September 10, 2026 • 29 mins
Japanese Daimyo Oda Nobunaga was fascinated by the mysterious, towering slave of a visiting Jesuit missionary, and soon this man, Yasuke, joined Nobunaga's court, eventually becoming a full-on samurai. Join the guys as they explore the strange life of the African-born samurai, Yasuke.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians, as we said earlier, we're taking the
week off in celebration of Labor Day. But don't worry,
we've still got plenty of nerdy things from the archives
that we can't wait to share with you. Especially this
one is a straight up anime story.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, it actually is. There is, I believe, Afro Samurai.
which is an anime-style cartoon series, I believe from Adult Swim,
or at least it was on Adult Swim when I
saw it. There are also multiple films based on the
life of Yasuke, a samurai warrior of African descent in
(00:38):
feudal Japan, which was unusual at the time, to say
the least. Yes, very much to say the least. We
can't wait.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
For you to join us on this wild ride, folks.
So tune in as we learn how a Japanese daimyo
named Oda Nobunaga was fascinated by a stranger from Africa.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh, and just to add, Ben, there is entirely an
animated series called Yasuke that has at least one season,
and that is available as we speak on Netflix. Let's
roll the tape.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(01:45):
fellow ridiculous historians. I've got to say, first, I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Hi. Oh, hey, Ben. It's me, Noel, your old pal.
And there's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
We're in a different studio today. Just peek behind the curtain.
So Casey's actually physically sitting in the same room with us.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, it's weird. I have to... Like be quiet and
not make noise.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I know.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Can't be crinkling a wrapper or something.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
And you're craning your neck to look at us from
the side. And we can smell each other's musks.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I mean, this is a very small little hot box
that we're in right now. Sorry, the musk might be me. Oh, no, no.
It's a melange of all of our musks. And all
of our musks combined, we are Ridiculous History. A potpourri.
of perfect ridiculousness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Did you guys see the movie? What was it with
Forrest Whitaker? Was it Ghost Dog?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Way of the Swammer? Yeah, with the RZA soundtrack? Or
was it GZA? I think it was RZA. RZA's soundtrack.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
GZA does production, but is more, I think, known for
his verses.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When Wu-Tang forms like Voltron, I believe that RZA is
the head.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
I just saw RZA in the new Jim Jarmusch movie. Oh, yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
How'd he do?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
He was great for his scene. I had issues with
the movie.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I heard the movie was very painfully self-aware. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
But no, he's got a little cameo. He's with Whoopi S.,
so he makes a delivery. That's pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I do want to– I'm still a Jarmusch addict, so
I'll check out Don't Die. But this is interesting because
the concept of Ghost Dog, right, is that he is
a samurai and people are often taken aback because they're thinking–
How can this black man be a samurai?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, but to be fair, he's also like a modern-day
kind of self-prescribed samurai, isn't he? Right.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
He's not dressed as a samurai in the 16th century
would be.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
But today we're going to talk about a historical ghost
dog kind of figure, right? Yes.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yasuke, the enslaved African man who became a samurai and
fought for Nobunaga. Also, a soft note to any of
our Japanese-speaking friends, any of your fellow Japanese-speaking listeners in
the audience, none of us speak Japanese.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Should we have brought in Lauren Vogelbaum as a Japanese
consultant on this one?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You know, I thought about it, Noel, but I didn't
want to spring it on her at the last minute.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
She's still recovering from jet lag from Hawaii. Mm-hmm, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
We welcomed her back yesterday, and it was bittersweet because,
you know, I said, welcome back. I'm sorry you had
to leave Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I just sang her the Welcome Back Cotter song. Mm-hmm.
With open arms.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And then we shared a whiskey. You were there. I
was there. I was there.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I said aloha. She said mahalo. And that is the
extent of my Hawaiian language knowledge.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And you left it at that. And just so you know,
our knowledge of the Japanese language is similarly light. But
we're going to do our best on these here pronunciations.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It's not unheard of in the history of the samurai
for non-Japanese people. individuals to reach the heights, work their
way up to the ranks of the samurai. You may
have seen that Tom Cruise movie. What is it? The
Last Samurai? The Last Samurai. I have problems with that film. Well,
isn't it kind of a white savior kind of like
(05:01):
narrative a little bit? It's like Blood Diamond.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And Blood Diamond is this very similar thing with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Someone is killing a bunch of people, but then they
do one decent thing, and because they happen to be white,
they're praised.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And if I'm not mistaken, don't they both do bad
accents in both of those movies?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
My favorite Afrikaner or South African accent is Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
They have a word for people like me in Buntu.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It means white mining Africa.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's actually, that's The accent is so terrible that I
did a pretty good job of what Leonardo DiCaprio was doing.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Isn't Ubuntu also a type of Linux software? I was
going to say it's a Linux distro. I think it is, yeah.
But if I'm not mistaken, so English sailor William Adams,
who was born in 1564, died in 1620, came to
Japan in 1600, and he did just what we said,
rose through the ranks and became himself. a very notable samurai,
(05:59):
but he was English. Didn't Tom Cruise not do an
English accent in the movie, if I'm not mistaken? I
don't remember. I don't think so. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You know, I was watching it, I think, on a
plane or something. Yeah, this guy, the English guy, comes
after Yasuke.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
That's right. He's just the most famous because I've never
heard of Yasuke.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, he's just the most famous. There was also one
from shortly after Yasuke's period who was from South Korea.
There were several from South Korea.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
There was.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
One guy from the Netherlands, and then there was William Adams,
you mentioned, and then there was a Chinese national, and
then there was one.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Who was unknown. Oh, The Unknown Samurai. That'd be a
good movie. That's a great idea. Just name alone. It's
a cool name. Let's just start with the name and
work backwards. But no, we have this gentleman whose name
is Yasuke, and I can only imagine that that was
his name that he was given after... Coming to Japan.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
But they refer to him in all the research that
we've seen as that from the start. So we don't
know what his name was before this, but I can
only assume that that's the case. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Or at the very least, it's a Japanization of his
original name. So we have a couple of theories about
his life, but we don't really know anything for certain
about his original life before he arrived in Japan. According
to some books, people just sort of assumed that he
was from Portuguese-controlled Mozambique, because a lot of the people
(07:27):
of color who were traveling to Japan from Africa were
coming from Mozambique.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
No, that's right, because he was an enslaved person, and
he was traveling with a group of Europeans, or I
believe a gentleman from Portugal, and he was sort of
like a manservant to this, was it a Jesuit? It
was some kind of religious, a member of a religious order,
if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
He arrived in 1579 as the servant of a Jesuit missionary,
Alessandro Valigano. And Alessandro had been appointed what they called
the visitor or the inspector of Jesuit missions in the Indies.
So that was South and East Asia and East Africa.
So he would travel around to all the missions owned
(08:13):
by the Jesuits.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And a lot of this research comes from a gentleman
named Thomas Lockley. who wrote a book called African Samurai,
the true story of Yasuke, a legendary black warrior in
feudal Japan. And Ben, as you said at the top
of the show, one of the theories is that he
came from Mozambique. Others suggest that he came from Sudan
(08:35):
and trained as a child soldier in Goa in India. Right, right.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
The idea being that because of his... To the Japanese,
extraordinary height. He was about a foot taller than the
average Japanese person. And because of his very, very dark skin,
he might have been a member of the Dinka in Sudan.
So let's stick with Lockley for a second. This is, again,
this is all speculative. There are no corroborating documents on
(09:03):
Yasuke's time. His agreed-upon adventure, as far as the documents go,
really does kind of begin in Japan. But Lockley spent
nine years researching the story of this man, Yasuke. And
he believes that Yasuke was abducted from his family by
slave traders, either of Arab or Indian origin, and then
(09:24):
trafficked across the Indian Ocean through Arab countries. And as
you said, Noel, trained as a child soldier. And it's
during this time that Lockley speculates Yasuke meets Alessandro Vallegano.
the most powerful Jesuit missionary of the day. So Goa
was a huge trading missionary military hub.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Coastal.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, for the Portuguese empires. And it was a huge
center of the slave trade. So it's quite plausible that
this is where the Jesuits encountered it.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
For the first time, right? Yep, I agree completely. Let's
backtrack just a little bit and give a little bit
of context of what was going on in 16th century
Japan at the time. Huge divides going on, a lot
of isolation from the outside world. The country was split
into various provinces, and they were ruled by these feudal
(10:20):
lords that were– OK, I'm going to do my best
on this one. They were called– I think it's daimios.
And this is, of course, a nation that is an island.
So it has a lot of water that causes it
to be isolated in that way. So it really creates
its own kind of universe, very isolated. And that is
until European explorers, you know, with ships and fleets– seeking adventure,
(10:47):
decided to make their way into this, what they saw
as a very exotic land that they either wanted to
conquer or, you know, learn from, or I don't know
what the motivation, what do you think, Ben?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They didn't have the most successful results at first. The
Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in Japan and
they brought their entire culture with them, which included the
religion and included slavery.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And it included our hero, Yasuke.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So as we established, Shisuke arrives in Japan in 1581,
and his arrival triggers a literal riot. He lands in Kyoto,
and people wanted to see this extraordinary person and be
in his presence because they had never seen anything like this.
And the next few pieces of this story may be
(11:43):
offensive to some listeners, but But I have personal insight
on this, too, because this happened to some of my
friends when they went to rural China.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Oh, no way. Yeah. Yes way. Yes way, Ted.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So there's a warlord, the most powerful warlord in Japan,
Nobunaga Oda. And he sees Yasuke. And at first, he
believes this is not a human being. It's either a
demon or a god, a daikokuten, a god of prosperity,
because they're usually represented by black statues and temples. And
(12:14):
so this is what he does. He tries to rub
what he thinks is ink off of this man's skin
and makes him like strip to his waist and then
try to rub it off.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And then he goes, oh, my God. He's fascinated by them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
This is really this is your skin. This is not
paint or ink. This has happened within our lifetimes to
people in rural China. I had a friend who was
traveling out toward western China. Some older person came up
and without so much as a buy or leave, they
grabbed my pal's arm and they spat on his arm
(12:49):
and tried to rub.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Off the skin.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And they didn't think it was mean. And afterwards, they
wanted pictures with him. They wanted to talk.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Spitting on people is never polite behavior, I wouldn't say. No, no.
There has to be a better way to do it.
I can't think of a culture where that's appropriate.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
But this is true.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
We can kind of see, if we exercise some empathy,
how amazing this must be. This guy is taller than
literally everyone. His skin seems amazing to you, right? And
once Oda is finally convinced that this Yasuke character is real,
he immediately throws a feast for the guy, and it
turns from a riot to a party. Also, again, these
(13:33):
are warlord rules, so he pretty much decides the tone
of the room.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Oh, totally. And the riot element you're talking about, I think,
referred to folks trying to get a look at the guy, right? Yeah, exactly.
Literally just like a kind of feeding frenzy to kind
of like, oh, see, because, oh, it's important to remember,
this certainly would have been one of the first, if
not the first, many of these folks had ever seen
of a black man. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And this is not necessarily a movie moment where it's
like Oda is at the Kyoto port. Lord Nobunaga, as
he was called, asked for an audience when he heard
about all this commotion, and that's when he does the
whole thing about rubbing the pigment from his skin and
then throwing his feast, and then he hires Yasuke. He
(14:15):
makes him his retainer and his bodyguard.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yes, he did eventually make him his bodyguard. For a
little while, though, he was treated a little bit more
as kind of like a source of amusement or kind
of like a novelty, kind of an oddity, right? But
then he demonstrated, because of his training as a child soldier—
And his military prowess, he demonstrated very quickly that he
was a very competent and powerful warrior. And he began
(14:41):
to learn martial arts as well. Right, right.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And he was also versed in Japanese. So we think
he probably had these conversations. According to Lockley, Oda loved
just sitting around and shooting the breeze with Yasuke. You know,
tell me more about your life. There are no records
of how much he earned at his time, you know,
when he was first sort of a novelty. And then
(15:07):
when within a month, he's a warrior. We don't know
how much he was paid. So Lockley says it's tough
to know how high Yasuke ranked. And that's why people,
that's why you'll hear a lot of people, including this author,
speculate that he was the equivalent.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Of a page or a bodyguard. That's right. But what
we do know is a Tokyo-based publisher by the name
of Matt Ault who works for a publishing house called
Alt Japan, had this to say, that Yasuke was no
longer seen as human chattel or any kind of indentured servant,
but he was like all vassals, meaning a samurai is
(15:45):
beholden to their lord, the warlord, Oda, right?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Right, and that's why in less than a year, Yasuke
went from being a page to becoming one of the
upper echelons of Japan's warrior class, the samurai. We should
stop just for a second and talk about what a
samurai actually is, because I suspect that many of us
may have a couple of misconceptions. So these are warriors
(16:11):
of pre-modern Japan, and later they become the military ruling
class and the highest ranking social caste of the Edo period,
which is 1603, 1867. They had this sort of code, right,
a code by which one would live, maybe similar to
the idea of chivalry, but this was Confucian in design, right,
(16:34):
or in influence. This Bushido, the way of the warrior,
stressed things like loyalty to your master, self-discipline, respectful, ethical behavior,
and there was also a lot of Zen Buddhism in there.
But these might be filling any number of roles. You know,
some samurai eventually essentially became bureaucrats.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
But not at this time. No, not at this time.
But Yusuke was literally Oda's right-hand man. He got all
of this special treatment, preferential treatment. He was gifted a
ceremonial samurai sword or a katana sword. He dined privately
regularly with Oda, which was very enviable among the other samurai.
(17:18):
He was kind of his favorite, it would seem, based
on what we know. He also had his own private residence,
which wasn't for everybody. and just seemed to be a
real asset to the warlord and have a really prominent
position in that society.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Right. And again, when we're talking about the society, we
have to emphasize this is a fractured society. This is
not the unified Japan with which we are familiar today.
There's a lot of interior fighting. This is the era
of warring states. It's a turbulent century in history. And
just in the same way that the Alamo or Antietam
(17:56):
conjures these images of generals and founding fathers, so do
the key struggles of this period, also called the Sengoku,
according again to Alt. And Yasuke knows that he is
not going to have, he might have a future when
he's older as some sort of bureaucrat if he makes it,
but in this very violent time, he's going to fight.
(18:17):
So within a year of his arrival, he joins Lord
Nobunaga's forces in their invasion of the Iga province, I-G-A.
And they attacked this place, which is ringed with mountains.
It was called a ninja hotbed with 40,000 to 60,000 troops,
and they conquered it.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, and this is from Lockley's account. He said that
this first foray into battle was a success. His second,
there was kind of a twist in the story, right?
So according to Lockley's account, in June of 1582, Nobunaga's
samurai general, Mitsuhide Akichi... attacked his master, Nobunaga, at his
(18:59):
residence in Kyoto. He launched a tactical offensive. The attack
kicked off something that's known as the Battle of Hono-ji Temple.
And that kind of put the kibosh on Nobunaga's plans
to bring together these splintered factions in Japan, right? He
wanted to unify the country. Under his control, as most
(19:23):
warlords do. That's fair. You know what would make this
place great? If I were in charge. That'd be swell.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
It doesn't take warlords to think that way, but most do. Yep.
So it's a tragic, dramatic moment in Japanese history. And
in Yasuke's personal history, he is fighting tooth and nail
during this siege, this storming of the temple. And when
(19:52):
Lord Nobunaga sees that defeat appears imminent and unavoidable, he
goes back to his thinking of the code under which
he has functioned for most of his life. And he says,
this general has betrayed me. so I have no choice
but to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
And that's when, I mean, it's a very specific way
of killing oneself, and it's pretty grisly. Oh, it gives
me the heebie-jeebies just talking about it, thinking about it.
You're disemboweling yourself. You're disemboweling yourself with a very specific
short blade. You stick it in, and then you pull
it sideways, and essentially your guts just spill out wherever
you stand, and then you fall over dead. I imagine
(20:34):
it wouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
A And if it's something where enemy forces are giving
you the option to choose that honorable way out, I believe,
and someone checked me on this, I believe the idea
was that you were given the option of using the
short knife, and if you faltered or you didn't do
it correctly or you hesitated, there would be someone standing
next to you or nearby with a sword, and they
would decapitate you.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, in fact, Oda's last order to Yasuke was to
take his sword and his decapitated head to his son. Wow.
That's daddy. Oh, my God. That's grisly.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yasuke probably took the head after the guy died, after
Lord Nobunaga died. And he had to take this head
because it couldn't fall into someone else's hands.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It was considered very dishonorable.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So he goes back to Azuchi Castle and starts working
for Nobunaga's son, Odo Nobutada. His son also committed suicide.
after suffering defeat at the hands of the same treacherous general.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's right. And at this point, Yasuke is what we
call a ronin, or what the Japanese refer to as
a ronin, which is a samurai without a master. And
that's an image that you see throughout, you know, cinema
and like fiction, the idea of the roving, wandering ronin
who is beholden to no one. And you think of
them as almost like a vigilante of justice out to,
(22:00):
you know, Right wrongs or whatever. I don't know. Or
the crime film with Robert De Niro. Also that. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
You know, I don't even remember what happened at Ronin,
but I remember being a little unimpressed.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Maybe I need to watch it again. Maybe I was
too young. I don't know that I ever saw that.
And this is where we kind of lose the plot
on Yasuke a little bit, right? Lockley does some more
of his speculation that he knows and loves so well.
the idea is that Yasuke could have possibly gone back
(22:35):
to the Jesuit missionaries. Who knows?
Speaker 1 (22:37):
He could have been a guard for the Jesuits, but
he could have been a sailor. He could have been
a pirate.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
That'd be fun. It's just dream big. He just needed
a change. The whole handing over the decapitated head of
his master to the sun, that probably would have turned
him a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Well, let's step back a little bit, too, and see
that although Lord Nobunaga was pretty progressive in seeing past color,
Mitsuhide was super racist. He said, this Yasuke character is
not human. He's not Japanese, not even human.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
He's a beast.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
And I refuse to acknowledge him as a samurai. And
he said the problem with this, one of the reasons
he was so offended, probably racism, xenophobia. But another reason
is that Yasuke did not commit seppuku, which was the
Eastern tradition of Instead, he offered his sword to the general,
(23:31):
which is Western tradition.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Interesting. So you think it really is kind of the
case that Oda, the original master, was a pretty progressive
dude for the time. In this instance. No, in this instance.
In this single instance. What I'm saying is the way
he was treated would not have been the norm. He
kind of went out on a limb. But if you
think about it, too, I mean, yes, they obviously became friends,
(23:54):
but in his primary— impetus was probably like look at
this big strapping dude that i can put to work
for me you know yeah there's a little bit of
racism even in that exactly that's that's the thing it's
sort of like.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Uh frederick vilhelm would have said that he loved the
potsdam giants and was good friends with them right but
he would still kill them if they didn't do what
he wanted of course so So this is almost where
the tale ends. Despite his relatively brief time as a samurai,
(24:28):
he's been a hero in fiction and a lot of
stuff has been based off of him, including the great
animated series Afro Samurai.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
So good. Loosely based. Sure. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
So loosely based in that it just happens to be
a samurai.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And the thing too is there may have been others
like him, but we just don't have... the same kind
of documentation that we do about him. He was pictured
in a lot of traditional Japanese screen paintings where he
stands out among the crowd. You can definitely tell there's
like one black person among all of these Japanese folks.
(25:05):
And he appears multiple times, right? Right, right.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
There's some, I guess, compelling stuff, but it's circumstantial. This
is the best documented case we have of this sort
of contact. There is another figure in Japanese history that
some experts will say is of African descent, a fellow
named Sakonoye no Tamoramaro.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's a tough one, Ben. You did very well. I
did a horrible, piss-poor job on that. I disagree. Well,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
He was a warrior who, from about 758 to 811 A.D.,
was a palace guard, and he was placed in command
of forces that the emperor had sent to fight the
indigenous people, the Ainu. This warrior was said to have
a black complexion. But that's kind of grasping at straws.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
There's no one who said this guy came from Africa.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
And lest we have dropped too many spoilers in this,
there is a pretty amazing looking dramatization of this story
that's coming to Netflix in the not too far future,
where Yatsuke is going to be played by Chadwick Boseman
of Black Panther fame. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Phenomenal actor. And Yatsuke does not have a release date yet.
The news on the street is just news about casting,
but I'm going to watch it. I mean, I already
have Netflix. It's kind of a sunk cost, right? What
am I going to do?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Not watch it? Exactly. No, you're not going to not
watch it. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I am very
much looking forward to it now that Game of Thrones
has let us all down so hard. And also, you know,
just the fact that it's gone. The fact that it
was a disappointing ending is neither here nor there. I
need something to fill the vacuum that is my Sunday
night and the hole in my heart. I'm just waiting
(26:47):
for the books.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I don't think the story's over because there are still
two more books. If you're listening, George R.R. Martin, I
know you're a big fan of this show. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Maybe, George, if you're listening.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Maybe you've just been so busy listening to ridiculous history
that you haven't had time to sit down and write
those other two novels. If so, we apologize to every
Song of Ice and Fire fan out there.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, it's all our fault. It's mainly Casey's. We got
a very noncommittal nod there. We did.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What else we got?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Well, this is the end of our episode, but not
the end of our show. We'd like to hear your
stories of other, let's say, unorthodox outsiders who made a
name for themselves in society, similar to the way Yasuke did.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
You know what I mean? And this could traverse gender, ethnicity,
religious creed.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Let us not forget that Religious differences that seem relatively
minor to a lot of us today in an increasingly
secular United States.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Were huge deals for thousands of years. It's true. It's true. Yeah,
write us in. Give us your stories of outsiders making
a splash. You can write to us at ridiculous at iheartradio.com.
You can also hit us up on our Facebook group,
The Ridiculous Historians, where I think all you have to
do is name us. Either me, Ben, or Casey, or
just say something cute.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Or, yeah, just make one of us laugh. Yes, you
can also find us on our Twitters, on our Instagram.
You can find our personal adventures on Twitter or Instagram.
I'm at Ben Bolin HSW on Twitter, and I'm at
Ben Bolin on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't really tweet too much. I occasionally lurk in
other people's tweets, but not my thing. So I am
pretty exclusively on Instagram, at HowNowHSW. Noel Brown. Big thanks
to super producer Casey Pegram for holding it down in
the sweat box. Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
our theme. Big thanks to Gabe Luzier. Big thanks to
Christopher Haciotis.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Big thanks to you for listening and extra big thanks
to you, Noel.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I return your thanks with thanks of my own for
you and all you do for Just, you know, history
at large. One day, this is so weird. I have
this dream. It has nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I have this dream of throwing like an old-fashioned pizza
party for us and all the ridiculous historians. You know,
like where you would rent out a skating rink or
bowling alley.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I just got to find the right location. Tell us
if you'd be down for that. Totally. We should totally
do a meet-up. Maybe we should get on the historians
page and see if there's enough folks in Atlanta to
hang out sometime. Let's check it out. We'll see you soon, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Fellow ridiculous historians, as we said earlier, we're taking the
week off in celebration of Labor Day. But don't worry,
we've still got plenty of nerdy things from the archives
that we can't wait to share with you. Especially this
one is a straight up anime story.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, it actually is. There is, I believe, Afro Samurai.
which is an anime-style cartoon series, I believe from Adult Swim,
or at least it was on Adult Swim when I
saw it. There are also multiple films based on the
life of Yasuke, a samurai warrior of African descent in
(00:38):
feudal Japan, which was unusual at the time, to say
the least. Yes, very much to say the least. We
can't wait.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
For you to join us on this wild ride, folks.
So tune in as we learn how a Japanese daimyo
named Oda Nobunaga was fascinated by a stranger from Africa.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh, and just to add, Ben, there is entirely an
animated series called Yasuke that has at least one season,
and that is available as we speak on Netflix. Let's
roll the tape.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(01:45):
fellow ridiculous historians. I've got to say, first, I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Hi. Oh, hey, Ben. It's me, Noel, your old pal.
And there's our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
We're in a different studio today. Just peek behind the curtain.
So Casey's actually physically sitting in the same room with us.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, it's weird. I have to... Like be quiet and
not make noise.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I know.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Can't be crinkling a wrapper or something.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
And you're craning your neck to look at us from
the side. And we can smell each other's musks.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I mean, this is a very small little hot box
that we're in right now. Sorry, the musk might be me. Oh, no, no.
It's a melange of all of our musks. And all
of our musks combined, we are Ridiculous History. A potpourri.
of perfect ridiculousness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Did you guys see the movie? What was it with
Forrest Whitaker? Was it Ghost Dog?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Way of the Swammer? Yeah, with the RZA soundtrack? Or
was it GZA? I think it was RZA. RZA's soundtrack.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
GZA does production, but is more, I think, known for
his verses.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When Wu-Tang forms like Voltron, I believe that RZA is
the head.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
I just saw RZA in the new Jim Jarmusch movie. Oh, yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
How'd he do?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
He was great for his scene. I had issues with
the movie.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I heard the movie was very painfully self-aware. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
But no, he's got a little cameo. He's with Whoopi S.,
so he makes a delivery. That's pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I do want to– I'm still a Jarmusch addict, so
I'll check out Don't Die. But this is interesting because
the concept of Ghost Dog, right, is that he is
a samurai and people are often taken aback because they're thinking–
How can this black man be a samurai?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, but to be fair, he's also like a modern-day
kind of self-prescribed samurai, isn't he? Right.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
He's not dressed as a samurai in the 16th century
would be.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
But today we're going to talk about a historical ghost
dog kind of figure, right? Yes.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yasuke, the enslaved African man who became a samurai and
fought for Nobunaga. Also, a soft note to any of
our Japanese-speaking friends, any of your fellow Japanese-speaking listeners in
the audience, none of us speak Japanese.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Should we have brought in Lauren Vogelbaum as a Japanese
consultant on this one?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You know, I thought about it, Noel, but I didn't
want to spring it on her at the last minute.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
She's still recovering from jet lag from Hawaii. Mm-hmm, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
We welcomed her back yesterday, and it was bittersweet because,
you know, I said, welcome back. I'm sorry you had
to leave Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I just sang her the Welcome Back Cotter song. Mm-hmm.
With open arms.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And then we shared a whiskey. You were there. I
was there. I was there.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I said aloha. She said mahalo. And that is the
extent of my Hawaiian language knowledge.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And you left it at that. And just so you know,
our knowledge of the Japanese language is similarly light. But
we're going to do our best on these here pronunciations.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
It's not unheard of in the history of the samurai
for non-Japanese people. individuals to reach the heights, work their
way up to the ranks of the samurai. You may
have seen that Tom Cruise movie. What is it? The
Last Samurai? The Last Samurai. I have problems with that film. Well,
isn't it kind of a white savior kind of like
(05:01):
narrative a little bit? It's like Blood Diamond.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And Blood Diamond is this very similar thing with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Someone is killing a bunch of people, but then they
do one decent thing, and because they happen to be white,
they're praised.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And if I'm not mistaken, don't they both do bad
accents in both of those movies?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
My favorite Afrikaner or South African accent is Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
They have a word for people like me in Buntu.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It means white mining Africa.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's actually, that's The accent is so terrible that I
did a pretty good job of what Leonardo DiCaprio was doing.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Isn't Ubuntu also a type of Linux software? I was
going to say it's a Linux distro. I think it is, yeah.
But if I'm not mistaken, so English sailor William Adams,
who was born in 1564, died in 1620, came to
Japan in 1600, and he did just what we said,
rose through the ranks and became himself. a very notable samurai,
(05:59):
but he was English. Didn't Tom Cruise not do an
English accent in the movie, if I'm not mistaken? I
don't remember. I don't think so. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You know, I was watching it, I think, on a
plane or something. Yeah, this guy, the English guy, comes
after Yasuke.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
That's right. He's just the most famous because I've never
heard of Yasuke.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, he's just the most famous. There was also one
from shortly after Yasuke's period who was from South Korea.
There were several from South Korea.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
There was.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
One guy from the Netherlands, and then there was William Adams,
you mentioned, and then there was a Chinese national, and
then there was one.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Who was unknown. Oh, The Unknown Samurai. That'd be a
good movie. That's a great idea. Just name alone. It's
a cool name. Let's just start with the name and
work backwards. But no, we have this gentleman whose name
is Yasuke, and I can only imagine that that was
his name that he was given after... Coming to Japan.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
But they refer to him in all the research that
we've seen as that from the start. So we don't
know what his name was before this, but I can
only assume that that's the case. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Or at the very least, it's a Japanization of his
original name. So we have a couple of theories about
his life, but we don't really know anything for certain
about his original life before he arrived in Japan. According
to some books, people just sort of assumed that he
was from Portuguese-controlled Mozambique, because a lot of the people
(07:27):
of color who were traveling to Japan from Africa were
coming from Mozambique.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
No, that's right, because he was an enslaved person, and
he was traveling with a group of Europeans, or I
believe a gentleman from Portugal, and he was sort of
like a manservant to this, was it a Jesuit? It
was some kind of religious, a member of a religious order,
if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
He arrived in 1579 as the servant of a Jesuit missionary,
Alessandro Valigano. And Alessandro had been appointed what they called
the visitor or the inspector of Jesuit missions in the Indies.
So that was South and East Asia and East Africa.
So he would travel around to all the missions owned
(08:13):
by the Jesuits.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And a lot of this research comes from a gentleman
named Thomas Lockley. who wrote a book called African Samurai,
the true story of Yasuke, a legendary black warrior in
feudal Japan. And Ben, as you said at the top
of the show, one of the theories is that he
came from Mozambique. Others suggest that he came from Sudan
(08:35):
and trained as a child soldier in Goa in India. Right, right.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
The idea being that because of his... To the Japanese,
extraordinary height. He was about a foot taller than the
average Japanese person. And because of his very, very dark skin,
he might have been a member of the Dinka in Sudan.
So let's stick with Lockley for a second. This is, again,
this is all speculative. There are no corroborating documents on
(09:03):
Yasuke's time. His agreed-upon adventure, as far as the documents go,
really does kind of begin in Japan. But Lockley spent
nine years researching the story of this man, Yasuke. And
he believes that Yasuke was abducted from his family by
slave traders, either of Arab or Indian origin, and then
(09:24):
trafficked across the Indian Ocean through Arab countries. And as
you said, Noel, trained as a child soldier. And it's
during this time that Lockley speculates Yasuke meets Alessandro Vallegano.
the most powerful Jesuit missionary of the day. So Goa
was a huge trading missionary military hub.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Coastal.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, for the Portuguese empires. And it was a huge
center of the slave trade. So it's quite plausible that
this is where the Jesuits encountered it.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
For the first time, right? Yep, I agree completely. Let's
backtrack just a little bit and give a little bit
of context of what was going on in 16th century
Japan at the time. Huge divides going on, a lot
of isolation from the outside world. The country was split
into various provinces, and they were ruled by these feudal
(10:20):
lords that were– OK, I'm going to do my best
on this one. They were called– I think it's daimios.
And this is, of course, a nation that is an island.
So it has a lot of water that causes it
to be isolated in that way. So it really creates
its own kind of universe, very isolated. And that is
until European explorers, you know, with ships and fleets– seeking adventure,
(10:47):
decided to make their way into this, what they saw
as a very exotic land that they either wanted to
conquer or, you know, learn from, or I don't know
what the motivation, what do you think, Ben?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They didn't have the most successful results at first. The
Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in Japan and
they brought their entire culture with them, which included the
religion and included slavery.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And it included our hero, Yasuke.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So as we established, Shisuke arrives in Japan in 1581,
and his arrival triggers a literal riot. He lands in Kyoto,
and people wanted to see this extraordinary person and be
in his presence because they had never seen anything like this.
And the next few pieces of this story may be
(11:43):
offensive to some listeners, but But I have personal insight
on this, too, because this happened to some of my
friends when they went to rural China.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Oh, no way. Yeah. Yes way. Yes way, Ted.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So there's a warlord, the most powerful warlord in Japan,
Nobunaga Oda. And he sees Yasuke. And at first, he
believes this is not a human being. It's either a
demon or a god, a daikokuten, a god of prosperity,
because they're usually represented by black statues and temples. And
(12:14):
so this is what he does. He tries to rub
what he thinks is ink off of this man's skin
and makes him like strip to his waist and then
try to rub it off.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And then he goes, oh, my God. He's fascinated by them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
This is really this is your skin. This is not
paint or ink. This has happened within our lifetimes to
people in rural China. I had a friend who was
traveling out toward western China. Some older person came up
and without so much as a buy or leave, they
grabbed my pal's arm and they spat on his arm
(12:49):
and tried to rub.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Off the skin.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And they didn't think it was mean. And afterwards, they
wanted pictures with him. They wanted to talk.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Spitting on people is never polite behavior, I wouldn't say. No, no.
There has to be a better way to do it.
I can't think of a culture where that's appropriate.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
But this is true.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
We can kind of see, if we exercise some empathy,
how amazing this must be. This guy is taller than
literally everyone. His skin seems amazing to you, right? And
once Oda is finally convinced that this Yasuke character is real,
he immediately throws a feast for the guy, and it
turns from a riot to a party. Also, again, these
(13:33):
are warlord rules, so he pretty much decides the tone
of the room.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Oh, totally. And the riot element you're talking about, I think,
referred to folks trying to get a look at the guy, right? Yeah, exactly.
Literally just like a kind of feeding frenzy to kind
of like, oh, see, because, oh, it's important to remember,
this certainly would have been one of the first, if
not the first, many of these folks had ever seen
of a black man. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And this is not necessarily a movie moment where it's
like Oda is at the Kyoto port. Lord Nobunaga, as
he was called, asked for an audience when he heard
about all this commotion, and that's when he does the
whole thing about rubbing the pigment from his skin and
then throwing his feast, and then he hires Yasuke. He
(14:15):
makes him his retainer and his bodyguard.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yes, he did eventually make him his bodyguard. For a
little while, though, he was treated a little bit more
as kind of like a source of amusement or kind
of like a novelty, kind of an oddity, right? But
then he demonstrated, because of his training as a child soldier—
And his military prowess, he demonstrated very quickly that he
was a very competent and powerful warrior. And he began
(14:41):
to learn martial arts as well. Right, right.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And he was also versed in Japanese. So we think
he probably had these conversations. According to Lockley, Oda loved
just sitting around and shooting the breeze with Yasuke. You know,
tell me more about your life. There are no records
of how much he earned at his time, you know,
when he was first sort of a novelty. And then
(15:07):
when within a month, he's a warrior. We don't know
how much he was paid. So Lockley says it's tough
to know how high Yasuke ranked. And that's why people,
that's why you'll hear a lot of people, including this author,
speculate that he was the equivalent.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Of a page or a bodyguard. That's right. But what
we do know is a Tokyo-based publisher by the name
of Matt Ault who works for a publishing house called
Alt Japan, had this to say, that Yasuke was no
longer seen as human chattel or any kind of indentured servant,
but he was like all vassals, meaning a samurai is
(15:45):
beholden to their lord, the warlord, Oda, right?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Right, and that's why in less than a year, Yasuke
went from being a page to becoming one of the
upper echelons of Japan's warrior class, the samurai. We should
stop just for a second and talk about what a
samurai actually is, because I suspect that many of us
may have a couple of misconceptions. So these are warriors
(16:11):
of pre-modern Japan, and later they become the military ruling
class and the highest ranking social caste of the Edo period,
which is 1603, 1867. They had this sort of code, right,
a code by which one would live, maybe similar to
the idea of chivalry, but this was Confucian in design, right,
(16:34):
or in influence. This Bushido, the way of the warrior,
stressed things like loyalty to your master, self-discipline, respectful, ethical behavior,
and there was also a lot of Zen Buddhism in there.
But these might be filling any number of roles. You know,
some samurai eventually essentially became bureaucrats.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
But not at this time. No, not at this time.
But Yusuke was literally Oda's right-hand man. He got all
of this special treatment, preferential treatment. He was gifted a
ceremonial samurai sword or a katana sword. He dined privately
regularly with Oda, which was very enviable among the other samurai.
(17:18):
He was kind of his favorite, it would seem, based
on what we know. He also had his own private residence,
which wasn't for everybody. and just seemed to be a
real asset to the warlord and have a really prominent
position in that society.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Right. And again, when we're talking about the society, we
have to emphasize this is a fractured society. This is
not the unified Japan with which we are familiar today.
There's a lot of interior fighting. This is the era
of warring states. It's a turbulent century in history. And
just in the same way that the Alamo or Antietam
(17:56):
conjures these images of generals and founding fathers, so do
the key struggles of this period, also called the Sengoku,
according again to Alt. And Yasuke knows that he is
not going to have, he might have a future when
he's older as some sort of bureaucrat if he makes it,
but in this very violent time, he's going to fight.
(18:17):
So within a year of his arrival, he joins Lord
Nobunaga's forces in their invasion of the Iga province, I-G-A.
And they attacked this place, which is ringed with mountains.
It was called a ninja hotbed with 40,000 to 60,000 troops,
and they conquered it.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, and this is from Lockley's account. He said that
this first foray into battle was a success. His second,
there was kind of a twist in the story, right?
So according to Lockley's account, in June of 1582, Nobunaga's
samurai general, Mitsuhide Akichi... attacked his master, Nobunaga, at his
(18:59):
residence in Kyoto. He launched a tactical offensive. The attack
kicked off something that's known as the Battle of Hono-ji Temple.
And that kind of put the kibosh on Nobunaga's plans
to bring together these splintered factions in Japan, right? He
wanted to unify the country. Under his control, as most
(19:23):
warlords do. That's fair. You know what would make this
place great? If I were in charge. That'd be swell.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
It doesn't take warlords to think that way, but most do. Yep.
So it's a tragic, dramatic moment in Japanese history. And
in Yasuke's personal history, he is fighting tooth and nail
during this siege, this storming of the temple. And when
(19:52):
Lord Nobunaga sees that defeat appears imminent and unavoidable, he
goes back to his thinking of the code under which
he has functioned for most of his life. And he says,
this general has betrayed me. so I have no choice
but to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
And that's when, I mean, it's a very specific way
of killing oneself, and it's pretty grisly. Oh, it gives
me the heebie-jeebies just talking about it, thinking about it.
You're disemboweling yourself. You're disemboweling yourself with a very specific
short blade. You stick it in, and then you pull
it sideways, and essentially your guts just spill out wherever
you stand, and then you fall over dead. I imagine
(20:34):
it wouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
A And if it's something where enemy forces are giving
you the option to choose that honorable way out, I believe,
and someone checked me on this, I believe the idea
was that you were given the option of using the
short knife, and if you faltered or you didn't do
it correctly or you hesitated, there would be someone standing
next to you or nearby with a sword, and they
would decapitate you.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, in fact, Oda's last order to Yasuke was to
take his sword and his decapitated head to his son. Wow.
That's daddy. Oh, my God. That's grisly.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yasuke probably took the head after the guy died, after
Lord Nobunaga died. And he had to take this head
because it couldn't fall into someone else's hands.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It was considered very dishonorable.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So he goes back to Azuchi Castle and starts working
for Nobunaga's son, Odo Nobutada. His son also committed suicide.
after suffering defeat at the hands of the same treacherous general.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's right. And at this point, Yasuke is what we
call a ronin, or what the Japanese refer to as
a ronin, which is a samurai without a master. And
that's an image that you see throughout, you know, cinema
and like fiction, the idea of the roving, wandering ronin
who is beholden to no one. And you think of
them as almost like a vigilante of justice out to,
(22:00):
you know, Right wrongs or whatever. I don't know. Or
the crime film with Robert De Niro. Also that. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
You know, I don't even remember what happened at Ronin,
but I remember being a little unimpressed.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Maybe I need to watch it again. Maybe I was
too young. I don't know that I ever saw that.
And this is where we kind of lose the plot
on Yasuke a little bit, right? Lockley does some more
of his speculation that he knows and loves so well.
the idea is that Yasuke could have possibly gone back
(22:35):
to the Jesuit missionaries. Who knows?
Speaker 1 (22:37):
He could have been a guard for the Jesuits, but
he could have been a sailor. He could have been
a pirate.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
That'd be fun. It's just dream big. He just needed
a change. The whole handing over the decapitated head of
his master to the sun, that probably would have turned
him a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Well, let's step back a little bit, too, and see
that although Lord Nobunaga was pretty progressive in seeing past color,
Mitsuhide was super racist. He said, this Yasuke character is
not human. He's not Japanese, not even human.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
He's a beast.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
And I refuse to acknowledge him as a samurai. And
he said the problem with this, one of the reasons
he was so offended, probably racism, xenophobia. But another reason
is that Yasuke did not commit seppuku, which was the
Eastern tradition of Instead, he offered his sword to the general,
(23:31):
which is Western tradition.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Interesting. So you think it really is kind of the
case that Oda, the original master, was a pretty progressive
dude for the time. In this instance. No, in this instance.
In this single instance. What I'm saying is the way
he was treated would not have been the norm. He
kind of went out on a limb. But if you
think about it, too, I mean, yes, they obviously became friends,
(23:54):
but in his primary— impetus was probably like look at
this big strapping dude that i can put to work
for me you know yeah there's a little bit of
racism even in that exactly that's that's the thing it's
sort of like.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Uh frederick vilhelm would have said that he loved the
potsdam giants and was good friends with them right but
he would still kill them if they didn't do what
he wanted of course so So this is almost where
the tale ends. Despite his relatively brief time as a samurai,
(24:28):
he's been a hero in fiction and a lot of
stuff has been based off of him, including the great
animated series Afro Samurai.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
So good. Loosely based. Sure. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
So loosely based in that it just happens to be
a samurai.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And the thing too is there may have been others
like him, but we just don't have... the same kind
of documentation that we do about him. He was pictured
in a lot of traditional Japanese screen paintings where he
stands out among the crowd. You can definitely tell there's
like one black person among all of these Japanese folks.
(25:05):
And he appears multiple times, right? Right, right.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
There's some, I guess, compelling stuff, but it's circumstantial. This
is the best documented case we have of this sort
of contact. There is another figure in Japanese history that
some experts will say is of African descent, a fellow
named Sakonoye no Tamoramaro.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's a tough one, Ben. You did very well. I
did a horrible, piss-poor job on that. I disagree. Well,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
He was a warrior who, from about 758 to 811 A.D.,
was a palace guard, and he was placed in command
of forces that the emperor had sent to fight the
indigenous people, the Ainu. This warrior was said to have
a black complexion. But that's kind of grasping at straws.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
There's no one who said this guy came from Africa.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
And lest we have dropped too many spoilers in this,
there is a pretty amazing looking dramatization of this story
that's coming to Netflix in the not too far future,
where Yatsuke is going to be played by Chadwick Boseman
of Black Panther fame. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Phenomenal actor. And Yatsuke does not have a release date yet.
The news on the street is just news about casting,
but I'm going to watch it. I mean, I already
have Netflix. It's kind of a sunk cost, right? What
am I going to do?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Not watch it? Exactly. No, you're not going to not
watch it. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I am very
much looking forward to it now that Game of Thrones
has let us all down so hard. And also, you know,
just the fact that it's gone. The fact that it
was a disappointing ending is neither here nor there. I
need something to fill the vacuum that is my Sunday
night and the hole in my heart. I'm just waiting
(26:47):
for the books.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I don't think the story's over because there are still
two more books. If you're listening, George R.R. Martin, I
know you're a big fan of this show. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Maybe, George, if you're listening.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Maybe you've just been so busy listening to ridiculous history
that you haven't had time to sit down and write
those other two novels. If so, we apologize to every
Song of Ice and Fire fan out there.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, it's all our fault. It's mainly Casey's. We got
a very noncommittal nod there. We did.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What else we got?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Well, this is the end of our episode, but not
the end of our show. We'd like to hear your
stories of other, let's say, unorthodox outsiders who made a
name for themselves in society, similar to the way Yasuke did.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
You know what I mean? And this could traverse gender, ethnicity,
religious creed.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Let us not forget that Religious differences that seem relatively
minor to a lot of us today in an increasingly
secular United States.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Were huge deals for thousands of years. It's true. It's true. Yeah,
write us in. Give us your stories of outsiders making
a splash. You can write to us at ridiculous at iheartradio.com.
You can also hit us up on our Facebook group,
The Ridiculous Historians, where I think all you have to
do is name us. Either me, Ben, or Casey, or
just say something cute.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Or, yeah, just make one of us laugh. Yes, you
can also find us on our Twitters, on our Instagram.
You can find our personal adventures on Twitter or Instagram.
I'm at Ben Bolin HSW on Twitter, and I'm at
Ben Bolin on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't really tweet too much. I occasionally lurk in
other people's tweets, but not my thing. So I am
pretty exclusively on Instagram, at HowNowHSW. Noel Brown. Big thanks
to super producer Casey Pegram for holding it down in
the sweat box. Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
our theme. Big thanks to Gabe Luzier. Big thanks to
Christopher Haciotis.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Big thanks to you for listening and extra big thanks
to you, Noel.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I return your thanks with thanks of my own for
you and all you do for Just, you know, history
at large. One day, this is so weird. I have
this dream. It has nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I have this dream of throwing like an old-fashioned pizza
party for us and all the ridiculous historians. You know,
like where you would rent out a skating rink or
bowling alley.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I just got to find the right location. Tell us
if you'd be down for that. Totally. We should totally
do a meet-up. Maybe we should get on the historians
page and see if there's enough folks in Atlanta to
hang out sometime. Let's check it out. We'll see you soon, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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