Yasuke was a black man, from Africa, brought to Japan by Dutch traders (maybe as a slave, maybe not, I don’t remember). The traders met with Oda Nobunaga, one of the premier warlords of the sengoku era in Japan, and Nobunaga was fascinated with this strange person he’d never seen the like of before. He took on Yasuke (as a servant IIRC?), and over the years Yasuke earned Nobunaga’s trust to the point that he was made a full retainer (presumably with some qualifications).
Racist Gamers ()are upset that Yasuke is the protagonist in a new/upcoming video game (I can’t be asked to know which) where he’s one of the two playable protagonists. In a fit of racism, they are claiming that he’s not a real samurai because he is too black.
I remember the last time there was drama about Yasuke I was corrected by some people about the history, so I sat down to read some stuff about samurai. So I do want to point out that “who is a samurai” was of course a much looser thing than what we think of today. Technically each clan made their own decision about who was a samurai and who was a higher ranking samurai than anyone else. But one common and legal definition of the era is that only samurai could wear daisho, and we know for a fact that Yasuke was allowed a wakizashi. Also this wasn’t Europe, plenty of samurai were “retainers”. A kuramaitori got a salary, he was still directly answerable to the shogun himself. While the highest echelons of power were decided by income and therefore land ownership, there were like hundreds of steps below where you didn’t need to own land. You could argue that since the highest rank we know he had was kosho calling him “Samurai” is a bit like calling a squire a knight, but again he wore daisho and served as personal attendant to Oda Nobunaga. There were hatamoto (Well, gokenin I suppose) with land holdings who would kill a couple of family members for that job.
However we also know that he faced discrimination and was exiled from Japan by Oda Nobutada with the words that as a black slave he was basically an animal.
Yasuke not being considered a smaurai is weird to me because he is so often used in Japanese games as the black samurai that it almost feels like a trope. He was there in Nioh (either 1 or 2) and Team Ninja are super chud.
“Samurai” mostly just means retainer. Gamers arguing that Yosuke wasn’t a samurai because he was “merely” a retainer would be like arguing that some medieval dude wasn’t really an knight, but merely a vassal of the sovereign monarch, i.e. it’s saying the same shit with different words.
Someone dumb this down for me please
Yasuke was a black man, from Africa, brought to Japan by Dutch traders (maybe as a slave, maybe not, I don’t remember). The traders met with Oda Nobunaga, one of the premier warlords of the sengoku era in Japan, and Nobunaga was fascinated with this strange person he’d never seen the like of before. He took on Yasuke (as a servant IIRC?), and over the years Yasuke earned Nobunaga’s trust to the point that he was made a full retainer (presumably with some qualifications).
Racist Gamers (
)are upset that Yasuke is the protagonist in a new/upcoming video game (I can’t be asked to know which) where he’s one of the two playable protagonists. In a fit of racism, they are claiming that he’s not a real samurai because he is too black.
I remember the last time there was drama about Yasuke I was corrected by some people about the history, so I sat down to read some stuff about samurai. So I do want to point out that “who is a samurai” was of course a much looser thing than what we think of today. Technically each clan made their own decision about who was a samurai and who was a higher ranking samurai than anyone else. But one common and legal definition of the era is that only samurai could wear daisho, and we know for a fact that Yasuke was allowed a wakizashi. Also this wasn’t Europe, plenty of samurai were “retainers”. A kuramaitori got a salary, he was still directly answerable to the shogun himself. While the highest echelons of power were decided by income and therefore land ownership, there were like hundreds of steps below where you didn’t need to own land. You could argue that since the highest rank we know he had was kosho calling him “Samurai” is a bit like calling a squire a knight, but again he wore daisho and served as personal attendant to Oda Nobunaga. There were hatamoto (Well, gokenin I suppose) with land holdings who would kill a couple of family members for that job.
However we also know that he faced discrimination and was exiled from Japan by Oda Nobutada with the words that as a black slave he was basically an animal.
Yasuke not being considered a smaurai is weird to me because he is so often used in Japanese games as the black samurai that it almost feels like a trope. He was there in Nioh (either 1 or 2) and Team Ninja are super chud.
He’s in both Nioh games, yeah. Don’t really know enough to say anything about Team Ninja other than the
character designs.
“Samurai” mostly just means retainer. Gamers arguing that Yosuke wasn’t a samurai because he was “merely” a retainer would be like arguing that some medieval dude wasn’t really an knight, but merely a vassal of the sovereign monarch, i.e. it’s saying the same shit with different words.