There, Lockley said the man could have been a military slave or an indentured soldier, but he “probably got his freedom before meeting Valignano.” The author speculates that given the circumstances of how the African man arrived at his employment with Valignano, it’s possible that Yasuke was enslaved as a child and taken from Africa to India. “Personally I don’t think he was a slave in any sense of the word, I think he was a free actor,” Lockley said. Some have said that Yasuke was a slave, and Lockley acknowledges the theory but disagrees. It was on this trip that Yasuke crossed paths with the feudal lord. “Euphemistically, they had valets-manservants if you’d like-who were also versed in weapons.” In 1581, Valignano headed to what was then the capital city, Kyoto, to meet with Nobunaga and request permission to leave Japan. “As a priest he wasn’t allowed to have any soldiers or guards,” Lockley said of the Jesuit missionary. They came by way of India, and according to Lockley, Yasuke was in service to Valignano most likely as a bodyguard. When Yasuke arrived in Japan in 1579, he was with an Italian Jesuit named Alessandro Valignano. Interest in Yasuke is bound to grow since, as Lockley says, he is widely regarded as the first-ever foreigner to be given warrior status in Japan. The anime series references a range of other moments documented in the life of the Black samurai who lived more than 400 years ago. According to Lockley, Yasuke entered the feudal lord’s service sometime within the next few days. Nobunaga then threw a party to welcome the man into his court. Of course Yasuke’s skin remains intact,” he said. Lockley described this event from March of 1581. “Yasuke was brought before Nobunaga and he didn’t believe Yasuke’s true skin color was black,” said Thomas Lockley, a co-author of African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan along with Geoffrey Girard. This interaction is not too unlike the actual initial encounter between the men. “I was born with black skin,” Yasuke responds. “Did you ink your skin black?” Nobunaga inquires when Yasuke’s appearance does not change. After the feudal lord applauds him for winning a fight on the streets, he asks for Yasuke to be cleaned, thinking that his skin is covered in dirt. One of the first scenes in the anime shows the first meeting between Nobunaga and Yasuke.
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