Who was Yasuke, the black samurai?

A game series spanning the ages

Assassin’s Creed games have always been set in well-documented historical settings, with the fictional main characters interacting with notable figures of the time and often taking part in historical events, sometimes shaping them. Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which will be released on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 in November, will be set in Japan and will have a notable difference from previous games. One of the two main characters will not be a fictional character like Ezio Auditore, but a real historical figure known as Yasuke, a black man coming from Europe. This disconcerted some fans, who argue that he was not a real samurai and that his presence detracts from the game’s immersiveness.

How did a black man become a samurai?

The man known as Yasuke came to Japan in 1579 in service of Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano. His real name is unknown and his origins uncertain, possibly coming from Mozambique. In 1581 he followed his master to an audience with Nobunaga Oda, the most powerful man in Japan at the time. Nobunaga was impressed by the black skin of the man, having never seen a black man with his own eyes, as well as his imposing build and muscular frame. Yasuke was reportedly well over 180cm tall, while the average Japanese man barely reached 155cm at the time. Reports tell of how Oda ordered the man to be thoroughly washed, thinking that maybe he had ink on his skin, but the more he was washed the blacker Yasuke’s skin appeared. So it was that Oda asked father Valignano to let the black man enter his service, and gave him the name Yasuke.

Now, that Yasuke was in service of Nobunaga as a retainer, having been assigned a house and land, and the right to bear a short sword, it is a fact. It didn’t make him a samurai, though, because samurai were very high-ranking officials akin to nobility. We have no clear information about Yasuke’s status in Japanese society, but it seems most plausible that Nobunaga simply wanted to keep such an unusual person close as a trophy, to show off his power and influence. We know that Yasuke served faithfully and was near his master until he was betrayed at Honno-ji by Mitsuhide Akechi. After Nobunaga’s death, Yasuke was spared by Akechi because he was deemed an animal and not deserving a man’s death. Maybe it was a ruse by Mitsuhide to save his life, we don’t know for certain. Yasuke was sent to the Jesuits in India and we have no more info on him.

Yasuke, an undying cultural icon

Exceptional, unusual things never fail to attract attention, and a giant black man in feudal Japan is as intriguing to us as he was to Nobunaga several centuries ago. Yasuke has been depicted in media many times, sometimes as a minor character, sometimes as inspiration for an entire franchise (Afro Samurai, by Takashi Okazaki), and can be found as a playable character in more than one game. In 2021 Netflix released a short, heavily fictionalized animated series based on him, titled simply Yasuke. His next endeavor will be being the main character in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, let’s hope he’ll be up to the task.

How could Yasuke be related to Assassin’s Creed?

So, what does such a peculiar character have to do with Assassin’s Creed? We will only know when the game is released and we learn the story, but we can speculate a bit. Yasuke came to Japan from Italy around the year 1580. We know the Assassins were very active in Italy around 1500, when Ezio’s story is set. Since it’s hard to imagine Templars and Assassins to simply sprout in such a distant land as Japan, we can imagine that Yasuke (and maybe even father Valignano) could have been trained by Assassins in Europe and sent to Japan to counter a growing templar threat. Very little is known of his life, thus making it easy to write any kind of story around the historical facts. We will soon know, when Shadows releases in November.