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The trailer for the upcoming Assassinโs 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 Assassinโs 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 figureโs existence, as evidenced by a Wikipedia page โedit war.โ The criticism ranges from the erasure of a potential East Asian male protagonist (backed up by Japanese people complaining about the โpolitical correctnessโ of it all) to theories that racist players will be immediately turned off by a Black protagonistโs presence in the game.
Image by Tokyo Weekender
Letโs 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 Yasukeโs origins and how he ended up in Japan in the first place, Lockleyโs works#ad, products of several years of specialized research, offer precise evidence of Yasukeโs time in Japan as a retainer of Oda Nobunaga.
Lockley isnโt the only one defending Yasukeโs 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 โrealโ samurai and therefore should not be a samurai in the game. Hirayamaโs 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 Nobunagaโs service.
The evidence presented by Hirayama parallels an episode in FX series Shลgun, when Englishman John Blackthorne is promoted to hatamoto rank by Lord Toranaga and given a house, salary, and servants. Itโs interesting how nobody bats an eye about the โforeign dude becomes one with Japanโ trope when said foreign dude is a white guy (Blackthorne, Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, etc.). Why werenโt people up in arms about โhistorical accuracyโ 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, isโฆ dicier. One fan on X went so far as to say that โit would be as dumb as having it based in Africa and deciding to use a white male protagonist.โ 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 Yasukeโs inclusion in the game is that it โdisregards Japanese culture and traditionโ and โinaccurately depictsโ Japanese history. But if Yasuke was realโฆ how is that historically inaccurate?
Image by Ubisoft
Iโve said it before and Iโll say it again: it really just boils down to good olโ 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? Itโs annoying that people still chalk up the inclusion of a Black protagonist to โwokenessโ and DEI politics, but such is the current reality of including diverse characters.
While itโs not hard to understand why Japanese fans of the franchise are mad about a central characterโs 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 isnโt she enough?
Featured Image by Ubisoft
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