June 25, 2019 • 28 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):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. I've got to say first,
I'm Ben. Hi. Oh hey Ben, it's me. No, they're
all pal And there's our super producer, Casey Pegram. Hello.
We're in a different studio today. Just peek behind the curtain.
So Casey is actually physically sitting in the same room
(00:47):
with us. This is Yeah, it's weird. I have to
like be quiet and not make noise, can't be crinkling
a wrapping, craning your neck to look at us from
the side, and we have a really and we can
smell each other's musks. I mean, this is a very
small little hot box that we're in right now. Might
be Oh no, no, it's it's it's a melange of
our all of our musks and all of our musks combined.
(01:07):
We are Ridiculous History, a pot pourri of perfect ridiculousness. Yeah,
did you guys see the movie What was it with
Forest Whittaker? Was it Ghost Dog? The soundtrack? Is this soundtrack?
Jis does production, but is more I think known for
his verses when we're saying forms like vultron, I believe
(01:30):
that Riza is the head. I just saw riz in
the new Gym Jarmers movie, Oh yeah, how do you do?
He was great for his scene. I had issues with
the movie. I heard the movie was very like painfully
self aware. Yeah, but but no, he's like got a
little cameo. He's with whoops. So he makes a delivery.
That's pretty much it. That's great. I I do want
to I'm still a Jarmus Shaddic, so I'll check out
(01:51):
Dead Don't Die. But this is interesting because in 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? Well, but
to be fair, he's also like a modern day kind
of self described samurai, isn't he right? He does it.
He's not dressed as uh samurai in the sixteenth century
(02:15):
would be. But today we're gonna talk about a historical
ghost dog kind of figure. Right. Yes, yes, Suke, the
enslaved African man who became a samurai and fought for Nobunaga.
Also soft note to any of our Japanese speaking friends
in your fellow Japanese speaking listeners in the audience. None
(02:38):
of US speak Japanese. Should we have brought in Lauren
Voge Obamas, a Japanese consultant on this one. You know,
I thought about it, No, but I didn't want to
spring it on her at the last minute. She's still
recovering from jet lag from Hawaii. Yeah. We we welcomed
her back yesterday and it was it was bitter sweet
because you know, and said welcome back. I'm sorry you
(03:00):
had to leave Hawaii. I just sing are the welcome
back caughtter song with open arms, and then we shared
a whiskey. You were there, I was there, I was there.
I said a looha. She said mahallow. Then that is
the extent of my Hawaiian language. You left it at that.
And just so you know, our our our knowledge of
the Japanese language is similarly. U light. We're gonna do
(03:20):
our best on these here pronunciations. UM. Here's the thing.
It's not unheard of in the history of the samurai
for non Japanese individuals to reach the heights. Uh, I
mean work their way up to the ranks of the samurai. Um.
You may have seen that Tom Cruise movie the was
it the last samurai Samurai I have problems with that film. Well,
(03:41):
isn't it kind of a white savior kind of like
narrative a little slight blood diamond, you know, and blood
Diamond is the 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,
their praise. And if I'm not mistaken, don't they both
do bad accents and both of the movies my favorite,
uh my favorite offered Connor or South African Accident is Leonardo.
(04:06):
They have a wood for people, locked me in them too.
It means white mining a Freakay? Who wow, that's actually
that's the accent is so terrible that I did a
pretty good job of what Leonardo DiCaprio was doing. Isn't
also a type of Lennox software? Yeah? But if I'm
(04:28):
not mistaken, So English sailor William Adams, who was born
in um came to Japan in sixteen hundred and he
did just what we said, rose through the ranks and
became himself a very notable samurai. But he was English.
Didn't Tom Cruise not doing English accent in the movie.
If I'm not mistaken. I don't remember. I don't think
so then I you know, I was watching a shink
(04:50):
on a plane or something. Yeah, this guy, the English guy,
comes after Yasuke, and he's just the most famous because
I've never heard of Yeah, he's just the most famous.
There was also one from shortly after yasukes period who
was from South Korea. There were several from South Korea.
There was one guy from the Netherlands, and then there
(05:13):
was William Adams you mentioned, and then there was a
Chinese national, and then there was one who was unknown,
the Unknown Samurai. That'd be a good movie. That's a
great idea to 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 becoming But
(05:37):
they refer to him in all the easearchs that we've
seen as that from the starts. We don't know what
his name was before that, but I can only assume
that that's the case. Would you agree, yeah, yeah, or
it's 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 his original life before he arrived in Japan.
(06:00):
And according to some books, people just sort of assumed
that he was from Portuguese controlled Mozambique because a lot
of the people of color who were traveling to Japan
from Africa, We're coming from Mozambique. You know that's right,
because Um, he was an enslaved person. Uh, and he
was traveling with a group of Europeans or I believe
(06:24):
a gentleman from Portugal, and he was sort of like
a man servant to this. Um was it a Jesuit,
It was. It was some kind of religious a member
of a religious order, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, yes.
He arrived in fifteen seventy nine as the servant of
a Jesuit missionary, Alessandro Valigano. And Alessandro had been appointed
(06:44):
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 by the Jesuits. And a lot
of this research comes from a gentleman aimed Thomas Lockley,
who wrote a book called African Samurai. The true story
of Yasuke, a legendary black warrior in fetal Japan and
(07:08):
ben as you said at the top of the show,
one of the theories that he came from Mozambique. Others
suggest that he came from Sudan, uh and even and
trained as a child soldier in Goa and India, right right.
The idea being that because of his to the Japanese
extraordinary height is about foot taller than the average Japanese person,
(07:32):
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 cooperating documents on
Yasuke's time. His agreed upon adventure, as far as the
documents go, really does kind of begin in Japan. But
(07:54):
Lockley spent nine years researching the story of this of
this man, Yes Suke, and he eaves that Yessuke was
abducted from his family by slave traders either of Arab
or Indian origin, and then trafficked across the Indian Ocean
through Arab countries and as you said, normal trained as
a child soldier. And it's during this time that Lockley
(08:18):
speculates Yasuke meets Alessandro Vallighano. Uh, the most powerful Jesuit
missionary of the day. So go Up was a huge
trading missionary military hub coastal, yeah, for the Portuguese Empires,
and it was a huge center of the slave trade.
So it's it's quite plausible that this is where the
(08:41):
Jesuits encounter Yasuke for the first time. Right, I agree completely.
Let's back try just a little bit and give a
little bit of context of what was going on in
sixteenth century Japan at the time. Uh, huge divides going on. Um,
a lot of isolation from the outside world. Uh. The
country was split into various provinces and they were ruled
(09:02):
by these feudal lords that were Okay, I'm gonna do
my best on this one. They were called I think
it's dim yos um. And this is of course a
a nation that is an island, so it has a
lot of water that causes it to be isolated in
that way. Um, so it really creates its own kind
of universe, very isolated, and that is until European explorers,
(09:26):
you know, with ships and fleets seeking adventure, decided to
make their way into this what they thought saw as
a very exotic land that they either wanted to conquer
or you know, learned from or I don't know what
the motivated. What do you think? Then they didn't have
the most successful results at first. The Portuguese were the
first Europeans to arrive in Japan, and they brought their
(09:49):
entire culture with them, which included the religion and included slavery,
and it included our hero. So as we established, Jisuke
arrives in Japan in fifteen eighty one, and his arrival
(10:09):
triggers a literal riot. He 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 the next few pieces of this story may
be offensive to some listeners, but I have personal insight
(10:29):
on this too, because this happened to some of my
friends when they went to rural China. Yeah, yes, way, yes,
way to uh So, there's a warlord, the most powerful
warlord in Japan, Noble Naga Oda, and he sees Yasuke,
and at first he believes this is not a human being.
It's either a demon or a god uh daiko kutin
(10:52):
or god of prosperity, because they're usually represented by black
statues and temples. And so he does this is what
he does. He tries to rub what he thinks his
ink off of this man's skin and makes him like
stripped to his waist and then try to rub it
off him. And then he goes, oh my god, he's
fascinated by the Yeah, this is really this is your skin.
(11:13):
This is not paint or ink. This has happened within
our lifetimes. Two people in rural China had a friend
who was traveling out toward western China. Some older person
came up and without as so much as a by
your leave, they grabbed my pal's arm and they spat
on his arm and tried to rub rub off this
(11:35):
and they were they didn't think it was mean. And
afterwards they you know, they wanted pictures with him, they
wanted to talk. Spending on people is never polite behavior.
I wouldn't I wouldn't say no, no. I I guest
culture where that's appropriate. But this is true. You can
we can kind of see if we exercise some empathy,
(11:55):
how amazing this must be. This guy is taller than
literally everyone. His 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 are warlord rules, so he pretty much decides the
(12:19):
tone of the room. 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, 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 never seen of a of a
black man. Yeah, absolutely, And this is not it's not
(12:39):
necessarily a movie moment where it's like Oda is at
the Kyoto port Lord Nobunagas who 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 makes him his retainer and
(13:00):
his bodyguard. Yes he did, uh, eventually making his bodyguard
for a little while though, he was treated a little
bit more as like a kind of like a source
of amusement or kind of like a novelty. But then
he demonstrated because of his training right as a child
soldier and his military prowess, he demonstrated very quickly that
he was a very competent and powerful warrior. Um. And
(13:23):
he began to learn martial arts as well, right, right,
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
(13:44):
of how much he earned at his time, you know,
when he was first sort of a novelty and then
when within a month he's a warrior. Uh, 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 of a page or
(14:07):
a bodyguard. That's right. But what we do know is
a Tokyo based publisher by the name of Matt Alt,
who works for a publishing house called All japan Um,
had this to say that Yasuke was no longer seen
as human shadow or any kind of like an indentured servant,
but he was like all vassals, meaning you know, a
samurai is a is beholden to their lord, the war lord,
(14:31):
right 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
(14:53):
warriors of pre modern Japan, and later they become the
military ruling class and the highest ranking social cast of
the Adol period, which sixteen o three eighteen sixty seven.
They had this sort of code, right, a code by
which one would live. May be similar to the idea
of chivalry, but this was Confucian in in design, right
(15:17):
or in influence. This bushido, the way of the warrior,
stress 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 um filling any
number of roles. You know, some samurai eventually essentially became bureaucrats,
(15:38):
you know what I mean. But uh, but not at
this time. No, no, no no, no, not at this time.
But but but you say, it was literally Oda's like right
hand man. He got all of this special treatment, um
preferential treatment. He was gifted a ceremonial samurai sword or
a katana sword. Um. He dined privately regularly with with
Oda um, which was very enviable among the other samurai.
(16:01):
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. Right and again, when we're
talking about this society, we have to emphasize this is
(16:21):
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 air of warring states. It's a turbulent
century in history, and just just in the same way
that the Alamo or Antietam conjures these images of generals
and founding fathers, so do the key struggles of this period,
(16:44):
also called the Sinoku. According again to alt And Yosuke
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. So within a year of his arrival,
he joined Lord Noble Naga's forces in their invasion of
(17:06):
the Ega province I g a uh and they attacked
this place which is ringed with mountains. It was called
a ninja hotbed, with forty thousand to sixty thousand troops
and they conquered it. Yeah, and this is from Lockley's account.
He said that this first um foray into battle was
a success. His second there was kind of a twist
(17:29):
in the story, right, So according to Lockley's account, in
June two, Noble Naga samurai general Mitsuhide Akichi attacked his
master No Monaga at his residence in Kyoto. He launched
a tactical, you know offensive. The attack kicked off something
that's known as the Battle of Hono g Temple um
(17:52):
and that kind of put the Kai bosh on Noble
Naga's plans to bring together these fat entered factions in Japan. Right,
he wanted to unify the country under his control. More lords,
do you know it would make this place great? H
if I were in charge? Two? Uh. It doesn't take
(18:15):
warlords to think that way, but most do yep. So
it's 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
Lord Nobunaga sees that defeat appears imminent and unavoidable, he
(18:41):
goes back to his thinking of the code under which
he has functioned for most of his life, and he says, ah,
this general has betrayed me, so I have no choice
but to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide. And that's when
I mean. It's a very specific way of killing oneself,
and it's pretty great. Lee. Oh, it gives me the
he b g's just talking about it. Thinking about it,
(19:03):
you're disemboweling you. You're disembowing 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 wherever you stand, and then you fall over dead.
Imagine it wouldn't be a quick death. And if it's
if it's something where enemy forces are giving you the
option to choose that honorable way out, I believe and
(19:26):
when 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. Yeah.
In fact, Odah's last order to Yasuke was to take
his sword and his decapitated head to his son. Wow,
(19:49):
that's daddy, Oh my god. He Yasuki probably took the
head after after the guy had died. Afterward, Newbunaga died
and he had to take this head because it couldn't
fall into someone else's hands. It was considered very dishonorable.
So he goes back to Azuchi castle and starts working
(20:10):
for noble Naga's son, Odo Nobutada. His son also committed
suicide after suffering defeat at the hands of the same
treacherous general. That's right, and at this point, Yes, Suke
is what we call a ronan or what them started
with the Japanese referred to as a ronan, which is
a samurai without a master. And that's an image that
(20:32):
you see throughout you know, cinema and like fiction, the
idea of the roving, wandering ronan who was beholden to
no one, and you think of them as almost like
a vigilante of justice out to you know, right wrongs
or whatever. I don't know. The crime film with Robert
de Niro also that I don't know, like you know,
I don't even remember what happened at Ronan, but I
(20:53):
remember being a little unimpressed. Maybe I need to watch
it yet, maybe just too young. I don't know that
I ever saw that. And this is where we kind
of lose the plot on Yessuke a little bit, right,
um luckily does some more of his speculation that he
knows and loves so well. Uh. The idea is that
(21:14):
Yessuke could have possibly gone back to the Jesuit missionaries.
Who knows. He could have been a guard for the Jesuits,
but he could have been a sailor, he could have
been a pirate. It's just dream big. He just you know,
he doesn't need a change, you know, the whole like
handing over the decapitated head of his master to a
son that probably would have turned him a little bit. Well,
(21:35):
let's step back a little bit too and see that
although Lord Nobunaga was pretty progressive and seeing past color,
Mitsuhid was super racist. He said, this Yasuke character is
not human. He's not Japanese, not even human. He's a beast,
and I refuse to acknowledge him as a samurai. And
(21:58):
he said, the problem with is one of the reasons
he was so offended probably racism, senophobia. But but another
reason is that Yasuke did not commit sepukul, which was
the Eastern tradition. Instead he offered his sword to the general,
which is Western tradition. Interesting, so you think it really
is kind of the case that oda uh the original master,
(22:21):
was a pretty progressive dude for the time, in this
instant and in this instance, this single What I'm saying
is the way he was treated would not have been
the norm. You know, but maybe, but if you think
about it too, I mean, yes, they obviously became friends,
but his primary impetus was probably like, look at this
big strapping dude that I can put to work for me.
(22:43):
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, uh,
Frederick Wilhelm would have said that he loved the Potsdam
giants and was good friends with him, right, but he
would still kill them if they didn't do what he wanted,
of course. So so this is almost where the tail ends.
(23:07):
Despite his relatively brief time as a samurai, he's been
um a hero in fiction, and a lot of stuff
has been based off of him, including the great animated
series Afro Samurai loosely based ye, so loosely based in
that it just happens to be a samurai. And the
thing is there may have been others like him, but
(23:29):
we just don't have the same kind of documentation that
we do about him. Um. He was pictured in a
lot of traditional Japanese screen paintings where you he you
can he stands out among the crowd. You can definitely
tell there's like one black person among all of these
Japanese folks, and he appears multiple times, right right, right,
(23:51):
There's some I guess compelling stuff, but it's 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. Fellow
names Saka No Tamo Ramaro. That's a tough one, Ben,
he did very well. I did a horrible, piss poor job.
(24:12):
I disagree. We'll thank you. He was a warrior who
from about seven fifty eight to eight eleven 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 I knew this warrior was said to
have a black complexion, but that's kind of grasping at straws,
(24:33):
you know what I mean. There's no one who said
this guy came from Africa. Unless we have dropped too
many spoilers in this Uh. There is a pretty amazing
looking dramatization of this story that's coming to Netflix in
the not too far future, where uh Yetsuke is going
to be played by Chadwick Boseman of Black Panther Thing. Yes,
(24:54):
that's right, phenomenal actor, and Yasuke does not have a
release date yet. The news on the street is just
news about casting, but I'm gonna watch it. I mean,
I already have Netflix. It's kind of a sunk cost, right,
What am I gonna do not watch it? Exactly? No,
you're not gonna not watch it? Yeah, and you know, um,
I am very much looking forward to it now that
(25:16):
Game of Thrones has let us all down so hard. Uh.
And also you know, just the fact that it's gone,
like not done, 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 in the
hole in my heart. I'm just waiting for the books.
I don't think the story is over, because there's still
two more books. If you're listening, George R. R. Martin,
(25:36):
now you're a big fan of this show, maybe that's it.
Maybe maybe, George, if you're listening, 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. It's all our fault. It's mainly cases.
(25:57):
We got a very noncommittal nod there did Okay, It's okay. Um,
what else we got. Well, it's uh, 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
(26:22):
similar to the way yasuke did you know what I mean?
And this could traverse gender, ethnicity, religious creed. Let us
not forget that religious differences that seem relatively minor to
a lot of us to date in an increasingly secular
United States were huge deals for thousands of years. It's true,
It's true. Yeah, right, Asai, and give us your stories
(26:43):
of outsiders making a splash. You can write to us
at Ridiculous at I heart radio dot com. You can
also hit us up on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians,
where I think all you have to do is name
either me Ben or Casey, or just say something cute
or yeah, just make it make one of us laugh. Yes.
You can also find us on our twitters on our Instagram.
(27:06):
You can find our personal adventures on Twitter or Instagram.
I'm at ben Bowland hs W on Twitter and I'm
at ben Bowland on Instagram. I don't really tweet too much.
I occasionally learn in other people's tweets, but not not
my things, So I am pretty exclusively on Instagram at
how now Noel Brown. Big thanks to super producer Casey
Pagram for holding it down in the sweat box. Big
(27:29):
thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Big thanks
to Gabe Lousier. Big thanks to Christopher Hasiotis. Big thanks
to you for listening, and extra big thanks to you know.
I return your thanks with thanks of my own for
you and all you do for the just you know,
(27:49):
history at large. One day, this is so weird. I
I have this dream there's nothing to do with anything,
have this dream of throwing like an old fashioned pizza
party for us and all the ridiculous storians you know,
like where you would rent out as skating rink or
bowling alley. I just gotta find the right location. Tell
us if you'd be down for that. Totally, we should
totally do a meet up. We should get on the
(28:09):
historians page and to see if there's enough folks in
Atlanta to hang out sometimes. Let's check it out. Let's
see you soon, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, follow Ridiculous Historians. I've got to say first,
I'm Ben. Hi. Oh hey Ben, it's me. No, they're
all pal And there's our super producer, Casey Pegram. Hello.
We're in a different studio today. Just peek behind the curtain.
So Casey is actually physically sitting in the same room
(00:47):
with us. This is Yeah, it's weird. I have to
like be quiet and not make noise, can't be crinkling
a wrapping, craning your neck to look at us from
the side, and we have a really and we can
smell each other's musks. I mean, this is a very
small little hot box that we're in right now. Might
be Oh no, no, it's it's it's a melange of
our all of our musks and all of our musks combined.
(01:07):
We are Ridiculous History, a pot pourri of perfect ridiculousness. Yeah,
did you guys see the movie What was it with
Forest Whittaker? Was it Ghost Dog? The soundtrack? Is this soundtrack?
Jis does production, but is more I think known for
his verses when we're saying forms like vultron, I believe
(01:30):
that Riza is the head. I just saw riz in
the new Gym Jarmers movie, Oh yeah, how do you do?
He was great for his scene. I had issues with
the movie. I heard the movie was very like painfully
self aware. Yeah, but but no, he's like got a
little cameo. He's with whoops. So he makes a delivery.
That's pretty much it. That's great. I I do want
to I'm still a Jarmus Shaddic, so I'll check out
(01:51):
Dead Don't Die. But this is interesting because in 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? Well, but
to be fair, he's also like a modern day kind
of self described samurai, isn't he right? He does it.
He's not dressed as uh samurai in the sixteenth century
(02:15):
would be. But today we're gonna talk about a historical
ghost dog kind of figure. Right. Yes, yes, Suke, the
enslaved African man who became a samurai and fought for Nobunaga.
Also soft note to any of our Japanese speaking friends
in your fellow Japanese speaking listeners in the audience. None
(02:38):
of US speak Japanese. Should we have brought in Lauren
Voge Obamas, a Japanese consultant on this one. You know,
I thought about it, No, but I didn't want to
spring it on her at the last minute. She's still
recovering from jet lag from Hawaii. Yeah. We we welcomed
her back yesterday and it was it was bitter sweet
because you know, and said welcome back. I'm sorry you
(03:00):
had to leave Hawaii. I just sing are the welcome
back caughtter song with open arms, and then we shared
a whiskey. You were there, I was there, I was there.
I said a looha. She said mahallow. Then that is
the extent of my Hawaiian language. You left it at that.
And just so you know, our our our knowledge of
the Japanese language is similarly. U light. We're gonna do
(03:20):
our best on these here pronunciations. UM. Here's the thing.
It's not unheard of in the history of the samurai
for non Japanese individuals to reach the heights. Uh, I
mean work their way up to the ranks of the samurai. Um.
You may have seen that Tom Cruise movie the was
it the last samurai Samurai I have problems with that film. Well,
(03:41):
isn't it kind of a white savior kind of like
narrative a little slight blood diamond, you know, and blood
Diamond is the 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,
their praise. And if I'm not mistaken, don't they both
do bad accents and both of the movies my favorite,
uh my favorite offered Connor or South African Accident is Leonardo.
(04:06):
They have a wood for people, locked me in them too.
It means white mining a Freakay? Who wow, that's actually
that's the accent is so terrible that I did a
pretty good job of what Leonardo DiCaprio was doing. Isn't
also a type of Lennox software? Yeah? But if I'm
(04:28):
not mistaken, So English sailor William Adams, who was born
in um came to Japan in sixteen hundred and he
did just what we said, rose through the ranks and
became himself a very notable samurai. But he was English.
Didn't Tom Cruise not doing English accent in the movie.
If I'm not mistaken. I don't remember. I don't think
so then I you know, I was watching a shink
(04:50):
on a plane or something. Yeah, this guy, the English guy,
comes after Yasuke, and he's just the most famous because
I've never heard of Yeah, he's just the most famous.
There was also one from shortly after yasukes period who
was from South Korea. There were several from South Korea.
There was one guy from the Netherlands, and then there
(05:13):
was William Adams you mentioned, and then there was a
Chinese national, and then there was one who was unknown,
the Unknown Samurai. That'd be a good movie. That's a
great idea to 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 becoming But
(05:37):
they refer to him in all the easearchs that we've
seen as that from the starts. We don't know what
his name was before that, but I can only assume
that that's the case. Would you agree, yeah, yeah, or
it's 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 his original life before he arrived in Japan.
(06:00):
And according to some books, people just sort of assumed
that he was from Portuguese controlled Mozambique because a lot
of the people of color who were traveling to Japan
from Africa, We're coming from Mozambique. You know that's right,
because Um, he was an enslaved person. Uh, and he
was traveling with a group of Europeans or I believe
(06:24):
a gentleman from Portugal, and he was sort of like
a man servant to this. Um was it a Jesuit,
It was. It was some kind of religious a member
of a religious order, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, yes.
He arrived in fifteen seventy nine as the servant of
a Jesuit missionary, Alessandro Valigano. And Alessandro had been appointed
(06:44):
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 by the Jesuits. And a lot
of this research comes from a gentleman aimed Thomas Lockley,
who wrote a book called African Samurai. The true story
of Yasuke, a legendary black warrior in fetal Japan and
(07:08):
ben as you said at the top of the show,
one of the theories that he came from Mozambique. Others
suggest that he came from Sudan, uh and even and
trained as a child soldier in Goa and India, right right.
The idea being that because of his to the Japanese
extraordinary height is about foot taller than the average Japanese person,
(07:32):
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 cooperating documents on
Yasuke's time. His agreed upon adventure, as far as the
documents go, really does kind of begin in Japan. But
(07:54):
Lockley spent nine years researching the story of this of
this man, Yes Suke, and he eaves that Yessuke was
abducted from his family by slave traders either of Arab
or Indian origin, and then trafficked across the Indian Ocean
through Arab countries and as you said, normal trained as
a child soldier. And it's during this time that Lockley
(08:18):
speculates Yasuke meets Alessandro Vallighano. Uh, the most powerful Jesuit
missionary of the day. So go Up was a huge
trading missionary military hub coastal, yeah, for the Portuguese Empires,
and it was a huge center of the slave trade.
So it's it's quite plausible that this is where the
(08:41):
Jesuits encounter Yasuke for the first time. Right, I agree completely.
Let's back try just a little bit and give a
little bit of context of what was going on in
sixteenth century Japan at the time. Uh, huge divides going on. Um,
a lot of isolation from the outside world. Uh. The
country was split into various provinces and they were ruled
(09:02):
by these feudal lords that were Okay, I'm gonna do
my best on this one. They were called I think
it's dim yos um. And this is of course a
a nation that is an island, so it has a
lot of water that causes it to be isolated in
that way. Um, so it really creates its own kind
of universe, very isolated, and that is until European explorers,
(09:26):
you know, with ships and fleets seeking adventure, decided to
make their way into this what they thought saw as
a very exotic land that they either wanted to conquer
or you know, learned from or I don't know what
the motivated. What do you think? Then they didn't have
the most successful results at first. The Portuguese were the
first Europeans to arrive in Japan, and they brought their
(09:49):
entire culture with them, which included the religion and included slavery,
and it included our hero. So as we established, Jisuke
arrives in Japan in fifteen eighty one, and his arrival
(10:09):
triggers a literal riot. He 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 the next few pieces of this story may
be offensive to some listeners, but I have personal insight
(10:29):
on this too, because this happened to some of my
friends when they went to rural China. Yeah, yes, way, yes,
way to uh So, there's a warlord, the most powerful
warlord in Japan, Noble Naga Oda, and he sees Yasuke,
and at first he believes this is not a human being.
It's either a demon or a god uh daiko kutin
(10:52):
or god of prosperity, because they're usually represented by black
statues and temples. And so he does this is what
he does. He tries to rub what he thinks his
ink off of this man's skin and makes him like
stripped to his waist and then try to rub it
off him. And then he goes, oh my god, he's
fascinated by the Yeah, this is really this is your skin.
(11:13):
This is not paint or ink. This has happened within
our lifetimes. Two people in rural China had a friend
who was traveling out toward western China. Some older person
came up and without as so much as a by
your leave, they grabbed my pal's arm and they spat
on his arm and tried to rub rub off this
(11:35):
and they were they didn't think it was mean. And
afterwards they you know, they wanted pictures with him, they
wanted to talk. Spending on people is never polite behavior.
I wouldn't I wouldn't say no, no. I I guest
culture where that's appropriate. But this is true. You can
we can kind of see if we exercise some empathy,
(11:55):
how amazing this must be. This guy is taller than
literally everyone. His 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 are warlord rules, so he pretty much decides the
(12:19):
tone of the room. 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, 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 never seen of a of a
black man. Yeah, absolutely, And this is not it's not
(12:39):
necessarily a movie moment where it's like Oda is at
the Kyoto port Lord Nobunagas who 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 makes him his retainer and
(13:00):
his bodyguard. Yes he did, uh, eventually making his bodyguard
for a little while though, he was treated a little
bit more as like a kind of like a source
of amusement or kind of like a novelty. But then
he demonstrated because of his training right as a child
soldier and his military prowess, he demonstrated very quickly that
he was a very competent and powerful warrior. Um. And
(13:23):
he began to learn martial arts as well, right, right,
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
(13:44):
of how much he earned at his time, you know,
when he was first sort of a novelty and then
when within a month he's a warrior. Uh, 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 of a page or
(14:07):
a bodyguard. That's right. But what we do know is
a Tokyo based publisher by the name of Matt Alt,
who works for a publishing house called All japan Um,
had this to say that Yasuke was no longer seen
as human shadow or any kind of like an indentured servant,
but he was like all vassals, meaning you know, a
samurai is a is beholden to their lord, the war lord,
(14:31):
right 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
(14:53):
warriors of pre modern Japan, and later they become the
military ruling class and the highest ranking social cast of
the Adol period, which sixteen o three eighteen sixty seven.
They had this sort of code, right, a code by
which one would live. May be similar to the idea
of chivalry, but this was Confucian in in design, right
(15:17):
or in influence. This bushido, the way of the warrior,
stress 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 um filling any
number of roles. You know, some samurai eventually essentially became bureaucrats,
(15:38):
you know what I mean. But uh, but not at
this time. No, no, no no, no, not at this time.
But but but you say, it was literally Oda's like right
hand man. He got all of this special treatment, um
preferential treatment. He was gifted a ceremonial samurai sword or
a katana sword. Um. He dined privately regularly with with
Oda um, which was very enviable among the other samurai.
(16:01):
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. Right and again, when we're
talking about this society, we have to emphasize this is
(16:21):
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 air of warring states. It's a turbulent
century in history, and just just in the same way
that the Alamo or Antietam conjures these images of generals
and founding fathers, so do the key struggles of this period,
(16:44):
also called the Sinoku. According again to alt And Yosuke
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. So within a year of his arrival,
he joined Lord Noble Naga's forces in their invasion of
(17:06):
the Ega province I g a uh and they attacked
this place which is ringed with mountains. It was called
a ninja hotbed, with forty thousand to sixty thousand troops
and they conquered it. Yeah, and this is from Lockley's account.
He said that this first um foray into battle was
a success. His second there was kind of a twist
(17:29):
in the story, right, So according to Lockley's account, in
June two, Noble Naga samurai general Mitsuhide Akichi attacked his
master No Monaga at his residence in Kyoto. He launched
a tactical, you know offensive. The attack kicked off something
that's known as the Battle of Hono g Temple um
(17:52):
and that kind of put the Kai bosh on Noble
Naga's plans to bring together these fat entered factions in Japan. Right,
he wanted to unify the country under his control. More lords,
do you know it would make this place great? H
if I were in charge? Two? Uh. It doesn't take
(18:15):
warlords to think that way, but most do yep. So
it's 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
Lord Nobunaga sees that defeat appears imminent and unavoidable, he
(18:41):
goes back to his thinking of the code under which
he has functioned for most of his life, and he says, ah,
this general has betrayed me, so I have no choice
but to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide. And that's when
I mean. It's a very specific way of killing oneself,
and it's pretty great. Lee. Oh, it gives me the
he b g's just talking about it. Thinking about it,
(19:03):
you're disemboweling you. You're disembowing 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 wherever you stand, and then you fall over dead.
Imagine it wouldn't be a quick death. And if it's
if it's something where enemy forces are giving you the
option to choose that honorable way out, I believe and
(19:26):
when 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. Yeah.
In fact, Odah's last order to Yasuke was to take
his sword and his decapitated head to his son. Wow,
(19:49):
that's daddy, Oh my god. He Yasuki probably took the
head after after the guy had died. Afterward, Newbunaga died
and he had to take this head because it couldn't
fall into someone else's hands. It was considered very dishonorable.
So he goes back to Azuchi castle and starts working
(20:10):
for noble Naga's son, Odo Nobutada. His son also committed
suicide after suffering defeat at the hands of the same
treacherous general. That's right, and at this point, Yes, Suke
is what we call a ronan or what them started
with the Japanese referred to as a ronan, which is
a samurai without a master. And that's an image that
(20:32):
you see throughout you know, cinema and like fiction, the
idea of the roving, wandering ronan who was beholden to
no one, and you think of them as almost like
a vigilante of justice out to you know, right wrongs
or whatever. I don't know. The crime film with Robert
de Niro also that I don't know, like you know,
I don't even remember what happened at Ronan, but I
(20:53):
remember being a little unimpressed. Maybe I need to watch
it yet, maybe just too young. I don't know that
I ever saw that. And this is where we kind
of lose the plot on Yessuke a little bit, right,
um luckily does some more of his speculation that he
knows and loves so well. Uh. The idea is that
(21:14):
Yessuke could have possibly gone back to the Jesuit missionaries.
Who knows. He could have been a guard for the Jesuits,
but he could have been a sailor, he could have
been a pirate. It's just dream big. He just you know,
he doesn't need a change, you know, the whole like
handing over the decapitated head of his master to a
son that probably would have turned him a little bit. Well,
(21:35):
let's step back a little bit too and see that
although Lord Nobunaga was pretty progressive and seeing past color,
Mitsuhid was super racist. He said, this Yasuke character is
not human. He's not Japanese, not even human. He's a beast,
and I refuse to acknowledge him as a samurai. And
(21:58):
he said, the problem with is one of the reasons
he was so offended probably racism, senophobia. But but another
reason is that Yasuke did not commit sepukul, which was
the Eastern tradition. Instead he offered his sword to the general,
which is Western tradition. Interesting, so you think it really
is kind of the case that oda uh the original master,
(22:21):
was a pretty progressive dude for the time, in this
instant and in this instance, this single What I'm saying
is the way he was treated would not have been
the norm. You know, but maybe, but if you think
about it too, I mean, yes, they obviously became friends,
but his primary impetus was probably like, look at this
big strapping dude that I can put to work for me.
(22:43):
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, uh,
Frederick Wilhelm would have said that he loved the Potsdam
giants and was good friends with him, right, but he
would still kill them if they didn't do what he wanted,
of course. So so this is almost where the tail ends.
(23:07):
Despite his relatively brief time as a samurai, he's been
um a hero in fiction, and a lot of stuff
has been based off of him, including the great animated
series Afro Samurai loosely based ye, so loosely based in
that it just happens to be a samurai. And the
thing is there may have been others like him, but
(23:29):
we just don't have the same kind of documentation that
we do about him. Um. He was pictured in a
lot of traditional Japanese screen paintings where you he you
can he stands out among the crowd. You can definitely
tell there's like one black person among all of these
Japanese folks, and he appears multiple times, right right, right,
(23:51):
There's some I guess compelling stuff, but it's 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. Fellow
names Saka No Tamo Ramaro. That's a tough one, Ben,
he did very well. I did a horrible, piss poor job.
(24:12):
I disagree. We'll thank you. He was a warrior who
from about seven fifty eight to eight eleven 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 I knew this warrior was said to
have a black complexion, but that's kind of grasping at straws,
(24:33):
you know what I mean. There's no one who said
this guy came from Africa. Unless we have dropped too
many spoilers in this Uh. There is a pretty amazing
looking dramatization of this story that's coming to Netflix in
the not too far future, where uh Yetsuke is going
to be played by Chadwick Boseman of Black Panther Thing. Yes,
(24:54):
that's right, phenomenal actor, and Yasuke does not have a
release date yet. The news on the street is just
news about casting, but I'm gonna watch it. I mean,
I already have Netflix. It's kind of a sunk cost, right,
What am I gonna do not watch it? Exactly? No,
you're not gonna not watch it? Yeah, and you know, um,
I am very much looking forward to it now that
(25:16):
Game of Thrones has let us all down so hard. Uh.
And also you know, just the fact that it's gone,
like not done, 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 in the
hole in my heart. I'm just waiting for the books.
I don't think the story is over, because there's still
two more books. If you're listening, George R. R. Martin,
(25:36):
now you're a big fan of this show, maybe that's it.
Maybe maybe, George, if you're listening, 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. It's all our fault. It's mainly cases.
(25:57):
We got a very noncommittal nod there did Okay, It's okay. Um,
what else we got. Well, it's uh, 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
(26:22):
similar to the way yasuke did you know what I mean?
And this could traverse gender, ethnicity, religious creed. Let us
not forget that religious differences that seem relatively minor to
a lot of us to date in an increasingly secular
United States were huge deals for thousands of years. It's true,
It's true. Yeah, right, Asai, and give us your stories
(26:43):
of outsiders making a splash. You can write to us
at Ridiculous at I heart radio dot com. You can
also hit us up on our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians,
where I think all you have to do is name
either me Ben or Casey, or just say something cute
or yeah, just make it make one of us laugh. Yes.
You can also find us on our twitters on our Instagram.
(27:06):
You can find our personal adventures on Twitter or Instagram.
I'm at ben Bowland hs W on Twitter and I'm
at ben Bowland on Instagram. I don't really tweet too much.
I occasionally learn in other people's tweets, but not not
my things, So I am pretty exclusively on Instagram at
how now Noel Brown. Big thanks to super producer Casey
Pagram for holding it down in the sweat box. Big
(27:29):
thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Big thanks
to Gabe Lousier. Big thanks to Christopher Hasiotis. Big thanks
to you for listening, and extra big thanks to you know.
I return your thanks with thanks of my own for
you and all you do for the just you know,
(27:49):
history at large. One day, this is so weird. I
I have this dream there's nothing to do with anything,
have this dream of throwing like an old fashioned pizza
party for us and all the ridiculous storians you know,
like where you would rent out as skating rink or
bowling alley. I just gotta find the right location. Tell
us if you'd be down for that. Totally, we should
totally do a meet up. We should get on the
(28:09):
historians page and to see if there's enough folks in
Atlanta to hang out sometimes. Let's check it out. Let's
see you soon, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio 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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