Gaming's latest culture war targets Yasuke, Japan's Black samurai

By Owen Ziegler
Staff writer

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May 25, 2024



For centuries, an African slave who entered the orbit of war-torn Japan’s leading daimyo was an interesting historical tidbit. As of last week, he became the catalyst for the latest in the so-called culture wars.
On May 15, developer Ubisoft Quebec announced Assassin's Creed Shadows, an upcoming chapter in the long-running action-adventure series set to take place during Japan’s Sengoku (Warring States) Period (1482-1573). As is common to the Assassin’s Creed franchise, players will control a main character (in Shadows, this is Naoe, a female ninja) through stealth missions usually culminating in the violent elimination of a target. In a slight departure, players will also control Yasuke, a character based on a real-life African slave brought to Japan by Italian Jesuit missionaries and who gained the trust of warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582).

For many gamers, Ubisoft’s announcement was their first introduction to Yasuke, a well-documented historical figure with a strong claim to the title of Japan’s first non-Japanese samurai. For a vocal minority, however, a Black protagonist of a game set in feudal Japan was a call to war.
Critics on X (formerly Twitter) claimed Yasuke was a warrior but never truly made a samurai. On Reddit, some insisted that if Nobunaga endowed a Black man with the status of a samurai it could only have been as a joke, and on YouTube, creators lambasted Ubisoft and claimed gamers would reject “woke Yasuke” en masse. Yasuke’s Wikipedia page is now locked and cannot be edited by non- or newly registered users.
To Thomas Lockley, a Nihon University professor and author of “African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan,” this deluge of Yasuke hot takes is disappointing.
“What it seems to me is that people who know nothing about Japanese history, know nothing about Japan in most cases and certainly know nothing about the Japanese language and the terminology they’re talking about — suddenly, they know everything,” Lockley tells The Japan Times.


The study of history across cultures as varied as Japan and the West can be problematic when people look for one-to-one comparisons. 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, including Sakujin Kirino, who served as a fact-checker for “African Samurai” and is one of the country’s foremost experts on the 1582 Honnoji Incident, for which Yasuke was believed to be present.
That’s not to say that the study of history can’t be messy, and responsibly telling the story of Yasuke requires a steady, measured approach in modern times — something Ubisoft is all but assured not to do.
Far from a paragon of modern game development, Ubisoft has increasingly released titles with pay-to-win mechanics alongside a precipitous decline in quality since its heyday in the early 2000s. Some gamers have tried to cut through the noise of the Yasuke “controversy” by pointing out these shortcomings, even going so far as to claim Ubisoft is banking on this to drive engagement for a game that may not be able to capture headlines off its post-release experience.
All’s well that ends well for Ubisoft, though, especially if this Yasuke talk convinces gamers to shell out for the Assassin's Creed Shadows Collector’s Edition, a collection of paywalled content, three days of “early access” before the general public and other samurai-themed tchotchkes — all available for the low, low price of $279.99 (about ¥44,000).

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/05/25/digital/yasuke-assasins-creed-samurai/

https://archive.is/JVmcH

 

[Megaton Punch]

>Japan Times
>by Owen Ziegler

>Nihon University
>professor Thomas Lockley

I'm so glad we're finally getting the real Japanese perspective from true and honest Japanese people.

 

[God of Nothing]

>well-documented
>people are still unsure whether he was a samurai or not

 

[breadandcircuses]

Honestly, there would be less controversy if Yasuke was just another historical domain character that interacted with the player characters.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Honestly, there would be less controversy if Yasuke was just another historical domain character that interacted with the player characters.

it's funny how they act so smug over it and so distraught over the negative feedback.

they could have literally just had it with yasuke as a skin and noone would have cared. but doing all the ragebaiting is just a bad look. it's funnier that they've announced yasuke to be lgbtq+, in a game where the historical expert/etc. specialized in man-boy love relations in old japan. . . . in a game set in old japan.

so, yasuke gonna get him some little boys?

 

[Bonedome]

>well-documented
>people are still unsure whether he was a samurai or not

Pretty sure it was confirmed he was a sword bearer and did no fighting or samurai work.

 

[Kane Lives]

Don't you love smug gaijins just talking down to you like they know your own local history better than you do?
t. no japanese ever

Seriously, was any native Japs even consulted for this pile of hilariously racist goyslop?

 

[Clem Fandango]

They're really taking #WUZ to new heights with this garbage. It's a shame because an Assassins Creed game set in Japan could have really worked well, but I know I won't be buying this anyway.

 

[Divine right to rule]

>well-documented
>people are still unsure whether he was a samurai or not

TECHNICALLY there are like 3 sources that mention him independently, but only wrote a few sentences each.
From these few sentences they extrapolated the wildest shit.

So that he actually existed is reasonably certain, but he was a small curiosity that is primarily useful in showing Oda Nobunaga's relationship to novelty and western fashion.

 

[God of Nothing]

TECHNICALLY there are like 3 sources that mention him independently, but only wrote a few sentences each.

So
*smacks lips*
you be saying
*robs pregnant woman*
WE
WUZ
SHOGUN N SHIEEEEEET

 

[ZazietheBeast]

Ahem. Cleopatra ain't black and Yasuke ain't a Samurai, but a retainer - a glorified sword holder and Nobunaga's personal party trick man. Also Fate is doing a far better job of honoring history than Assassin's Creed nowadays.

And this is the franchise with the female King Arthur.

 

[Pentex]

Whether Yasuke was ever ceremoniously endowed with the rights, privileges and responsibilities of a samurai, he was addressed as “tono” (literally, “lord” or “master”)

By who?

“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.”

Nice sleight of hand there, Lockley. Samurai families can trace their lineages back multiple centuries through their koseki (family register).

If you're going to fap over Yasuke the Mandinka Samurai Yojimbo Ninja, at least follow in Daisuke Ishiwatari's footsteps and make him so over-the-top cool that no one cares about accuracy:

 

[I'm Retarded?]

>use a historical event or figure you know nothing about to push your ideological fetishes
>get called out by people who actually know history
>cry racism and smear all your critics as bad faith actors with an ideological agenda
it's all so tiresome kiwibros.

Some gamers have tried to cut through the noise of the Yasuke “controversy” by pointing out these shortcomings, even going so far as to claim Ubisoft is banking on this to drive engagement for a game that may not be able to capture headlines off its post-release experience.

gee, you think?

 

[Bland Crumbs]

All’s well that ends well for Ubisoft, though, especially if this Yasuke talk convinces gamers to shell out for the Assassin's Creed Shadows Collector’s Edition, a collection of paywalled content, three days of “early access” before the general public and other samurai-themed tchotchkes — all available for the low, low price of $279.99

Spoiler Alert: It will not and they will blame racists.

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

For the anglo-american mind a history without niggers is incomprehensible; that is the very reason why they shove into everything.

 

[The Ugly One]

Of course Yasuke was a samurai. There's a pretty straightforward proof:

A black woman invented the telescope. You might disagree. You might even have some evidence to the contrary. But you have to ask yourself: is this really worth losing my job over? A black woman invented the telescope.

 

[Tepes Thot]

It’d be ironic if their knock off Japan simulator Nagasaki-ed them to bankruptcy.

Between rewriting history, the sea of mentally ill mayotards working on it, and the pro-pedo coomer they hired as a “historian”, this shit deserves death.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Not consuming black LGBT samurai games by French megacorps funded by ESG Jews is RACIST!

 

[The Hardest R]

it's funny how they act so smug over it and so distraught over the negative feedback.

It’s no different than what they pulled for Hidden Figgers n’ Shit, except it’s a decade later and everyone is tired of niggers getting shoved in everywhere. So a nigger being the best samurai in the entirety of the Grorious Nippon is going to get a lot more pushback in current year plus nine than pretending negresses were solely responsible for rocket science a decade earlier.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

So they had to resort to that. What do the Japanese networks NHK, BS-1, BS-2 and TV Tokyo say then?