Don’t forget to get your copies of the children’s book : My African Icons, I Love Africa, The Black Samurai, and Mr. Imhotep’s ABC. Get them here: https://mrimhotep.org/books
What do you think about Yasuke? Can we consider him an African Icon? Let me know in the comments below.
#imhotepfacts
20 Comments
This is an excellent summary of Yasuke’s life. Anyone who wants to know more details and context about his life before and after coming to Japan should watch the following video on the YouTube channel Aga Khan Museum.
Lunchtime Lecture – Yasuke: An African Warrior in Japan with Prof. Thomas Lockley
Prof. Lockley works at Nihon University in Tokyo, and he is the foremost Yasuke expert. He published the first biography of Yasuke in 2017, translated from his English manuscript into Japanese by Yoshiko Fuji, titled 「信長と弥助 本能寺の変を生き延びた黒人侍」（Nobunaga and Yasuke: The Black Samurai Who Survived the Honno-ji Incident）. This book also has an English subtitle on its cover, “Yasuke: In search of the African samurai”.
In 2019, Prof. Lockley also published an English language book that is a dramatization of Yasuke’s story, co-authored by the novelist Geoffrey Girard. It is titled “African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan”. I do not like this choice to make a dramatization, because it actually includes even more historical details for flavor, but it has been used as an excuse to discredit Lockley’s findings by critics like the YouTuber Metatron, who doubt that Yasuke was a real samurai.
I can't stress it enuff! drop the Gangsta movies and turn yo your history! europeans have made trillions off African stories like this one and Memnon the Ethiopian.
As long as our stories are controlled by our enemies, they will always be negative. In order to support a slave narrative created by our former enslavers.
Been waiting for this
I know Yasuke, and to my surprise so do more people than you'd think in latin america.
Excellent video! Love that you covered the story of Yasuke! This is wonderful that you are expanding beyond Kemet. I really don't think there are enough positive stories of how Africans/Black people in the history that is taught in schools.
Just wanted to nitpick and say you said "200,000" were converted to Christianity but the video showed "2,000" as the number… You know "certain people" love to see discrepancies to invalidate others' hard work… Just trying to help… 🙏 Amazing vid! 👏
He was a servant, not a samurai.
Blacks were there first.
Me commenting on: "You make a great point, black people in Portugal weren’t just slaves. He could’ve very well been a Moor." My DNA-genealogy showed 17% Portuguese, 3% Spanish, 15% Moor, 1% Melanesian, 1% MALI-Ghana, a whole lot of American Indigenous. I am supposed to be related to the Cabeça de Vaca who along with Estevanico, the Moor, from Azemour were captured, travelled the Southwest. Through the King of Portugal, I am related to Marie Antoinette, and Simon Bolivar. I think the Samurai went to Portugal controlled India, Mozambique or Portugal controlled Africa. The Knights Templars were there also.
There's additional circumstantial evidence that not only did he survived but thrived, known for his intelligence , military ability, and his multilingual skills set, which would serve him well later under another lord.. Kato Kiyomasa, unless there was a bunch of Africans running around Japan at that same exact time who were embedded as Samurais, which imo is unlikely, he may have taken part in the invasion of Korea with Kiyomasa, a former ally of Nobunaga.
Katō and his troops were in a desperate situation in the Sosaengpo Castle. His diseased and depleted army was hungry and running short on funds and munitions for the anticipated push back into the interior when the peace talks eventually failed and they’d enter the field again. Katō was a hawkish general, dedicated to the war and to the service of his master Hideyoshi. He turned now to his leading retainers at home in his fief Higo to deliver the materials that were so badly needed.
One of those retainers was African, quite possibly our heroic African samurai. Just how Yasuke would have entered Katō’s service is unclear, but Katō’s proximity to, and trade with, Nagasaki would certainly have meant that it would not have been difficult. Yasuke would have been a highly useful hire, and his warrior background and Nobunaga connection would clearly have appealed to the martial-minded lord. In a letter regarding orders for an overseas trading mission dated December 6, 1593, Lord Katō gives specific instructions as to the leaders of the mission. One of them is called Kurobo, or “Black man.”
Kurobo had not initially accompanied Katō to Korea, but remained behind in the port of Ikura in Higo; the letter of 1593 suggests he was a retainer with responsibility for aspects of international trade and foreign affairs. In 1594, this man called Kurobo sailed aboard a Chinese-style junk, built by immigrant Chinese shipwrights in Japan and owned by Katō, with a cargo of silver and one hundred twenty tons of wheat bound for Manila in the Philippines. The Spanish in Manila were very keen to trade for wheat as it was in short supply locally and for them it was essential to make their staples of bread and ship’s biscuit.
The wheat was traded for munitions and then taken to Korea to supply the desperate garrison. The junk’s next moves are uncertain, but it was again ordered on a supply mission in 1596. Katō had complained that supplies of saltpeter to make gunpowder had been insufficient in previous voyages, dressed down his retainers and demanded over three tons this time. A later letter revealed that lead had been sent, but he again demanded more. We do not know how long Kurobo had been living in Ikura and serving Lord Katō, but another highly interesting piece of information revealed by Katō’s letter is that it specifically mentions that care be taken of the African man’s wives and children while he was away on this voyage. Kurobo—whether he was Yasuke or not—was clearly well established in Ikura and had been living there for some time. He was a man of wealth, rank and responsibility in Higo. After all, to support such a household, you needed to be very well off.
To specifically mention his family, Katō also clearly valued his service, and was fond of him. It also indicates the African was given preferential treatment as a foreigner, allowed multiple wives—polygamy was not common in Japan, although most men of rank had concubines. Geographically, professionally and chronologically, there is every possibility that the man was Yasuke in the service of another Japanese lord. Remember the illustration on the writing box (in Chapter 8) created by the Rin School, the one of a very tall black man dressed in expensive Portuguese clothing and the two dark-skinned boys.
The cloak carrier is clearly a servant. But the boy musician? Could he be the giant’s child Katō writes of? The man in the illustration is likely Yasuke. The artists of the Rin School, who created this beautiful artifact, were based in Kyoto during Yasuke’s visits there, and this is probably the nearest we will ever come to gazing upon the African samurai’s genuine likeness. It may be Yasuke and his son captured in this image. Another potential record of Yasuke’s post-Nobunaga years appears in an anonymous Japanese document from the 1670s. It mentions an African man alive during the 1590s, who shared the physical description of Yasuke, “seven shaku (feet) tall,” and was “black as an ink stone” and shared a name with Katō’s retainer, for he was also called “Kurobo.”
Lockley, Thomas; Girard, Geoffrey. African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan (pp. 356-357). Harlequin. Kindle Edition.
Dope and I'm glad that you are expanding your content
I also heard he was very tall is that true?
Thank you teacher for this very informative video . 💙💙
ahh yes..nobunaga's favorite pet
THIS IS SUCH MAGNIFICENT INFORMATION MR IMHOTEP 👍🏿💪🏿💯💥🤜🏿🤛🏿👊🏿
believing such man is a slave means you have been a human without brain. thanks for sharing such wonderful history with us, we really appreciate it alot.
Great video!!!!!!
Sasuke and Son Goku. Yasuke Uchiha and Sengoku War
Thank you for sharing. I use to hear of samurai’s when I was growing up a little girl n that he was Blk from old Bruce Lee movies…
Thanks for the great info.