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How A Legendary Black Samurai Became an Anti-Imperialist Icon
The recent announcement of the video game Assassin’s Creed Shadows caused a panic among racists online. Why? Because it stars Yasuke, an African samurai. Yasuke is a pop culture icon who’s been around for decades. His status as a warrior in the service of famed warlord Oda Nobunaga isn’t in question.
Just ask Thomas Lockley, a historian who lives in Japan and spent nine years researching Yasuke. He published a book about him in 2019. Angry Planet was a different show (with a different name) back then. I also didn’t know how to master audio. I thought it’d be fun to dig up this old show, remaster the audio, and let an authoritative voice explain the history—and the legend—of Yasuke.
Original show notes from 2019:
It’s a story some of you may know, it’s been told over and over in different forms. A gaijin, an outsider, comes to Japan and ingratiates themselves with the local military power. From James Clavell’s Shogun, to a bad Tom Cruise movie, to William Adams, it’s a story told over and over in both Japan and the West. Some of those stories have a kernel of truth and few are as fascinating as that of Yasuke—a samurai born in Africa.
Here to help us unravel the mystery and history of this legendary samurai is Thomas Lockley. Lockley is a professor at Nihon University College in Tokyo and a visiting scholar at the University of London. Along with Geoffrey Girard, Lockley is the author of the book African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan.
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