Who is Yasuke, the black samurai from Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Yasuke was a black samurai of African origins who served one of Japan’s most important lords and left an indelible mark on the country’s history.
The Assassin’s Creed series is famous for weaving real historical figures into its narratives (with considerable poetic license). The new Assassin’s Creed Shadows, set in Japan at the end of the sixteenth century, is no exception because its protagonist is Yasuke , a real-life and historically documented black samurai. His figure is cited by both Japanese and Portuguese sources, given that he arrived in the Japanese archipelago as an escort for an Italian Jesuit missionary named Alessandro Valignano.
Before proceeding with the analysis of his historical figure, here are the sources we used for this in-depth study on Yasuke , the samurai protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Shadows: the Shinchō Kōki of Ōta Gyūichi (the chronicles of Oda Nobunaga’s life written after his death), the Matsudaira Ietada Nikki (the diary of the samurai Matsudaira Letada), the Histoire Ecclesiastique Des Isles Et Royaumes Du Japon of the Jesuit François Solier and the letters of the Jesuit missionary Luís Fróis .
If all the testimonies agree on Yasuke’s African origins, only Fróis hypothesizes a more precise location of his area of origin: present-day Mozambique , at the time the Portuguese colony of East Africa. Jean Crasset, in his Histoire de l’eglise du Japon states that Yasuke and Valignano met in India (probably in one of the Portuguese ports of the sub-continent) and then landed in Japan in 1579
Who is Yasuke, the black samurai from Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Japanese Trailer
Valignano’s mission was to draw up a report on the Portuguese missionary presence in the Indies (a region that at the time included East Africa and a good part of Asia) so it is natural that the Italian priest wanted to bring an escort given the The hostility of many peoples towards Christian preachers still manifests. Finally, all sources agree on the fact that Yasuke (whose original name was probably Yasufa, or Yusuf) was not a slave but a man trained in the use of weapons.
Who is Yasuke, the black samurai from Assassin’s Creed Shadows
The arrival in Japan
Valignano arrived in Japan in 1579 and remained in Kyushu for two years where he probably instructed Yasuke to study Japanese. His protector, in fact, already knew at least three languages : his native language of Mozambique, Portuguese and Arabic given his (probable) Muslim faith. We have no information on the first two years of Yasuke’s stay in Japan but we know exactly when he started to get noticed. On March 27, 1581, as evidenced by Fróis’ letters, Valignano, Yasuke and Fróis himself met with the most powerful man in Japan at the time, Oda Nobunaga, in the capital Kyoto.
It is worth dwelling for a moment on the figure of this very powerful daimyō, considered by Japanese historiography as the first great unifier of Japan . His war of unification, in fact, lasted more than 20 years, from 1560 to 1582, revolutionized Japanese war tactics and set in motion the events that would give birth to the Tokugawa shogunate (to which the TV series Shogun the series TV Shogun is inspired) and started the Edo period. This is to say that, in 1581, Oda Nobunaga was at the height of his power.
Returning to Yasuke’s arrival in the capital, Fróis says that his appearance (which Ōta Gyūichi describes in his Shinchō Kōki as a man of 26 or 27 years old, 1.80 meters tall and with a powerful physique) caused such a crowd of curious people that numerous doors were broken down and several people were crushed to death. At this point the sources disagree on one detail: Portuguese reports state that Yasuke was present at the meeting between Oda Nobunaga and the Jesuits, and that the daimyō was incredibly impressed by his physical might and the color of his skin. Japanese accounts, however, speak of Oda Nobunanaga’s desire to meet a black man, and therefore, after the embassies linked to the mission of the Portuguese church, Yasuke was brought before him.
After a sort of curtain in which Nobunaga did not believe that Yasuke’s skin was truly black, the daimyō decided to hire the warrior to become a samurai in his army. We read in the Shinchō Kōki: “A black man was hired as a vassal by Nobunaga-sama and received a salary. His name was decided to be Yasuke . He was also given a short sword and a house. Sometimes he was forced to carry tools of Nobunaga-sama”. We don’t know what instruments the source is referring to but, given that Yasuke knew Japanese, Fróis’ letters say that the lord never tired of talking to his new vassal and that he sent him around the city with an attendant to do his chores.
The mission against the shinobi
Yasuke reappears in the sources almost a year later, at Azuchi Castle, where the samurai Matsudaira Ietada notes in his diary the arrival, together with Oda Nobunaga, of his imposing vassal. This quote, especially for the purposes of the plot of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, is fundamental because Nobunaga had gone to the region to destroy the Takeda clan, his bitter enemy, and to submit to his control the rebel provinces of Iga and Koga whose territory was adjacent to the province of Omi where Azuchi Castle is located. The second protagonist of the game, Naoe, comes from Iga and in the cinematic trailer presented by Ubisoft we see the meeting between the two characters while Yasuke is on a mission to eliminate his lord’s enemies.
The destruction of the shinobi clans of Iga and Koga was the end of the legendary ninja schools of those areas but some warriors of these lands managed to escape to enter the service of none other than Tokugawa Ieyasu, vassal of Nobunaga and future shogun of Japan . Some members of the Iga clan, including the legendary Hattori Hanzō , even went so far as to serve as Tokugawa’s bodyguards. Finally, Naoe is the daughter of Fujibayashi Nagato, one of the most famous shinobi who actually existed, so it will be interesting to see how two initially rival characters end up being allies.
The Honnō-ji incident and the end of documentation
Yasuke appears in historical sources for the last time in 1582, the year of Oda Nobunaga’s death. Betrayed by one of his most important vassals, Akechi Mitsuhide, Nobunaga found himself surrounded and extremely outnumbered at Honnō-ji temple: the only option left to him was to commit seppuku, ritual suicide. Nobunaga was one step away from completing the unification of Japan when he died, but his two most loyal servants finished the job. First Toyotomi Hideyoshi defeated Akechi, avenging his lord, then, upon his death, Tokugawa Ieyasu , after defeating what remained of those who opposed Nobunaga’s plan, was appointed Shogun, starting the era that bears his name and which will end in 1868 with the Meiji restoration.
In all this generational turmoil, Yasuke was near the Honnō-ji temple but, contrary to what some theories say, we have no evidence that he was the one who acted as second (the act of cutting off the heads of those who stabbed themselves in the womb) in the suicide of his benefactor. What we do know is that Yasuke went to Nobunaga’s son , Oda Nobutada, under whose command he faced Akechi’s forces. Here the sources do not specify whether Yasuke surrendered or was defeated, we know, however, that he was spared by Akechi Mitsuhide and that he was taken to a Nanban-ji, a proto-Christian church in Japan at the time, where Fróis notes , five months after Nobunaga’s death, that Yasuke was alive and well.
This is the last known mention of the samurai, which on the one hand generates an insatiable thirst for further sources to find out what really happened to him, but on the other hand gives Ubisoft ample space to expand the events of this incredible historical figure. We have no records of his fighting style, the weapons he preferred, or the exact role he played on the battlefield – these are all questions Assassin’s Creed Shadows will try to answer . We know that in the game he will wield, in addition to the katana, the kanabō (the armored staff seen in the trailer), a bow (hopefully the long one typical of Japan) and the naginata, a long and versatile polearm. The game could also expand on his past, both on his two years in Valignano’s service and on how he arrived in India, and, above all, on his future. Now all we have to do is wait for November 12th to see what Ubisoft has taken from history and where it has left room for imagination.