🔗 Yasuke – The First African Samurai

🔗 Biography 🔗 Africa 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/History 🔗 Japan/Biography

Yasuke (variously rendered as 弥助 or 弥介, 彌助 or 彌介 in different sources) was a man of African origin who served as a retainer under the Japanese daimyō Oda Nobunaga. In 1579, Yasuke arrived in Japan in the service of Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, Visitor of Missions in the Indies, in India.

Yasuke is thought by some to have been the first African that Nobunaga had ever seen and he was one of the many Africans to have come with the Portuguese to Japan during the Nanban trade. He was also present during the Honnō-ji Incident, the forced suicide of Nobunaga at the hands of his samurai general Akechi Mitsuhide on 21 June 1582.