Talk:Yasuke

Untitled

Hi! While reading the article, I see "According to other, unattributed, accounts Yasuke may have come"... If these accounts are unattributed, where do they come from ? Can't we find a source for them (contemporary or not)... If they just come from internet forum or romans, we can not take them in account... -Ash_Crow 01:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

One point of mentioning the "other, unattributed" accounts is to show how many contradictory, or clearly wrong, accounts there are about Yasuke. Look at earlier versions of the article. I meant to say "beware of what you read."

Another purpose is to make it so if someone adds something and does not attribute it, hopefully the reader will realize that it is not attributed, unlike earlier versions where there was no idea at all of what came from where, or what was supposed to be attributed or not. (Though most was wrong anyway.)

Of course, people do make attributions without checking them, such as saying that "Yasuke" was mentioned in Frois's History. I could not find any such mention in the relevant chapters, even with an index. Frois wrote a lot besides his History. And Frois did not say most of what was in the article, anywhere. Stone-turner 08:52, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

About a description different from the original of Japan.

"Because it was not a Japanese race, liberated it" is a bent translation.

"Because it was not a person, liberated it" is correct.

Yasuke was not recognized that human from Akechi Mitsuhide. (221.184.32.93 (talk) 01:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

The original was in Portuguese, and the whole was translated into Japanese in Jūroku-jūnanaseiki Iezusukai Nihon Hōkokushuu, Matsuda, Kiichi, ed., Hōdōsha, 1987-98. This is the modern, scholarly translation. The passage in the translation reads:黒人（カフレ）をいかがにすべきか問うたところ、この黒人（カフレ）は動物（ベスティアル）であって何も知らず、また日本人でもないから彼を殺さず、インドの祭司たちの教会に置くように命じた．(Vol. 3-6, p. 129) So Akechi gave two reasons.--Stone-turner (talk) 06:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, this article states that the Shinchoko-ki says Yakuke was stronger than 10 men (強力十の人に勝たり）. Did you check the Shinchokoki? I don't know what source has 100 men, but if it was written before the Shinchoko-ki (1622) I would be very interested to know what it is.--Stone-turner (talk) 06:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

この黒人（カフレ）は動物（ベスティアル）であって何も知らず - How is this part translated? It is said that it will not know anything because it is an animal (non-man). Akechi Mitsuhide saw yasuke in an aspect different from Oda Nobutada. 61.119.255.42 (talk) 04:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

People even say he will be made a 'tono' (lord)," though this did not happen.

Is this a joke? The statesmanship is necessary to become tono(lord). 61.119.255.42 (talk) 04:24, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't be obscene. I edited your above statement.

I don't know what you mean by a joke. It is a direct quote from Mexia's letter. He was in Azuchi at the time and reported what people said, which is why the statement was in quotes and the present tense. I will reword it a little.--Stone-turner (talk) 12:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

In the English page, yasuke is legend Soldier(lol

"Moreover, his strength was greater than that of 10 men."

強力（ごうりき）十の人に勝（すぐ）れたり

nobunaga praised strength of yasuke. However, yasuke does not fight against ten people.

juninriki(十人力) is not 10men power. When it is expression exaggerated a little, understand it.

Japanese has the word hyakuninriki(百人力). When the person who edited this page translates it, it will become the 100men power. However, the true meaning is "With strong help, I feel very stouthearted".

A commentary of hyakuninriki. http://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%99%BE%E4%BA%BA%E5%8A%9B

By a mistake to occur because of a literal translation, yasuke becomes a legendary soldier. 60.33.38.8 (talk) 07:01, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

An English page with useless yasuke as a hero.

Yasuke fought alongside the Nobutada forces for a long time but when all his comrades had died, he surrendered his sword to Akechi's men.

Is yasuke the only survivor in the fight? Do not make an impressive false story. 220.106.175.174 (talk) 05:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

To an English editor and people seeing this page.

yasuke is not evaluated historically in Japan. The reason is because he was worthless. yasuke does not have an impressive event in a fight. It is only it that he was defeated by the akechi forces. There is no useful description in yasuke as an aide of nobunaga.

However, the people of the English zone seem to want to change Yasuke to the hero. Please be careful about the impressions of this page. A false script with yasuke as a hero is added.220.106.175.174 (talk) 06:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The Yasuke/black people was identified with Buddha in Japan and was admired. Information disgusted with is on this page a lot.

Please submit the information that yasuke was admired like Buddha.

Please show a source of information where a black people was praised as Buddha in Japan.

The Japanese book seems to be shown as a source of information. However, it is obvious that it is not a mainstream thought. The words that akechi said to yasuke are famous. Yasuke is a beast(not Buddha).

Does the Westerner believe this information? They attach a plausible reason from the source of information of the doubt and recite an unrealistic made-up story.220.106.175.174 (talk) 07:03, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I edited the first sentence to make it clear

I hope no one has a problem with this, but I corrected this clause in the first sentence from this:

"...a black ( Erroneously thought of as African, or of African origin) retainer who was in the duke of the Japanese hegemon and warlord Oda Nobunaga between 1581 and 1582."

to this retainer of the Japanese hegemon and warlord Oda Nobunaga between 1581 and 1582."

Best regards TheBaron0530 (talk) 13:58, 21 June 2016 (UTC)theBaron0530

To add to article

To add to this article: is there a film about Yasuke that is in production as of early 2020? 76.189.141.37 (talk) 21:05, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Samurai

Pinging Havsjö and Natemup. Please use this space to discuss the merits of describing Yasuke as a samurai instead of relying on edit summaries. Havsjö, will you please self-revert your most recent edit? It was your fourth reversion in 24 hours, breaking WP:3RR. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:18, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I've re-added the samurai reference (which was almost certainly removed at point in the past, perhaps as an act of vandalism), with multiple reliable sources. natemup (talk) 20:50, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Sourced samurai reference is now being removed without explanation by an anonymous editor. natemup (talk) 03:08, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Natemup: I have reverted your edit. Please locate better sources. Geoffrey Girard is a novelist who almost certainly doesn't read Japanese, classical Chinese, or even Portuguese or Latin. Naima Mohamud is a filmmaker who AFAICT is similarly unqualified to write about these matters. What's worse, the titles of those two sources strongly imply you just Googled "African samurai" to locate sources that could be used as a pretext to write what you already wanted to write rather than honestly and accurately reflecting how our subject is described in the best scholarly sources. This practice, which demands that anyone seeking to remove dubiously sourced factual claims somehow prove a negative, turns WP:BURDEN on its head. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

In fact, one could Google anything about Yasuke and virtually every result would refer to him as a samurai. It seems extremely odd to be this pedantic about a claim found in virtually every source already used in the article. natemup (talk) 03:00, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

@Natemup: "almost certainly vandalism"? Please retract that personal attack immediately. Anyway, as I have explained on my talk page, "samurai" is a somewhat loaded term, and whether this subject "was a samurai" (or "Samurai" as this article has written it quite often in the past) kinda misses the point. A popular source, even one written by someone with a PhD in a relevant field, is not reliable for this material if it does not address these matters. If we take "samurai" as a generic term for "warrior" or "soldier" then it's a truism that Yasuke was a samurai, but this is not worth mentioning; if we take it to mean someone who was born or adopted into one of the buke families of pre-modern Japan, then it's a truism that Yasuke was not a samurai and you won't find any scholar who argues otherwise. But if you are going to persist in name-calling, such questions are irrelevant as I don't want to discuss the matter with anyone who doesn't abide by WP:CIVIL. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:11, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't know why you assume that was directed at you. It was my understanding that the term was removed from the article at some point in the distant past and I didn't care to find out who it was. But you seem to have outed yourself here with that very stringent definition that is alien to the dictionary. By nature of his being a retainer in the Oda clan under a daimyo, Yasuke was a samurai. natemup (talk) 11:40, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Anon continues to vandalize the page with original research and biased edits. natemup (talk) 23:22, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I don't know any anon: I was invited to keep an eye this article by User:Goszei, and it was my edit that you reverted with the edit summary The removal of this term from the article was almost certainly vandalism. Moreover, at the end of every calendar month in 2020 the lead sentence described him as a "retainer" with a link to affinity (medieval), which unlike "samurai" is not a loaded term that implies an unverifiable (but likely wrong/anachronistic) conclusion: the present "samurai" debate seems to have been initiated in mid-February with this edit; accusing someone, even an editor who doesn't have an account (!), let alone someone with ten times your edit count over a period twice as long, of "vandalism" because said editors joined User:Havsjö in undoing your unilateral and WP:BOLD edit is simply unacceptable, and you need to stop doing it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:13, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

And no, the fact that your initial BOLD edit stood for almost two weeks before someone else happened to notice the problem and changed it a third option does not make your edit the WP:STATUSQUO and said third option "bold". @Havsjö and Goszei: What would you say to restoring the lead sentence's "status quo ante bellum"? That he was a "retainer" of Nobunaga is plainly true and is probably the only verifiable fact about him, and my problem with "samurai" is that it's a vague term that typically is used as a translation of buke, and he almost certainly was not a buke, but how about you? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:24, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Sorry! It seems the original was a straight revert and the "man" thing originated with this edit more than a month later. "Samurai" appears to have stayed out of the lead sentence until very recently, when the bogus "former samurai" was added. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:37, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

The initial insertion of original research appears to have been in March 2019, when an idiosyncratic definition of "samurai" occasioned the removal of the term from the article. No source used then or now supports that change. Again, virtually every source used (and extant) calls Yasuke a samurai, which he was by dictionary definition as a retainer under a daimyo. It is quite literally the very warp and woof of his notability, of which I'm sure every editor involved is aware. And it has nothing to do with "Afrocentrism", as has been vandalistically added to the article as of late (in reference to a bunch of White dudes and the bloody BBC). I know Wikipedia has processes for resolving these kinds of conflicts, though I have not yet resorted to them. Choose your next step wisely. natemup (talk) 11:50, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are talking about, but my definition of samurai comes from Kōjien for the Japanese meaning(s) and Merriam-Webster for the English meaning; neither of them support the edit you started unilaterally pushing in February. Going back to early 2019 to establish the "status quo" would be highly questionable by itself, but going back into the page's earlier history the opening sentence doesn't appear to have used the word "samurai" on December 31 of 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, or 2015. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:48, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

You're picking arbitrary dates. The article began by calling him a samurai, and has referred to him as such at various points since. I was restoring a previous version that should supersede later (and unilateral, undiscussed) edits that were based on original research and a definition not found in any source used in the article. Merriam-Webster states that a samurai is a retainer under a daimyo, which throughout this dispute the article has unequivocally claimed Yasuke to be (based on the exact same sources that say he was a samurai). natemup (talk) 17:09, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Natemup, I haven't looked at the sources in-depth, but I am so far inclined to agree with you that the lead should describe Yasuke as a samurai. The body could note that there is some disagreement on the matter. I also agree that "Afro-centric" was a bizarre and POV statement to add.

That said, your most recent revert was a violation of WP:3RR and I urge you to self-revert. I also don't believe the recent IP edits to be vandalism, though I am frustrated that they are not participating in talk page discussion. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 17:48, 6 May 2021 (UTC) Struck because I'm bad at counting.

From what I can see, I haven't made more than 3 reverts in the last 24 hours. natemup (talk) 18:16, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

You're totally right! Struck. You may want to reach out to the IPs to demonstrate that you're trying to avoid an edit war. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Response to Natemup's response to me: I'm not picking arbitrary dates. I'm trying to establish that for most of this article's history the word "samurai" was not used in the opening sentence, because that is the WP:STATUSQUO that should remain intact pending consensus to the contrary. You are picking arbitrary dates that support your position. Meanwhile, the fact that the article used the word samurai when it was first started is completely immaterial because it was created in the bad old days when Wikipedia was "elementary and often wrong". That said, the earliest version of this article was actually superior to your version since it didn't begin "○○ was a samurai" but rather clarifies that he was born in Africa and became a "samurai" (i.e., it makes clear from its opening line that it is using a definition of "samurai" that allows one to become such without being born into it or even being born on the same continent). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:25, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

The "Afro-centric" bit was indeed bizarre and POV, and should not be re-added. I advise that parties comment further in the section break below, while the version I have restored remains in place. Please keep discussion strictly to the content at hand. — Goszei (talk) 01:54, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Section break

I think this discussion needs a reset. Could both parties please present the sources for their position in this thread? I believe that Hijiri is correct on the procedural point of status quo, which should stay in place while we have this discussion, but let us please put that aside for the moment and grind down on the sources so we can sort this out. Proposed versions of the lead/body sections with citations would be appreciated. — Goszei (talk) 01:17, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I believe I have now restored a version of the lead with a suitable claim to the "status quo ante bellum". I have retained several changes to the body made in the interim that are unrelated to the current dispute. — Goszei (talk) 01:50, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think sources are necessary for a negative statement on a talk page per WP:BURDEN, but:
  • OED defines "samurai" as A member of a powerful military caste in feudal Japan.[1],
  • Collins defines it as In former times, a samurai was a member of a powerful class of fighters in Japan.[2],
  • MW defines it as the warrior aristocracy of Japan[3] (it also seems to have changed since I last checked, as it now includes the obviously highly problematic definition a military retainer of a Japanese daimyo practicing the code of conduct of Bushido as well, and the fact that neither Oxford nor Collins gives this definition implies it is the less common), and
  • the commentary track on the Hong Kong Legends DVD of Moon Warriors distinguishes "samurai" from a similar Chinese term by referring to samurai as a "class" (I am not saying this is a reliable scholarly source, but rather that it is reflective of the popular/colloquial understanding of the word in question).
    • All of these imply that the English word "samurai" corresponds to the Japanese word 武家 more than the modern colloquial sense of the false friend 侍 (i.e., "a warrior" or "a soldier"), so Japanese-language sources that refer to our subject as a 黒人侍 are not reliable for the claim that he "was a samurai" in the common English sense, and English-language sources that translate 黒人侍 as "Black samurai" or "African samurai" are therefore mistranslations.
  • There's also this blog entry that compiles quotations from / summaries of the surviving primary sources (sorry, but covid is preventing me from going to libraries or museums, especially ones outside Osaka -- the same is, of course, true for everyone else involved in these discussions, so all we have is what we have on hand and what we can dig up online, and whether we trust that they are not misquoting anything is a matter of faith). None of them describe this person as a 侍, 武士, 武家, 士, or other such term; he is referred to repeatedly as a "Black slave" (using Japanese that I don't think I should repeat in polite company -- Ctrl+F "を見", and it's the two characters before that), or as a 黒坊主 (which may be similarly problematic, but I can't figure out how to translate, since 坊主 could mean an abbot, a monk, a young boy, a bald person, a master of some art or field of learning, a guy who serves in a castle in some super-complicated capacity...[4]).

I have yet to see any reliable source in either English or Japanese that explicitly addresses the problem of whether our subject was granted a title as a member of feudal Japan's military aristocracy ("the samurai") or he was a strong man who served under Nobunaga. The fact that he does not seem to have been given a surname, and that he seems to have been returned to the the Christians after the Honnoji Incident, strongly imply the latter. This is, of course, not to say that it's not okay to address the question in our article if reliable sources can be located, or to clarify somewhere in the article what we mean by "samurai" and then use it under that definition, but to say in the opening sentence that "Yasuke was a [member of the military aristocracy of feudal Japan]" is highly problematic.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:40, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I have little knowledge in this area, but I will offer some quotes and summarization from a copy I obtained of Lockley and Girard's African Samurai book, which explains their working definition of samurai:

Extended content

At Yasuke’s time the samurai formed the ruling class and almost anybody of note in Japanese society was a samurai. The rest, for the most part, aspired to be. [...] [However], [t]he samurai, as an identifiable class, had not started out this way. It then says that the Genpei War allowed samurai to advance from simple instruments of war and tax-collection muscle to the ruling class. On the Sengoku period: the endless battles took their toll on the limited ranks of the traditional samurai families, and many daimyō lords decided they needed to expand their armies. Gone were the days when a few hundred highly trained, magnificently attired samurai squared off against each other with swords in battle. By Yasuke’s era, the armies were tens of thousands strong and the need for cheap soldiers had provisionally overridden the need to keep peasants exclusively growing rice. Many of the peasants now found themselves receiving regular wages and better arms from their lords and they held an ambiguous dual status as farmers and lower-ranking samurai, known as ashigaru. (The key difference from traditional samurai being that ashigaru were not normally permanently retained, nor did they hold fiefs.) [...] Thus, following The Age of the Country at War, there was no shortage of “samurai” in Japan. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps up to half a million, could have claimed the epithet, though few would have any real family pedigree beyond the last couple of generations in the elite warrior world. A daimyō could call upon both direct personal retainers such as Yasuke, and part-time ashigaru warriors to swell his ranks. It is not known exactly which rank Yasuke held, but it would probably have been equivalent to hatamoto. The hatamoto saw to the lord’s needs, handling everything from finance to transport, communications to trade. They were also the bodyguards and pages to the warlord, traveling with him and spending their days in his company.

It primarily calls Yasuke a samurai, and a few times calls him a "samurai retainer". — Goszei (talk) 04:15, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Note: Lockley is the sole expert quoted in the following news stories currently used: BBC 2019, The Japan Times 2019, and CNN 2019. USAToday 2021 also cites Lockley liberally, and also cites once "Jeff Taylor" (who self-published his book, no good). — Goszei (talk) 04:36, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I am a little concerned by some facts about Lockley and his work.

• His GScholar is not very comforting on his academic credentials. Here is his self-description: [5] I am a Japan-based academic who researches CLIL (content and language integrated learning ) and the history which I teach as part of CLIL. I publish both educational outcomes research and historical stories of the people who inspire my learners to greater language learning, international empathy and understanding.
• The Japan Times source says: While the book is based on primary sources, Lockley has had to make quite a lot of “research-based assumptions” in order to complete the narrative.
• His co-author on the book was Geoffrey Girard, an author who primarily writes historical fiction.
• The book was published by Hanover Square Press, which is by no means an academic publisher – self description: Launched in 2017, Hanover Square Press aims to publish compelling, original fiction and narrative nonfiction—the kind of books that keep you up all night reading and that you want to talk about the next morning..

If Lockley's works and the descendant mass-media sources were the only ones we had, I would be more comfortable citing them, but that's not the case. There are many Japanese-language sources currently cited in this article (of whose academic credentials/merits I am uncertain, but I presume to be better than this), and I think we need to evaluate those first. — Goszei (talk) 05:07, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, Lockley has published three works on Yasuke, none of which were published anywhere academic.

• Lockley 2016 was published in a collection of treatises populated only by members of his university's faculty. ([6])
• Lockley 2017 was published by Ohta Publishing, which our article makes clear is not academic either.
• Lockley/Girard 2019 was what I analyzed in my above comment. — Goszei (talk) 05:59, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Concerning the matter at hand—that of sources, rather than cherry-picked dictionary entries—virtually every source cited in the article refers to Yasuke as a samurai. Full stop. It is literally the reason the article was created and is the warp and woof of Yasuke's significance. This has been obscured by an unsourced edit from 2019 that insisted on a hereditary definition of "samurai"—which is one of at least two, the other of which was cited above (and swiftly no-true-Scotsman'ed) by Hijiri. And lest anyone be misled, the article has been categorized under ~"foreign samurai" throughout this entire brouhaha, since well before I ever got involved, indicating the original state of the article before vandalism took hold. Hijiri has also deemed what would be considered a reliable source on any other article as unreliable here, even scholars whose work is *already* cited in the article without controversy. Thus three additional reliable sources I added have been removed, while the obvious original research seen above from Hijiri is being represented in the article at present without justification. natemup (talk) 04:28, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

and swiftly no-true-Scotsman'ed Wait, what? Please focus on content. I was quite clear that if we want to use the broader (Japanese) definition of "samurai" as meaning "soldier" or "servant", we can, but not in the lead sentence and not without comment, because (i) that is not how the word is conventionally used in English (as per its being unattested in most major dictionaries) and (ii) that is not how it is defined in the lead of the linked article. (If you are talking about how I called the definition "obviously highly problematic": it is a truism that Yasuke could not have "practic[ed] the code of conduct of Bushido" since said "code" was essentially invented around 300 years after Yasuke's death.[7])

As for general sources on Yasuke rather than ones specifically addressing the issue at hand (the definition of the word "samurai"), it would not be difficult to find sources on Yasuke that don't use the word "samurai" to describe him. Here is a Japanese popular culture (fictional) source that is arguably no worse than some of the sources previously cited, and here is a more academic one, but since it is impossible to prove a negative (and Wikipedia policy explicitly says we don't have to) of course such sources prove nothing. And needless to say, no one has yet produced a Japanese-language source that describes Yasuke as a 武家 or some term equivalent to how the above English dictionaries define "samurai".

Anyway, would you mind me asking how you would define "samurai"? If we know what those who want the word "samurai" to be used in the lead sentence want the meaning of this to be, I think that would help in figuring out a compromise, as I am only now getting the feeling we have been talking past each other and you have not been trying to make the claim that Yasuke was a member of the military aristocracy.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:50, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Both the Wikipedia article on samurai and the top dictionary definitions describe them (in at least one meaning) as the retainers of Daimyo. The sources say Yasuke was that. And I'm not aware of a Japanese-language requirement for reliable ones on this website. natemup (talk) 01:49, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Both the Wikipedia article on samurai and the top dictionary definitions describe them (in at least one meaning) as the retainers of Daimyo. That's simply not true. That is more technically accurate to the Japanese meaning of the word samurai, but all English dictionaries, and the opening sentence of our article define "samurai" as a a member of a warrior aristocracy. It is the exception that does otherwise (actually, no major dictionary gives the exact definition you cite, unless you consider "military" and "practicing the code of conduct of Bushido" to be inconsequential parts of the definition you are citing), and it seems that you are only claiming the word means X and not Y in order to "win" this argument so you can alter the article to make readers come away thinking Y, not X. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:19, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I see that Natemup has resorted to going to the samurai article and attempting to change the definition given there in the hopes that claiming that buke status was not "hereditary" will end this. I asked above for Natemup's definition of "samurai" and he seemingly ignored my request, but it now seems that he is actively trying to change any definition that he can in order to make the term practically meaningless. If a "samurai" is "anyone a semi-reliable source has called a samurai", then there is no reason to use such a meaningless term in the lead sentence of this article, any more than there is to use it in our Tom Cruise article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:03, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

I have located digital scans of many of the primary sources that Lockley includes in the end matter of his book. [8] We shouldn't trust the content of this Reddit comment, obviously, but the links seem useful. — Goszei (talk) 03:25, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, "black monk" is a mistranslation; he/she cites Wikipedia and says we got it wrong to say "page", but 坊, as I said above, has a multiplicity of meanings, and indeed a nearly identical word to that used in the primary source (with ん inserted between the two kanji) is apparently the Japanese equivalent of the N-word. Apart from problems like this, these look useful, and at least "cafre" doesn't look like a translation from Japanese and provides a hint to the unrelated problem discussed below. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:20, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Methinks an RfC is in order both here and on the "Samurai" page. natemup (talk) 14:33, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I mean... maybe? But you've been extremely evasive regarding what it is you want this article to say. You clearly don't want it to say our subject was "a member of the hereditary military aristocracy of Japan" because you tried to change the definition of "samurai" so it no longer says that. You've instead resorted to personal attacks and accusations of "original research" because the rest of us are carefully reading sources to see what they actually say, while you have been picking up words here and there and presenting them out of context. In this kind of situation, what would the RFC question even say? If it was just Should the article describe him as a "samurai"?, that doesn't work because I at least have not been arguing against that (I think it's fine to refer to him as a "samurai" in the article body, if "samurai" is defined inline as being something different from "hereditary military aristocracy of pre-modern Japan"). If the question was Should the lead sentence describe him as a "samurai" without further clarification? then it's fairly certain that most Wikipedia editors would oppose it, since the only sources that have been located that support such a claim either (a) are not RSes for Japanese history articles or (b) use a different definition of "samurai" from how the word is commonly used in English and defined in the lead of the samurai article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:22, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I will refrain from making a comment on what other editors would oppose until they have been consulted. I think it should read as "samurai" without explanation, because the public consensus (outside of Wikipedia and in the writings of several authors) seems to be that a samurai can be non-hereditary—a note contradicted on the Samurai wiki page only because of relatively recent edits from those such as (if not exactly) yourself. natemup (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

the public consensus ... seems to be that a samurai can be non-hereditary That is simply ridiculous and (as you have been told multiple times!!!) completely unrelated to the current dispute. Some sources refer to our subject as being created a member of the military aristocracy of feudal Japan, but those sources are not specialists in Japanese history (or even just "history"); other sources written by slightly more qualified individuals (but still not peer-reviewed or published through university presses) use "samurai" in a slightly more generic sense that is not how 99.999% of English speakers would intuitively understand it. You seem to be claiming that our subject (who, again, does not even seem to have had a family name but rather a super-generic, practically derogatory nickname -- bear in mind of course that the warrior caste were distinguished by their possession of family names[9]) was created a member of the hereditary military aristocracy of Japan[10] but that he was just created a member of the hereditary military aristocracy of Japan, since I doubt even Lockley/Girard 2019 support such a claim. Where is your source for any of this? Why would you think that? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:51, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

As has been the case from the beginning, my claim is only that Yasuke is referred to as a samurai in reliable sources (including virtually every source on the internet and those currently in this article), and that the primary dictionary definitions of samurai include non-hereditary descriptions. Again, we are in need of an RfC. natemup (talk) 02:20, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

That's not how WP:BURDEN works. You need reliable sources, enough to justify the inclusion of your specific claim in this article. Others have told you that since our article entitled samurai currently defines the term as referring to the hereditary military aristocracy of pre-modern Japan, sources that use the term in a different sense are not reliable for the specific claim you are making. Use of the term in the article body (not the lead sentence), accompanied by clarification that the term does not, here, refer to the hereditary military aristocracy of pre-modern Japan, would be different, but you have specifically rejected that proposal, and have refused to cite a single academic source written by a historian of pre-modern Japan that says our subject was made a member of the hereditary military aristocracy of pre-modern Japan. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

And, as discussed, you and a few other editors are the reason that the Samurai article refers to them as hereditary. It did not previously say this. Moreover, that is a textbook example of citing Wikipedia. As it is, you have no-true-Scotsman'ed every straightforward explanation and reliable source I've presented, which is why I'm calling for an RfC. natemup (talk) 02:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Slave or Servant

Because of the ambiguity in whether he was a slave or a servant, I removed the categories that mention him as slave. Thoughts?Manabimasu (talk) 22:32, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm sure it was from an old version of the page. natemup (talk) 22:40, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

黒奴 means "Negro slave" and is used in several of the primary sources. Admittedly most of these primary sources are (Japanese translations of?) Jesuit transactions, which Lockley 2017 appears to dismiss on the basis that 16th-century Jesuits didn't allow slavery, a rather outlandish claim from a historical standpoint given that Jesuits were buying and selling slaves in the United States even as late as the 1830s and our article on them repeatedly implies that they were among those Christians who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans and instead advocated for the importation of slaves from Africa (and no, I'm not basing this view on Wikipedia -- even setting aside the common sense that slavery was widely accepted in European society at the time and condoned by the Catholic church, peer-reviewed journal articles agree). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:40, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

@Manabimasu: I'm not that invested in this matter, but this is definitely not a reliable source on the matter; she cites the 2019 work of pop history / historical fiction discussed here, but Lockley seems to base his assumption that our subject could not have been a slave on the fact that he came to Japan with Jesuits and Jesuits opposed slavery, an extraordinary claim seemingly based on a misunderstanding of European debates on slavery in the 16th century (Jesuits were apparently generally among those who argued against using natives of the Americas as slaves, instead favouring the enslavement and transportation of Africans like our subject) and contradicted my numerous well-known historical facts. Moreover, almost all of our primary sources refer to our subject as a slave. I don't have a particularly strong view on this matter either way, and I don't like this edit or its edit summary for various policy reasons, but you didn't revert it based on said policy reasons so much as your apparent belief that the sources that reject the idea that our subject was a slave have the better case, no? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:15, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Lockley 2016, Lockley 2017, and Lockley 2019?

I have some questions about these. Amazon says Lockley 2017 is close to 300 pages in Japanese, so it's a little hard to believe that it could be a translation of Lockley 2016, which is less than 40 pages -- can someone identify the English version and replace the citations? I understand that WP:NONENG prioritizes a reliable source text in a foreign language over a possibly mistaken translation into English, so all the more we should almost never cite a translation of a text originally written in English. Lockley 2019, while I appreciate that it is not cited anywhere in the article, it appears based on its co-authors' resumes to be a work of historical fiction, and is therefore inappropriate even for a further reading section -- the article includes an "In popular culture" section for that reason. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:27, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I was looking for the English version of Lockley 2017 as well, to no avail. He talks about what happened a little in this interview, and I think that Lockley 2017 was only ever published in Japanese because it was derived from an unpublished expansion of the Lockley 2016 essay. — Goszei (talk) 06:02, 7 May 2021 (UTC) See my comment below. — Goszei (talk) 06:31, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

According to this academic review (accessible through WP:TWL), Lockley 2019 is a work of popular history. I quote the paragraph most pertinent to the discussion here:

The book is clearly intended as popular history, and, while it might be unfair to judge a book by what is it not, the scarcity of primary sources on Yasuke is compounded by the lack of scholarly citations or other means to document the narrative. The afterward lists chapter-by-chapter “Selected Readings” of primary and secondary sources, but no direct citations. The omission of citations is not necessarily a question a veracity of the scholarship, but the authors frequently go into detail about Yasuke and his personal reactions, like his kidnapping from Africa and his sword fight with a young enemy samurai, with no cited documentation. Likewise, there is no discussion of the evidence that explains how, in just fifteen months, Yasuke and Nobunaga developed such a close relationship. Was it just Yasuke’s height and skin color? Presumably, much of this might come from Fróis or be based on reasonable speculation, but, without specific references, details often seem like creative embellishments, rather than historical narrative.
— R. W. Purdy

_dk (talk) 06:06, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

• So, after writing the above I noticed that the Japanese version of Lockley 2017 is on Kindle and therefore immediately accessible to those who, like me, are interested in this topic outside of Wikipedia arguments and therefore wouldn't mind paying to own a copy. It says that it is a translation of Yasuke: In [S]earch of the African Samurai, which it says was published in 2016; however, putting this into Google brings up a bunch of libraries, etc. that all seem to have it quite confused with another book, as they all show a photo of the cover of a book with a different title,[11][12][13] and one even says Search is a different book due to be published in 2019![14] Moreover, they all attribute the book to Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard, which the translation does not. Moreover, as skeptical as I am of Lockley 2017's scholarly value, it is at least a work of non-fiction with extensive endnotes, and I don't think Girard -- apparently a novelist by profession -- would have anything to do with such a book. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

  I just read the author's note in Lockley 2019, where Lockley says that the book had an earlier rendering of this book (published in Japan), and then thanks Ohta Publishing and Yoshiko Fuji (the publisher and translators of Lockley 2017). He goes on to explain that he teamed up with Girard in 2017, whose new tips, ideas and techniques which continuously strengthened and took the book in new, exciting and often unforeseen directions. It appears these two books are in fact the same book, the latter having a popular history spin from Girard. — Goszei (talk) 06:31, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

  I own paper book of 2017 and 2019. I can say 2017 had nothing to do with Geoffrey Girard. 2019 version looks like historical novel for me but contains new findings after 2017.--Sacchisachi (talk) 15:43, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Folding screen "depicting a well-dressed black man who could be Yasuke"?

My Kindle copy of Lockley 2017 doesn't have page numbers so I can only guess that "pp. 147–148" probably corresponds to (the latter half of?) "十六世紀の日本にいたアフリカ人" (which is seemingly around two thirds of the way through the volume), but this explicitly says that there is no possibility that Yasuke was the model for the man in the image. Moreover, the first two thirds of this paragraph appears to bear a closer resemblance to a much earlier passage in Lockley 2017 (the final paragraph of "信長の小姓に", perhaps about halfway through the first chapter), which explicitly states that none of the African men portrayed in such screens is Yasuke but that there is a high probability that Yasuke left an impression on Eitoku and that memore served as a model for his later depictions of other African men. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:04, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Sacchisachi: I was curious, so I used Wikiblame and, after a number of tries (the text has gone through several permutations in the last three and a half years), found that you originally added this text.[15] Do you have a paper copy of Lockley 2017 that you can check? My Kindle copy makes pinpointing page numbers difficult, but if you could quote the first five or six characters of the relevant paragraph(s) that would be a tremendous help. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:38, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: The book was written in Japanese, translated from Lockley's original English text. At that time, I thought that the translation was not good, and found some conflicting descriptions in the book. That paragraph 「残念ながら、屏風絵の中の人物が...」also looked conflicting for me and I interpreted that there is no "faithful portrait" of Yasuke but later Kano painter put him as one of the characters in byobu. But now I think your interpretation is better. On the other hand, the new TV program of NHK about Yasuke starring Lockley and other scholars was aired yesterday. The program introduced one byobu possibly depicting Yasuke according to a museum curator. I wonder this can not be the source though.Sacchisachi (talk) 15:23, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems somewhat inappropriate to be assessing whether this or that passage may be mistranslated or dubious and insert our own interpretations (this is actually explicitly prohibited by WP:NOR). If Lockley 2017 is dubious, then Lockley 2016 should be consulted, and if Lockley 2016 is dubious, then none of these sources should be used.

I would also be very, very reluctant to trust such a show regarding such speculations, per Oka's blog cited below. The producers might have asked the curator if they had any possible depictions of Yasuke, had the curator show them a screen that could be the least implausible, and then cut around it to make it seem "possible". Moreover, I don't think other Wikipedia articles include speculation about how certain artworks may possibly depict this or that historical figure, since history is, by definition, about what is probable, not what is possible. (Ask any New Testament historian.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

@Hijiri88:I apology for causing misunderstanding about it, I will delete that section. I will be more careful about the statement not directly from expert of the topic. I now fully agree your opinion that history is what is probable not possible. On the other hand, I am afraid to say I think the problem is Lockley, the most known expert of Yasuke is maximalist which other historian called him according to 2017.「君は最大主義者的手法を取っているように思う。」「同じだけの確率で"ないかもしれない"場合もにも、大体において"あるかもしれない"方を採用している。とはいっても、史料が不十分な場合には、そうでもしないと先に進めないだろう」 Lockley was the first author who wrote the book about Yasuke exclusively, most of information about Yasuke relies on his research seeking what is possible. That is one of the origins of confusions in this article, I think. We have to discuss about it on other section though. Thank you for clarify my fault.--Sacchisachi (talk) 04:28, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

In popular culture

@KuroMina: Thank you for your recent edits. I was actually wondering how to incorporate Kurosuke and Endō Shūsaku, since they're almost certainly more important to this topic than practically everything else in the article.

The problem, though, is that neither is really "popular culture" as our article defines it. Endō Shūsaku is generally regarded as one of the more important novelists in the post-war Japanese literary tradition, and Kurosuke appears to almost always be mentioned in conjunction with its literary award. Another (probably bigger) issue is that Wikipedia "In popular culture" sections generally appear in articles on historical, mythological, or literary figures who were later incorporated into film, TV, pop music, comic books, etc., whereas Yasuke is a super-minor historical figure about whom virtually nothing is known (evidenced by the fact that he doesn't appear to have an entry in any Japanese paper encyclopedia -- most of them are more interested in sushi and cultural depictions of Minamoto no Yoshitsune) who has since the latter half of the 20th century experienced several "booms" in public interest resulting in these various pop culture interpretations. It therefore seems somewhat problematic to confine the two Showa 40-nendai works that represent the first "boom" (and to which most of the later works can trace their origins) to the "In popular culture" section.

It's a general problem with how this article is written: modern cultural depictions and hypothesizing by both professional and amateur historians comprise the core of the article, but it is written to present our subject as a well-documented historical figure: we have one apparently completely-bogus section entitled "Possible depictions in art" that discusses various Black people in late 16th- and early 17th-century Japanese are, one section marked as "theories" and another section marked "documented life" that is fairly overwritten and itself includes a fair bit of theorizing (it includes a lot of details of Frois and Nobunaga's adventures on which it is assumed our subject joined them). These matters could perhaps be ignored if we changed "In popular culture" to "Cultural depictions", dropped the bullet points, and wrote a prose description of the various "Yasuke booms" in modern Japan and modern African-American circles. This would make it by far the longest section in the article, but it would be much more in line with various Wikipedia policies and guidelines, particularly WP:WEIGHT.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:15, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Apologies for the late reply! I haven't been able to edit anything for the past week due to family issues. Anyway, yeah, that's something that crossed my mind after adding Kurosuke and Shūsaku Endō's novel to the list: how they're certainly more significant than the other "pop culture" entries, since Kurosuke inspired Endō, LeSean Thomas, etc., and Endō's novel has generated a decent amount of scholarly interest/writings in English (probably more in Japanese). I think converting to a "cultural depictions" section, expanding on the various "Yasuke booms" in Japan and overseas, is a good idea. :) KuroMina (talk) 19:27, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

NHK program about Yasuke

The TV program of NHK about Yasuke(only tailor available https://www6.nhk.or.jp/nhkpr/post/trailer.html?i=29252) was aired yesterday. There was some new discovery about early life of Yasuke I wanna introduce. According to the research by Mihoko Oka, the professor of Tokyo university specializing Kirishitan history, she found new letter of Valignano in Rome about the man likely Yasuke . To summarize the points,

• In August 4 1574 he was given slaves from the commander of Mozambique Island.
• He soon hand over most of slaves out of three men. He sent two of them to monastery in Lisbon, only one man remain beside him.

This letter suggests new perspective which may solve the problems.

• If this man was Yasuke, he was probably born in coastal area near Mozambique Island.
• He was the slave worked under Portuguese colonial government, then became the servant of Valignano.

Oka suggests he might studied at St. Paul's college in Goa and was trained as soldier utilizing firearms. The program was not entirely academic, but I think this theory is worth considering.--Sacchisachi (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

We don't generally rely on research results published by means of NHK shows, but FWIW Oka wrote a blog about the show.[16] She doesn't seem to have been too impressed with the final product: unfortunately I missed the actual show so I can't speak to it, but it would be preferable if we could cite something written by her and edited by other professional historians in consultation with her, rather than (perhaps inappropriately) cut together by TV producers attempting to cash in on the hype surrounding the Netflix show. She apparently told them that she saw no reason to believe that the "くろぼう" named "又大夫" was actually secretly Yasuke, but the producers apparently didn't listen to her? And she was apparently very upset that they put her name at the end, implying that she oversaw the production, without her consent. This reminds me a little of Marushima's reaction to Age of Samurai, and is generally why we shouldn't trust mass-market TV shows for historical information. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:03, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I see. I did not know Oka was confused about the show. It is terrifying, if misconception about historical figure spread due to commercialism. About くろぼう, I did not even noticed that part of the program was associated Oka. I know the book identifying くろぼう or 又大夫 as Yasuke　大航海時代の日本人奴隷-増補新版 (中公選書 116)　by ルシオ・デ・ソウザ and her. But there was no explanation of this interpretation, I thought ソウザ misunderstood that くろぼう was personal name applied for Yasuke.--Sacchisachi (talk) 04:49, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

It is terrifying, if misconception about historical figure spread due to commercialism. This is why I find it frustrating when non-Japanese with no grounding in Japanese history watch shows like Netflix's Yasuke or virtually any Japanese anime with a historical setting in the last 30 years. (NHK specials are not so risky.) The target audiences for such shows learned about Japanese history in their shakai classes in school, and I don't think anyone takes these kinds of shows too seriously. The real problem is that they sometimes drag professional scholars down with them, but this is not so much an issue for public understanding of history as it is for the individual scholars' reputations. (As an aside, I was re-reading the "Tokonatsu" chapter of Genji over the weekend: 「あな、うたて。まことにみづからのにもこそ言ひなせ」と、かたはらいたげに思したれど indeed; hopefully the 聞かむ人 will わきまへはべり in these cases.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:40, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

"original research"?

@Firefangledfeathers: Regarding this revert, you accuse the IP editor of original research and say the information as previously written is cited to a reliable source. I will admit that I have not read said source (for reasons already stated above), but I at least can read said source, which is written in Japanese, whereas nothing in your edit history or on your user page implies you can read Japanese, so you are almost certainly not in a position to claim the information is reliably sourced as written. Moreover, even if this information is reliably sourced as you have restored it, it is most likely WP:SYNTH (a type of original research) if the source does not mention our present subject (the late 16th-century figure known to history as Yasuke) on the relevant pages. Do you understand this? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:41, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Hijiiri 88: no I can't access or read that source. I admit that it was a borderline revert. Here's my thought process: that sentence was added by Sacchisachi and altered in an IP user's first edit with the edit summary "Removed shipmate and left slave. During this timeframe all African were slave who were removed from their original origin." Sacchisachi, do you believe that sentence was inappropriate WP:SYNTH? Hijri 88, do you believe the IP user's assertion that all Africans outside of Africa at the time were slaves? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 12:47, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it matters: our primary sources for "Yasuke" say he was a slave, and you have not provided a justification for the sentence's inclusion. I would, therefore, like you to refrain from accusing other users of "original research" until you have further familiarized yourself with our policies and guidelines. You are not the "main culprit" in that other discussion up above, but you have definitely been enabling the bogus accusation that being skeptical of popular media sources' reliability for this topic is "original research", which is counterproductive. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:27, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I have a lot of respect for your opinion, and it seems you have reasonable concerns about my conduct. I am happy to discuss it at my talk page, or yours if you like, but it's unlikely to involve anything helpful to this article's talk page. For this article, I would love input from Sacchisachi, or anyone else with access to the source. I would not revert any good-faith claim that the current line is unverified, but I do object to removal on the grounds of offensive falsehoods. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 00:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I guess that sounds reasonable, but given that you are thus far the only one to give any credence (and therefore add "legitimacy") to Natemup's claims, it seems relevant to the future of this article: there was a six-day period when it looked like the problem had resolved itself and the "original research" accusations against, e.g., me had ceased (once Natemup had seen sources that explicitly referred to "samurai" as "the hereditary military aristocracy of Japan"), but then this happened. As far as I am concerned, the IP editors (whether they are Japanese editors who may or may not be right-wing or racist but in this case are right on the subject or bigots from South Carolina or, indeed, POV-pushers who have never studied Japanese history) are only here because of the recent pop culture attention our subject has been receiving in the US and Europe because of various pop culture properties. (Yes, some of these pop culture properties are made by and for Japanese, but in Japan everyone receives a basic education in Japanese history, know that Yasuke was not the -- or even a -- central figure in 16th-century Japan, and do not mistakenly refer to him with a word that means "a member of the hereditary military aristocracy".) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:02, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see. At the time, I hope I was clear that was an only-barely-informed, preliminary opinion. We've all, I think, learned much more about Lockley's reliability since then. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 01:58, 18 May 2021 (UTC)