Some players have decided to declare war on Assassin’s Creed Shadows because Yasuke, one of the two main characters, is a black samurai. Despite knowing that he is a historical character, many did not accept the choice made by the developers, declaring it far-fetched and stating that in reality he was not a true samurai, according to them a noble title, but only a servant. In short, we would find ourselves faced with the usual woke conspiracy to make a work of fiction more inclusive by forcing the story (something Assassin’s Creed has never done in the past… how can we forget the accuracy of the figure of Leonardo Da Vinci, just for do an example?).
A fan of Japanese history, particularly medieval history, @Sallymander40k, however intervened on X explaining that these people are very wrong and that what they say is simply false and fruit of ignorance. Ours has explained in several posts, also publishing explanatory documents, that personal servants like Yasuke were samurai in all respects, in the era in which he lived.
Ignorance and prejudice
“When someone says that one is a “servant,” they are actually saying that one is a Kashinor a member of a clan’s Kashindan.” Sallymander40k explained. “You can think of a clan’s Kashindan as basically its standing army, the soldiers it maintains… to be immediately ready for war.”
Sallymander40k explained that these were different figures from the Ashigaruessentially commoners forced into military service when their lord went to war.
“Whoever was in the Kashindan of a clan was considered a samurai. Basically all career soldiers were one during the Sengoku period. The idea of samurai as part of a rigid military caste into which one had to be born is an invention of the Edo period.”
“Now, to clarify, samurai *clans* were aristocratic noble families that you had to be born into. Being a member of the Kashindan of a clan didn’t mean you were part of the clan, but you didn’t have to be part of the clan to be a samurai.”
According to Sallymander40k, the currently most widespread concept of samurai derives from samurai clans: “The first samurai clans that emerged during the Heian period were career soldiers who became nobles.”
And here we come to Yasuke, who “served as Koshō of Oda Nobunaga, who was a personal servant/bodyguard of a Bushō or the samurai equivalent of a general or lord. The Koshō were basically considered samurai. Yasuke… He was a samurai. So now do we want to say that Oda Nobunaga invented DEI ‘woke’ (diversity, equity and inclusion) or what?”
Meanwhile a group of players vandalized the Wikipedia page dedicated to Yasuke, as can be verified by its historian, to pass off the false idea that he was not a samurai, just to be able to continue the controversy against Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
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