Yasuke: In Search of the African Samurai Read online

  Warrior.

  Samurai.

  Legend.

  The remarkable life of history’s first foreign-born samurai, and his astonishing journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society.

  When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traveled much of the known world. Kidnapped as a child, he had ended up a servant and bodyguard to the head of the Jesuits in Asia, with whom he traversed India and China learning multiple languages as he went. His arrival in Kyoto, however, literally caused a riot. Most Japanese people had never seen an African man before, and many of them saw him as the embodiment of the black-skinned (in local tradition) Buddha. Among those who were drawn to his presence was Lord Nobunaga, head of the most powerful clan in Japan, who made Yasuke a samurai in his court. Soon, he was learning the traditions of Japan’s martial arts and ascending the upper echelons of Japanese society.

  In the four hundred years since, Yasuke has been known in Japan largely as a legendary, perhaps mythical figure. Now African Samurai presents the never-before-told biography of this unique figure of the sixteenth century, one whose travels between countries, cultures and classes offers a new perspective on race in world history and a vivid portrait of life in medieval Japan.

  Advance Praise for African Samurai

  “The time has come for history to embrace the amazing story of Yasuke. In African Samurai words flex their muscles and pay tribute to a man of physical strength and combat skills. The writing is seductive and the reader sees the world through Yasuke’s eyes. There is much to learn about the wonder of his life, and his story is a sharp blade cutting into invisibility.”

  —E. Ethelbert Miller

  “This book is not only the best account in English of Yasuke, the famous African samurai. It’s also a delightful introduction to the vibrant and multicultural world of Asian maritime history. Written novelistically, with a light scholarly touch... Exciting and informative!”

  —Tonio Andrade, author of The Gunpowder Age

  “Rarely do I read a book that challenges my worldview of history, but African Samurai certainly alters my understanding of African and Japanese history. African Samurai gripped me from the opening sentence—a unique story of a unique man, and yet someone with whom we can all identify.”

  —Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

  “African Samurai sounds like a novel, a freaking amazing novel. But Yasuke is real, and Lockley and Girard bring him and his world to life with incredible research and style. Yasuke may have lived in the 1500s, but he is a hero for our modern world. Seriously...when is the movie?”

  —Bret Witter, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Monuments Men

  Thomas Lockley is an associate professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo, where he teaches courses about the international and multicultural history of Japan and East Asia. He has published several dozen research papers and articles, including the first in the world regarding the life of Yasuke. At the time of writing, 2018, he was Visiting Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He and his family live in Chiba, Japan.

  Geoffrey Girard is the author of more than a dozen books. Born in Germany and shaped in New Jersey, he currently teaches in Ohio. He was selected for a Writers of the Future prize in 2003, and his debut novel was nominated for a Stoker Award. He has an MFA from Miami University.

  African Samurai

  The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan

  Thomas Lockley

  and

  Geoffrey Girard

  For my mother, Ruth,

  who gave me a lifelong love of books,

  and David, her husband and stalwart.

  —T.L.

  Contents

  Quotes

  Prelude: Yasuke de gozaru

  Part One: Warrior

  Chapter One: A Welcome to Japan

  Chapter Two: Only the Grace of God

  Chapter Three: The Ghosts of Africa

  Chapter Four: Seminary Life

  Chapter Five: The Terms of Employment

  Chapter Six: The Witch of Bungo

  Chapter Seven: Pirates and Choir Boys

  Chapter Eight: A Riot on Monday

  Chapter Nine: Tenka Fuba

  Chapter Ten: Feats of Strength

  Part Two: Samurai

  Chapter Eleven: Guest of Honor

  Chapter Twelve: Treasures Old and New

  Chapter Thirteen: The Way of Warriors

  Chapter Fourteen: His Lord’s Whim

  Chapter Fifteen: Oda at War

  Chapter Sixteen: The Dead are Rising

  Chapter Seventeen: Collecting Heads

  Chapter Eighteen: Fuji-san

  Chapter Nineteen: Battle Cry

  Chapter Twenty: The Honnō-ji Incident

  Part Three: Legend

  Chapter Twenty-One: Japan, Tomorrow

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Guns of Okitanawate

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Possible Paths

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Yasuke Through the Ages

  Afterword

  Author Note

  Notes

  Index

  An orphaned blossom

  returning to its bough, somehow?

  No, a solitary butterfly.

  —Arakida Moritake

  When a lion runs and looks back,

  it’s not that he is afraid.

  Rather, he is trying to see

  the distance he has covered.

  —African proverb

  Prelude

  Yasuke de gozaru

  June 21, 1582

  Before daybreak, the Honnō-ji Temple already glowed brightly. Flames engulfed its roof and walls in climbing waves of gold and crimson. Scattered around the main temple, another half-dozen smaller structures crackled and sparked like festival bonfires as thick smoke spread over Kyoto.

  Deep within the growing fires, Lord Nobunaga and his small entourage had clustered together to fight it out. They only delayed the inevitable. They were outnumbered a hundred to one, surrounded by multiple lines of gunmen and archers. Their only defenses burning. The gunfire had paused and the traitor Akechi now ordered the advance of his veteran samurai from all sides into the smoke, wielding swords and spears. The vengeful lord would not let the fire complete his retribution.

  Yasuke emerged from the inferno to face them. He’d managed to escape out the side of the burning temple. Lost within the confusion of the flames and smoke, he now faced only three men in the tightening circle of hundreds. With the blaze raging behind him, he’d hoped to cut through them quickly. To somehow escape before another three, or thirty, blocked his escape.

  The Japanese proverb “gossip about a man and his shadow will appear” was proving far too literal for the traitorous Akechi soldiers frozen before the foreign warrior. They knew Yasuke only from camp rumors. Nobunaga’s “black man.” The African samurai.

  In person, they had never before seen a shadow so tall, a man so dark. Nobunaga’s bodyguard stood above them like an adult over children, their helmets barely reaching his chest. And his half-concealed face was more than dark-skinned—it was freshly smeared with ash and blood from the battle to appear more terrifying. He also, perhaps most daunting of all, clutched a samurai’s sword, its blade already lacquered in blood.

  The three warriors had not expected this. They’d imagined only vanquished foes, a few mortall
y wounded survivors ready for the final blow, or perhaps a cowering maiden fleeing the blaze. This was no terrified servant girl.

  Yasuke loomed over them focused, undaunted. Wrathful.

  One of the soldiers glanced at the sword in his own trembling hand and his look revealed all: it was not weapon enough to fell such a man.

  Yasuke smiled grimly. Fear was a much-needed ally this night. This would be the last mission for his lord. The cloth bundle cinched at his hip sat heavily against Yasuke’s upper thigh as if urging him onward. Moments before, he had vowed to carry Nobunaga’s mortal remains to his lord’s heir, and he’d not journeyed halfway across the world to break such vows.

  The three soldiers remained spellbound, unable to move. Even words failed them.

  “Yasuke de gozaru,” the African samurai challenged, stepping forward into attack position.

  I am Yasuke.

  PART ONE

  Warrior

  Chapter One

  A Welcome to Japan

  Yasuke arrived in late July. Even at sea, the air was warm and heavy and a steady, hot offshore wind drifted off the bordering coastline. He traveled on a nao, a top-of-the-line Portuguese merchant ship carrying lustrous Chinese silk, Chinese scrolls of learning, Chinese medicines and Portuguese guns.

  Crates of the world’s latest weaponry, and all the lead and saltpeter that went with it, belonged to the man Yasuke had been employed to protect: the Jesuit missionary from Europe, Alessandro Valignano. With the guns, Valignano and his fellow Jesuits also brought a fine stash of Christian artifacts and, they believed, literal salvation. But even they understood it was the guns Japan waited for. And a few crates of firearms to save millions of souls was, in the end, a fair bargain.

  The year was 1579. Elsewhere, Sir Francis Drake had just landed in California and claimed it for Queen Elizabeth. Ivan the Terrible, of Serbian-Turkic heritage, now firmly ruled Russia. French Catholics and Protestants were ending a brutal thirty-year religious war largely orchestrated by their former queen, Catherine de Medici of Italy. In Peru, the very last remnant of the Incan Empire had just been defeated by Spain. And, the bubonic plague, which began in China, was now killing thousands in Venice. The world had grown much smaller.

  In this same spirit, Japan had appeared again off the Portuguese ship’s port bow earlier in the morning. Stipples of rock and green surfacing from the restrained waves, uninhabited islets framed by the smaller specks of fishing boats. The mainland now ran low on the horizon, its scattered islands finally becoming a solid belt of green trapped beneath summer haze and infinite white clouds. It would be only another half day into port. The crew and passengers were comforted at finally reaching the end of their long journey, cheering and clapping backs in shared relief. Yasuke had every reason to celebrate with them.

  He’d spent the last two years working as a bodyguard and attendant for Valignano, drifting ever eastward from Goa (in India, where he’d been first employed by the Jesuits) to Melaka (in modern-day Malaysia) and onto Macao (in southern China), Valignano settling affairs in the Jesuit outposts in those places before finally continuing to their farthest destination: Japan.

  It was the most successful of all the Asian missions for the Jesuits and a source of considerable pride and promise for the Church in Rome. Here, Valignano planned to remain for several years and, for the foreseeable future, Yasuke would no longer have to journey by sea.

  Travel in any century teaches patience and tolerance, and the African warrior had certainly exercised his share of both. From standing guard in stifling heat awaiting countless transports, slogging across muddy trails, safeguarding the Jesuit baggage—barrels and boxes filled with candles, devotional works of art, relics, clothing, wine, food supplies and gold—along crowded docks, to suffering seasickness and worse as the ships heaved and rolled over rough waters.

  The Portuguese Nao or “Black Ship” from Macao arrives in Nagasaki. Late sixteenth century, Kano Naizen.

  Their current passage had proven little different than the other Portuguese ships he’d traveled on in the last two years: uncomfortable, filthy, dangerous and disease-ridden. Valignano often wrote home of his loathing of travel by water and it was easy to appreciate why. The ships were garbage dumps with sails, crew and passengers alike living in their own filth for weeks. Rats thrived and multiplied between decks, and only strengthened as passengers grew weaker during the later stretches of any long voyage; fresh cadavers or those too frail to resist became an extra source of ready food for the vermin. (In turn, rat meat was a main course several weeks into most journeys for the common mariner.) And, all too often, deadly diseases also signed up for the voyage. Syphilis, typhus, malaria, hepatitis, bubonic plague, smallpox, meningitis, rabies. Combined with the atrocious diet, horrendous work conditions, strict punishment and even conventional murder, life at sea always took its toll. Such voyages often killed half of those aboard. To truly learn to pray, one needed only to go to sea.

  Fortunate survivors stumbled off the ships when reaching their final destination. If they were very lucky, the end point would have a missionary hospital; most of the beds in such hospitals were taken by recovering mariners. Otherwise, they recovered in flea-ridden flophouses. However unpleasant such lodgings were, even these were grand improvements over the ships. Thus, as they neared land again, hope and the inimitable accomplishment of survival once more filled the ship’s crew and passengers.

  In the face of such dangers and discomforts at sea, the voyage had not been all bad for Yasuke. He’d gotten on well with the sailors and would miss their company. It was a mixed crew: Portuguese, Indians, Chinese and even several other Africans. Portuguese was the default language of the maritime world and Yasuke, having spent two years traveling mostly by sea, now spoke enough to share in their gripes and jests. As a likable fellow with an easy smile, he would have garnered the camaraderie of all the working men from the first moment he’d stepped onboard with the Jesuits.

  Yasuke had also eaten better than most aboard. The crew ate mainly hardtack biscuits (also called “molar breakers” or “worm castles”), dried meat or fish and drank mealy water; rations were given out monthly if not gone bad, and if the officers were honest enough not to have sold them for personal profit. Avoiding such dangers, the Jesuits had brought onboard their own supplies which Yasuke had defended, cooked, served and eaten. Livestock (and their feed) as well as fine food such as figs, honey, salt, olive oil, flour and even wine had all been available to the Jesuits and their entourage of attendants employed in India and China. This was not entirely done from charity; Valignano recognized a man of Yasuke’s size and profession needed to eat well.

  Standing at the rails, Yasuke glanced back at the man he now protected. Valignano conferred with his half-dozen sun-browned European colleagues and their Chinese and Indian fellow Jesuits. This mission was no ordinary group of proselytizing Catholics. Their leader, and Yasuke’s direct charge and concern, was the most important Catholic in all of Asia.

  While Alessandro Valignano’s name means almost nothing today, in the late 1500s, it moved armies, assembled fleets and raised cities. He’d been given the official position “Visitor to the Indies” by Pope Gregory XIII and was then dispatched to inspect and develop the flourishing Catholic footholds in India, China and, finally, to the easternmost of the missions, Japan. An enigmatic place the Chinese referred to as the Land of the Rising Sun but largely ignored and avoided, a land of pirates and disorder. Valignano’s first stop there was to be Nagasaki, a deep anchorage in a Jesuit-friendly province. From there, he and Rome hoped the rest of Japan awaited.

  Yasuke grinned at the idea of Japan and looked back toward its land. The prospect of fresh food, fresh air, physical freedom and solid earth for the first time in three weeks was quite appealing. As was the prospect of a new place. Many enemies awaited here too, yes, but he was still curious to see what this mysterious country
offered.

  As they approached, however, their ship was met at sea by another smaller craft. Yasuke moved casually down the deck to stand closer to Valignano.

  There were several anxious moments as the crew prepared for possible violence, knowing pirates from China or Japan occasionally were bold, and ravenous, enough to strike a Portuguese vessel. A wild flurry briefly overtook the ship: the decks were doused with water to prevent fire and then strewn with sand for footing; the many cooking fires aboard were snuffed, half a dozen small cannon were loaded and run out on the top deck; the powder and shot rammed; swords were distributed and several muskets primed. Throughout, Yasuke remained calm and silent, revealing no emotion, keeping any concerns to himself. Valignano, in turn, ignored the commotion, coolly watching the stretch of land running beside them. Having spent two years together in equally dangerous settings, the two men fed off each other’s composure and tacitly agreed panic and fear aided no one.

  As if to demonstrate this very point, the ship’s concern proved for naught. Drawing closer, Yasuke and the others could now clearly see a Jesuit banner—a black pointed Order of Christ cross (evenly formed like a plus sign) atop the letters IHS (the Greek-to-Latin monogram for the name of Jesus Christ) upon a white background—run high on the approaching unarmed coastal craft and fluttering in the wind. The new ship rounded up into the wind and then lay wallowing, hove to. Moments after, a small Japanese-style sampan boat, which the Jesuit ship had towed behind, rowed jerkily across the dancing waters between the two ships.

  Up the ladder to the deck came the “robust” Brother Ambrosius Fernandes, the Jesuit ship’s captain. Brother Ambrosius looked and moved more like a battle-hardened soldier than any scroll-clutching religious official, and for good reason. He’d first come to Asia as a mercenary chasing the riches that came with such skills, but had offered his life to God in exchange for survival when a ship he’d been sailing on was caught in a tempest off Macao and several comrades were swept into the sea and lost. Fernandes saw the next dawn and joined the Jesuits shortly after returning to shore. After proper respect was paid to Valignano, Brother Ambrosius delivered a request from the local mission superior, asking the grand Visitor to change plans and make for another port: Kuchinotsu, instead of Nagasaki.