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).
Gaming's latest culture war targets Yasuke, Japan's Black samurai
- Thread starter TheCrackMonkey
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2022
Remember the commie tactic of just repeating lies often enough (using kike media to astroturf it) until they become fact in the plebic mind. There are no nigger samurai. Period. Just as there are no nigger elves when Baphomet Bezos' Rangs of Powuh returns.
Anyone got the roof korean copy/pasta. It only gets more true as the Judeo-Communist years go by.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2020
Yeah it's just fucking retarded because Yasuke kinda did exist, but getting hyper-aggressive with the shilling to the point that it's hostile is what's tiring.
I could suspend my disbelief that Yasuke could be a samurai/fighter of some kind in a fictional game set in this time period. But when you have to go on about him being the best or being totally LGBTQA+ while denying historical evidence to push a "we wuz kangz" idea. You've totally lost everyone.
telling people that george washington carver didn't really invent peanut butter gets a lot of rabid frothing at the mouth.
PS1gamenwatch
kiwifarms.net
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- Oct 26, 2015
They could've done an Assassin's Creed game in The Philippines pre-colonial era, since a majority of the natives that time were darker skinned Aetas
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2019
I don't think this is what you're looking for, but I do enjoy sharing this image, when I find the opportunity.
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2017
They probably don't give a fuck. Japan tends to not give a fuck when gaijin are being baka.
Hidden Figgers was an alleged true and honest story. AssCreed is a historical fantasy game, not even regular historical fiction.
There's nothing w.r.t. individual characters they can put in a historical fantasy game and have it be offensively ahistorical. They can make Yasuke shogun in the course of the game if they add "and then Templars worked to suppress the truth". They can make Oda Nobunaga secretly a wamen, and make her survive Honnoji and ascend to godhood. Did or did not Kinoshita Tokichiro build a castle in a day? We don't know for sure; an author of historical fiction can say "eckshually, that was Yasuke". Did Takenaka Hanbei capture a castle single-handedly for the lulz? "eckshually, that was Yasuke, too".
The central conceit of the setting is that it's mostly "history as we know it" and secret societies armed with magitech fuck around behind the scenes. It can bear vampires if you don't make the vampires too stupid (like, deathly afraid of any conceivable pre-20th-century source of light). It certainly can bear a single historical black guy. The only sensible complaint is "I don't like it" (which, to be fair, is also "problematic" and needs "unpacking").
The offensive lie is in the advertising campaign, in which they say, "Yasuke was totes a
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- Jan 7, 2023
They're trying their damn hardest to convince people that this nigger was an actual samurai and not just a glorified circus carny.
Battlefield2142EU
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 15, 2022
Can’t wait for the Shaka Zulu game where he is a faggot fat transgender white lesbian.
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2020
Tom Cruise played the role of Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai. Admittedly Algren is a fictional character, but he was based on two real life French soldiers, Eugène Collache and Jules Brunet. How do you think the wokes react to this? By calling it a white saviour movie. Well then, this is a black saviour video game. The poor little chinks are too backwards to help themselves and they need a mighty negro warrior to save the day.
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2022
Ubisoft hired leftist activist professor that wrote a book about Japanese monks fucking young men back in the day like Catholic priests as the narrative consultant.
Nope. They hired an Americanised Jap fujoshi named Sachi Schmidt-Hori. Her first published book is called “Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives.” It revolves around how Jap Buddhist monk and their young apprentice (Spoiler: Pedo) are actually sex partner and the homophobic era of 1950-1980s want to stop research of such faggotry practice. She even adds transgenderism, sexual orientation, and sexual agency into the book too.
She was hired by Ubisoft around January 2023 as a “Narrative Consultant.”
I am interested in investigating how gender, sexuality, corporeality, and power are represented and negotiated in pre-seventeenth-century Japanese narratives and illustrations. My first book, Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives (University of Hawai`i Press, 2021) is on medieval chigo monogatari (Buddhist acolyte tales), which often depict romantic relationships between Buddhist priests and adolescent boys. These tales challenge a host of normative and moral standards we (academics, especially) internalize, including such ideas as "sexual orientation," "transgenerational sex," and "sexual agency."
My current project is on the literary representations of "milk kinships" in pre-seventeenth Japanese tales, in cluding the Tale of Ochikubo, the Tale of Genji, the Tales of the Heike.
My current project is on the literary representations of "milk kinships" in pre-seventeenth Japanese tales, in cluding the Tale of Ochikubo, the Tale of Genji, the Tales of the Heike.
Name: Sachi Schmidt-Hori
Occupation: Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture
Work Place: Dartmouth University, Seattle
Degrees: BA in American Studies, MA in Japanese Linguistic, and PHD in Japanese Literature.
Phone: 603-646-2861
Email: Sachi.Schmidt-Hori@dartmouth.edu
LinkedIn: Here
Dartmouth University: Here
Facebook: Here
Published Book: Amazon Hawaii Google
Yes. Please look forward to the story of the nigger who conquered all of Japan with his BBC, bred the entire island’s women and children because Jap men can’t even reach their womb, and this is historically accurate because Yasuke wuz Shotgun and shieeet and it wuz huwayte peepoo who colonised and killed all niggers in Jepen and gave it to slant eyes.
Welcome to the progressive world, where we finally have the glorification of Black Violence on Asian made by a multi-million corporation.
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- Jan 19, 2023
A lot of samurai were assholes, thugs and criminals. They weren't really particularly honorable especially during this time period.
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- Oct 9, 2023
Does anyone care anymore beyond people mocking them?
I know they get cut a check for this but after the series of fuck ups like rings of power,wheel of time, Cleopatra and more I thought even the normie public understood not to touch this shit.
I know they get cut a check for this but after the series of fuck ups like rings of power,wheel of time, Cleopatra and more I thought even the normie public understood not to touch this shit.
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- Jul 1, 2017
The insertion of blacks into everything these days is akin to how white people tried to attribute all sorts of archaeological monuments to white people/Bible Jews. And sure enough, the alleged "experts" like these people who spin fanfics and exaggerations are almost universally white/(((white))), just like in the old days. Sure is funny coming from the people who always bitch about "muh colonialism" when they have to come up with the most obscene projections of globohomo into the distant past.
Yasuke was not a samurai. Not a single actual samurai would have recognized him as such. He was Oda's glorified pet monkey.
Yasuke was not a samurai. Not a single actual samurai would have recognized him as such. He was Oda's glorified pet monkey.
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- Jun 23, 2017
Every fucking time.
Halmaz
kiwifarms.net
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- Jul 4, 2022
Just play Ghost of Tsushima. It is basically Assassin's Creed set in historical Japan, without the DEI shit. Just imagine the mongols are templars, if you care about that. The gameplay is pretty much the same as older AC titles.
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- Dec 15, 2022
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- Feb 4, 2023
"Naw, naw, I ain't after no little boys, I came here for a man's butt!" -Yasuke, the Booty Samurai.
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- Dec 16, 2019
Making a huge deal about him being the protagonist just makes it seem like Ubisoft doesn't have faith in their own product.
I'd play a game about Yasuke making every man in Japan his bottom bitch.
God of Nothing
kiwifarms.net
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- Aug 31, 2016
it's always either a kike, a faggot, or a woman, barring the mix of all that
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- Sep 7, 2019
asscreed in japan itself is already the "in cease of emergency" option after they denied it for years and basically made fun of everyone asking.
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- Dec 25, 2022
We don't even know the motherfucker's real name or what happened to him after the death of Nobunaga. He was a "Samurai" for all of 15 months. We have no idea what kind of person he even was, but of course we have to celebrate him merely for fucking existing.
