Explainer / Who was Yasuke, the real black samurai who inspired Netflix’s new series? He’s appeared in anime and video games like Afro Samurai and Nioh, but little is known about his life

Dropping on Netflix today, Yasuke is the streaming platform’s latest “original net animation” – or ONA – following the likes of popular Japanese anime series Aggretsuko and Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045.

The show takes place in an alternate reality version of feudal Japan that’s full of magic and futuristic technology. Here, after the death of Oda Nobunaga – one of the Japanese lords whose conquests spurred the eventual unification of Japan in 1591 – a boatman named Yasuke decides to move on from his life as the Black Samurai, a legendary ronin. However, after saving a girl with mysterious powers from a warlord, Yasuke finds himself pulled into a dark and mysterious new conflict.

Something of a legendary figure in Japanese history, knowledge of the real Yasuke’s life is sparse and experts do not always agree on the details. Even the place of his birth is contested. Accounts written close to the time of Yasuke’s life suggest he was from Mozambique in southeast Africa where the Portuguese were active traders. But more recent scholarship posits that Yasuke could have been born further north, either in Ethiopia or closer to the Nile in Sudan.

Whatever his origins, Thomas Lockley, an associate professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo, is certain that in his youth Yasuke’s village was attacked by slave traders and that the young boy was sold into captivity.

From there Yasuke was likely brought to India, which at this time was a fragmented polity of different princely states. The Mughal Empire, which would eventually unify much of the subcontinent, was beginning its rise to predominance and there was almost constant warfare throughout the region.

It was into this maelstrom that a young Yasuke was eventually thrown as part of a group of African mercenaries. Lockley posits that Yasuke ended up fighting for Ibrahim Husain Mirza, a Persian lord who controlled a southern district of Gujarat on the western coast of India. It is believed that Yasuke was involved in the defence of Surat, and that after its fall he retreated south down the coast to the Portuguese territory of Goa.

Here Yasuke would fall in with the Jesuits, the missionary order who would take him to Japan. The first Jesuit missionaries had arrived in Japan in 1549 and had continued to build their presence ever since. At this time, Christianity had a small but significant presence in the country. By the end of the 16th century Japan would have the largest Christian community of any country that was not under European rule, and a number of important lords had converted too.