One glaring thing i noticed that people have missed is that Yasuke had no last name (family name). In ancient times, Japanese peasants didn't have last names only the nobility and the samurai did. So the fact that Yasuke has no last name/family name and was never given one means he was never accepted as a samurai. (besides the fact that you know....the title of samurai was passed down through blood and you couldn't just become one anyways)
Of course this is just if Yasuke did exist, but he didn't.
Preaching to the choir at this point. And probably going to end up getting u/Kaarous old response to me some time ago becoming a copypasta.
The sole argument for the existence of Yasuke is the Jesuit chronicles of their missions to Japan. Which were filled with nonsense and aren't taken seriously by most Catholics. Several of them were bloating their accounts in hopes of a bishopric.
Nobunaga never mentioned him in his own writings. Which given that Nobunaga would write poems about pretty much anything he laid eyes on, suggests that the two never met. The sole corroborating account stated that one of the missionary priests had a black servant, and they presented him as a curiosity to Nobunaga's court, but there is evidence of nothing else.
Here's another strain on historical credulity. Supposedly Yasuke fought for Nobunaga as a samurai. One of the claims is that he spoke fluent Japanese.
The time period between when they supposedly met and when Nobunaga was assassinated by Akechi Mitsuhide was... three months.
A black guy from what would now be Morocco, probably a slave to the priests, and someone whose language skills would have included mostly broken Portuguese, supposedly learned the second most difficult language on earth in three months. For reference, Japanese has three goddamn formal alphabets.
There is nothing about the story that is historically credible. There is more evidence of Santa Claus than there is of Yasuke. Now if you want a Japanese historical figure that is actually interesting and actually real, I suggest Honda Tadakatsu. He's a real life Hercules.
ive been posting screenshots of this post on twitter. i also want to turn this in to a copypasta lol
May as well also remind people insisting that he fought in Nobunaga's army what Nobunaga was known for: total massacre in his conquests, no survivors, "end the grudges before they can even begin."
I’ve read some comment sections on YouTube and sadly some people will just clap like a seal over the latest DEI conquest
It’s malicious. Woke SJWs are genuinely racist against Japan. Western Game Devs, particularly of the Indie variety, and Western Game “Journalists” and media personalities are particularly guilty of hating Japan and we can see that in decades of coverage towards Japanese games. The act of using a black man instead of a Japanese character in feudal Japan is blatantly racist and a humiliation ritual.
They hate'em cause they can't be 'em.
Japanese game devs have created products and franchises that can be enjoyed to this very day, and in some cases, even if you don't speak japanese. Wokeoids devs of both corporate and indie flavor have never managed to make anything fun - they depend on frameworks, bloatware and managed third party sales systems to create games that behave less as games, and more as lectures on ideology.
They thought that by becoming game devs, they could control the narrative and break into our hobby to become our new masters. Instead, they broke their teeth on the walls of reality and are haemohorraging money with every tottering step they make, becoming dependent on federal money to even exist for any period of time.
That's why they're so desperate. That's why they're so afraid.
So you're saying we wuz santa an shieet?
Good Lord that old comment is getting a lot of mileage.
its a good post that's why.
There's a reason I kept this around, despite rarely agreeing with Kaarous.
That comment hit the nail on the head, and I believe in giving credit where credit is due.
Even if he was a full samurai the reasons for making him the lead character are obvious and I’d still have a Japanese lead. If they were so hard pressed to include him they could’ve had him as someone you meet. Seems like a slam dunk to have a Japanese protagonist in a game like this
It was probably Washington.
You're thinking of Yasuke Washington Carver, inventor of wasabi.
lol. Perfect.
...That is so wrong. Why am I laughing?
If only we had a game about a legendary figure like Goemon who travels through Japan and fights enemies in a comical fashion.
Golden age Goemon had a japanese-themed striptease show side-event. Modern gaming can never be so awesome.
I need a giant robot that attacks a boy coming out of a peach as well.
If you even believe the dubious second-hand account. He had no last name because he was kept as a curiosity, a pet. If he even existed.
I tried to google like someone getting elevated to samurai. I am not a weeb, so I don't know. But I couldn't find any examples. That seems like a glaring issue with the Yasuke samurai story. The first sentence on wikipedia says they're a hereditary military class.
Towards the end of the samurai as a caste, it was all but hereditary. However, that wasn't always true in earlier eras there was more social fluidity. It is possible that someone could perform some exemplary deed and be "elevated" into the samurai caste. Elevated is in quotes as there could considerable expenses to maintain that rank. By Nobunaga's time, the deed would need to be truly exemplary and such a request would need to go through and be approved by the shogunate bureaucracy.
It's about as common as a dirt farmer being elevated into nobility. Technically, it could happen. Did happen, with (I think?) Hideyoshi. But it's an incredibly rare thing, notable when it does happen. Add to it the fact Japan was in-fighting and in-warring for centuries, and any losing side lost all their nobility often, and what you get is a very slim pickings as to any common filth who ascend to nobility AND who live long enough to have three generations and a "real" family name to pass along.
Hideyoshi was elevated to the nobility yes, but out of a combination of being a very interesting person of his own right and Nobunaga's legendary capacity for doing things on a whim.
Both of them were chronicled in the Shinchoko-ki.
Someone should shove this whole statement onto his Wikipedia page and tell the history re-writing goon mob there to get fucked.
Yasuke didn't have a family name because the white supremacists conspired to rewrite history and take it away from him!!!!111 :')
There were periods where a peasant could become a samurai, but he would be given a family name afterwards. This would be a blood soaked era when they needed all the warriors they could get. Most would be sent back to being a peasant. There are forms of Karate entirely from those peasants who wanted to continue teaching how to fight.
Of course there was a black market trade for names. Seven Samurai had a character who did that. The gambling halls and whorehouses often bought names for themselves. It's part of the history of the Yakuza.
That being said, there was no way Yasuke the black samurai existed. Catholic monks are well known for straight up lying wherever they were. I read so many stories of how the European settlers arrived on a day that was to celebrate a god, and somehow the natives all thought these new men must be the gods that it's now a tell for when someone hasn't done their research for history. It all sounds like nonsense.