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In popular culture, in anime, in Jordan's books and video games, there is a character who

goes by the name of Yetsuke, an African Samurai. But we know that in these media characters

can do things which in real life people cannot, so one might have assumed that Yetsuke was

not real. Could there really have been an African Samurai? The highest ranking military

warrior in early modern Japan. Well, in this case, truth is at least a strange as fiction.

For Yetsuke was indeed a real person, and his story is incredible.

Arriving in Japan in 1579, in the service of the Jesuit missionary, Alessandro Valignano,

Yetsuke caught the eye of Oda Nabunaga, one of the most important feudal lords in Japanese

history and a unifier of the country. Within just two years, Yetsuke was a samurai, the

first and only black person to hold this title at the time.

Who exactly was Yetsuke? How did he come to Oda Nabunaga's attention and why did Nabunaga

choose to make Yetsuke a samurai? And what does Yetsuke's story tell us about early

modern Japan and the agency of African people? Is popular culture the best way to tell the

stories of people whose lives have such silences in the archives?

To answer these questions, I'm pleased to welcome novelist Craig Schrieve, author of

...