YASUKE Self-Made

Almost 500 years ago, a man named Yasuke was the first foreignborn man to become a samurai, Japan’s elite warrior caste.

Yasuke was a man of African origin and one of several Africans to have come with the Portuguese to Japan during the Nanban trade. Described as robust, black as a bull, and of fine character, he was skilled to become a retainer and weapon-bearer to the Japanese daimyō Oda Nobunaga.

A Global Citizen

In 1579, Yasuke arrived in Japan with the Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano. Yasuke, who likely could speak Japanese, was likely from Mozambique. According to Fujita Midori, the first African people to reached Japan in 1546 were Africans from Mozambique as shipmates with Portuguese captain Jorge Álvares.

In June 1582, Nobunaga was attacked and forced to commit seppuku in Honnō-ji by the army of Akechi Mitsuhide. Yasuke was there at the time and immediately after Nobunaga’s death, Yasuke went to join Nobunaga’s heir Oda Nobutada, who was trying to rally the Oda forces at Nijō Castle. Yasuke fought alongside the Nobutada forces but was eventually captured. When Yasuke was presented to Akechi, the warlord allegedly said that the black man should not be killed, but taken to the Christian church in Kyoto, the Nanbanji. The fate of Yasuke is uncertain as there is no further written information about him after this event.