It’s madness in the streets of Kyoto on this spring day in 1581. Residents flock to see a group of foreigners heading to the Azuchi castle of the daimyo (independent warlord) Oda Nobunaga. Among them, an Italian Jesuit missionary, Alessandro Valignano. But the one who attracts everyone’s attention is a slave and black. Although he is not the first African to enter Japan, his physique is particularly impressive. The Portuguese Jorge Alvares, mentions in a writing from 1547, his skin color and his stature, “6 shaku and 2 sun” (i.e. approximately 1m88). Nobunaga, the daimyo himself, is fascinated: he has him washed to ensure that his skin color is indeed natural! In his memoirs, he marveled at his physical strength, which he described as “equivalent to that of 10 men”. Fascinated, he brings him into his service and baptizes him Yasuke. It is this mysterious character that the new opus of the Assassin’s Creeds saga, Shadows proposes to embody.
Probably from Mozambique, the future Yasuke is torn from his native land by slave traders who take him to Goa. There, he was purchased by a company of Jesuit priests and entered their service. After some time in this important Portuguese trading post located in the Indies, he embarked with Valignano in 1579. Direction another mission to Kyushu, the southernmost island of the Japanese archipelago. At this time, Japan was going through a period of great instability (…)
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