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OFH Throwback- Episode #172- Who Was the African Samurai? (Part II)
Update: 2024-09-03
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In this throwback episode Sebastian takes you back to the conclusion of the African Samurai series. In the 1580’s Japan was a on the precipice of a massive transformation. For over a century the country had been embroiled in war, but by 1581 the end seemed to be in sight. The powerful Lord Oda Nobunaga was on the path to unifying the fractured nation. It was at this time that a remarkable man from East Africa, known as Yasuke, came into his service. Nobunaga would take a shine to this foreigner and would eventually honour him with a ceremonial sword and a monthly stipend. For many historians this makes Yasuke the first ever foreigner born Samurai. Legend has it that he played a pivotal role in Oda Nobunaga’s final living moments. Should we trust these stories of Samurai derring-do? Tune-in and find out how a loosely tied top knot, a public scrubbing, and the slippery definition of “samurai” all play a role in the story.
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Transcript
00:00:00
[Playing music]
00:00:06
Hello and welcome to this very special throwback episode of Our Fake History.
00:00:13
This week I'm throwing you back to part 2 of our season 8 series "Who Was the African Samurai".
00:00:21
I re-released part 1 of that series last week, so if you've not heard that, then please feel free to go back and give that a listen now.
00:00:29
In the re-release of part 1, I explained that the choice to return to the story of Yasuke, the African Samurai, had to do with the recent controversy surrounding the inclusion of Yasuke as a playable character in the most recent installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series.
00:00:49
I spoke about that controversy at some length in the last introduction, so I won't repeat myself here.
00:00:56
I just want to say that I think that controversy is mostly ridiculous.
00:01:01
Frankly, I don't buy the claims of some of the disgruntled gamers that they are genuinely upset by historical inaccuracies in the game.
00:01:11
The Assassin's Creed games have never really been about historical accuracy, so their outrage this time around seems to be fueled by something else.
00:01:24
For me, the biggest issue has to do with the author Thomas Lockley, whose book "African Samurai" is the only substantive English language examination of Yasuke's life that we have.
00:01:38
As I've said many times, and you will hear me say again during this throwback episode, that book has always been a complicated source.
00:01:49
Large parts of "African Samurai" should be understood as historical fiction, spun out of guesses about Yasuke based on some admittedly thin primary sources.
00:02:02
Now, to be clear, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with writing that kind of a book, so long as the author is forthcoming about what their book is.
00:02:15
The issue is that Thomas Lockley has been cagey about just how fictionalized his version of Yasuke's life actually is.
00:02:25
It's clear from many interviews that I've looked at that Lockley wants his book to be regarded as a reliable work of history, which I think isn't realistic given what he's produced.
00:02:39
His book is certainly based on real history, but he takes a lot of liberties, and I wish he was better at owning up to that.
00:02:49
One of the biggest controversies around Yasuke in Japan is the fact that Lockley has identified him unambiguously as a samurai.
00:03:00
In this throwback episode, you will hear me engage with the question of who is and who is not a samurai at some length.
00:03:09
Now, I think one of the greatest weaknesses of Thomas Lockley's book is the fact that he doesn't engage with the question of what made someone a samurai in the late 1500s.
00:03:23
The truth is that the samurai hardened into a hereditary caste in Japanese society in the so-called Tokugawa era.
00:03:33
That was after the year 1600 when the Tokugawa family took control of Japan and established their regime known as the Shogunet.
00:03:44
Once the Tokugawa Shoguns solidified their power, social mobility became nearly impossible in Japan for more than two centuries.
00:03:54
In that time, it was very clear who was and who was not a samurai.
00:04:01
In that time, all of the samurai were from a select group of families whose status was recognized by the government, and who got to display that status by carrying two swords and wearing other types of clothing that were only permitted to those of the samurai caste.
00:04:19
Now, there are cases of foreign-born people being given samurai privileges during the Tokugawa era.
00:04:28
These people are often called the foreign-born samurai, and there are English, German, and Korean examples of people who attained samurai status during that period.
00:04:40
Now, there are some in Japan who would deny even those folks the title of samurai because they were not native-born Japanese.
00:04:52
But it's easier to make the case that those foreigners were considered samurai because the markers of the samurai caste were so carefully prescribed after the year 1600.
00:05:06
The issue is everything before that period.
00:05:10
The surprising thing that I learned in all of this was that maybe no one was a samurai before the year 1600.
00:05:21
Now, this is surprising because many sources claim that the samurai traced their history back to the 11th century, some sources even place it earlier in history.
00:05:33
It's especially surprising because the Sen Goku era or the Japanese warring states period that raged throughout the 16th century is often considered the heyday of samurai warfare.
00:05:47
The historical mythology that grew out of the Sen Goku era would have us believe that that was when the samurai were truly the samurai.
00:05:59
But it seems like once the samurai had hardened into a caste during the Tokugawa era, those samurai families looked back and retroactively called their ancestors samurai,
00:06:15
even though their ancestors probably did not see themselves as samurai.
00:06:22
Now, one thing I didn't get a chance to go into in this episode that you're about to hear was that in this period that is the late Sen Goku era, the late 1500s,
00:06:34
for the very first time you had Japanese lords conscripting peasants into military service.
00:06:41
Those of you who listened to my series on the Great East Asian War, that is the Japanese invasion of Korea in the late 1500s, might remember that the Japanese armies were largely made up of peasants who had been trained as musket men or archibaciers.
00:06:58
In fact, the most successful Japanese commanders at the end of the warring states period, like Oda no Bu Naga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi,
00:07:09
were famous for their huge forces of peasant musket men.
00:07:14
These firearm wielding infantry were called Ashigaru, but their existence had upended an age old Japanese social structure.
00:07:24
Before that point in Japanese history, the Bushi or warriors fought and the farmers farmed.
00:07:32
So, what about these new peasant warriors?
00:07:36
Were they warriors or were they farmers?
00:07:40
Could they be considered samurai?
00:07:43
The answer was deeply unclear during the era when Yasuke was in the service of Oda no Bu Naga and that's the era that I cover in this throwback episode.
00:07:56
The entire question of what it meant to be a warrior in Japan had been upended by these new armies stocked with peasants.
00:08:06
This was also a period of remarkable social mobility in the country.
00:08:11
Listeners to the Great East Asian War series might also remember that Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the eventual leader of Japan, started his existence as a peasant,
00:08:22
a sandal bearer to his lord.
00:08:24
Unlikely people were rising in society at that particular moment, but this would not last.
00:08:34
Hideyoshi himself would clamp down on this type of social mobility once he was in power.
00:08:40
Now, I wish that Thomas Lockley had engaged with the sticky question of what it meant to be a samurai, a warrior, or a proto samurai in the 1580s.
00:08:54
But he really doesn't.
00:08:56
Lockley simply insists that because Yasuke was a retainer, who was given a household and was gifted a sword by his lord, he was unambiguously a samurai.
00:09:09
The weird truth is that no one was unambiguously a samurai in the 1580s.
00:09:16
That, to me, is super interesting.
00:09:20
But I don't think Lockley wanted to engage with that ambiguity because it made the story of Yasuke harder to sell.
00:09:29
It's immediately interesting if Yasuke is the African samurai.
00:09:35
It's less catchy if he's the African-born retainer to a Japanese lord in a time of proto samurai.
00:09:43
Now, I get it.
00:09:44
I especially get it just for the title of the book.
00:09:49
African samurai is just a better title, but he really should have got into the nuance within the pages of that book.
00:09:57
And he really doesn't.
00:10:00
Anyway, you will hear me carry on about this at length in this episode.
00:10:06
So I will leave it there for now.
00:10:08
Please join us in one week's time when we will return with a brand new episode of our fake history for the start of season 10.
00:10:18
In the meantime, please enjoy episode number 172, who was the African samurai part two.
00:10:31
Hey, everyone, Sebastian here.
00:10:33
Before we get started today, I just wanted to give all the listeners a heads up that on today's episode, we are going to be speaking about suicide.
00:10:42
Specifically, we're going to be going into some detail about the Japanese ritual of Sipuku.
00:10:48
If that's not something you want to hear, then perhaps skip this one or skip over the parts that deal with that ritual.
00:10:58
Just wanted to let you know.
00:11:00
Enjoy the show.
00:11:02
There's a story that in 16th century Japan, there lived a boy who was the son of a mid-level Japanese lord or Dimeo from the province of Owarri.
00:11:21
This youngster could be politely described as idiosyncratic, less polite folks might just call him weird.
00:11:30
As a teen, he embraced a wild style of dress.
00:11:34
One Japanese source that records his legend describes his style like this.
00:11:40
"Dressed in a wide-sleeved robe with a short haka-ma skirt, he carried various things at his waist, including a flint bag and a long sword and a red sheath.
00:11:54
His top knot was bound by a cord with loose ends.
00:11:58
On the street, he walked leaning against someone's shoulder while eating a rice cake."
00:12:06
Nothing quite says, "I'm cool," like leaning on your buddy's shoulder and eating a rice cake.
00:12:14
That is pure teenage, too cool to care energy right there.
00:12:20
Now it might not sound like much, but in 16th century Japan, a red sword sheath, a flint bag at your waist and a top knot bound with a loose cord was about as funky as it got.
00:12:35
That same source tells us that this young man also "collected extraordinary people around him."
00:12:45
In other words, he liked rolling with an eclectic crew.
00:12:50
He was less concerned with issues of class and rank than was considered appropriate for an aristocratic youth of that period.
00:12:58
He liked people who were fun, unusual or impressive in some way.
00:13:04
Social station be damned.
00:13:06
There are many tales of this young man showing up to formal occasions wearing wild clothes or acting dismissively irreverent.
00:13:16
When he became old enough to command an entourage of soldiers, he insisted that they carry spears that measured three and a half can.
00:13:25
Now if you don't know your Japanese measuring units, three and a half can is roughly 21 feet.
00:13:34
These giant spears were almost unusable, but they always drew attention.
00:13:49
All of this flashy irreverence eventually earned the young man the disperaging nickname, "The Great Fool of a Worry."
00:13:49
Many in the province openly dispaired for the future of the clan should the Great Fool ever become its head.
00:13:58
If we believe the legends, the most shocking action of all came on the day of the Great Fool's Father's Funeral.
00:14:07
If there was ever an occasion on which to show deference to tradition and comport oneself with dignity and respect,
00:14:17
it was this day.
00:14:19
But the Great Fool was not about to change his style simply because his father had died.
00:14:35
We're told that the scandalous young man turned up at his father's funeral wearing the same garish clothes he wore while roaming the streets with his motley crew of hangers on.
00:14:40
This was considered inappropriate to the extreme.
00:14:44
This was the 16th century Japanese equivalent of showing up to your conservative father's funeral in full punk gear.
00:14:54
I'm talking studded leather jacket full Mohawk died, preferably ripped jeans, combat boots and a chain that connects your pierced nose to your pierced ear.
00:15:06
But the choice of clothes was just the beginning.
00:15:09
Instead of reverently paying his respects to the dead, we're told that the Great Fool picked up a handful of incense and carelessly chucked it at the ceremonial tablet that had been erected to honor his father.
00:15:24
After this disrespectful display, he marched out before the ceremony had officially ended.
00:15:32
Among the guests at this funeral was an old advisor to the deceased Dimeo, a man named Hirate Masahide.
00:15:41
Masahide had overseen much of the Great Fool's education and had been a mentor to the lad in his younger years.
00:15:49
After witnessing this overt disrespect, he was in consulate.
00:15:56
He felt like he had failed in his task to educate this young man.
00:16:00
He now believed that there was only one way to shock the Great Fool out of his foolishness.
00:16:08
And so Hirate Masahide committed sapuku, an act of ritual suicide where a warrior uses a short sword to slice a fatal cut across their belly.
00:16:23
The message sent by this violent act was not lost on the Great Fool.
00:16:30
The death of Masahide completely reoriented him.
00:16:34
He realized that his behavior had not only dishonored himself, but had also dishonored his mentor.
00:16:43
Masahide had felt like his honor had been so damaged that sapuku was the only conceivable path forward.
00:16:52
If we believe the legend, then this was a turning point in the young man's life.
00:16:58
He vowed that he would change his ways and not be remembered as the Great Fool.
00:17:05
And indeed, he was not.
00:17:08
As the years passed, he transformed himself into the most formidable general and leader in all of Japan.
00:17:17
His disparaging nickname would fade away, and instead history would remember him by his true name, Oda Nobunaga.
00:17:28
He would eventually be celebrated as one of the so-called three heroes of the warring state's period.
00:17:36
His conquests would set the stage for the eventual reunification of Japan and the end of nearly 140 years of war.
00:17:46
It's hard to know just how much stock we should put in the stories I just told you about the young Oda Nobunaga.
00:17:55
The stories of his youthful rebelliousness are likely rooted in reality, but it's hard to say how much they've been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
00:18:05
These stories also seem to act as origin myths for key elements of Nobunaga's character as an adult.
00:18:14
As a ruler, Oda Nobunaga would gain a reputation for a certain type of irreverence.
00:18:22
While the myth would have us believe that the death of Hirate Masahide transformed the Great Fool into the man who would become Japan's Great Unifier.
00:18:33
Oda Nobunaga was arguably always unconventional for a 16th century Dimeo.
00:18:40
For one, he was known to promote people based entirely on merit and seemed less concerned with Japan's rigid social hierarchy than many of his peers.
00:18:51
Famously, Nobunaga's greatest general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, rose from a lowly peasant to being Nobunaga's sandal bearer to becoming the man in charge of castle repair to eventually becoming a lord and Nobunaga's right-hand man.
00:19:08
Nobunaga also had an interest in all things foreign.
00:19:13
Not only did he revolutionize Japanese warfare through his use of European style firearms, but he also had a taste for European fashion.
00:19:24
He was known to wear European made armor on occasion.
00:19:28
He also particularly liked wide brimmed Portuguese hats.
00:19:34
His later sartorial flair and willingness to embrace foreign novelty is explained by those tales of youthful indiscretion.
00:19:45
Now, this could mean that those stories are mostly true and that Nobunaga never really lost his wild side, or it could mean that those stories were invented later to help explain his comparatively relaxed attitude towards Japanese tradition.
00:20:04
It's hard to say, but I'm interested in this because understanding Oda Nobunaga's character is key to understanding one of the more surprising men ever to come into his service.
00:20:19
I'm of course speaking of the East African warrior known to the Japanese as Yasuke.
00:20:26
Yasuke found himself in Japan in the late 1500s employed as a bodyguard for the ranking Jesuit missionary in the country.
00:20:35
But through a few twists of fate, he eventually came to serve Oda Nobunaga.
00:20:41
Tradition has it that Nobunaga was so impressed with this man from Africa that he made him an official retainer with a stipend and servants.
00:20:52
He even gifted Yasuke a ceremonial sword.
00:20:56
In other words, he made him a samurai.
00:21:00
In many ways, this fits nicely with what legend tells us about Nobunaga's character.
00:21:07
He was someone who was willing to break with convention.
00:21:11
If anyone would feel comfortable with the idea of a non-Japanese samurai, it was Oda Nobunaga.
00:21:18
He had a reputation for seeing merit in people whose class or social position would normally put them below notice.
00:21:26
However, Nobunaga also liked collecting things he believed were exotic.
00:21:33
He had a taste for foreign novelty.
00:21:36
So what was Yasuke to him?
00:21:40
Did Nobunaga truly recognize that Yasuke was an impressive warrior and a capable advisor who deserved to be considered a bushy or samurai?
00:21:52
Or was his view of Yasuke far less dignified?
00:21:56
Did he see Yasuke simply as a foreign curiosity meant to decorate his entourage, another extraordinary person to be collected?
00:22:07
Did Nobunaga truly respect him?
00:22:10
Or did he see him as an exotic gift from the Portuguese, the human equivalent of a wide brimmed hat?
00:22:19
With so few primary sources concerning Yasuke, it's hard to know.
00:22:26
It can be easy for us to project our own wants and desires onto these sparse accounts.
00:22:33
I know that when I first heard about the African samurai, I wanted to learn that he was a supreme badass.
00:22:41
And indeed, there is one way to read the sources where Yasuke could be understood as one of the most impressive people of his age.
00:22:51
Someone whose talent and ability were so undeniable that he crossed cultural boundaries thought to be virtually impermeable.
00:23:00
However, the sources may also tell the tale of a man who had far less agency in the events of his life.
00:23:10
How much can we say for sure about the African samurai?
00:23:15
Let's find out today on Our Fake History.
00:23:40
One, two, three, oh!
00:23:49
Episode number 172, who was the African samurai, Part 2.
00:23:57
Hello and welcome to Our Fake History.
00:24:02
My name is Sebastian Major and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.
00:24:15
Before we get going this week, I just want to remind everyone listening that an ad-free version of this podcast is available through Patreon.
00:24:24
Just go to patreon.com/ourfakehistory and start supporting at $5 or more every month to get access to an ad-free feed and all the extra content I have on offer for the patrons.
00:24:39
If you like the show and want to support what we're doing here, then Patreon is the best way to go about it.
00:24:46
So check it out.
00:24:49
Today we are returning to Japan's Warring States Period to examine the surprising life of Yasuke, the African-born samurai.
00:24:59
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Yasuke.
00:25:04
So if you haven't heard Part 1, then I strongly suggest that you go back and give that a listen now.
00:25:11
On today's show, I'm going to be throwing around the term's primary source and secondary source quite a lot.
00:25:19
Now I know a lot of you listening are real history heads, so you know what these terms mean.
00:25:25
But just in case some of you forgot, a primary source is a historical source that was written by a participant or an observer around the time that a historical event took place.
00:25:40
A secondary source is a book that has been written by a historian well after the fact that combines and interprets these primary sources.
00:25:53
In Part 1, I spent some time laying out the many challenges that come with creating a series on a figure like Yasuke.
00:26:02
In particular, I pointed out how few primary sources we have concerning the life of this East African man.
00:26:10
When he does appear in the sources, the descriptions are often superficial.
00:26:16
Yasuke's voice is completely absent from the historical record, and as such we see him only through the eyes of the European and Japanese people who encountered him.
00:26:29
The other challenge is that I've had to rely quite heavily on the research of one particular historian, Professor Thomas Locley.
00:26:38
Locley is one of the only people I've found publishing in English about Yasuke, so his research is pretty indispensable.
00:26:47
But somewhat frustratingly, Locley's book, African Samurai, straddles the line between a straight history book and a piece of historical fiction.
00:26:59
So it needs to be used quite carefully and checked against the available primary sources whenever possible.
00:27:07
Now, I could not have made this series without Professor Locley's work, so I tip my hat to you, Thomas Locley, if you happen to come across this podcast.
00:27:19
But as you'll hear, I'm also going to be critical of some of Locley's interpretations.
00:27:25
With all that said, this story is just too cool not to discuss, despite the challenging nature of the sources.
00:27:33
How is I not going to tell you about the African Samurai?
00:27:38
In part one, we learned that Yasuke was an East African man who was brought to Japan by the Jesuits in 1579.
00:27:47
He was a bodyguard for a man named Alessandro Valignano, the Jesuit visitor of missions in the Indies.
00:27:56
We spent some time exploring the various theories concerning Yasuke's origins and potential homelands.
00:28:03
Some primary sources places homeland in the colony of Portuguese Mozambique.
00:28:08
However, Thomas Locley has guessed that Yasuke may have originally been one of the Dinka people of South Sudan.
00:28:16
Locley has also argued that Yasuke was potentially recruited by the Jesuits in India, where he may have been one of the elite African slave soldiers known as the Habshi.
00:28:29
What we know for sure is that Yasuke arrived in Japan just as the Jesuits were starting to assert themselves more aggressively as players in Japan's ongoing civil war.
00:28:42
We discussed how in 1580 the Jesuits were gifted the entire city of Nagasaki by a recently converted Japanese lord,
00:28:52
giving them a full on Japanese colony.
00:28:56
We left off in the last episode with Yasuke accompanying Valignano on his trip to the city of Kyoto.
00:29:05
Kyoto was the traditional imperial capital of Japan, although calling it the capital of anything in this period might be a bit of a stretch.
00:29:14
As you heard, as the Jesuit entourage made their way to the capital, Yasuke's appearance created a bit of a sensation amongst the Japanese,
00:29:25
many of whom had never seen a dark-skinned African person before.
00:29:31
One source tells us that by the time Yasuke entered Kyoto, the frenzy created by his appearance turned into an all-out riot.
00:29:41
The commotion got the attention of Oda Nobunaga, the Japanese lord, who was getting close to uniting the warring country under his sole rule.
00:29:52
Valignano had come to Kyoto specifically to curry the favor of Japan's most important Dimeo.
00:29:59
But as we heard last time, after Yasuke "disturbed the peace" in Kyoto, Oda Nobunaga was more interested in seeing him than any of the Jesuits.
00:30:12
Okay, so let's pick back up with Yasuke and see how this meeting with Oda Nobunaga changed his life.
00:30:20
[Music]
00:30:30
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[Music]
00:33:53
Yasuke's first meeting with Odonobanaga is one of the few moments in his life where he really comes into focus in the historical sources.
00:34:03
Now, it's hard to know if we can trust everything that's been recorded about this moment as some of the details seem pretty wild.
00:34:12
But here's what we know.
00:34:15
After receiving his invitation to meet with Odonobanaga, Thomas Lockley guesses that Yasuke was escorted to Nobunaga's de facto headquarters in the city of Kyoto.
00:34:26
This would have been the repurposed Hanoji Temple.
00:34:31
Before Nobunaga took over the temple complex, Hanoji had been one of the largest Buddhist temples in Kyoto.
00:34:39
The warlord's choice to make this sacred space into his city headquarters has been interpreted as a provocative message sent to the militant Buddhist groups that had opposed his rise.
00:34:52
As I mentioned briefly in the last episode, Nobunaga's conquests had often brought him into conflict with powerful Buddhist institutions in the country.
00:35:01
More than once he went to war against Buddhist sex and temples, taking over the Hanoji Temple and using it as his private palace,
00:35:11
was a not-so-subtle message to any Buddhists who might still oppose him.
00:35:16
It also didn't hurt that it was one of the better fortified places in the city.
00:35:22
We know that Yasuke was accompanied to his meeting with Nobunaga by the Jesuit father Organtino and not notably Alessandro Valignano,
00:35:33
the ranking Jesuit in Japan at the time.
00:35:37
Organtino was probably chosen to go because he was Nobunaga's Jesuit contact.
00:35:45
They had known each other for years by that point.
00:35:48
Long before Valignano arrived in the country, Organtino had been steadily cultivating a friendship with Nobunaga.
00:35:56
He had even been granted permission by Nobunaga to build a Christian church close to Nobunaga's main headquarters of Azuchi Castle.
00:36:05
The choice to bring Organtino and not Valignano to this meeting was clearly deliberate.
00:36:12
This was not meant to be a diplomatic engagement where Nobunaga would formally treat with the Jesuits as an institution.
00:36:21
It seems that Nobunaga was just curious about Yasuke, diplomacy with the Jesuits could wait.
00:36:29
He wanted to see the man who apparently had caused a riot on the streets of Kyoto.
00:36:36
Organtino, it seems, was there simply to smooth the process of introductions.
00:36:42
In his book on Yasuke, Thomas Lockley imagines that Yasuke conducted himself with perfect Japanese manners at this first meeting.
00:36:53
It's true that there was very specific etiquette that one needed to observe when meeting a lord like Oda Nobunaga.
00:37:02
For instance, there are very specific customs just around the act of bowing.
00:37:07
They're still are in Japan.
00:37:09
Yasuke would have been expected to give an appropriately deep and humble bow before this important lord.
00:37:18
Lockley imagines that Yasuke hit all these beats perfectly and duly impressed Nobunaga.
00:37:26
But the primary sources are actually silent on this point.
00:37:32
What we do know is that when Oda Nobunaga spoke to Yasuke, Yasuke was able to respond in Japanese.
00:37:41
Now, this is no small thing.
00:37:43
Japanese is a famously difficult language to master.
00:37:48
Valignano would famously write that while he admired the sophistication of the Japanese language, he felt like he never fully mastered it.
00:37:59
By the time Yasuke met Oda Nobunaga, he had been living in Japan for around two years.
00:38:06
Clearly, in that time, he had been perceptive and diligent enough to get a reasonable understanding of Japanese.
00:38:14
Japanese is also a language where conventions of grammar change based on the rank of the person you're speaking to.
00:38:22
Was Yasuke so good at Japanese that he addressed Nobunaga in the exact right way given his status?
00:38:32
Again, it's hard to know.
00:38:34
Thomas Lockley imagines that he did this perfectly.
00:38:38
We don't know that for sure though.
00:38:40
Our sources tell us that Yasuke could communicate with Nobunaga.
00:38:45
One Jesuit source goes so far as to say that Oda Nobunaga, "Never tired of speaking with him."
00:38:55
So while it's hard to know exactly how good Yasuke's Japanese truly was, if we trust our primary sources, then we can assume that he could carry on a conversation.
00:39:07
He was also interesting enough that Oda Nobunaga wanted to speak with him often.
00:39:13
Now, I think this detail gives us some real insight into what kind of a person Yasuke was.
00:39:22
He was obviously deeply intelligent and had an aptitude for languages.
00:39:28
Now, once again, we're in the realm of speculation here, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt.
00:39:35
But Yasuke probably spoke at least three languages.
00:39:42
There was his mother tongue from wherever his homeland truly was.
00:39:46
He presumably spoke Portuguese with the Jesuits, but it's also possible he spoke either Latin or an Italian dialect.
00:39:54
Valignano was Italian after all.
00:39:58
By the time he met Oda Nobunaga, he spoke passable Japanese.
00:40:03
Thomas Lockley's right, and Yasuke was trained as an elite warrior in India, then he may have spoken more than one Indian language.
00:40:13
Now again, we're guessing.
00:40:15
But what we know for sure is that in those two years between 1579 and 1581, Yasuke had clearly been a student of Japanese language and culture.
00:40:27
Remember, when Valignano arrived in Japan, there were still many Jesuits who had been living in the country for years who had not properly learned Japanese.
00:40:37
The fact that Yasuke picked up enough Japanese to have a conversation with Oda Nobunaga in that time?
00:40:45
Well, that's worth noting, especially considering that learning conversational Japanese would have been well outside of what he would have been expected to do as a Jesuit's bodyguard.
00:40:56
Now, this brings us to the most infamous story about Yasuke and Oda Nobunaga.
00:41:05
When Yasuke was led into the meeting room and was formally presented to Oda Nobunaga, we're told that the Lord was suspicious of Yasuke's dark skin color.
00:41:19
One source even suggests that Nobunaga thought that Yasuke's appearance might be some sort of elaborate practical joke.
00:41:29
If we trust our sources, then he allegedly thought that Yasuke may have been died with black ink.
00:41:37
So we're told that he had Yasuke strip to the waist right in front of him.
00:41:43
Nobunaga then ordered that Yasuke be scrubbed with a brush to test whether or not his skin was truly as dark as it appeared.
00:41:53
In the book, African Samurai, the authors even imagined that Nobunaga did the scrubbing himself, although the primary sources do not make that obvious.
00:42:06
Eventually, Nobunaga was satisfied that this man truly was as dark as he seemed.
00:42:14
Now, this odd tale of Nobunaga scrubbing the shirtless Yasuke is one of the central pieces of lore in Yasuke's life.
00:42:26
So we should ask, did this really happen?
00:42:29
Well, as I mentioned, this tale appears in two primary sources written by Jesuits.
00:42:37
These are the letters of Luis Freuse and the writings of Lorenco Mexica, with the most detail being in the account from Freuse.
00:42:47
In fact, Freuse's letters are among the most important sources we have for the life of Yasuke.
00:42:54
Now, we also have Japanese accounts of Yasuke's life, the most important being the Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, which was a history written by one of Nobunaga's close attendance.
00:43:08
Interestingly, the Japanese accounts don't mention this scrubbing incident, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't happen.
00:43:19
The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga is actually quite terse when it comes to details about Yasuke.
00:43:27
The reason I'm a touch suspicious of this story is the fact that Oda Nobunaga had been trading with Europeans for years, before 1581.
00:43:37
Thomas Lockley spends quite a lot of time in his book demonstrating that African people, either enslaved or otherwise employed by the Portuguese,
00:43:48
had been visiting Japan for some time before Yasuke's arrival.
00:43:53
It's very possible that Yasuke truly was the first dark-skinned African that Nobunaga had ever met.
00:44:01
I mean all the sources say that he was, but I find that a little hard to believe considering how much contact he would have had with Portuguese traders.
00:44:11
But again, this is just a suspicion I have, so take that for what it's worth.
00:44:18
I also find it a little hard to believe that Nobunaga truly thought that Yasuke was painted or died.
00:44:26
The whole scrubbing incident was undoubtedly demeaning for Yasuke.
00:44:31
So, it seems like if it did happen, possibly it was done as kind of a joke or a weird form of entertainment given the carnival atmosphere of the occasion.
00:44:44
Remember, Yasuke's appearance had started a riot in Kyoto.
00:44:50
Perhaps Nobunaga wanted to put on a show of discovering the "truth" of what had caused a disturbance in his streets.
00:45:00
Now again, I'm just guessing.
00:45:02
I know I keep saying that, but with Yasuke, that is just the nature of the game.
00:45:08
Our sources tell us that this was meant as a real test.
00:45:13
But it feels silly, right?
00:45:15
It feels like Nobunaga was purposefully making a spectacle out of his exotic guest.
00:45:22
I cannot prove this, it's just a vibe I'm getting.
00:45:27
So once again, take that for what it is.
00:45:31
If this moment was humiliating for Yasuke, that did not make it into the sources.
00:45:37
And if he was insulted or demeaned, Nobunaga very quickly made up for it.
00:45:43
The sources tell us that once Nobunaga was satisfied, he sent for his sons to entertain Yasuke.
00:45:50
And they "treated him with extraordinary grace."
00:45:56
Yasuke clearly navigated this meeting with enough tact that Nobunaga was impressed.
00:46:02
We're told that he gifted Yasuke with over 80 pounds of copper coins at the end of the evening.
00:46:10
That was a small fortune in 1581.
00:46:14
And that's all we know about that first encounter.
00:46:20
A few days later, Valignano finally got his chance to meet with Nobunaga.
00:46:26
At that meeting, Valignano made a number of gifts to the Japanese warlord and asked his permission to leave the country and hopefully bring a few Japanese converts with him back to Europe.
00:46:39
Now, somehow, and the details are blurry here, but somehow over the course of their conversation, Valignano offered Yasuke's service to Nobunaga as a gift.
00:46:54
Yasuke was to be a reminder of Jesuit friendship.
00:46:59
Now, if you find this detail a little confusing, I can't blame you, because so do I.
00:47:07
As you might remember from the last episode, it's Thomas Lockley's contention that Yasuke was not an enslaved person by the time he came into the service of the Jesuits.
00:47:19
But the fact that Valignano gifted Yasuke to Nobunaga hurts that particular interpretation, it seems like he was traded,
00:47:31
like a piece of property.
00:47:34
It's completely unclear from the sources if Yasuke had a choice in whether or not he was going to serve Nobunaga.
00:47:45
Now, this blurry moment is a good example of how our interpretive decisions can affect how we perceive the past.
00:47:53
Thomas Lockley argues quite convincingly that Yasuke was not a slave by the time he got to Japan.
00:48:00
And yet, so many of these early moments with Nobunaga really make it seem like he was enslaved.
00:48:11
We could interpret that scrubbing story as an example of Yasuke being dehumanized or being treated like a slave.
00:48:21
The fact that he was so blithely gifted by the Jesuits to Nobunaga again makes it seem like he didn't have a say in the matter.
00:48:30
My point is, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that Yasuke was still enslaved when he started serving Oda Nobunaga.
00:48:43
Whether Yasuke entered his service freely or not, or sources tell us that Oda Nobunaga immediately took a shine to his new servant.
00:48:54
One of our Jesuit sources tells us that Nobunaga found Yasuke "entertaining" and would meet with him often.
00:49:04
The Japanese Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga gives us a few more essential details.
00:49:11
The Chronicle is considered one of the most reliable sources we have when it comes to the life of Oda Nobunaga.
00:49:17
And that source tells us that after serving Oda Nobunaga for an unspecified time, the Lord decided to honor Yasuke in a surprising way.
00:49:30
The source tells us, "The black man called Yasuke was given a stipend, a private residence, servants, etc.
00:49:40
He was given a short sword with a decorative sheath.
00:49:45
He was sometimes seen in the role of weapon bearer."
00:49:50
This tiny entry in the Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga is what I'm going to call Yasuke's samurai passage.
00:50:01
This is the piece of historical evidence that's used to prove that there was an African-born samurai.
00:50:11
If we trust the Chronicle, and by the way, most historians believe that we can trust the Chronicle, then these honors demonstrate that Yasuke was a retained warrior.
00:50:24
The gift of a sword was no small thing.
00:50:29
Being granted a stipend and acting as weapon bearer were honors usually reserved for samurai.
00:50:37
But we need to ask, what did it mean to be a samurai in Japan in 1581?
00:50:46
Well, turns out it's kind of complicated.
00:50:49
So let's take a quick break, and when we come back, I promise we will break it all down.
00:50:57
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There are a few warriors in global history as immediately identifiable as the Japanese samurai.
00:53:20
I'm sure most of you can picture a samurai in your mind.
00:53:23
He's probably an elite soldier honed into a precision-killing machine after years of training.
00:53:31
He carries his distinctive curved katana blade and the accompanying short sword in his belt.
00:53:38
He's decked out in beautifully made-scaled armor and an unmistakable flanged helmet.
00:53:46
Perhaps his faceguard is decorated with a garish fake mustache.
00:53:51
In full regalia, he looks something like a ferocious insect.
00:53:57
Now above all else, we're told that the samurai lived by a strict code of ethics known as bushydo or the way of the warrior.
00:54:07
They were loyal to a fault.
00:54:10
They served their masters with perfect devotion and should they fail, they would have no compunction about taking their own lives through the ritual of sapuku.
00:54:21
This is the samurai myth.
00:54:25
And yes, some of it is rooted in historical fact, but turns out much of what we imagine about the samurai comes from legend or exaggerations developed well after the medieval warrior heyday.
00:54:43
Now in this series, we've been focusing on the 1580s, which was an important time of transition in Japanese history.
00:54:53
The Sengoku Jidai, a warring states period, was drawing to a close in the 1580s.
00:55:00
In a few decades, Japan would be firmly under the control of the Tokugawa family and their newly enshrined shogunate.
00:55:08
The Tokugawa period would last for over 250 years, well into the 19th century.
00:55:16
Under the Tokugawa, a very rigid class system, or perhaps status system, is more accurate, took shape.
00:55:26
Now, technically this transformation began in the late 1580s under nobunaga successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but it came into its fullest form under the Tokugawa shoguns.
00:55:40
It was in the Tokugawa era that the samurai became a very specific class within society.
00:55:50
In this period, you were born into being a samurai.
00:55:55
It was an entirely hereditary distinction.
00:55:59
This meant that one could not rise to become a samurai.
00:56:04
You were either born into a samurai family or you were not.
00:56:09
The samurai families of the Tokugawa period had previously been landed warrior families with storied histories from the Sengoku era,
00:56:19
but this Tokugawa period, starting in the early 17th century, was defined by peace and isolation from the outside world.
00:56:29
There were no wars for these so-called warriors to fight.
00:56:36
So the samurai steadily transformed into the bureaucratic class of Japan.
00:56:42
They were local administrators, poets, historians, scribes, and so on.
00:56:48
But despite the fact that they were so removed from their warrior roots, or perhaps because of that fact, the samurai really started to celebrate their warrior heritage at that time.
00:57:03
It was in the Tokugawa era when the ideas of Bushido, or the way of the warrior, started to be popularized among samurai families.
00:57:14
Then, centuries later, during the Japanese imperial era leading up to World War II, Bushido was turned into a type of national ideology in Japan.
00:57:26
In that era, this samurai ethic was transformed to fit the nationalistic policies of the government.
00:57:34
So the myth of Bushido, or the code of the warrior extending deep into Japan's past, was supercharged during that World War II era.
00:57:48
Japan's samurai past went through a fresh round of mythologizing to help push the ideals of self-sacrifice that fit with the empire's expansionistic policies in the early 20th century.
00:58:03
But the warriors of the Tsungoku era didn't really follow a clear code of warrior ethics.
00:58:12
There were certainly ideas about honor and good conduct, but Bushido hadn't really become a widely accepted code.
00:58:22
When you look at the history of the Tsungoku era, rarely do you find examples of warriors acting with perfect loyalty.
00:58:31
In fact, it was incredibly common during the warring states period for warrior retainers to betray their lords.
00:58:40
It'll happen in this story, just a little bit later.
00:58:44
Similarly, the Bushido idea that a samurai should cultivate his artistic side was a round in the Tsungoku period, but it was hardly enshrined as part of the role of the warrior.
00:58:59
In the later Tokugawa period, that is between the 17th and 19th centuries, the warring states era became the source of tons of legends.
00:59:10
The warriors of the Tsungoku were sometimes portrayed as acting with Bushido-like ethics, even though that wasn't really historically accurate.
00:59:22
But later values were imposed on the past.
00:59:26
Many of the privileges enjoyed by the samurai as a group were not enshrined until the 17th century.
00:59:36
In the book Samurai, a concise history, the historian Michael Wurt doesn't use the word samurai to refer to Japanese warriors until after the end of the Tsungoku period.
00:59:50
He argues that before that point, people in Japan called Bushi, which translates roughly to warrior, were a less clearly defined class.
01:00:03
Yes, these warriors exerted a massive influence over Japanese society.
01:00:09
Yes, warrior families took control of Japan in the form of the Shogunate starting in the 12th century.
01:00:18
Yes, wealthier Bushi or warriors wore the armor and carried the weapons that we associate with traditional samurai.
01:00:29
But before the 17th century, when the samurai were hardened into a distinct hereditary class, Wurt is not comfortable calling any Japanese warriors samurai.
01:00:43
He even argues that the word samurai, which roughly translates as those who serve, was rarely used by warriors in earlier periods.
01:00:55
Wurt even writes that the term samurai may have been seen as insulting to warriors previous to the 17th century.
01:01:04
Now, not all historians are as hardline about this as Wurt.
01:01:08
Many are comfortable using the term samurai to refer to warriors dating back to at least the 12th century.
01:01:17
Still, Wurt's position is worth noting.
01:01:22
So here's the big question.
01:01:24
Were the warriors of Yasuke's period "samurai"? Well, they were certainly proto-samurai.
01:01:35
Warriors who had been formally retained by a lord or dimeo in 1581, especially those with land, would be transformed into the samurai class in a matter of years.
01:01:49
That's why many historians are comfortable calling these warriors samurai.
01:01:55
But with the important caveat that we shouldn't overly romanticize them, or picture them following Bushido to the letter.
01:02:04
Also, it's worth noting that the massive armies recruited during the Sengoku period meant that many peasant farmers were pressed into service.
01:02:15
Given their new status as warriors, these former peasants started demanding more rights.
01:02:23
Were these peasant fighters samurai?
01:02:27
Well, part of the reason a more rigid hereditary class system came into being at the end of the Sengoku era was to shut these peasant warriors out of positions of power and privilege.
01:02:41
The warring states era had blurred the lines between peasant and warrior.
01:02:48
The new Tokugawa regime would enforce strict boundaries between those groups.
01:02:55
There were to be no blurred lines under the Tokugawa shogunate.
01:03:01
So was Yasuke truly a samurai?
01:03:07
Well, he was as much a samurai as anyone was in that era.
01:03:13
He was a formally retained warrior with a residence who had been gifted a sword by his dimeo.
01:03:21
That's about as samurai as things got in 1581.
01:03:36
If you're going to argue that Yasuke wasn't technically a samurai, it would only be because you've taken Michael Wert's position and you believe that no one was technically a samurai at that time.
01:03:41
Okay, now I'm sure there's a few of you out there saying to yourself, Sebastian, I get it.
01:03:49
You've split the hairs around who is and is not a samurai.
01:03:53
You've done your due diligence here.
01:03:55
Now tell me some stories.
01:03:56
Tell me some stories about the African samurai doing some cool samurai stuff.
01:04:04
Surely, Yasuke, the six foot two giant was a warrior like no other.
01:04:10
Surely there are tales of him slicing through enemies on the battlefield.
01:04:17
Well, here's the thing.
01:04:20
Those stories don't really exist in the primary sources.
01:04:26
Now, there is one suggestive piece of Japanese art dating from the early 17th century that shows Oda Nobunaga watching a sumo wrestling match.
01:04:38
One of the wrestlers is depicted with rather dark skin.
01:04:43
Is this a painting of Yasuke demonstrating his great strength in front of his lord?
01:04:50
Thomas Lockley thinks that maybe it is, but we really don't know.
01:04:56
I'll put that image up on Facebook and on the website and you can have a look for yourself, but we have no proof that that's Yasuke.
01:05:06
But there is one particularly dramatic episode that has been preserved.
01:05:14
Now, some of the details were recorded in the letters of Luis Freuse, who you might remember, is one of our key Jesuit sources for the life of Yasuke.
01:05:24
While other details come from a legendary tradition preserved by the Oda family.
01:05:31
This story of samurai glory is made all the more compelling because it happens to be set during one of the most pivotal moments in the Sengoku Jidai.
01:05:43
I'm referring to an event that has been remembered as the Hanoji Incident, which is a wonderfully understated name for one of Japan's most consequential political assassinations.
01:05:57
There is a saying in Japanese about the end of the Sengoku Jidai that goes,
01:06:12
"Nobunaga pounds the national rice cake.
01:06:13
Hideyoshi needs it.
01:06:14
And in the end, Ayasu sits down and eats it."
01:06:16
This little saying refers to the fact that Oda Nobunaga would never see the ultimate reunification of Japan.
01:06:25
However, his conquests would set the stage.
01:06:29
His successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, would build on Nobunaga's conquests and further consolidate control of the home islands.
01:06:39
Ultimately, it would be Nobunaga's longtime ally, Tokugawa Ayasu, who would take control of the unified country and would establish a shogunit that would last well into the 19th century.
01:06:53
That's how we get the so-called Tokugawa period that I was speaking about before.
01:07:00
The reason that Nobunaga didn't get a chance to sit down and eat the national rice cake, as it were, was because he died as the result of a stunning act of treachery in the year 1582.
01:07:16
This was roughly a year after Yasuke came into Oda Nobunaga's service.
01:07:21
At the time, Nobunaga was riding high.
01:07:25
He and his close ally, Tokugawa Ayasu, had just emerged victorious from a clash with the Takeda clan.
01:07:33
The Takeda had long been one of the most formidable clans in all of Japan, and an implacable foe of the Oda.
01:07:41
Their defeat put Nobunaga tantalizingly close to his goal of unifying all of Japan under his rule.
01:07:50
From there, he turned his attention towards the Mori clan, his enemies to the southwest.
01:07:57
In June of 1582, one of Nobunaga's best generals, the aforementioned Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was already in Mori territory with an army besieging an important castle.
01:08:09
The castle was proving stubborn, so Hideyoshi called for reinforcements to hopefully overwhelm the defenders.
01:08:17
In response, Oda Nobunaga ordered a number of his commanders to march their army to Hideyoshi's aid.
01:08:25
Nobunaga also planned to come to the front line himself, but he chose to take a leisurely route.
01:08:32
As he moved from east to west, he chose to stop for a night in Kyoto to enjoy a tea ceremony and sleep in the comfort of his de facto headquarters,
01:08:42
Hanoji Temple.
01:08:44
That is, the same Hanoji Temple where Nobunaga likely first met Yasuke.
01:08:50
But instead of marching to rendezvous with Hideyoshi, one of Nobunaga's other commanders got a different idea.
01:09:00
This was Akechi Mitsuhide, a man considered to be one of Nobunaga's most trusted retainers.
01:09:10
On June 21st, 1582, Mitsuhide knew that Nobunaga was going to be in the Hanoji Temple and that he would be lightly defended.
01:09:22
So he made the fateful decision to take his army of a few thousand men and march them into Kyoto.
01:09:31
His plan was to surround the Hanoji Temple, attack those inside, kill Nobunaga, take his severed head as a sign of legitimacy, and then assert himself as the new leader of everything that had been conquered by the Oda clan.
01:09:49
It was an audacious plan to say the least.
01:09:54
Now, I'm sure you're wondering why, who was Akechi Mitsuhide, and why did he betray Nobunaga?
01:10:03
Well, there isn't a nice clear answer to that question.
01:10:08
Mitsuhide had served Nobunaga loyally for nearly two decades.
01:10:13
He had been commanding Oda forces since the early 1870s, and in that time, he had become one of the most richly rewarded of all of Oda Nobunaga's retainers.
01:10:25
Nobunaga had given him a large fight and the impressive Kamayama castle.
01:10:32
By all accounts, Akechi Mitsuhide was one of Oda Nobunaga's most trusted retainers.
01:10:39
The exact reasons for Akechi's treachery remain a bit of historical mystery.
01:10:46
There are a few stories of Nobunaga insulting Mitsuhide on a few occasions and potentially wounding the man's pride.
01:10:54
One of the more compelling theories is that Akechi Mitsuhide had nursed a resentment against Nobunaga since 1579.
01:11:04
In that year, Oda Nobunaga had an enemy lord executed after he'd promised to keep the man alive.
01:11:12
In retribution, the lord's angry clan executed a number of hostages.
01:11:19
It turns out that among those hostages was Akechi Mitsuhide's mother, or potentially a beloved aunt, it all depends on which source you read.
01:11:31
So it's possible that Mitsuhide blamed Nobunaga for his mother's death and this contributed to his decision to turn traitor.
01:11:41
But there's a good chance that that entire story is just a historical myth.
01:11:47
Some historians see that incident as out of character for Nobunaga and think the story may have been concocted after the fact to help explain Akechi Mitsuhide's treachery.
01:11:59
Bald Ambition may have been the key motive in all of this.
01:12:04
Akechi Mitsuhide clearly thought that he could pull off a coup d'état and take Nobunaga's place as the most powerful man in Japan.
01:12:14
So he shot his shot.
01:12:18
On the night of June 21, his forces marched into Kyoto and surrounded Honogji Temple.
01:12:25
Nobunaga was caught completely by surprise.
01:12:29
The attack on Honogji has been a favorite of Japanese artists ever since.
01:12:35
The heavily armored Akechi troops are contrasted with Nobunaga's unarmored defenders wearing their casual evening wear, scrambling to protect their lord.
01:12:47
The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga would claim that Oda Nobunaga tried to fight off the attackers himself.
01:12:54
The Chronicle poetically tells us that he shot his bow three times before "the string broke.
01:13:02
It's time apparently having come as well."
01:13:07
He got to love those poignant flourishes.
01:13:21
We're then told that he fought off as many attackers as he could with a spear before being wounded and falling back into his inner chambers.
01:13:22
At this point, he ordered his surviving servants to set the temple on fire.
01:13:29
He then knelt down, withdrew his short sword and committed sapuku.
01:13:36
According to this tradition, he chose to die by his own hand, rather than give Akechi Mitsuhide the satisfaction of killing him.
01:13:47
Now, one version of this sapuku ritual involves two participants.
01:13:54
In cases where the warrior has chosen to commit sapuku and is not being compelled to end their life as a punishment, they will choose a second warrior to help them complete the process.
01:14:06
The person ending their life cuts their belly with a short sword.
01:14:11
When this is completed, the second warrior then beheads the person whose belly has been cut.
01:14:18
The assistant was to perform this perfectly with one slice of the blade, lest they bring dishonor on themselves and their family.
01:14:28
Tradition has it that Oda Nobunaga's young page, Mori Ranmaru, acted as his second.
01:14:36
Then Ranmaru stoked the flames of the fire that would eventually devour the entire temple.
01:14:44
Now, in some Yasuke fiction, like the recent Netflix anime series, Yasuke is depicted acting as Oda Nobunaga's second during the sapuku ritual.
01:14:57
But this is pure fiction.
01:15:00
All the Japanese sources tell us that Mori Ranmaru was the second.
01:15:07
That is, if this ritual even took place, and believe me, I'm going to come back to that.
01:15:14
But there is a story about Yasuke at this moment that according to Thomas Lockley has been preserved by the Oda family.
01:15:25
The story is that while Yasuke did not act as Nobunaga's second, he was with the Dimeo during the sapuku ritual.
01:15:36
We're told that he thought valiantly to protect his lord, acting with the devotion befitting a mythical samurai.
01:15:45
Then, in the final moments before Nobunaga plunged the short sword into his belly, he turned to Yasuke and said simply,
01:15:56
"Yasuke, the head."
01:15:59
His meaning was immediately understood by Yasuke.
01:16:04
Once the ritual had been completed, it would be Yasuke's task to take Nobunaga's severed head, escape from Hanoji Temple,
01:16:15
make his way across Kyoto, and then deliver the head to Nobunaga's son and heir, Nobutada.
01:16:24
This was an important task because Oda Nobunaga's head would have been more than just a trophy for the traitor Akechi Mitsuhide.
01:16:34
It could have been used as a sign of Mitsuhide's legitimacy as he attempted to gain control of Nobunaga's lands and armies.
01:16:45
Legend has it that Yasuke did as he was commanded, and this is the truly badass Yasuke legend.
01:16:56
Using his great strength and unparalleled ability as a warrior, he managed to fight his way out of the burning temple and cut a path through Akechi Mitsuhide's soldiers.
01:17:09
He then ran through the night, pursued by Mitsuhide's men, and then somehow miraculously he arrived at Nijo Castle,
01:17:21
where Oda Nobutada, Nobunaga's son was staying.
01:17:27
Yasuke then presented the head to Nobutada, signifying that he was now the new leader of the Oda clan.
01:17:40
Of course, it would not be long before Akechi Mitsuhide's soldiers had surrounded Nijo Castle, seeing that all was lost,
01:17:51
tradition has it, that Nobutada also chose to end his life by way of Sapuku.
01:17:59
However, he ensured that his remains and presumably those of his father were hidden, so they would never fall into the hands of the traitorous Akechi.
01:18:11
Tradition has it that all of the defenders around Nobutada at Nijo Castle were killed, except if you can believe it,
01:18:23
Yasuke.
01:18:24
And we actually have a source that supports that final point.
01:18:32
The letters of the Jesuit Luis Freuse tell us that Yasuke was apprehended by Akechi Mitsuhide's troops while defending Nijo Castle.
01:18:43
All the other prisoners were executed, but according to the Jesuit, Yasuke was spared because of Akechi Mitsuhide's prejudices.
01:18:55
Freuse recorded that when Yasuke was brought before Mitsuhide, the traitorous commander called him a beast.
01:19:03
He then declared that because Yasuke was not Japanese, he did not deserve the dignity of a proper execution.
01:19:12
So it was ordered that Yasuke be returned to the Jesuits living in Kyoto.
01:19:19
Okay, so what do we do with this story?
01:19:24
If you are predisposed to seeing Yasuke as one of history's forgotten badasses, it can be tempting to give this tale some credence.
01:19:35
It would be crazy and quite frankly very cool if one of the only people to survive the Hanoji incident was Japan's only African-born samurai.
01:19:49
But of course, there are many things that make this story hard to believe.
01:19:55
First, it's not necessarily clear that Oda Nobunaga committed sapoku.
01:20:03
Now you will read in most summaries of Oda Nobunaga's life that he chose to commit sapoku rather than be captured by the Akechi soldiers.
01:20:15
However, neither the letter of Luis Freys describing the Hanoji incident nor the chronicle of Lord Nobunaga explicitly mentioned sapoku.
01:20:28
They both say that after he was wounded fighting off the invaders, he went into a private room and "closed the door" that may be a euphemism for suicide,
01:20:42
but not necessarily.
01:20:44
The chronicle of Lord Nobunaga says only that the fire was started by Nobunaga's page to consume his body and that the fire would keep the body from falling into the hands of Akechi's troops.
01:20:58
The suicide implied by the chronicle is a death by fire, not the sapoku ritual.
01:21:08
Like all things samurai, the sapoku ritual involving a second samurai acting as a headsmine only seems to have been formalized in the 17th century,
01:21:19
the period directly after the time we're speaking about.
01:21:25
Now, there are instances of warriors ending their lives by slicing their bellies earlier in Japanese history.
01:21:34
But like most of samurai culture, sapoku became a carefully prescribed ritual only in the Tokugawa era.
01:21:44
The fact that Oda Nobunaga's alleged sapoku ritual seems to hem very close to the later formalized practice is a little convenient.
01:21:57
Now, that doesn't mean it didn't happen, only that it's possible that the story of his suicide was embellished in later tellings to make Nobunaga appear more like an idealized samurai.
01:22:12
The fact that two of our most important primary sources about this event don't mention sapoku explicitly is notable.
01:22:23
But even if Oda Nobunaga committed sapoku in the way that is often reported, Yasuke's daring escape from Hanoji Temple with Nobunaga's head kind of defies common sense.
01:22:36
Also, Yasuke's flight with the head isn't mentioned in any of our written sources, and according to Thomas Lockley has only been preserved as an Oda family legend.
01:22:50
Now, it is amazing that we have a primary source that connects Yasuke to the defense of Kijou Castle where no potato was staying.
01:22:59
And that kind of kicks ass.
01:23:02
However, the end of Yasuke's story is odd.
01:23:07
Thomas Lockley has argued that dark skin had overwhelmingly positive connotations in Tsungoku era Japan.
01:23:17
And yet, in the Freuse letter, we're told that Akichi Mitsuhide viewed Yasuke as a "beast".
01:23:27
This suggests that Mitsuhide saw Yasuke's ethnicity as something that made him lesser than a Japanese person.
01:23:36
Now, newly found primary sources have suggested that Akichi Mitsuhide wasn't even in Kyoto during the attack and that an underling actually commanded the raid.
01:23:50
If this source can be trusted, then that means that Akichi Mitsuhide would not have met with the captured Yasuke because he wasn't even in Kyoto.
01:24:02
So, this means that Freuse either misattributed these racist remarks to Akichi Mitsuhide or he invented them out of whole cloth.
01:24:15
It's possible that the Jesuit was projecting his own prejudices against dark skinned people.
01:24:23
But we don't know.
01:24:25
We are guessing once again.
01:24:28
The fact that Freuse tells us that Yasuke was returned to the Jesuits once again raises questions about Yasuke's freedom.
01:24:38
Akichi Mitsuhide returned Yasuke like he was a piece of property.
01:24:43
So, was Yasuke ever truly free?
01:24:48
It's moments like this where you really wish you had Yasuke's voice in the sources.
01:24:55
Did Yasuke want to return to the Jesuits?
01:24:59
Or did his captors assume that he was still Jesuit property?
01:25:04
We don't know.
01:25:07
Sadly, for us, after the Hanoji incident, Yasuke completely vanishes from the historical record.
01:25:15
That's it.
01:25:18
Thomas Locke has speculated that a few sources describing dark skinned African men living and fighting in Japan after 1582 may in fact be referring to Yasuke,
01:25:31
but there's no clear proof of that.
01:25:35
Akichi Mitsuhide's attempted coup would ultimately fizzle out after he was unable to gain the support of enough of Nobunaga's followers.
01:25:44
In this way, Nobunaga's death reminds me of Julius Caesar's.
01:25:50
In both cases, the assassins completely misjudged how beloved the man they had killed truly was, despite their tyrannical impulses.
01:26:02
The audacity of Akichi Mitsuhide's treachery also made him few friends.
01:26:09
In the end, Nobunaga's trusted general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, would emerge as his true successor.
01:26:17
Hideyoshi would destroy what remained of Akichi Mitsuhide's forces at the Battle of Yamazaki a few months after the Hanoji incident.
01:26:27
Akichi Mitsuhide would die fleeing the Battle, allegedly killed by a bandit or a group of disgruntled peasants with bamboo staves.
01:26:37
Both stories are considered a little too poetic to be true, but that's what we're told.
01:26:45
But of course, this podcast has been about Yasuke, so it's with Yasuke that we must end.
01:26:54
I've struggled on this journey to understand the life of the African samurai.
01:27:01
The amazing thing about Yasuke is that he was a real person.
01:27:07
The very idea of an African-born bushy or Japanese warrior seems impossible, but he really did exist.
01:27:17
But the sources are so sparse and contain so few details that there is more room than usual for a historian or any other reader for that matter to imagine Yasuke as they want to see him.
01:27:33
As I waited through the work done by Thomas Lockley, I found myself getting more cautious of his conclusions as I went.
01:27:43
As I said in part one, Lockley has done more research into the life of Yasuke than anyone else publishing in English.
01:27:50
If you don't read Japanese, then to learn about Yasuke, you have to go through Lockley.
01:27:58
But here's where I'm at with his work.
01:28:01
It's not that Lockley does anything wrong.
01:28:04
I just think that he has chosen to interpret the sources in the most generous way possible.
01:28:13
The Yasuke that appears in his and Gerard's book, African Samurai, is a truly remarkable figure.
01:28:21
They imagine Yasuke as a free man who managed to emancipate himself from slavery.
01:28:29
They present him as a warrior's warrior, who over the course of a lifetime mastered both Indian and Japanese fighting styles.
01:28:39
They see him as a Renaissance man who could speak multiple languages and quickly mastered complex Japanese rules of etiquette.
01:28:48
They assume that his status as a Samurai was rarely if ever questioned by contemporary Japanese people.
01:28:58
Finally, they lean into the legend that Yasuke played a pivotal role in the Hanoji incident.
01:29:07
Allow me to present my own biases.
01:29:10
I want to believe in Lockley's Yasuke.
01:29:15
I like the idea that an African-born person became a Samurai during the Warring States period.
01:29:24
I like the idea that Yasuke was an intelligent and highly adaptable person who managed to rise in Japanese society simply based on his talent.
01:29:37
I want him to be a badass.
01:29:41
But we have to ask ourselves, do the primary sources really say that?
01:29:49
The truth is, they don't say much.
01:29:54
If you want to see the badass, then you can make a case that he was a badass, and Thomas Lockley certainly does.
01:30:03
However, it's possible that Lockley had it wrong.
01:30:09
It's possible that Yasuke was not a free man when he came into the service of the Jesuits.
01:30:16
The fact that he was traded to Nobunaga, and then unceremoniously shuttled back to the Jesuits after the Dimeo's death makes it seem like he had little choice over his own fate.
01:30:30
Oda Nobunaga's choice to give Yasuke a sword, a stipend, and a residence could have been the great honor that Lockley presents it as.
01:30:42
But it also may have been Oda Nobunaga dressing up a man he saw as his slave.
01:30:52
The scrubbing incident could be interpreted in a way that suggests that Nobunaga thought he could play with Yasuke and make a spectacle out of him.
01:31:03
Nobunaga was famously irreverent and allegedly appreciated all things exotic.
01:31:11
Was Yasuke truly a respected retainer, or was he kept around as an exotic addition to Nobunaga's entourage?
01:31:19
The sources are not clear.
01:31:23
It's also possible that the reality may have been somewhere between these two extremes.
01:31:29
Perhaps Yasuke started out in Nobunaga's service as an exotic accessory, but then he proved himself to be an intelligent person and a formidable warrior.
01:31:40
A man worthy of the rich honors bestowed on him by Oda Nobunaga.
01:31:47
We just don't know.
01:31:48
This is one of the great challenges when dealing with a figure from the past about whom so little is written.
01:31:56
I wanted to make a podcast where I told you that the African samurai was totally real and on top of that he was one of the most impressive people of the late 1500s.
01:32:08
But I had to check myself.
01:32:10
Just because that's something I wanted to tell you doesn't necessarily make it true.
01:32:18
What I learned was that in the early 1580s it's debatable how samurai even Japanese-born samurai were.
01:32:28
Were there even samurai?
01:32:31
My whole foundation is shaken.
01:32:35
But Yasuke was real.
01:32:36
An East African man made it to Japan in the late 1570s and came into the service of Oda Nobunaga.
01:32:44
He was given a sword, a stipend, and a residence.
01:32:48
All the honors do to a bushy, a warrior retainer.
01:32:54
He fought on the side of Nobunaga's forces during the Hanoji incident, and then he faded from history.
01:33:04
When it comes to Yasuke that's all we really know for sure.
01:33:09
But you have to admit, even that is pretty badass.
01:33:17
Okay, that's all for this week.
01:33:20
Join us again in two weeks time when we will explore a new historical myth.
01:33:28
Before we go this week, I got to give some shout outs.
01:33:44
As I always do, big ups to Tristan Paulitt, to Megan McLeod, to Juan Chute, to Stephen Alexander, to Jay Adkins, to Angela Lopez, to Muabum, to Fishlaken, to Leland Davidson, to Christina, to Jay Matthews,
01:33:56
to Emily Smith, to Gary Ansock, to Joy Hovastat, to Dr.
01:34:04
Kate, to Marine Lamont, to Jim Hess, to Anna Kamala Flores, to Joel Baker.
01:34:15
I think that's all for this week.
01:34:17
Big ups to all of those people because they've decided to pledge at $5 or more every month on Patreon, so you know what that means.
01:34:26
They are beautiful human beings.
01:34:29
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your ongoing support.
01:34:33
Thank you to everyone supporting at all levels.
01:34:36
I've actually got a new extra on deck coming up for the patrons, so look out for that.
01:34:42
There'll be some more information on that within the next week or so.
01:34:47
If you would like to get in touch with me, you can always send me an email at OurFakeHistory@gmail.com.
01:35:03
You can hit me up on Twitter.
01:35:03
That's @OurFakeHistory on Twitter.
01:35:03
You can hit me up on Instagram @OurFakeHistory.
01:35:03
You can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/OurFakeHistory, and I'm also posting other interesting stuff on Facebook, including pictures that I reference throughout the show.
01:35:12
Also go to OurFakeHistory.com and click on the page for this episode to see things that I post there as well.
01:35:21
That's also a good place to go if you're interested in the OurFakeHistory archive.
01:35:25
I don't talk about that as much as I should, but there's a bibliography there for every single episode and any past pictures that I've referenced.
01:35:35
That is where they are saved.
01:35:37
OurFakeHistory.com.
01:35:40
The theme music for the show comes to us from DirtyChurch.
01:35:44
You can check out DirtyChurch@dirtychurch.bandcamp.com, and all the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.
01:35:52
My name is Sebastian Major, and remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.
01:35:59
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