The African Samurai: The Incredible Story of Yasuke
An African child is taken by slavers. His ‘ownership’ is sold to Indian merchants. He is trained to fight, and kill, and forget his past. Then sold to the Portuguese as a child soldier, he fights, suffers, but survives. He is ‘purchased’ by Jesuits, who educate him and treat him far better than anyone since his capture. But he is still a slave. As bodyguard for the Pope’s Jesuit representative in 1579, he finds himself in Japan. Traded by the representative of a church, Isaac, now called Yasuke, finds his imperative to survive, taken into the clan of Oda Nobunaga – a warlord who, against all odds, looks to unite a warring Japan under one government. As Nobunaga is unconventional, so too is Yasuke; half a world from his childhood, he discovers a purpose. He embraces the true meaning of bushido.
Set at a turning point in Japanese history, Shreve has not only given perspective to slavery at the time, but to Japanese values and to the enigmatic personality of Oda Nobunaga, considered one of the founders of a united Japan.
