Having claimed Japan, the warlord soon set his sights higher, deciding he deserved to sit on the Imperial Throne of China, and was even said to be aiming so far as the land of the Buddha’s birth, India.
He fancied himself a modern-day Alexander the Great, heading west across the Eurasian landmass, and sent missives to neighboring states, Korea, Ryukyu (modern-day Okinawa), Taiwan, and the Spanish colonial authorities in Manila, demanding they support his ambitions to invade China. The Europeans were polite but firm in declining to help, and the Asian kingdoms either failed to answer or delayed again and again. The Koreans wondered who Hideyoshi even was, as they generally ignored goings-on to their east, considering the Japanese to be barbarians little worthy of attention. As Hideyoshi became more and more frustrated at the limit of his ability to project his power overseas, he decided to move unilaterally in his invasion of China. First though, to secure supply routes and a beachhead from which to attack the Chinese mainland, he needed to control the Korean peninsula. If the Koreans would not become his allies, then they’d become his subjects.
The ensuing Imjin War of 1592–1598 involved virtually the whole nation of Korea where, ultimately, three hundred thousand Japanese warriors faced the Koreans and more than one hundred thousand Chinese soldiers supporting their Korean allies. Hideyoshi’s well-equipped, battle-hardened professional soldiers landed in the southeast, at the point nearest to the Japanese archipelago in 1592. The force consisted of one hundred sixty thousand samurai, twenty-four thousand muskets, seven hundred transport ships, and more than three hundred warships, and all the support staff and sailors that went with that. Hideyoshi himself commanded proceedings from his specially built castle in north Kyushu, where another eighty thousand-plus samurai waited in reserve.
The Japanese force met surprised, and badly prepared, Korean forces who largely lacked any experience of actual warfare and, crucially, had no muskets. Battles raged up and down the peninsula, but eventually led to a stalemate in 1593, after the decisive Chinese intervention with Japanese forces holding on to strongholds on the southeast coast and successfully, but only just, retaining their continental foothold.
Katō Kiyomasa led this invasion with his army of more than twenty thousand vassal samurai and traversed Korea from south to absolute north, laying waste to vast swathes of the peninsula. In 1592, his troops crossed the frontier into Manchuria—now part of China, but then the realm of the fearsome and warlike horsemen of the Jurchen people who turned them back. Then Katō’s army fought their way back south again in the face of an onslaught by Korea’s Chinese allies, and an increased Korean guerilla insurgency. The distance Katō’s army crossed was roughly equivalent to that of Napoleon’s famous campaign from Paris to Moscow, at around seventeen hundred miles. When the war was at a stalemate in 1593, Katō built himself a formidable castle at Sosaengpo near Ulsan in southeast Korea (now headquarters of Hyundai and the site of the world’s largest shipyard), where he was holed up while negotiations between the Chinese and Hideyoshi seemed to continue without end.
Katō and his troops were in a desperate situation in the Sosaengpo Castle. His diseased and depleted army was hungry and running short on funds and munitions for the anticipated push back into the interior when the peace talks eventually failed and they’d enter the field again. Katō was a hawkish general, dedicated to the war and to the service of his master Hideyoshi. He turned now to his leading retainers at home in his fief Higo to deliver the materials that were so badly needed.
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One of those retainers was African, quite possibly our heroic African samurai.
Just how Yasuke would have entered Katō’s service is unclear, but Katō’s proximity to, and trade with, Nagasaki would certainly have meant that it would not have been difficult. Yasuke would have been a highly useful hire, and his warrior background and Nobunaga connection would clearly have appealed to the martial-minded lord.
In a letter regarding orders for an overseas trading mission dated December 6, 1593, Lord Katō gives specific instructions as to the leaders of the mission. One of them is called Kurobo, or “Black man.”
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The word Kurobo was originally a corruption of the name of the Sri Lankan city Colombo (Kuro was the Japanese name for Colombo, in modern-day Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka and India were often confused with Africa), and meant “a native of,” but had become a catchall term in Japan for people with very dark skin, especially Africans.
It may be that Yasuke, away from Nobunaga’s court, simply became known by this name. It was common in Japan to be named for your place of origin, profession, rank or position in society and it seems this African man simply became known as “Black Man.” This was an entirely logical name for the time and place in which he found himself and not the offensive epithet that it might be seen as today. Indeed, Elizabethan English references to Africans also use similar nomenclature, Blackamoor, Blackman, or simply Black. These were not meant to be offensive either and were simply an extension of common naming practices which described a person’s looks (Fair, Strong) profession (Barber, Gardner) or location (River, Castle).
Kurobo had not initially accompanied Katō to Korea, but remained behind in the port of Ikura in Higo; the letter of 1593 suggests he was a retainer with responsibility for aspects of international trade and foreign affairs. In 1594, this man called Kurobo sailed aboard a Chinese-style junk, built by immigrant Chinese shipwrights in Japan and owned by Katō, with a cargo of silver and one hundred twenty tons of wheat bound for Manila in the Philippines. The Spanish in Manila were very keen to trade for wheat as it was in short supply locally and for them it was essential to make their staples of bread and ship’s biscuit. The wheat was traded for munitions and then taken to Korea to supply the desperate garrison. The junk’s next moves are uncertain, but it was again ordered on a supply mission in 1596. Katō had complained that supplies of saltpeter to make gunpowder had been insufficient in previous voyages, dressed down his retainers and demanded over three tons this time. A later letter revealed that lead had been sent, but he again demanded more.
We do not know how long Kurobo had been living in Ikura and serving Lord Katō, but another highly interesting piece of information revealed by Katō’s letter is that it specifically mentions that care be taken of the African man’s wives and children while he was away on this voyage. Kurobo—whether he was Yasuke or not—was clearly well established in Ikura and had been living there for some time. He was a man of wealth, rank and responsibility in Higo. After all, to support such a household, you needed to be very well off. To specifically mention his family, Katō also clearly valued his service, and was fond of him. It also indicates the African was given preferential treatment as a foreigner, allowed multiple wives—polygamy was not common in Japan, although most men of rank had concubines.
Geographically, professionally and chronologically, there is every possibility that the man was Yasuke in the service of another Japanese lord.
Remember the illustration on the writing box (in Chapter 8) created by the Rin School, the one of a very tall black man dressed in expensive Portuguese clothing and the two dark-skinned boys. The cloak carrier is clearly a servant. But the boy musician? Could he be the giant’s child Katō writes of? The man in the illustration is likely Yasuke. The artists of the Rin School, who created this beautiful artifact, were based in Kyoto during Yasuke’s visits there, and this is probably the nearest we will ever come to gazing upon the African samurai’s genuine likeness. It may be Yasuke and his son captured in this image.
Another potential record of Yasuke’s post-Nobunaga years appears in an anonymous Japanese document from the 1670s. It mentions an African man alive during the 1590s, who shared the physical description of Yasuke, “seven shaku (feet) tall,” and was “black as an ink stone” and shared a name with Katō’s retainer, for he was also called “Kurobo.” This source gives us the additional information that this man was
from a country called Kuro. (Again, the Japanese name for Colombo, in modern-day Sri Lanka, often confused with Africa by the people of the time.) The unknown author undoubtedly meant this man was from Africa.
This man from Kuro was recorded as being present in the town of Shikano in the domain of Inaba (now eastern Tottori Prefecture in western Japan). This has to mean he was associated with a local lord by the name of Kamei Korenori because, although Kamei is not mentioned by name in the source referring to Kurobo, he was the lord of Shikano at the time and did indeed lead troops in Korea. He was a naval commander, and had contributed five ships to the war, all of which had been lost at the disastrous naval Battle of Dangpo in July 1592, when he himself only narrowly escaped with his life. Most of the Shikano men who had left so confidently for war the year before would have drowned on that terrible day.
Sadly, nothing is recorded about what activities the dark-skinned giant undertook while in Shikano, but a look at Kamei’s profile gives a good idea and establishes a key link with Higo and Katō’s African retainer of the same name. Kamei had been granted the fief of Shikano by Nobunaga at the age of twenty-four for his contributions to the Oda campaigns against the Mori clan in Tottori. Yasuke was very likely with Nobunaga when Kamei was granted his new land in audience at Azuchi, so Kamei would have met Yasuke.
Katō’s ship, with Yasuke onboard, and laden with weapons and food from Manila would have docked in Korea to supply his desperate men, then may well have undertaken a further voyage to Tottori to procure more supplies, or perhaps pick up silver from the local mines which Kamei controlled, for the embattled Katō troops. It’s tempting to suggest Yasuke was perhaps renewing an old acquaintance when he met Kamei again in Korea while working for Katō and then carried out a further task for him.
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Due to the very small number of Africans recorded as being resident in Japan at the time, and even fewer who would have matched Yasuke’s profile, the man, or men, proposed above are highly likely to have been Yasuke, but what if they were not? What other possible avenues could his life have taken after the death of Nobunaga?
In all of the scenarios, Yasuke essentially disappears into the mists of time. Few people recorded detailed information about servants or farmers, sailors, soldiers or craftsman, in these times when the written word was still normally reserved for weighty and “respectable” matters. These were times when writing was a rare skill, something very few people could do and even fewer records were ever published or have managed to survive until the modern day for historians to analyze. Such a contrast to today when almost anybody can share their life or post a lasting statement online in minutes. Until very recently, published work covered only a miniscule fraction of the human experience and what remains for us today was necessarily weighted to the interests of those who wrote, almost invariably members of the ruling classes.
Some historical detective work is again necessary to uncover the stories of those who did not fall into this bracket, of whom Yasuke was one.
Here are the most likely possibilities:
Jesuit Muscle
Upon Nobunaga’s and Nobutada’s death, Yasuke was returned to the Jesuit church by Akechi troops and, as we have seen, probably returned to Nagasaki to provide some support for their mission. Conceivably, he could have left Japan then, returning with one of the Portuguese ships to Macao or even Goa. Jesuits regularly traveled these routes, for trade, ordination (there was no bishop in Japan at this time), promotion and a variety of other reasons. They would have needed Yasuke for the same reasons Valignano did, protection and intimidation in an unstable and dangerous world. Any long voyage would have run the risk of meeting pirates and the European controlled cities in Asia such as Macao, Manila and Goa could scarcely be called safe as many of the settlers had specifically ended up there because they were criminals or were fleeing persecution in Europe. India and the Far East were, in effect, frontier worlds for Europeans, far from the writ of the monarchs who nominally made, but were rarely able to enforce, the colonial laws. Yasuke could have provided much-needed protection for the priests in these frontier towns, or on missions to the interior as he had done in Japan.
Hideyoshi’s expulsion edict of 1587 was not seriously enforced for a decade as long as the Jesuit missionaries did not attempt new conversion work and kept a low profile. Hideyoshi had even hosted Valignano on his second visit to Japan in 1591, which had largely been to try and smooth over Coelho’s huge mistakes and overly militant attitude.
All seemed well again until 1597 when a Spanish treasure galleon, San Felipe, wrecked on the Japanese coast. Hideyoshi’s coffers were depleted by the Korean wars, and he saw an easy way to refill them by confiscating the large cargo of silver, worth many millions of dollars in today’s money. The Spanish, mediated by Franciscan missionaries, tried to get it back. In the process, an indiscreet Spanish pilot, Francisco de Olandia, showed one of Hideyoshi’s advisors a world map on which the Spanish Empire was portrayed and informed him that Spain’s main strategy for colonial conquest was to send in missionaries to soften up local populations and create a fifth column of Christians who would fight for them, not their local and “rightful” lord or king.
That went too far. These foreigners were potentially plotting treason. They needed to be taught a lesson and it came on February 5, 1597. Twenty-six Catholics—four Spaniards, one Mexican, one Indian and seventeen Japanese Franciscans (including three boys), and three Japanese Jesuits (arrested in error), were executed by crucifixion in Nagasaki on the orders of Hideyoshi. One of them, Brother Paulo Miki, had been a student at the Azuchi seminary and hence an acquaintance of Yasuke.
After having their ears and noses cut off, they’d been marched to their deaths, all the way from Kyoto, twenty-eight days and well over six hundred miles away, where they had been apprehended in defiance of the nonpropagation law. The burghers of the Christian city of Nagasaki watched in defiance, praying and shouting out the names of Jesus and Mary. These first Martyrs of Japan would later be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church on June 8, 1862. In addition to the executions, 137 churches were demolished. The Jesuit missionaries limped along with increasing difficulties until 1614, when the new Tokugawa government finally issued a definitive expulsion order that was properly enforced. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this was directly after hearing the news from protestant English merchants that the Jesuits had been expelled from their country and were executed if apprehended.
Many Jesuits did leave Japan at this time, as did large numbers of prominent Japanese Catholics, including Takayama Ukon, the man who all those years ago had hosted Yasuke and Valignano at Easter and been present at Yasuke’s first audience with Nobunaga. He steadfastly refused to surrender his faith, despite having lost his lordship, lands, influence and everything else a lord possessed. He had been demoted to the ranks, left dependent on others’ mercy and charity. Most other prominent Catholics stayed, and apostatized or kept their faith secret. Later more would die for their beliefs.
Despite continued Jesuit attempts at infiltration, smuggling themselves into the country aboard Portuguese and Chinese ships, and continuing evangelism in secret, the Japanese authorities became better at weeding out what they saw as purveyors of a criminal code and a stability-threatening ideology. At first, Catholicism among the Japanese converts itself was tolerated in the belief that given time everyone would see the error of their “new” beliefs, and return to the natural way of things. But as the Japanese government under the Tokugawa shoguns, the dynasty that Ieyasu had founded in 1603, became more frustrated at criminal Jesuit infiltrations and continued public displays of religious passion from a population who very much clung to their faith, policy turned to strong pressure which eventually by the 1620s turned into severe persecution.
A mass execution of Catholics in Nagasaki. The 26 Martyrs of Japan. Painted by an unknown Japanese Jesuit exiled to Macau.
Mass executions an
d extreme torture, designed to enforce recantation, including being hung in pits of snakes or held over burning hot sulfur lakes until nearly dead, then revived to go through it all again, became institutionalized.
Under this intense pressure, most Japanese Catholics in Nagasaki—and even some foreign Jesuits—recanted. Catholicism went underground or remained only in isolated rural areas, far from the eyes of the central government.
Among all this persecution was an African named Ventura, who was one of the Catholics to renounce his erstwhile religion. He worked for the local magistrate Suetsugu Heizo, searching for Christians and fugitive priests in Nagasaki between 1625 and 1632. Although few details about this man are recorded, Ventura was much feared among the local Catholic population. Yasuke would almost definitely have been dead by this time, few people reached their seventies in this age and so it is unlikely to have been him.
If Yasuke had remained with the Jesuits into the seventeenth century, he would likely have moved with them away from Japan back to one of the Portuguese bases in Macao or India.
Sailor
If Yasuke had been cast aside by the Jesuits or decided to go it alone, there was one avenue that would have always been open to him. Sailor. The regular Portuguese ships in Nagasaki constantly looked for new and healthy hands. They were always undermanned due to deaths and desertions and Yasuke would have been a prime applicant. He knew his way around the ships, spoke several languages and was very strong. He had ample experience of traveling by sea and could likely make himself useful on a boat of any nation, in a variety of situations and jobs. Africans, Indians, Chinese and Japanese men often made up a very large proportion of “Portuguese” crews in Asia. This would have been a last resort for Yasuke, however, as there were far more attractive avenues open to him.
Yasuke: In Search of the African Samurai Page 31