Everyone has long been accustomed to Ubisoft KEKs and they are no longer surprising, but for the last two days I have heard from the news releases the obligatory clarification: “The main character in the new Assassins creed shadows is not a tribute to the modern agenda, but a real historical character.”. Is that so??
It’s hard to wrap my head around this and my inquisitive mind decided that I needed to delve into the issue. Although not even that… To burn or not to burn, that is the question!
Dedspasito
I admit, I was very interested in this question, but not from the side of the question “to burn or not to burn,” but rather from the side of “who is this Yasuke of yours?”. Is it really just a person to whom 15 lines are dedicated in a multi-volume book"Church history", or an interesting person who was at the right time and in the right place?
Let’s plunge into the wonderful world of Google translator from Japanese, dancing with a tambourine with access to the American library via VPN, as well as trying to understand the Wikipedia annotation, where its legs come from and whether the information provided is relevant? Otherwise, you know how it happens, in these boarding schools..
ACHTUNG! I am not a native speaker of Japanese, Latin and French, so don’t be too offended by the incorrect translation of names. I tried
Where do the blacks come from in the right-hand drive country??
Russian Google does not give an answer to this question that tortures the brain, much to my regret. Therefore, using the key combination Shift plus Alt, we will be transported to the most developed and loaded part of the World Wide Web. The first and most significant article, to which all my googling on this topic will refer me, is called “Images of Black People in Mediaeval and Early Modern Japan, 1543–1900». In the introductory part of this article we will see lines that will tell us directly: “from the middle of the 16th century, a fairly large number of black Africans began to end up on the islands of Japan as crew members, servants or slaves on European ships”.
Question. And what kind of trade with Europe if in Japan there was such a thing as Sakoku? This is such a historical process of isolation of Japan in the period from the 1640s to the 1850s-60s. That’s right, but the events that interest us occurred before the Sakoku period, and maybe even served as a catalyst.
Europeans, namely the Portuguese and Spaniards, began to sail en masse to Japan and sell their goods there. Moreover, it is interesting that Catholics began to sail to Japanese territory along with traders. Moreover, at this moment in Japan there was a process of “feudal fragmentation”. Such a moment in the history of almost any state when local princes begin to show each other who has the strongest gunpowder and the biggest gun, in order to spread their influence further and further. Feudal lords of Kyushu, which is closest to Europe, decided that if we accept the faith of our foreign friends, they will be more willing to make friends with us, bring us a lot of gunpowder and weapons, and together we will have the opportunity to show who is the strongest on the islands here. It is for this reason that the feudal lords from the island of Kyushu not only began to host people of the Catholic faith, but also began to open their churches en masse on the territory of their island and, moreover, began to accept this faith on their own. And a good example, as we know, is contagious.
Such a violent attraction to the Catholic Church was not left without the attention of European gentlemen, who decided that it would be nice to make this process more controlled.
The story of one man from Mozambique.
In those days there was such a thing in the Catholic Church as Society of Jesus (lat. Societas Iesu), they are also the Order of the Jesuits or simply “Jesuits”. This order was founded around the 1540s. To very generalize, the task of this order was “the evangelization of a population to which these holy texts have not yet reached”.
Moreover, the guys were not stupid, and no matter how open arms they greeted guests, they still knew perfectly well that with sword and fire the path for religion can and can be carved out, but you won’t get far like that.
The Jesuits also acted in the territories of Islamic countries, spreading their ideology, and they even won over converted slaves to their faith. There were often cases when Jesuit slaves subsequently accepted the faith of their masters, and they, in turn, for such a good deed could give them promotion up the career ladder from the status of “just a talking tool” to “a talking tool who carries your sharp swords behind you.”.
To conduct their expeditions, the Jesuits sent their best novices, who, in fact, led the Jesuit processes in different countries. Moreover, the “best husbands” were selected for such purposes. Who unquestioningly believe in the Catholic faith, and have a serious stature, and a handsome face. One of these Jesuits was Alessandro Valignano, who led such missions in the territories of India, Macau, China, and then on the Japanese Islands. A certain writer Jose Manuel Garcia in a 1997 work he cites the words father Louis Froy, accompanying Alessandro, which he wrote when they set foot on the shores of Japan: “crowds of Japanese were waiting for us, impressed by the growth of Valignano”. As head of mission, he was required to study and, if necessary, reorganize mission structures and methods throughout India, China and Japan. He was given enormous freedom of action and discretion, especially for such a young man, and was answerable only to the Superior General of the Jesuits in Rome. Alessandro had to impress the Japanese, and his dark-skinned servant helped him in this, who was enslaved somewhere in Mozambique, forced to follow a new faith, and as a reward was assigned to Alessandro. And he had a name Yasuke (or rather, they will give him a name later, but for simplicity we will immediately call him by his Japanese name), who was one of the closest servants of Mr. Alessandro.
Who are you, warrior??
It is documented that life, that the very fact of Yasuke’s arrival in Japan, is very poorly documented. His presence and life on the island were mainly written about by Father Louis, who nevertheless focused more on Alessandro’s journey in his essays than on his dark-skinned servant. But unlike the Europeans, the Japanese were not very familiar with black skin color, even though such, ahem, interesting personalities had already arrived on island Japan as part of ship expeditions before him. It’s just that everything is simple for merchants – they sailed, released the goods, received the money and sailed away. Is it the case of Mr. Alessandro, who was allowed into literally any house and went everywhere with his Yasuke.
I apologize for the jackassiness. This is a picture of Alessandro and Yasuki. Or rather, this is what Google gave me in response to my request
Alessandro’s mission required him to meet with high-ranking people in a Japan fragmented by feudal strife. But who to turn to when, during fragmentation, each feudal lord is his own master and wants to kill another feudal lord? Of course, you need to go to the most influential feudal lord of all the warring ones. This feudal lord turned out to be Oda Nobunaga (whose armor, by the way, can be stolen in PayDay 2. Yeah, yes, this is a site about games, we’re not just talking about history here).
Whether the armor is real is a completely different story.
The events of this campaign were reflected in letters Father Louis, when he reported to the Order and, accordingly, the same letter was reflected in the annual report of the Jesuit Mission to Japan for 1582. It is these letters and their reflection in the report that are for us the main source of knowledge that Yasuke really existed and took part in the Jesuit mission as part of Alessandro’s retinue. However, these letters were quite informal in nature. For example, in one of his letters, Father Louis wrote that “while in the capital, hand-to-hand combat broke out between local townspeople. The townspeople fought among themselves to catch a glimpse of Yasuke, breaking down the door of the Jesuit residence, and the whole fight ended with many deaths and injuries among the Japanese.
Father Louis and Alessandro also spoke colorfully about this meeting:
“Nobunaga also really wanted to see a black man and called him. .. took Yasuke to Nobunaga, who, upon seeing a black man for the first time, refused to believe that his skin color was natural and not something added later, and forced him to take off his clothes from the waist up. .. how Nobunaga, thinking that there might be ink on his body, made him take off his clothes and wash his body, but the more he washed and rubbed, the darker his skin became.".
Father Louis
Moreover, Yasuke’s arrival in Japan is also documented in manuscripts of Shincho Koki, aka Nobunaga Koki, essentially the chronicles of Oda Nobunaga himself. They contain the following text: “A black bozu has arrived from a Christian country. He looks 26 or 27 years old. The blackness of his body is like that of a bull, he is healthy and of excellent physique. Moreover, he has the strength of more than ten people. The padres came with him and thanked Lord Nobunaga for permission to proselytize.".
Nobunaga was impressed by the black boy and asked Alessandro to give it to him. The latter did not object and left the guy as a gift [do not forget, no matter how good he was, Nobunaga had to leave a gift, because his mission depended on it (approx. author)]. At court, a black youth was given the Japanese name Yasuke , . [later] Nobunaga made him his assistant and enlisted Yasuke in his army.
text from Shincho Koki
Father Louis wrote the following about this:
The black man understood a little Japanese, and Nobunaga never tired of talking to him. And since he was strong and could perform several tricks, Nobunaga took great pleasure in protecting him and forced him to wander around the city of Kyoto with an escort. Some townspeople thought that Nobunaga could make him tono ("lord").
Father Louis
After the transfer of Yasuke was successfully completed, information about him in Jehusite letters and texts is naturally lost. Their trace also ends in Japanese chronicles, since the guy simply served in the army. The following mentions of him are found already in historical entries from the May 11, 1582 diary of Matsudaira Ietada, a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The latter was also not an ordinary man from the mountain, but was a former vassal of Oda Nobunaga, and later helped him in the unification of Japan. These records state that Yasuke accompanied Nobunaga on his inspection tour of the region after he destroyed his longtime nemesis, Takeda Kai clan. In the description of the event of May 11, 1582. it says:
“Nobunaga-sama was accompanied by a black man, whom the missionaries gave him as a gift and to whom he gave a scholarship. His body was as black as ink and his height was 6 shaku 2 fans (182.4 cm). They said his name was Yasuke.»
Matsudaira Ietada
On June 1, 1582, Oda Nobunaga was betrayed and attacked by his senior retainer Akechi Mitsuhide during the Honno-ji Incident, and Yasuke at this time served not far from his master. After his master was forced to commit suicide, Yasuke was captured. The question arose, what to do with the black warrior?? Here it is no longer known for certain. Or rather how. In one of the correspondences, the source of which I was never able to dig up is the following text:
The black man, whom the https://royallamacasino.uk/ guest sent to Nobunaga, came to the house of Nobunaga’s son after his death and fought for quite a long time when Akechi’s vassal came to him and said: “Don’t be afraid, give me this sword,” and he gave him the sword. The vassal asked Akechi what should be done with the black man, and he replied: “The black slave is an animal (animal) and knows nothing, and he is not Japanese, so do not kill him, but put him in custody.”.
Subsequently, from the annual reports of the Jesuits, it becomes clear that Yasuke returned to them. However, the texts contain only information that he was treated in the Jesuit camp for some time, and later his trace is completely lost in the annals of history.
Was he a samurai??
You and I, dear readers, have at least figured out the story of Yasuke, but now we would like to understand who he was at court?
Let’s look at the definition of the word "samurai» – in feudal Japan – secular male feudal lords, ranging from large sovereign princes (daimyo) to small nobles; in the narrow and most frequently used meaning – the military-feudal class of small nobles.
The word “samurai” itself comes from the ancient indefinite form of the verb “serve». That is, a samurai is a service man. Samurai are not only knight warriors. They were both the bodyguards of their daimyo or overlord, and at the same time his servants in everyday life
Based on this definition, then our Yasuke doesn’t look much like a samurai. Or rather, there are no sufficient sources that would describe his life and position in the courtyard in more detail. Based on his history and position in the courtyard, I come to the conclusion that he was more likely "bushi"rather than a "samurai", albeit with a more significant position in the courtyard. Although both “bushi” and “samurai” mean approximately the same thing in Japanese. Still, before such eminent samurai of foreign origin, such as, for example, Jan Joosten our Yasuki falls short. The first had a great influence on the emperor’s court, was one of the initiators of the spread of Christianity in Japan. He had his own estate, a district in Tokyo was named after him, although, in fact, the question of who is considered a samurai and who is not is quite debatable. Russian Wikipedia says that he is a servant and a warrior. English – that he simply served at court. From the sources you might think that our friend Nobunaga almost washed his panties. So I’m more inclined to think that he shouldn’t be called a samurai.
Aren’t Ubisoft crazy about pushing the agenda so brazenly??
Well, here we are 70 years late with such questions.
In 1968, the writer Yoshio Kurusu and artist Genjiro Mita published a children’s book about Yasuka entitled "Kurosuke». The following year, the book received the Japan Children’s Writers Association Award, receiving recognition. Yasuke also inspired Shusaku Endo to write a satirical novel "Kuronbo» 1971. Yasuke also plays a minor role in manga by Yoshihiro Yamada "Hyoge Mono" 2005–2017. Ubisoft was also late in the video game field, because in the video game Nioh 2017 years and its continuation in 2020 a fictional portrayal of Yasuke was already present, voiced by Richie Campbell.
Yasuke is an amazing character from a historical perspective. A slave servant of a European Catholic who accidentally ended up in the courtyard of one of the most important people in Japan. But which had absolutely no impact either on Nobunaga’s court or on life in Japan in general. I don’t quite understand the developers’ intention to make him the main character. He would be much better suited as a main supporting character who would help us in the plot, tell the story and put us into context. He could rather serve as a new Leonardo, sometimes moving us along the plot. But the game hasn’t come out yet, so we’ll have to wait and see. Still, I have very high hopes for the Japanese theme.
And I also don’t advise you, as readers, to draw conclusions based only on what you see. Still, Yasuke is a character who lived an amazing life and who also deserves to be told about her.
Z.Y. (I still don’t know how to insert “Finished reading”? Add a plus!")
See you at stop, game, ru!
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
Best comments
Is it possible to click on more than one link and get confused with the text??
My respect for your efforts.
As we understand, this is the same moment from the animated series?)
Everyone talks and argues about whether there was a black samurai or not. But no one, NO ONE, notes the skill of Japanese barbershops, who in the 16th century learned to curl Afro braids for their only client
But which had absolutely no impact either on Nabunaga’s court or on life in Japan in general. I don’t quite understand the developers’ intention to make him the main character
but it seems to me that everything is more or less clear. the developers needed to somehow hu… miraculously insert some kind of national minority into Japan at the end of the 16th century. You can’t just invent a conventional black neighborhood. so they found the only more or less famous black man, who can even be considered a samurai to some extent. and the fact that he had no influence on the life and history of Japan is a plus, t.you can do whatever you want with it, it won’t contradict the real story. but if the main character was the same Nobunaga Oda and he would run across the rooftops and crush hundreds of people with his own hands – that would already be strange
Excellent and informative article, definitely like it!
And don’t even offend anyone in the comments by calling them false historians. Shock.
Afro, we’ve lost everything.
Here. good article! my admiration!
It’s just a pity that the author of that “investigation” most likely will not read this and will not understand what he was wrong about
Off the top of my head, I also remember Nagoriyuki from Guilty Gear: Strive. And there the Negro samurai, based on the image of Yasuke, was made by the Japanese themselves. And in general, the story with Yasuke shows well that the problem of inclusivity is not in itself, but only and only in whether the character turns out to be interesting.
Yasuke is extremely fertile ground for creating an interesting and workable image/character within the framework of the plot. All we can do is wait and see.
No, not mutually exclusive. From the very first game, Assassin takes real historical figures and introduces them into never-before-existent conflicts between Assassins and Templars. Real historical events are present in games, but they are given a completely different context, different causes and consequences. These are not fully historical events, since they have been changed, but these historical events and real personalities are taken as the basis for fictional events for the plot.
If you take historical events as a basis, but somehow change them to suit your plot, and do not retell them verbatim as they happened, this already makes the work not historical. But this does not exclude the possibility that your plot is somehow based on hysterical events.
It wasn’t your blog that offended me, it was your behavior. how you attack everyone who disagrees, how everyone here is “shaking”, etc.d..
If you responded normally to criticism, you accepted it without problems, nothing would have happened at all. but you continue to do this, you tell me that 1 link is actually the truth, everyone around you is wrong and you are the only one standing here in a white coat, handsome.
Bruce Lee once said “I’m not afraid of the one who learns 10,000 different kicks, I’m afraid of the one who learns 1 punch 10,000 times.”.
maybe you took it too seriously and applied it to your “investigation”, but it doesn’t work that way. even if you study one link 10,000 times, it will still be one link that cannot answer all the questions
The historicity of “writing” is given by references and sources from where this “writing” gets its information, and which should be in every such “writing”
I understood you last time, dude. tell me, from what year can this or that scientific work be considered real, and not an invention of contemporaries?? Otherwise, thousands of universities around the world produce tens of thousands of historians. scientific papers are written, etc.d… and all this is written in modern times… screw it’s just that HISTORICAL SCIENTIFIC WORKS are written IN THE MODERN TIME.
I wrote to you there and will write here: Yasuke is mentioned at least in “Shincho Koki” – a biography of Oda Nobunaga, written partly by himself, partly by a close general… and all articles and books also refer to this biography (including Wikipedia). and this is the MAIN work where he is mentioned. if you want to prove that this is not true, look for this biography, translate it and prove that it is not there. yes, it will be VERY difficult. it’s literally 1000 times more difficult than opening one link. only then the truth will be an INVESTIGATION.
but I even know why you ignored this link. you saw the number 2017 and thought it was something new and modern. and the fact that the author Ota Guichi lived near Oda Nobunaga and died in 1613 you didn’t even bother to google. and you will say something else about factual information. although what are we talking about in general, you literally answered last time that Source Studies is a pseudoscience for you… a person for whom the science of historical sources is a pseudoscience, ignoring all sources except those that are convenient for him, tells something about the facts. you’re funny.
(you will now excuse yourself that it was a joke and this is indicated by a bracket, etc.d and t.p… but no, it doesn’t work like that, if you write garbage, don’t hide behind the fact that “it was trolling”)
the “portal” rejected it.but that “excursion” was based on ONE link from Wikipedia and it was presented under the title “Investigation”. translating 1 link into Russian, ignoring others (including books by professors and associate professors at Japanese universities) is NOT an investigation
+ The author also threw his fists at everyone who disagreed with him and answered from the line of “get it first”
and now in the comments above he calls himself “a hater who got me with his stupid facts” (let me remind you once again – he made a conclusion in a blog using one link from the wiki… FACT))
“No” is possible, in the AC there is a Gorgon and a Cyclops, a black man in Japan would definitely not have killed the series. Here the question is rather the opposite – why take a historical character and get problems associated with the difficult fate of a slave?? It was easy to come up with a random sailor (if it was so necessary to push in a black man), and to answer all the questions – look, Yasuke was there, which means our sailor could very well be.
Exactly what to gain and lose. Arrive in Japan as a servant of the Missionary, somewhere in the prologue/flashback. Show up at Nobunaga’s court. Show his meetings with Shibata Katsuyo and many other vassals and servants of Nobunaga after the meeting. And already develop his path to a Samurai, who could also help submit ideas for the Assassins to Nobunaga. Or maybe get inspired by these ideas from Nobunaga himself. Then fight Templar supporters along with Naoe in an attempt to reach the leader in Japan. Then comes the betrayal of Aketi (who may initially be a Templar, or even join the Templars in the process), and after it the defeat and loss of everything, but with the preservation of life (Perhaps with a huge shock from Aketi’s betrayal).
However, this story may be turned in the opposite direction, where Aketi is already on the side of the Assassins, and Nobunaga is on the side of the Templars.
In a word, the plot can be wrapped up very coolly. In the 1-2 years since Yasuke’s arrival in Japan, many turning events took place around Nobunaga. And Yasuke, because of his position, is ideal as a fairly free spectator sitting in the front rows… But what the hell, he’s literally on stage.
Thank you for the good material, which is not the same as that one, but which is good 🙂
I personally don’t understand the general shaking. Yubi now has an excellent option on hand, which in a normal scenario can please everyone (except for the witnesses to the summons, but it is impossible to please them). Dude was? Was. He was a samurai? Who the hell knows. And since nothing prevents them from making it, even if he wasn’t one, then there are still no proofs.
And besides, Assassino is not a historical summary. Leonardo did not build tanks and bombers (he drew, yes, but did not build), and all that stuff. You can make adjustments to the story in the name of the plot. In the end, from the very first part, real historical events were turned upside down in order to fit Templar showdowns into Assassino.
Thanks for the historical excursion.
And as for Yasuke, when the game comes out, then it will be clear how normal a game character he is. And it’s stupid to blaze because of his skin tone, but in 2024, and at Ubisoft – well, you people are already many years late. In short, we are waiting for the release.
Personally, I expect at least beautiful Japan from Yubikov, plus we will have a second GG – quite a pretty girl. So let’s keep the katana in the legs until we burn the torches.
Thank you, it was interesting.
All this hatred is reaching the point of absurdity. Such ridiculous arguments are called, which is downright frivolous.
– “He’s black in Japan, it didn’t happen, it couldn’t happen.”!“It was like this, so he is black in Japan – a historical character.
– “He is not a representative of the titular people; before him there were always!"There is a second hero, from the Japanese.
“But she’s a woman, and the problem is the lack of representation of Asian men in leading roles.”!"And at the same time, in the very first and last Assassins at the moment, the protagonists are Asian men.
— HE WAS NOT A SAMURAI, HE WAS ONLY NOBUNAGA’S PERSONAL MONKEY, PURELY AS A Jester AND A SLAVE, FOR ENTERTAINMENT! And here I will give a link to this article.
Poor Yasuke. So many seats burned because of his choice of residence.
Ubisoft, if they tried, could really convey a unique view of feudal Japan. It’s not every day you look at her through the eyes of a two-meter black man. But this is Ubisoft, the dialogues and plot are not about them.
Thanks for the blog! I admire people who are capable of researching given topics, since my investigation would look like this:
