The African Samurai

3.5 ⭐️

My love for samurai history began when I watched Tom Cruise's “The Last Samurai”. I promptly googled to see if the movie was based on a true story, which made me scroll across Yasuke, the black samurai. Unfortunately there is very little material to go off of in his life since tribal cultures of any kind use oral histories instead of written, which obviously are going to be skewed or vanished after 500+ years.

This book is pretty entertaining but it has several historical inaccuracies and information which are entirely speculation or imagination, which the author to his credit tells you at the end of the book. The author imagines what Yakuze would have thought or gone through coming from an African tribe, going to war for the Portuguese against the Ottomans, being the guard of Jesuit priest, being a samurai and friend to one the most famous Japanese warlords, to finally having freedom.

SOFT SPOILERS:

Some of my biggest issues with the historical inaccuracies are the fact that he gets kidnapped by Portuguese (white people) and enslaved. That narrative fits perfectly with Hollywood movies and pop culture, it's definitely possible but knowing how slavery works in Africa it's far more likely that he was enslaved by Africans and then sold to the Portuguese but there is no evidence to back any of these claims up.

There are also several instances of historical people dying and the author has depicted them dying at an incorrect time or the person who killed someone was not actually the person who did it.