Book Review: The African Samurai by Craig Shreve ★★★★☆

In 1579, a Portuguese trade ship sails into port at Kuchinotsu, Japan, loaded with European wares and weapons. On board is Father Alessandro Valignano, an Italian priest and Jesuit missionary whose authority in central and east Asia is second only to the pope’s. Beside him is his protector, a large and imposing East African man. Taken from his village as a boy, sold as a slave to Portuguese mercenaries, and forced to fight in wars in India, the young but experienced soldier is haunted by memories of his past.
From Kuchinotsu, Father Valignano leads an expedition pushing inland toward the capital city of Kyoto. A riot brings his protector in front of the land’s most powerful warlord, Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga is preparing a campaign to complete the unification of a nation that’s been torn apart by over one hundred years of civil war. In exchange for permission to build a church, Valignano “gifts” his protector to Nobunaga, and the young East African man is reminded once again that he is less of a human and more of a thing to be traded and sold.
After pledging his allegiance to the Japanese warlord, the two men from vastly different worlds develop a trust and respect for one another. The young soldier is granted the role of samurai, a title that has never been given to a foreigner; he is also given a new name: Yasuke. Not all are happy with Yasuke’s ascension. There are whispers that he may soon be given his own fief, his own servants, his own samurai to command. But all of his dreams hinge on his ability to protect his new lord from threats both military and political, and from enemies both without and within.

 

This book… I mean where do I start? I went in with zero expectations because it’s a part of history that I am not familiar with. I don’t know anything about Japanese history let alone shoguns and samurais. So, when I learned that this is based ON A REAL MAN! The first and PROBABLY the only black man who ever obtained the samurai status as a foreigner, you bet I was amazed.

 Home is a lost place, more dream to me than memory.

 

Sadly, there is very little material about his life before slavery as tribal cultures relied on oral history, and going back more than 500 years to tell this man’s story will in some part have to be fabricated. And before you start complaining, Shreve mentions at the end of the book that there will be some ‘historical inaccuracies and information which are entirely speculation or imagination’.

I want to address the things I didn’t like before I start to praise this book. I was not a fan of the info dumps describing the hierarchy and political mechanics of Japanese nobles. I get it, it’s essential to set the stage, but Shreve could have been creative with it like wove it into the story somehow. Second, there are some graphic passages related to war, conflict and horrific treatment towards prisoners and enslaved people. Don’t read this book if you have a weak stomach for reading descriptions of violence.

 

I remember the turtles, rising out of the sand and making their way to the sea. It was the last time I was free.

 

With the negative out of the way, I do want to begin by stating this book took me on a journey I wasn’t prepared for. Told in a non-linear style, and alternating chapters, this is Shreve’s version of what happened to a black slave, trained as a warrior in India to fight the Ottomans, guarding a Jesuit priest who then sells him to Nobunaga, earns the status of a samurai and finally gains freedom. There are a lot of musings in this book about the universality of humanity mixed in with the more dramatic action sequences. Yasuke does make the distinction that he spent the first twelve years of his life in the comfort of his home and tribe and others so dramatically changed with slavery and the army and seeing the world.

 

Half my life amongst family, half my life amongst strangers. Half my life a child, half my life a solider.

 

But we a can’t have a book, set during the slave trade that doesn’t talk about racism. As Yasuke spent his time in Europe with the Jesuits, they didn’t take long to call him a savage and change his name because they wanted to eradicate his culture.  The African Samurai was renamed Isaac when he was sold by the Portuguese to the church. The name Yasuke stuck because the Japanese warlord, Oda Nobunaga who brought him couldn’t pronounce his name so found an equivalent.

 

The Portuguese named me well. Issaac. A man to be sacrificed. A thing to be offered.

 

I ended up liking the characters and their interactions, the vivid details that transported me back in time through the tea ceremony and mythology. With the story spanning three continents, felt that I had learned a lot about events in the 16th-century Sengoku period, especially about how Christianity was spreading in that period when a lot of Japanese held onto their old traditions and beliefs. This reminds me of the novel Silence by Shūsaku Endō. 

Even though we are worlds and times apart, Shreve made Yasuke relatable, which got me hooked. Yasuke is complex; he was a boy with doting parents, kidnapped by Portuguese slavers who shaped his world, he had to toughen up if he were to survive war yet he still held onto his humanity. Yasuke is a gentle giant with a great sense of humour and someone with a lot of empathy. I felt his pain, resentment, hope and pride. This gentle giant had a good sense of humour and was easy to fall into banter with the other characters, even with General Nobunaga who showed much interest in Yasuke’s African heritage.  Yasuke’s interactions with Tomiko, the general’s house servant, there was some sprinkle of romance, but I think there was more admiration for one another. I did low-key wish they got together, but like interracial relationships in 16th-century Japan… I don’t think that would have happened… or maybe.

 

A bodyguard who relies on trust often fails at his task.

 

I didn’t know which way the story was going to head. It has an ambiguous end, but I wish there was more, like what happened to Yasuke afterwards? Where did he go? He sort of falls off from history and may have been spotted in a battle here and there. I guess that’s why fiction is better than life. With little historical resources, Shreve manages to capture an epic, of one man’s fight for survival and the search for a home and identity. It’s a visceral story of endurance, fierce, vivid and richly detailed.

 

A man who lacks fear also lacks caution.

 

I would recommend this book to historical fiction readers, particularly for those who are looking for a story with a non-Western setting and a unique perspective on the Indian Ocean slave trade. This book had it all: a story about strength, bravery, hope, heroism, survival, power, savagery, violence, ancient Japanese culture, and the unimaginable horrors and injustices of slavery. I think with the right director, this could be adapted into a movie that I would leap at the chance to see in the cinema. There are a lot of manga, anime, and video games depicting Yasuke from different sources, but two feature-length films are still in the development stage since 2017.

Yasuke is forever immortalised in fiction that is as close to fact as can be. And I believe Shreve did justice to narrate a story about Yasuke’s exceptional life at a critical time in Japanese history.

Rating: 4/5

Publishers: Canelo Adventure (Kindle Edition)

Publication date: August 1, 2023

Genre: Historical Fiction, Japanese, African, War, Samurai, 16^th century