African Samurai
Book description
"A readable, compassionate account of an extraordinary life.” —The Washington Post
The remarkable life of history’s first foreign-born samurai, and his astonishing journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society.
Warrior. Samurai. Legend.
When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traversed much of…
Why read it?
1 author picked African Samurai as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I loved this deep dive into a history that I knew absolutely nothing about.
It’s the story of an enslaved man from East Africa transported by the Portuguese to Japan, left behind there with a Jesuit mission. He came to fight alongside feudal lord Odo Nobunaga to become Japan’s first foreign-born samurai. What? He’d been in India before that?
Every chapter yielded something new I didn’t know and it’s all really well contextualized. The writers make it clear where the gaps in documentation lie, even as they tell a gripping story and bring a larger-than-life character to the page.
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