Yasuke

The First Foreign Samurai, True or False

Yasuke (彌介) was an African man, brought to Japan in 1579 as the servant of the Italian Jesuit missionary inspector Alessandro Valignano. Arriving some 20 years before the Englishman, William Adams, Yasuke is believed to have be made the first non Japanese samurai.

Remembered in the Shincho Koki, the Diary of Oda Nobunaga as well as in the journals of the missionaries of the day — although not actually named in the Shincho Koki, nor given much more than a cursory mention, in fact, we don’t know his actual name, it would have been something unpronounceable to the Japanese, and so he was later named Yasuke by the warlord Oda Nobunaga — Yasuke may have come from Mozambique, or possibly from Bakongo (modern day Congo region) where the Portuguese had extensive trade connections. His actual tribal history and indeed place of birth are unknown. His height is said to have been about 6 ft. 2 or 188 cm which would have been very imposing to the Japanese of the day, who averaged around 150 ~ 165cm, and was said to have been around 25 years of age. Again, no actual details exist.