It’s fun to dig around Japanese history for interesting tidbits to discover. Like William Adams, the English sailor who arrived in Japan in the year 1600 and became the personal adviser to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the third of Japan’s three unifiers. Adams was made a daimyo or samurai lord and given a fief with retainers and frigging wakizashi swords, which is about as awesome as it gets for a gaijin in Japan. But Adams wasn’t the first foreigner to attain the status of samurai. In 1581 Oda Nobunaga, the first of the above three unifiers, heard of a black slave from Mozambique named Yasuke who was traveling with an Italian Jesuit. Since Nobunaga loved unique things from foreign countries, he took an interest in the man, speaking with him often and making him a household retainer. As a samurai, Yasuke served Nobunaga faithfully, and when his lord was attacked by a turncoat general at Honno-ji Temple in Kyoto (a story roughly as famous to Japanese as Lexington and Concord is to Americans), Yasuke took part in the fighting. He was eventually captured and turned over to the Jesuits, and no further mention is made of him after that. Who would’ve thought that Afro Samurai was based on a true story?
Did you know Afro Samurai was based on a true story?
