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The trailer for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows#ad game, scheduled for release in February 2025, illustrates its two protagonists slicing and dicing their way through some feudal enemies. Naoe, a female shinobi Assassin from Iga Province, is a fictional character, but inspired by the real-life Iga ninja of the Sengoku period. Her male counterpart is Yasuke, a Black samurai who existed in real life and served under the feudal lord Oda Nobunaga. With two very different playing styles and skill sets, complete with a vast array of weapons, players can choose between either shinobi or samurai as they go through the game. The dual options offer an exciting opportunity to experience both unique characters and their specialized gameplay.
Despite this innovative freedom of play, some Assassin’s Creed fans (haters?) are taking issue with Yasuke being used as a central character, even taking it so far as to question the actual historical figure’s existence, as evidenced by a Wikipedia page “edit war.” The criticism ranges from the erasure of a potential East Asian male protagonist (backed up by Japanese people complaining about the “political correctness” of it all) to theories that racist players will be immediately turned off by a Black protagonist’s presence in the game.
Image by Tokyo Weekender
Let’s address the easiest of the critiques first: Yasuke was definitely a real person. Thomas Lockley, a British historian and professor, published African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan#ad, a book detailing the life and history of Yasuke. Although much is still uncertain regarding Yasuke’s origins and how he ended up in Japan in the first place, Lockley’s works#ad, products of several years of specialized research, offer precise evidence of Yasuke’s time in Japan as a retainer of Oda Nobunaga.
Lockley isn’t the only one defending Yasuke’s record. Japanese historian Yu Hirayama, an expert on Sengoku-era Japan, took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to defend Yasuke and his position as a samurai under Nobunaga, a detail that was contested by naysayers who claimed he was not a “real” samurai and therefore should not be a samurai in the game. Hirayama’s statement gave concrete reasons, such as a stipend and house bestowed by Nobunaga himself, as to why Yasuke would have qualified as an official samurai in Nobunaga’s service.
The evidence presented by Hirayama parallels an episode in FX series Shōgun, when Englishman John Blackthorne is promoted to hatamoto rank by Lord Toranaga and given a house, salary, and servants. It’s interesting how nobody bats an eye about the “foreign dude becomes one with Japan” trope when said foreign dude is a white guy (Blackthorne, Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, etc.). Why weren’t people up in arms about “historical accuracy” then?
Image by Kintaro Publishing
The argument that Yasuke is unnecessarily replacing a Japanese male protagonist, and therefore erasing Japanese people and culture from the game, is… dicier. One fan on X went so far as to say that “it would be as dumb as having it based in Africa and deciding to use a white male protagonist.” This sentiment was echoed by Japanese fans who petitioned to stop the sale and release of the game.
The main reason given for why fans are so mad about Yasuke’s inclusion in the game is that it “disregards Japanese culture and tradition” and “inaccurately depicts” Japanese history. But if Yasuke was real… how is that historically inaccurate?
Image by Ubisoft
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it really just boils down to good ol’ racism. Ironically, people are mad about Yasuke, a real figure, but not Naoe, a fictional creation inspired by a real ninja clan. Where is the outrage that Naoe might be an inaccurate portrayal of a shinobi? Why is Naoe trusted to be a proper representation of Japanese culture and tradition, but not Yasuke? It’s annoying that people still chalk up the inclusion of a Black protagonist to “wokeness” and DEI politics, but such is the current reality of including diverse characters.
While it’s not hard to understand why Japanese fans of the franchise are mad about a central character’s Japanese-ness being stripped away to make room for a Black character, they should perhaps try to see their own negative reactions as a reflection of their own ugly xenophobia and general anti-foreigner sentiment, a concept that is unfortunately still heavily prevalent in 21st century Japan. There is a Japanese protagonist in Shadows; why isn’t she enough?
Featured Image by Ubisoft
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