When Okazaki Takashi’s manga and anime series “Afro Samurai” came out, I know there were people who felt it was silly that there was a Black man as a samurai.
In reality, there was actually a real Black man who was a samurai and his story of how a man named Yisake who was renamed Yasuke, was a Habashi from Ethiopia and would serve under Oda Nobunaga in 1581-1582.
And when it comes to research about the “African Samurai”, one man has dedicated a lot of time conducting research on Yasuke and that is Thomas Lockley, an Associate Professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo where he teaches courses related to international and multicultural history of Japan and East Asia. He also was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
While Geoffrey Girard is a writer of thrillers, historicals and dark speculative fiction and has released several books.
And together, the two have written a fascinating and well-researched book about Japan’s first Black samurai titled “African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan”.
It’s important to note that the book I am reviewing is an advanced reader’s edition, so I’m not sure how much has changed from this version to the final version. So, I’ll only touch upon key points and not spoil much.
The challenges that I saw before reading this book was that information on Yasuke was little but to help readers understand his voyage to Japan, his country of origin and his role with warlord Oda Nobunaga, you have to feature the people that were around him.
So the first chapter focuses on the man that Yasuke worked for, Alessandro Valignano and how he worked as a bodyguard and attendant for him and charting the locations that Valignano went to that Yasuke went with him.
Valignano was given the position of “Visitor to the Indies” by Pope Gregory XIII and was sent to develop Catholic footholds in India, China and Japan.
The book also shows us how people were in awe him, he was muscular and fit, he was also 6’2″ which was the tallest some may have seen and he was Black and traveling to countries which never saw a Black person ever. And if they have, no one so tall and muscular. Fear would not be the word as Japanese people had no negative images associated with Black people because Buddha and Daikokuten, were typically portrayed with black skin. Some who may have thought Yasuke as Daikokuten.
The book also goes into Jesuits in Japan and Japanese who converted to Catholicism.
As Lockley is able to showcase Catholicism in Japan at the time, he also paints the picture of life for him growing up in Africa, where children were made to slaves, anyone older or younger (not within the ages of 5-12) to work were slaughtered and how these children would come to work for a man like Valignano.
Lockley also goes into the artwork that feature African men and how they were well-dressed in paintings and how certain depictions could be Yasuke.
But also what happens when Valignano and his crew along with Yasuke went to see Oda Nobunaga, and Oda only wanted to see Yasuke because he has heard so much about this “Black Man”, that he insisted that he wanted to see him for his own eyes.
What I found most interesting was the meeting between Yasuke and Oda Nobunaga, Oda going so far to scrub Yasuke’s skin, wondering if it was a joke. Even having him stripped to see if the black skin was indeed real and how he made Yasuke the guest of honor and also surprised Yasuke was of knowing the Japanese language. Answering every question Oda asked about the far away land he came from and the animals they had.
Valignano knew immediately how much Oda was impressed by Yasuke and knowing that, he offered Yasuke to Oda.
And I’ll leave it at that because there is even more fascinating tales of Yasuke becoming a samurai and how Oda welcomed Yasuke as his own black warrior, the demon who would ride with him in battle and the dark angel who protects him and his family in his home.
And what transpired right after.
The writers discuss how after 1582, there were no verified records of Yasuke. Was he killed in battle? Lockley provides other paths, other writings about a tall African man, but is it Yasuke or another man?
In the book, the writers also go into how the forgotten story of Yasuke would appear again over two centuries later.
But the writers have done a good job of presenting Yasuke through historical accounts, the people he worked with and served but also what was transpiring during that era in time to provide context to Japan’s first Black samurai.
While no one may know the truth of what may have happened to Yasuke after 1582, the amount of research that went into investigating what may have happened to him and other writings pertaining to a tall Black man was fascinating and I appreciated the amount of work that was done to do all this research.
Now I’m going to provide one counter to a review I read in Japan (for a Japanese book release of Yasuke by Lockley) of how he described the book like it was a thesis. First, I have to say that this book is not written to the point it is hard to understand. Yes, a lot of research went into this book but written like a thesis, I can see what the reviewer meant but by no means does this book read like a thesis. It’s well-researched and presented the best it can, considering there are sources of letters about Yasuke but not a whole lot, so the writers had to go further and understanding the era, the land Yasuke came from, the other people he served and what led him to Japan and his time with Oda Nobunaga.
I simply enjoyed this book, to the point that I made a goal to visit the current Honno-ji in Kyoto really soon.
For the most part, I commend Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard in writing “African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan“. It’s fascinating, well-researched and I definitely recommend it!
