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.