know how old he was when he arrived in Japan.

However, those years where he appears in the writings of his contemporaries from around 1579 to 1582 were some of the most consequential in the history of Japan.

First, those years arguably saw the peak of Jesuit power and influence in the country.

The arrival of Alessandro Valignano led to some reforms in the Jesuit approach to their mission in Japan.

Valignano believed that the Jesuits had been only moderately successful in winning converts because they'd not properly properly adapted their message to the Japanese audience.

He placed a new emphasis on learning the Japanese language and having the Jesuit brothers present themselves in a way that was more familiar to the Japanese.

In the 1500s, many Japanese people perceived Europeans as unmannered barbarians.

The Japanese placed a value on being able to eat with chopsticks and not touching food with your hands.

The European visitors often struggled with that custom.

On top of that, as part of their vow of poverty, the Jesuits often wore simple, unkempt robes.

To the Japanese, this just seemed dirty and unbecoming for someone who held the position of a priest.

Valignano took note and started having the Jesuits in Japan dress more like Shinto or Buddhist clerics.

At the very least, the Jesuits were encouraged to keep their appearance clean.

Valignano also encouraged a greater cultural exchange between the Europeans and the Japanese.

He would initiate a process that would eventually lead to the first Portuguese-Japanese dictionary.

Aside from religious texts, European classics like Aesop's Fables were translated into Japanese.

Similarly, Japanese classics like the Tale of Genji were translated into Portuguese.

Valignano's arrival also led to the Jesuits taking a more aggressive role in Japanese politics.

In 1570, a Japanese lord named Omura Sumitada became the first daimyo to convert to Christianity.

Now, cynically, this may have been done simply to ensure that he maintained a nearly exclusive trading relationship with the Portuguese.

Like all Daimyo in the Warring States period, Omura had many enemies who were eager to gobble up his land and possessions.

However, many noted that he seemed to be a sincere convert with a genuine interest in the tenets of the Christian faith.

Either way, In 1580, Omura's relationship with Valenano's Jesuits and the Portuguese paid off.

He was able to call on their support to repulse a threat threat from the rival Ryozoji clan.

In the aftermath of this conflict, Omura demonstrated his appreciation by ceding the entire port of Nagasaki to the Society of Jesus in perpetuity.

So, in 1580, just a year after arriving in Japan, Valignano now found himself in charge of a full-on Japanese colony.

Nagasaki had been growing as a site of European trade since Omura's conversion a decade earlier, but when it came entirely under Jesuit control, the city became a hub for all Christians in Japan.

This meant that the Jesuits were now landholders with a port and fortresses in the country.

If they hadn't already been active players in Japan's civil war, they certainly were after 1580.

Falignano's approach to his evangelical mission was also notable in how it focused on the upper classes of Japanese society.

Now, there was obviously a long Christian tradition of spreading the gospel to the poor and those on the lower rungs of society.

But Valignano was less interested in that.

He believed that if powerful people could be converted, their followers would invariably fall in line.

As such, Valignano was interested in converting the daimyo.

By 1581, there were three notable lords in southern Japan who had been baptized as Roman Catholics.

Valignano hoped that this was just the start, and soon more powerful lords would embrace the faith.

At the very least, these Christian daimyo could help get the Jesuits audiences with other Japanese power brokers.

Valignano also had a plan to bring a number of aristocratic Japanese converts back to Europe.

The idea was that on this European tour, these Japanese converts would advertise Jesuit missionary success.

It was also hoped that they would fall in love with the European way of life and then bring those customs with them back to their homeland.

However, by 1581, it was clear that there was a new center of power in Japan.

For any of these plans to come to fruition, the Jesuits would need the blessing of the man who had emerged as the most powerful ruler in the country.

This

was Oda Nobunaga.

Over the course of 20 years, Oda Nobunaga had steadily risen to become the most powerful of all the daimyo.

He had transformed the once marginal Oda clan into the most significant military entity in the country.

Now, there is a lot to say about the life and career of Oda Nobunaga, and as this series progresses, I plan to get deeper into it.

But for now, what you need to know is that in 1581, Nobunaga was on the path towards reunifying Japan under the sole rulership of one individual.

By that year, his forces had managed to conquer around 20 provinces, giving the Oda control over most of central Japan, including the old imperial capital of Kyoto.

Now, one quirk of Japanese history that we've spoken about before on this podcast is that no matter what was going on politically in the country, the position of emperor never really went away.

The Yamoto dynasty had emerged in the 7th century, and since that time, members of the same family had technically served as emperors of Japan.

In fact, even today, Japan has a Yamoto emperor.

It's one of the longest unbroken dynasties in the history of the world.

It's pretty amazing.

However, for much of Japanese history, the emperor had no real power.

Early on, the emperors were relegated to a purely ceremonial role.

The emperor was usually a puppet, being controlled by powerful advisors or ambitious priests.

For many centuries, the real power lay in the hands of the military leaders known as shoguns.

The warring states period would finally come to an end when the Tokugawa family would create a new shogunate.

But in 1581, there was no shogun.

The last shogunate had been dissolved by Oda Nobunaga in 1573, and the emperor lived in Kyoto under the protection of the Oda clan.

So, in 1581, Oda Nobunaga didn't have any official title that made him the ruler of Japan,

but

he controlled the emperor.

He controlled the most territory in the country.

He had the best and biggest army.

He was undeniably top dog.

Many assumed that the official titles were soon to follow.

So, in that year, Valenyano traveled to Kyoto to hopefully get an audience with the great Oda Nobunaga.

Nobunaga had been tolerant of the Jesuits and of Christianity in general.

His military successes had largely hinged on his brilliant implementation of European-style firearms.

Trade with Europe was important to him.

Nobunaga had also been rather hostile to the traditional Buddhist leaders in the country, as he believed that the Buddhist temples wielded too much political and military power.

All this meant that Nobunaga could become an important ally of the Jesuits.

Some even hoped that he might convert to Christianity.

Now, this was probably never going to happen, but you couldn't keep the Jesuits from hoping.

The Jesuit journey to Kyoto in 1581 would ultimately become an important moment in the story of Yasuke.

Yasuke accompanied Valignano as his bodyguard as the Jesuit moved through Japan.

Now, this progress to Kyoto was done in a fairly showy way.

The Jesuits were always trying to advertise their message.

But some sources tell us that Yasuke completely stole the show.

Apparently, his appearance caused a huge stir as they moved through small villages on their way to Kyoto.

While African people may have been a common sight in a city like Nagasaki, the people of central Japan were far more amazed by the stature and skin color of a man like Yasuke.

Thomas Lockley's research suggests that crowds started following the Jesuit entourage just to get a look at the African warrior.

In Lockley's book, he even speaks of a roof collapsing as people crowded on top just to get a look at Yasuke.

However, things got even wilder when the Jesuits entered Kyoto.

We know that Yasuke's entrance into the city caused enough of a commotion amongst the people on the street that it, quote, disturbed the peace, end quote, and got the attention of local officials.

Thomas Lockley has no problem describing this as a full-on riot.

Using a Jesuit letter as his source, he describes a scene where the people of Kyoto absolutely went mad over this African visitor.

If we trust Lockley on this one, it was Yasuke Mania.

He even describes members of the entranced crowd ripping articles of clothing off of Yasuke's body as souvenirs.

The commotion was caused partially because Kyoto was in full festival mode.

The Jesuits had arrived in the city a few days before Oda Nobunaga was going to be hosting a massive cavalry demonstration for the delight of the puppet emperor.

This was going to be a giant military parade punctuated by by feats of horsemanship.

So the city was even more crowded than usual with people who had traveled there specifically for the spectacle.

The appearance of an exceptionally tall African man with a group of European Jesuits may have felt like just another wild part of the carnival.

It's also possible that Yasuke's appearance excited people not only because it was exotic or novel, but because at this point in Japanese history, dark skin had mostly positive connotations.

Anti-black racism, which sadly was becoming more deeply entrenched in many societies in this era thanks to the African slave trade, hadn't really reached Japan in this period.

Lock Lee has argued that at this point in Japanese history, dark skin would have suggested a certain spiritual power.

The Buddha was sometimes depicted as having dark skin in Japanese art.

Perhaps even more significantly, the deity Daikukten, who was a Japanese version of the Hindu god Shiva, was usually depicted with black skin.

While Daikukten could at times be presented as fearsome, he was also associated with good fortune, fertility, and wealth.

So if we go with Lockley on this one, then Yasuke may have seemed like the living embodiment of this god of good fortune.

Now, once again, I should pause and remind you that this is just speculation.

The truth is we don't really know exactly how the people of Japan felt about Yasuke.

Lockley thinks that they saw him as exotic in a nearly supernatural way.

But again, this is just a guess.

We can't really be sure.

One Jesuit who was there that day would eventually record in a letter that a huge crowd followed Yasuke all the way to Kyoto's Jesuit headquarters.

The crowd then posted up outside of this makeshift Jesuit church and chanted for Yasuke to come out and display himself once again.

In the letter, the Jesuit would joke, quote, everyone agreed that if we displayed the man, we could earn eight to ten thousand crusados in a short time, end quote, crusados being the Portuguese currency of the day.

The crowd clearly got the attention of everyone who mattered in Kyoto.

It was not long before a messenger came to the Jesuit headquarters from none other than Oda Nobunaga himself.

Now this was a great honor, as it would not have been out of the question for the Jesuits to wait days or perhaps even weeks before hearing from Nobunaga.

However, the messenger came with a request that shocked everyone in the room.

He had not come to summon Valignano into Nobunaga's presence.

Oh no.

Instead, the messenger made it clear that Oda Nobunaga wanted to see Yasuke.

The messenger said simply, quote, His Highness requests the pleasure of this man's presence.

He desires to see what disturbs his peace, end quote.

Oda Nobunaga could wait to treat with the Jesuits, but Yasuke,

he wanted to see him right away.

An audience with Oda Nobunaga was no small thing.

Yasuke was about to have a date with destiny, and his life would never be the same.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in two weeks' time when we will continue the story of Yasuke.

And I promise in the next episode, he will become a samurai.

Before we go this week, I need to give a shout-out to the following people: big ups to Chip Alianakian,

to Jason Steinhauser, to Theodore LeBarbara, to Austin Condor, to John, to Travis Regis,

to Stephen Björndel,

to Jay Becker, to Patrick Petrus, to Mike Stein, to Kyle Mathies,

to Juan Schute,

to Dale Taylor, to Tom Justeson, to Kelly Black, to Tim Rose,

to Anthony Johnson,

and to Nikhil Sitter.

All of these people have decided to pledge at $5

or more a month on Patreon.

So you know what that means.

They are beautiful human beings.

Thank you to everyone who is supporting the show.

Thank you to everyone who has made one-off donations through PayPal.

Big ups to my man in Atlanta, Georgia.

You know who you are.

If it doesn't make sense for you to support this podcast financially, I get it.

Times are tough.

A nice way to support the show is just tell someone about it or write a nice five-star review wherever they let you leave reviews for podcasts.

If you ever want to get in touch with me, you can always send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

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The theme music for the show comes to us from Dirty Church.

You can check out more from Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

All the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major, and remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

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