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
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@Save the Loli
The gay pottery was like 7. A lot was satyrs being satyrs. Plato was not out of context, it’s him learning that fags from Crete had perverted mentorship’s into a sexual relationship.
The gay pottery was like 7. A lot was satyrs being satyrs. Plato was not out of context, it’s him learning that fags from Crete had perverted mentorship’s into a sexual relationship.
TrinityReformed
kiwifarms.net
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Plenty of it wasn't satyrs. You had erotic scenes of gods fucking each other like Hyacinth or Ganymede.
Similarly, you're ignorning that Plato only had a problem with how the Cretans conducted mentorships, not the general concept of having sex with teenage boys. Actually read the entire chapter that Plato's problem with the Cretans appears in.
This is also wrong.
1. "Kinaidos" was someone who took it up the ass, not a homosexual in general. If you actually look at contemporary art, the most accepted form of homosexual sex was not fucking a dude in the ass.
2. This is a passage condemning a rival politician accused of being a male prostitute. Once again, very out of context and not referring to homosexuals in general.
3. That seems to be a law against pedophilia, not homosexuality in general. And it's also basically saying the Spartans of Xenophon's day were ignoring this law, so clearly homosexuality and pederasty were tolerated in 4th century BC Sparta.
4. Ancient Romans only condemned being the submissive partner and molesting an underage citizen.
Once again, this is all cherrypicked evidence that tries to portray Ancient Greece as akin to the 1950s in sexual mores which is just as false as saying Ancient Greeks would be at home in San Francisco during a Pride Parade.
God of Nothing
kiwifarms.net
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- Aug 31, 2016
Time to pull out the most prominent noooooooooooticer of all time for this nonsense
TL
R
we don't have records of them condemning faggotry in every context, so that somehow means some gayness was tolerated
to get back on topic, yasuke turned from a trivia fact to an outright fabrication because of this nonsense and that makes me laugh
Rwe don't have records of them condemning faggotry in every context, so that somehow means some gayness was tolerated
to get back on topic, yasuke turned from a trivia fact to an outright fabrication because of this nonsense and that makes me laugh
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- Jul 1, 2017
It does, because we have ample evidence from contemporary art, literature, and written records that they certainly did tolerate homosexuality in some contexts, even if they wouldn't consider themselves bisexual or certainly not gay (which was bad because they were expected to find a wife). You'd only have a point if we didn't have such evidence.Time to pull out the most prominent noooooooooooticer of all time for this nonsense
TL
we don't have records of them condemning faggotry in every context, so that somehow means some gayness was tolerated
The evidence is striking compared to cultures which did not tolerate homosexuality like the ancient Jews or medieval Europe where there is no tradition of homoerotic art or literature and the law condemned ALL homosexuality instead of only certain forms. Again, you have nothing but taking literature out of context and deliberately misinterpreting what words meant.
God of Nothing
kiwifarms.net
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No like I'm genuinely only there for Naoe. I need to support her and her only. Not having a hood always feels wrong so that's why Yasuke is blah. Though if people react to him with fright or disgust it could be interesting to see.
Fuck them for straying so far from the original intent of the series though.
Fuck them for straying so far from the original intent of the series though.
PS1gamenwatch
kiwifarms.net
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Ya know if they were intending on putting an African in an Asian country, there were others they overlooked: They could have done Ancient China where ancient Chinese and an unidenified East African Kingdom opened trade:
Or the Philippines, where the earliest inhabitants were the Aeta or the Negritos
They were also present in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, even Taiwan
They could have focused on them, does every other Asian country not matter to them?
Or the Philippines, where the earliest inhabitants were the Aeta or the Negritos
They were also present in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, even Taiwan
They could have focused on them, does every other Asian country not matter to them?
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The last time someone in this site argued this, they misquoted Plato so badly that had they read the very page before they would have noticed how wrong they were if they weren't so ideologically wedded to this revisionist nonsense. I guess we better just ignore all the ancient poetry and literature discussing boys and male partners in the same context as women.
God of Nothing
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and you quoted him with the proper context?
your claims to this point have been nothing but "trust me, bro"
For fuck's sake, how is it wrong to take Plato's thoughts as not a general view of how the Greeks thought about it while you apply the same logic you think backwards to the gay artwork you claim exists? Is that not just a reflection of whoever created them believed in instead of what the Greeks in general thought? Have you calculated how much of this exists in contrast to normal depictions of sex to figure out just how gay the people who made these pieces really were? The end result of this line of thinking is everyone not able to make any conclusion about x in y point of time because there isn't a document from everyone in z saying x was true at y.
Men being grossed out by men fucking each other is a natural response. It's in men and women. This isn't some bullshit socialization/cultural programming nonsense. When we are children, boys mock each other of not being man enough and girls mock boys for not being man enough as well. Behavior like this can be seen across most cultural guidelines. Even now in this fucked up world where men and women can somehow be each other, men are mocked for not being man enough. Holy shit.
If I hear iT DePenDed On wHo tOpPed one more damn time. You think they looked well on guys fucking sheep better than guys who let themselves get fucked by sheep? Eating shit is better than drinking piss? It's the same act of uncleanliness/immorality. We all look at murderers more fondly than pedophiles but does that really change what they are?
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All I'm seeing here is that faggotry is bad and the medieval Jews were right about one thing.
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- Feb 22, 2017
If you're looking at a large, dark-skinned man in medieval Japan, there's Pacific islands are a lot closer than Africa, all full of dark-skinned people. Some of them extremely large.
PS1gamenwatch
kiwifarms.net
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Another thing Ancient China and Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia(Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia) have is their historical connection to Islam as well. They got that going for them.
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How the fuck did this thread turn into spergery about ancient Mediterranean faggotry and not how funny it is that Ubishit managed to piss off an entire country to the point their government got involved in it via their scheme to try and make nobody notice the horrible subscription model they're trying to sell with the next Assassin's Creed?
There are several European sources shortly after both Yasuke and Nobunaga were dead that hypothesize Yasuke was actually a Sri Lankan, based on Japan's limited adventurism with exploration abroad.
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Because in addition to not being what Plato thought because you took him out of context, Plato had many philosophical opponents. There are descriptions and depictions of gay sex long before Plato. I can take a general look at the Greco-Roman world and find plenty of texts praising male-male sexual relations and using the same language for relations with boys and men as relations with women, and texts condemning certain types of gay sex, but practically no texts condemning gay sex in general. For an attitude you claim was widespread, you'd think there would be numerous examples, since it sure was in Christianity and Islam where sodomites or rulers believed to have been sodomites were accused of having caused natural disasters and the decline of nations for their sins.
The number of fragments of gay sex art in ancient Greece (almost all pottery shards) number in the thousands and are spread across centuries and centuries of time, which is very good evidence it was widespread and had an audience at least as large as today. What cultures which don't tolerate homosexuality have such an enormous amount of explicit gay sex art? There's practically none from medieval Europe or the Islamic world.
Which is why they explicitly used terms related to women for the men--which we could call "twinks" now. At times they even dressed their male partners as women and forbade them to grow beards (this was very common in premodern Japan too, I should note). It's also why such relationships ended by the time one was in their mid-20s, not just because the youth was now very mature but because they were too manly. Indeed, it was considered abnormal to be the receptive partner after one's youth, or chase after men that old.
This is beyond stupid since we know that yes, yes they did believe it depended who topped, because they wrote down their thoughts about it. We have laws restricting just what sort of people could be on the bottom (slaves and non-citizens), after all. We know the go-to gay insult was always "you take it up the ass/suck another dude's dick" and not "you have sex with men" unlike today.
But you're going to tell me the very meticulous Romans had in all those centuries not a single law against gay sex until Christianity came along. Why did Christian emperors have to pass laws banning homosexuality if according to you everyone already hated it?
Your argument is a blatant case of projecting modern attitudes onto a totally different society. At absolute most you can argue that most people didn't have gay sex, but those who did were widely tolerated as long as they did so in certain contexts and never took it up the ass.
God of Nothing
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>trust me bro
>modern sensibilities when Christianity is thousands of years old
>all records we have of roman law are accurate when the commonly cited Lex Scantinia of who topped doesn't even have a reliable source and still says free men having gay sex is punishable
Projecting modern attitudes on a totally different society? Nigger, if you've paid attention at all to the current state of affairs, it depended on who you top cope is said by all closet faggots.
Universal elements exist in society as we are born with certain functions. The sheer ignorance is believing that anything is new or that things are too different to ever be understood from peoples are still human. In your blind search for truth, you've come to believe in outright lies.
you are honestly no better than the retards who think yasuke was a samurai
>modern sensibilities when Christianity is thousands of years old
>all records we have of roman law are accurate when the commonly cited Lex Scantinia of who topped doesn't even have a reliable source and still says free men having gay sex is punishable
Projecting modern attitudes on a totally different society? Nigger, if you've paid attention at all to the current state of affairs, it depended on who you top cope is said by all closet faggots.
you are honestly no better than the retards who think yasuke was a samurai
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There are contemporary Jesuit accounts calling him a Moorish infidel.
All that matters is when Nobunaga bit it he was given back to the Jesuits and disappeared, so probably back into slavery.
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- Jan 2, 2024
Yet no one shanked Hayao Miyazaki when he was working for the Japanese Communist Party at the start of his career.
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- Jul 1, 2017
Lex Scantinia doesn't say a word about free men having gay sex unless they sodomized a citizen. Go actually what was actually written about it. And you would think that your hypothetical anti-gay law would have been mentioned by someone, especially given the number of Roman poets who wrote about gay sex. Again, if the Romans wanted to get rid of homosexuals, they would've just said so, just like the Bible does or the Roman laws against other crimes. People who hate homosexuality in general like you claim "almost everyone" back then did don't care about who fucks and who is fucked.
Distaste of homosexual acts is not a universal aspect in society. There are numerous tribes in Africa and New Guinea who practice ritual homosexuality like the Etoro people. So-called "two-spirit" people (aka sodomites, not troons) were tolerated in most Native American societies provided they acted as women. This is all documented by people who were by no means friendly to homosexuality. What is a universal aspect is the distinction between sodomizing and being sodomized.
You claim I believe "lies" because you unserstandably hate some of the people who advocate them (as do I), but in actuality you've offered no evidence that actually matches what the primary sources say. I don't need a fag professor to read what was actually written and prove you wrong. You have to bend and twist so many words and sources to get "Ancient Greeks and Romans hated all forms of homosexuality" that I could use the same argument to prove everyone in the modern West does too.