The African Slave Who Became Japan's First Foreign Samurai

In 1579, when an African man stepped off a ship in Japan, he caused such a sensation that crowds gathered just to see him. People thought his skin had been painted with ink. Some tried to scrub it off. Within two years, this former slave would become a samurai warrior serving one of the most powerful warlords in Japanese history.

His name was Yasuke, and he arrived in Japan as a servant to Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano. Historical records don't tell us much about his life before Japan—he likely came from Mozambique or Ethiopia—but we know exactly when his extraordinary transformation began: March 27, 1581, when he met Oda Nobunaga.

From Curiosity to Warrior

Nobunaga was fascinated. Here was a man who stood over six feet tall (towering by 16th-century Japanese standards), with strength that impressed even battle-hardened warriors. Nobunaga didn't just want to meet Yasuke—he wanted to keep him.

The warlord gave Yasuke his own house, servants, and a katana. He assigned him a stipend of 250 koku (enough rice to feed 250 people for a year) and stationed him at Azuchi Castle. By the standards of the time, this made Yasuke a samurai—a armed retainer in direct service to a feudal lord.

A Warrior's Brief Glory

Yasuke didn't just stand around looking impressive. Contemporary accounts from Jesuit missionaries and Japanese chronicles confirm he fought in actual battles alongside Nobunaga's forces. He carried weapons into combat during the violent conflicts of the Sengoku period, Japan's age of warring states.

His time as a samurai was tragically short. On June 21, 1582—just over a year after entering Nobunaga's service—Yasuke was present at the Honnō-ji Incident, when Nobunaga's own general betrayed and attacked him. Nobunaga committed seppuku rather than be captured. Yasuke fought to defend his lord but was eventually taken prisoner.

The betrayer, Akechi Mitsuhide, spared Yasuke's life, considering him "not Japanese" and therefore not responsible for his actions. He was returned to the Jesuits. After that? History loses track of him entirely.

The First, But Debated

Here's where it gets interesting: some historians argue about whether Yasuke truly counts as a "samurai." The term was fuzzy in the 1580s—it would become more formalized later. But scholars generally agree that what Nobunaga gave Yasuke (house, weapons, stipend, direct service) would have been understood as warrior rank at the time.

Twenty years later, Englishman William Adams would become a samurai under Tokugawa Ieyasu, receiving land and hereditary title. Dutch trader Jan Joosten achieved similar status. Both are well-documented. But chronologically, Yasuke got there first—by two decades.

What makes Yasuke's story even more remarkable is this: he went from enslaved servant to armed retainer of Japan's most powerful warlord in less than two years. In a rigidly hierarchical society in the middle of a civil war, an African man with no Japanese language skills or cultural background earned a position that most Japanese warriors spent lifetimes pursuing.

We may never know what happened to Yasuke after 1582, but the historical records are clear: he existed, he fought, and he was the first foreigner to break into the samurai ranks.