Edge Rewrite
restyle Source code View original
// HTMLRewriter · presentation

This page was redesigned at the edge.

Cloudflare fetched the original article and streamed it through HTMLRewriter to apply an entirely new visual system without rebuilding the source page.

Jump to content

Talk:Yasuke

Page contents not supported in other languages.
Add topic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Proposal to discard the archive 3 RfC consensus or any other concensus that Yasuke should be represented as a samurai

[edit]
Latest comment: 1 day ago107 comments26 people in discussion

I propose to discard the archive 3 RfC consensus or any other consensus that Yasuke should be represented as a samurai in the article. (So, when Yasuke is represented as a samurai in the article, it must be presented as a opinion rather than fact.) The archive 3 RfC consensus is based on assumption that there is no reliable source to contest Yasuke's status as a samurai. However, we can find some sources as below casing doubt on it. (bold added to emphasize)

NakajKak (talk) 08:43, 28 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Do you support or oppose my proposal? NakajKak (talk) 10:34, 29 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

  • Support. It is clear by the sources that there is no academic concensus whether Yasuke was a samurai.
NakajKak (talk) 10:37, 29 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. Are we going to relitigate the topic? Really? If there's controversy, report the controversy without giving undue weight. The cited sources casting doubt don't do a great job of illustrating the point. I don't like the idea of a decision being overturned without new evidence or whatever coming to like because someone didn't like the previous consensus. RexSueciae (talk) 01:49, 12 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Might as well give the Reader's Digest version of counter-arguments to these sources:
  • Textbook example of WP: WEASEL In fact "some people" is literally the first example in the entry.
  • Cites the above as it's reference (but changes "some people" into historians, incorrectly).
  • Argument against Lockley's description and using a single source, not against Yusuke's status as a samurai (nor is Lockley this article's only source).
  • (same person as above) again isn't arguing for or against Yusuke's status as a samurai, simply stating that he doesn't fit the Western image of a samurai (there were plenty of samurai who never led men or even drew a sword in anger in their life).
  • Nor is there enough records to disprove. Does Owada still hold this opinion, given the source is at least two years old at this point?
  • Which is a big issue with all of these, they're old. Most of them have been posted and reposted and argued over and debated to death. This doesn't bring anything new to the table. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 13:09, 30 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. Obviously. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 04:14, 24 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
The problem is that any attmept to add statement questioning Yasuke's samurai status in the article have been rejected by the previous RfC beyonding the closer's argument. The closer says, "Since there have been no reliable sources furnished which contest the status of Yasuke as a samurai, it would be a violation of NPOV to depict it as contested." This consensus doesn't based on that all the sources contesting it are invalid or the statement is WP: WEASEL. Even if your arguments are right, the edits citing reliable sources shouldn't be rejected by the previous RfC. If you concern some edits are WP: WEASEL or whatever, they can be resolved by appropriate guidlines or through normal dispute resolutions. NakajKak (talk) 03:48, 29 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support I believe it's obvious the previous RFC was done hastily and without any actual merits in my opinion, and may have been politically motivated. ~2026-47339-99 (talk) 01:36, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
the previous RFC happened after months after discussion among editors Suredeath (talk) 06:09, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
To any possible closer, please see above discussion for where substantive issues, along with a moratorium proposal, are being discussed. TarnishedPathtalk 13:09, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support. The Previous RFC was flooded with people with an agenda in a heated news/political cycle. ~2026-35605-62 (talk) 02:10, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just want to officially record that I both oppose this and think it's a bad RFC also. Loki (talk) 16:57, 8 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. The sources presented above are mostly lower quality than the ones in the article describing him as a samurai; a medium post, a tertiary source, and some news coverage by non-experts isn't sufficient to demonstrate that anything has changed since the last RFC. For the record, here are some of the references that were crucial then, plus a few more:[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] --Aquillion (talk) 02:46, 12 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    You can argue some sources listed above or the others as low quality and shouldn't be included in the article even after the previous RfC is discarded through WP:RS etc. Though, rejecting them by means of the previous RfC assuming there is no such source, is bad reasoning. NakajKak (talk) 02:58, 26 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

Moratorium proposal

[edit]

I propose a 12 month moratorium on any discussion regarding the status of Yasuke as a samurai. TarnishedPathtalk 03:49, 29 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Comment:: That's not what we're doing. This is an encyclopedia, not a press office. Sumanuil. (talk to me) 06:37, 30 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support a 12-month moratorium. Anything longer would be unproductive. Katzrockso (talk) 18:45, 30 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per proposer. --JBL (talk) 00:04, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Why would you have a 12 month (!!) moratorium when there's recently published books like this that don't seem to have been used as sources for this article? Take a look at the introduction on Google books... See what that has to say about Yasuke. Them: Given the limitation of extant historical records, scholars have questioned Yasuke’s exact title and position under Nobunaga but largely agreed that he offered some means of service. Fujita Midori has closely examined the presence, reception, and portrayal of kurobo, the term used to describe dark-skinned foreigners, including African peoples, in early modern Japan, and placed Yasuke among a larger number of Africans who were employed by daimyo as soldiers or entertainers. Us: Yasuke was a samurai.  Tewdar  10:07, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Because Fujita Midori's Discover Africa―History of African image in Japan (World History series) that gives the majority of that quote has also been pretty thoroughly debated in the past and is actually used as a source in the article? Never mind that the paragraph in the introduction is all the coverage that book gives to Yasuke. Also "scholars have questioned" is WP:Weasel. This is what they write of Thomas Lockley's work (African Samurai, which they mention as his best-known book in the opening Contributors section) just before the part you quoted:
    Thomas Lockley has gone further to suggest a biography of Yasuke based on Japanese and Jesuit records, including the more well-documented travels of Valignano, and argued that Nobunaga likely elevated Yasuke precisely because of his foreignness since he "offered a new and different perspective on the outside world" in addition to possible military service.
    They use similar framing when writing about Yayōsu (耶楊子), Miura Anjin, and Hiramatsu Buhē and their interaction with the samurai class. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 23:50, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
    The examples above are not automatically weasel words. They may legitimately be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentence of a paragraph when the article body or the rest of the paragraph can supply attribution. Likewise, views that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions, if those expressions accurately represent the opinions of the source.  Tewdar  00:39, 1 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    It's hard to know what to say about a book that none of us have full access to, to be honest. My general objection is still that we still have zero sources that explicitly say Yasuke wasn't a samurai, and we need at least one to contradict the many that explicitly say he was.
    Of course, for all we know this new source could be one more for the pile of sources that explicitly say he was, because none of us have read it. It certainly seems to be written by many of the same people who say he was a samurai in other sources, like Lockley and Lopez-Vera. This seems a little like someone coming into a page about biology to say "why is everyone saying there should be a moratorium on discussion of creationism? I can find a new source that nobody has read that doesn't explicitly endorse evolution in the introduction, so clearly there's still a chance the article might need to change". Loki (talk) 00:18, 1 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Yeah it's exactly like that Loki... 😭  Tewdar  00:40, 1 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support 12-month moratorium. If consensus is going to change, we need more information than we already have, and the 12 months will give that time to happen. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
    far out man we literally have a new source published two weeks ago  Tewdar  21:29, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Checking the 4 academic libraries I have access to, none provide access to the the book presently, so while it may provide new insight, we would only know if someone was willing to pay the £37.39 for the ebook. Looking at standard timeframes, the book should become available in in the subscriptions libraries have with Routledge in the next 6–12 months. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 14:02, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    For simplicity sake the extent of the books mention of Yasuke is as follows: "While scholarly attention has largely centered on William Adams, more recent work has identified other non-Japanese figures associated with samurai in the early modern period. Brief mentions of an African man who accompanied the early Jesuits, found in the letters of missionary Luís Fróis (1532-1597) and Ōta Gyūichi's Shinchō Kōki, published around 1600, have intrigued researchers and contributed to ongoing debates about his exact role under Oda Nobunaga. Known as Yasuke, the man likely came from Mozambique, arrived in Japan in the 1580s with the company of Alessandro Valignano, Visitor of the Jesuit mission in Japan from 1573 to 1606, and entered some nature of service to Nobunaga, leading to his presence at the Honnō-ji Incident in 1582. John G. Russell identified Yasuke as an example of contemporary recognition of and fascination with racial difference. Thomas Lockley has gone further to suggest a biography of Yasuke based on Japanese and Jesuit records, including the more well-documented travels of Valignano, and argued that Nobunaga likely elevated Yasuke precisely because of his foreignness since he "offered a new and different perspective on the outside world" in addition to possible military service. Given the limitation of extant historical records, scholars have questioned Yasuke's exact title and position under Nobunaga but largely agreed that he offered some means of service. Fujita Midori has closely examined the presence, reception, and portrayal of kurobo, the term used to describe dark-skinned foreigners, including African peoples, in early modern Japan, and placed Yasuke among a larger number of Africans who were employed by daimyo as soldiers or entertainers. Identifying the significance of this persistent cultural fascination, Makoto Tsujiuchi placed the legacy of Yasuke within the broader discourse of African studies in Japan."
    Viewable with google book preview and from the editors introduction. Chrhns (talk) 19:42, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    This is almost as bad as having a primary source saying "though he was no Arthur", finding a secondary source that interprets that as "Arthur was the king of Britain", and then wikivoicing our king Arthur article lede with "Arthur was the king of Britain" ( and then saying, "but we don't have a source that says he wasn't the king of Britain", even though we do have a source saying there's a "limitation of extant historical records" 😭)  Tewdar  21:10, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    This suggests a lot of possible leads. I would really like to get my hands on the work of this Fujita Midori, as it seems they're specifically an expert on the history of Africans in Japan. If anyone can get this book chapter they wrote it'd likely be very useful. Loki (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    I have the book 😁  Tewdar  21:56, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    What do you think it says? You guessed it, approximately fuck all. He might be from Mozambique, was given to Nobunaga by Jesuits, had some knowledge of Japanese, fought in defence of Nobunaga, he's not Japanese so don't kill him, and that's about it.  Tewdar  22:03, 6 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    like i literally linked it directly above your comment wtf it was literally the comment right above  Tewdar  22:18, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Considering the new material. Halbared (talk) 21:45, 31 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose – a moratorium for what exactly? Why are we acting like there's been a disruption disaster here? Yes, this page has history, but looking at the archives this talk page has been relatively quiet recently, and the discussion above in no way warrants a moratorium – a single user started a discussion repeating the same things that have been said before, and was told to not do that, and got into a long argument with another editor. Moratoriums are not meant to be used because two editors had a fight; if editors think a fight has been overly disruptive, the right way to deal with that is the administrative noticeboards, not putting down a moratorium.
Let's not set a precedent that a single user can conjure up a moratorium for a page by starting a disruptive RfC. –Maltazarian ᚾparleyinvestigateᛅ 19:47, 1 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's more than one (see right below), and he's hardly the first to flog this equine carcass, just the latest. Let's not pretend that every entry in that archive during this "quiet" hasn't been pushing for this exact thing, and most before as well. Moratoriums are not permanent, even indefinite ones, and may be lifted early if there is consensus to do so.
As for the administrative noticeboard, NakajKak already tried that.
DragonBrickLayer (talk) 22:10, 1 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
The one below? You mean the one created by the exact same user who also made that AN post? Those just go to show that this is absolutely one editor kicking up a fuss, and a moratorium is not the way that should be handled. –Maltazarian ᚾparleyinvestigateᛅ 19:22, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support moratorium The new source above doesn't even dispute anything, so isn't really relevant to the discussion. Meanwhile, the other sources originally above to argue a disputation are things like a video interview in a popular science magazine. Not exactly a rigorous source investigating historicity. SilverserenC 03:37, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    There's this one too: Whether Yasuke was actually a samurai remains a matter of debate among historians due to a lack of primary sources. However, the prevailing view is that his role was more akin to that of an attendant and entertainer for Nobunaga. It is highly improbable that he ever commanded troops on the battlefield, rendering the notion of him as a legendary samurai utterly preposterous. Moreover, the very definition of samurai was only clearly established during the early modern period with the separation of military and agricultural classes.  Tewdar  08:41, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    "Moreover, the very definition of samurai was only clearly established during the early modern period with the separation of military and agricultural classes"
    Again, all I can read from this is... You want to debate the definition of Samurai, not if Yasuke is a samurai. This should go to Samurai Wikipedia page Suredeath (talk) 09:04, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    I want Wikipedia articles to reflect the best sources. This one says that "Whether Yasuke was actually a samurai remains a matter of debate among historians" and that "his role was more akin to that of an attendant and entertainer for Nobunaga." Why have you jumped straight to the last sentence?  Tewdar  09:15, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Not to mention this most "recent scholarship" is from a June 2025 Conference mostly using references that wouldn't fly on Wikipedia, such as Japan Forward from... you guessed it, 2024! While I'm sure Hirohito Tsuji is a qualified researcher, it's a tertiary mention, at best, and the presence of Japan Forward and Alaric Naude (a dude who is like my personal arch rival when it comes to this subject) whose cited book is a self-publication in disguise by fringe researcher, in the footnotes make me doubt it's usefulness as a reference. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 11:56, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Taking a closer look, that tertiary mention in the quoted section is directly attributed to Naude's book, so a nonstarter. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 12:08, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    "a matter of debate among historians"
    Which historians? Please present qoutes and citations from them. Otherwise, them there are WP:WEASEL. TarnishedPathtalk 12:44, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    You guys should probably re-read Wikipedia's WEASEL guideline and policies on reliable sources. If a reliable source says there's a 'debate among historians' or 'scholars have questioned' something, this is explicitly listed as an exception to WEASELing. Similarly, there is no need for our reliable sources to themselves cite reliable source... Otherwise probably all of the 'Yasuke was a samurai' sources used in the article would themselves be invalid, being as they are mainly either pop history with no citations whatsoever, or news articles.  Tewdar  12:59, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    You're putting forward a claim of reliability as a crutch and I can't see that claim has been accepted by most editors here. So, we're back at WP:WEASEL. So again, which historians? What did they say? Where are the citations to their works? TarnishedPathtalk 13:08, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    This has nothing to do with WEASEL. I think the first source is pretty good. In fact I think it is one of the best sources, as good as anything currently used in the article. It says, again, that scholars have questioned Yasuke’s exact title and position under Nobunaga but largely agreed that he offered some means of service. This is not weasel words because it is the language used in a reliable source. We can directly paraphrase this and not give two hoots about who the "scholars" are. Funnily enough, this is what the article itself currently does: According to historians this was the equivalent to "the bestowing of warrior or 'samurai' rank" during this period. - oh yeah? Which historians? You gonna drop a weasel tag on that? The second source is also by a decent researcher, but obviously the citation to Naudé is not great. But even if no sources were presented, I find the attempt to shut down all discussion for a full year, with no attempt to first even look for recent sources, to be quite disgraceful.  Tewdar  13:20, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    That is specifically footnoted in the actual text to the book I provided link about above, a self-published work that the author tried to disguise as being peer-reviewed. The author himself had the Wiki article about him deleted as a nonnotable WP:Fringe scholar. It's worthless as a source. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 13:00, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Hey congrats, you are now the first person to find a source that explicitly doubts whether Yasuke was a samurai!
    However, I'm not impressed by it. The author is a post-graduate researcher, not a professor. The topic is also only tangentially related to his expertise. It's hard to figure out where it's published but it seems like it's conference proceedings, not a peer-reviewed paper. In short, this is a marginally reliable source at best, and is still directly contradicted by better sources. Loki (talk) 19:06, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Hey, awesome, thank you so much... and that's just after a couple of days, imagine what I might find in twelve months... Oh no, wait, I won't be able to share that with you, will I...  Tewdar  20:43, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    From what I can tell from their website, at best they review an abstract of the paper, release it on Twitter, and publish it in these "conference proceedings" for free afterward. DragonBrickLayer (talk) 09:15, 3 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose moratorium - The two new sources suggest that whether Yasuke was a samurai is, at the very least, a matter of scholarly debate. I am frankly shocked that the proposer has apparently not even done a cursory search for recent scholarship before proposing a moratorium.  Tewdar  09:16, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose – I'm not sure what a moratorium accomplishes here. Because this is a culture war issue, there will be a steady flow of new editors coming confused to the talk page. Moratorium or no moratorium, users will still have to avoid WP:BITEing these newcomers and explaining our processes; responses will change from "see the FAQ" to "see the FAQ and also you're in violation of a discussion moratorium", and the second seems worse to me. Cheers, Suriname0 (talk) 15:01, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    No, responses will change from "see the FAQ" to immediately closing the discussion. That's the value of a moratorium: it allows us to stop wasting editor time on these by just closing them immediately instead of having to have the same argument over and over. Loki (talk) 19:07, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Looking at the past 12 months of this talk page, it seems the discussion about a moratorium is actually costing more editor resources than it would potentially save, so that argument feels a bit hollow to be honest with you. –Maltazarian ᚾparleyinvestigateᛅ 19:28, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    I'm only here because of the proposed moratorium 🤣  Tewdar  19:30, 2 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    Their attempt to censor/control the narrative draws more attention to this topic and makes Wikipedia more of a laughingstock. It's streisand effect in action. ~2026-35605-62 (talk) 01:33, 10 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
    There are decent historians who think Yasuke can reasonably be described as a samurai. It's a reasonable view. I just don't agree that this should be written in Wikipedia's voice, and I strongly disagree with the attempt to end all conversation on this for a year.  Tewdar  08:14, 10 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Comment: The people who consider Wikipedia a "laughingstock" are generally the kind of people who should be considered such themselves. Sumanuil. (talk to me) 01:39, 10 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose -- The debate about whether Yasuke was a samurai has at least appeared in some articles that are sourced above and there are some legitimate arguments. The easiest thing to do, is that the debate could at least be acknowledged, which doesn't change the meaning of the article; the article could still give more weight to the Lockley academic source if the consensus is there for that. It doesn't have to be phrased as a debate either. Wikipedia is not necessarily a documentation of experts. All it does is cite reliable sources, which can sometimes disagree or carry more weight than another amongst the community. TheWikiJedi (talk) 03:59, 3 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. I also want to mention that User:BrocadeRiverPoems has been indeffed for persistent sockpuppetry, who was one of the most prominent participants in the previous Yasuke debates, so I think having a fresh discussion free from sockpuppetry would be a good thing. Please see this SPI thread for more information. In addition, User:Renamed user 157yagz5r48a5f1a1f1235ad123, another participant in the debate, is also suspected to be a BRP sock. (Well, more or less confirmed, but no one has bothered to submit a separate SPI because it doesn't look like that editor will be back.) –GM 19:48, 3 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
On that note, another sock was just indeffed, so their !vote above has been struck. Thanks @Tewdar for pointing that out. I also suspect Polygnotus and BRP may be connected because of this edit, but since they're both indeffed anyway, I don't feel the need to make another SPI. Anyone's free to do so, though. –GM 19:55, 3 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. I don't think a 12 month moratorium on discussion is necessary. New sources that have come out should be discussed consensus can change. Chrhns (talk) 23:52, 3 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support 12 month Moratorium None of the sources provided are new, all of them were discussed in the discussions during and around the original RFC. The only new article presented cites the claim to a book by Alaric Naude which was discussed on RSN and shown to be concensus unreliable and of dubious publication. Relm (talk) 17:48, 4 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
Copyright 2027??  Tewdar  19:05, 4 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support 12 month moratorium None of this refutes the central scholarly consensus that was determined previously. Maybe one of two of these sources are respectable enough to be mentioned briefly in the body of the article, but there is nothing here that could alter the opening sentence or the bulk of the article. I see no good reason to continue litigating this particular point for the next 12 months.Katemeshi101 (talk) 09:02, 10 September 2026 (UTC)Reply
  • Support 12 month moratorium. The quality of the sources presented above is noticeably below the sources establishing that he was a samurai, and many of them were discussed and failed to sway anyone in previous discussions. Most of the arguments below make it clear that the people pushing for this don't believe anything has changed and just intend to re-litigate it over and over forever, which is disruptive and a pointless timesink. In particular, the argument that "well this is a culture-war issue, people are gonna keep coming in here trying to change it no matter what" is precisely the argument why we need a moratorium. Furthermore, previous moratoriums were clearly effective; it was only after it ended that we immediately descended into squabbling. If something genuinely changes, of course, a moratorium can always be lifted, but it serves to quickly shut down anyone who wanders in and just wants to repeat the same arguments that were made in the past, which is common for hot-button culture-war issues like this. --Aquillion (talk) 02:51, 12 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

References

[edit]

References

  1. ↑ Brickler, Alexander Dumas J. (Spring 2018). "Black Mecha Is Built for This: Black Masculine Identity in Firedance and Afro Samurai". TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 39: 70–88. doi:10.3138/topia.39.02. ISSN 1206-0143. Though the historical reality of the actual 16th-century black samurai Yasuke complicates this 21st-century Orientalist critique.
  2. ↑ Ho, Michelle H. S.; Tanaka, Hiromi (November 29, 2023). "Following Naomi Osaka and Rui Hachimura on Social Media: Silent Activism and Sport Commodification of Multiracial Japanese Athletes". Social Media + Society. 9 (4). doi:10.1177/20563051231211858. ISSN 2056-3051. "Black Samurai" references Yasuke, the first Black samurai in Japanese history who fought for Oda Nobunaga, a well-known feudal lord during...
  3. ↑ Stanislaus, Warren (14 October 2022). "Examining Afro-Japanese Encounters Through Popular Music". Teaching Media Quarterly. 10 (1). ISSN 2573-0126. For example, we looked at the significance of Yasuke the 16th century African samurai...
  4. ↑ Sharpe, Michael Orlando (1 December 2022). Black Lives Matter in Japan: The Specter of Race and Racism Haunting Japan. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 305–318. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-11324-6_20. ISBN 978-3-031-11324-6 – via Springer Link. He notes the example of the African man, Yasuke, who achieved samurai status after having been brought to Japan by the Europeans as a servant.
  5. ↑ Manatsha, Boga Thura (2019). "Historicising Japan-Africa relations". Pula Botswana Journal of African Studies. 33 (1). Yasuke also received some payment from Nobunaga and his brothers. He was later promoted to a samurai...
  6. ↑ Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva (2023). ""African Slavery in Asia: Epistemologies across Temporalities and Space."". 関西大学経済論集. 72: 9–39. Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese military dictator, who initiated the unification of Japan, demanded that Yasuke become his personal slave who he promoted to Samurai (Boxer 1989).
  7. ↑ Purdy, R. W. (3 May 2020). "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, A Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan: Toronto, ON: Hanover Square Press 480 pp., $27.99, ISBN: 978-1-335-14102-6 Publication Date: April 2019". History: Reviews of New Books. 48 (3): 64–65. doi:10.1080/03612759.2020.1747918. ISSN 0361-2759. ...the authors introduce Yasuke, a black African brought to Japan by the Jesuits and presented as a gift to arguably the most powerful feudal lord at the time, Oda Nobunaga, who raised him to the rank of samurai." ... "During this fifteen-month period, Nobunaga elevated Yasuke to samurai rank, and the two formed a close bond.
  8. ↑ Magazine, Smithsonian; Germain, Jacquelyne. "Who Was Yasuke, Japan's First Black Samurai?". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-05-24. Yasuke was an African warrior in the employ of Nobunaga, a powerful feudal lord known as the "Great Unifier," during Japan's Sengoku period. The first Black samurai, he was at Nobunaga's side when the daimyo died...
  9. ↑ Moon, Kat (30 April 2021). "The True Story of Yasuke, the Legendary Black Samurai Behind Netflix's New Anime Series". TIME. Retrieved 2024-05-24. But Yasuke was a real-life Black samurai who served under Oda Nobunaga, one of the most important feudal lords in Japanese history and a unifier of the country.
  10. ↑ "Yasuke: The mysterious African samurai". 13 October 2019. Retrieved 2024-05-24 – via www.bbc.com. Almost 500 years ago, a tall African man arrived in Japan. He would go on to become the first foreign-born man to achieve the status of a samurai warrior...
  11. ↑ Shyamal, Sriniketh (2025). "Warriors Beyond the Sword: The Samurai's Enduring Influence on Modern Japan and Global Culture". The Saber and Scroll Journal. 13 (1). ...and gave him the name Yasuke, giving him a sword, a house, and a stipend, thereby granting him the status of a samurai– the first ever foreign samurai. Yasuke served Nobunaga from...
  12. ↑ Haruko, Wakabayashi (2025). "The Arrival of the "Southern Barbarians": The Europeans and the Other Foreign Others in the Early Modern Japanese Nanban Screens". The Routledge Companion to Race in Early Modern Artistic, Material, and Visual Production. Routledge. pp. 433–442. The slave was later given the Japanese name "Yasuke" and was made a samurai retainer.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Yasuke&oldid=1377957691"