Separately, did you actually watch that Vera Dark video?
no real way to determine for sure whether he was or wasn't a samurai.
You are right, I did research for the Easter Rising that happened in 1916. There is still back and forth when new notes and family stories get revealed that change the order of how things happen, or simply if a person was in one place and not in another, or who gave the order to do what when.
History is not so clean-cut as people tend to get the impression, it's largely interpretative. It's not so simple as did or didn't happen, and not a lot of certainty, but rather best guesses.
In this case, the argument for Yasuke being a samurai can be pretty compelling owing to the concept of a samurai's stipend
Since I am too lazy to do my own research, I have used "asked a historian" which has been good to me. Been thorough and can be clearly referenced.
8.
As part of his order preparing for his soon-to-be conquests in 1582, Nobunaga ordered his vassals to hire good local samurai.
一 國諸侍に懇扱さすか無由斷樣可氣遣事
一 第一慾を構に付て諸人爲不足之條內儀相續にをひては皆々に令支配人數を可拘事
一 本國より奉公望之者有之者相改まへ拘候ものゝかたへ相屆於其上可扶持之事
Item [5] Treat the provincial samurai with courtesy. For all that, never be remiss in your vigilance.
Item [6] When the top man is greedy, his retainers do not get enough. Upon succeeding to domains, apportion them to all your retainers and take new men into your service.
Item [7] Should there be any men from your home province who wish to enter your service, investigate their provenance, contact their previous employers, and only then grant them a stipend.
So the word was not a one-off usage by Ōta Gyūichi and every single usage of the word stipend was, without exception, either giving it to samurai (some incredibly high ranked) or used in the context of hiring samurai or samurai’s salary. This includes a young sumo wrestler who may or may not have been a samurai, but was definitely hired by Nobunaga as his personal samurai. There is therefore no reason to think Gyūichi was using the term in Yasuke's context any differently. In fact we might even draw a slight parallel to Tomo Shōrin. Yasuke was said to have had the strength of ten men, meaning he must have demonstrated that strength and it’s certainly possible he demonstrated it through wrestling and beating everyone. Nobunaga loved wrestling, loved exotic stuff, and as shown above loved to demonstrate his generosity. So, it would certainly make sense on meeting Yasuke for Nobunaga to give Yasuke, who was exotic and might have been good at wrestling, a samurai’s stipend, a decorated sword, and a residence.
EDIT: I'm adding an explanation because people are misinterpreting this post.
The meaning of the word stipend alone is not supposed to prove Yasuke was a samurai. What proves Yasuke was a samurai is not that he received a samurai stipend, but that he received a samurai stipend & carried Nobunaga's weapons which was usually the job of a
koshō and
koshō were samurai & was awarded a residence by Nobunaga and the only non-samurai to be awarded one in the
Shinchōkōki was the special one given to the Jesuits & he was given 10
kanmon by Nobunaga's nephew Tsuda Nobuzumi which was a lot more than the annual income of some samurai & he was mobilized and followed Nobunaga on the Takeda campaign of 1582 and remained by Nobunaga's side even after Nobunaga dismissed all his
"ordinary soldiers" & he fought with a katana at Nijō.
A full citation of other evidence can be found here
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye
His book is not good as a reference text, I read it a bit. and note that it is written as a biography. A lot of it feels interpretative.
But when people say Thomas Lockley made it all up and he is the ONLY person who wrote about Yasuke, have they actually done the leg work and checked the citations and references?
====
@Corty
I can accept the second video about people being butthurt about historical figures who wear war armour in a city or not liking XYZ history of Josh Washington coz he won't drink cider on a hot day or whatever, because those are all "feelings" because people have such delicate feelings.
but the first video is BS.
Changing reference on wiki coz he wrote a book?
Saying he wasn't or was a consultant for his shitty book?
Going dark on socials because people are now harassing him?
The government want more research done? What the fuck does this prove?
And now people are gonna crucify a guy for writing a historical biography?
(these are all rhetorical questions)
Categorised as a BIOGRAPHY reads like a biography with a 920 Dewey number that can't even stand shoulder to shoulder with 952s?
I have read Dolly Parton's biography they are NOT and good book for history.
And that's why as of this moment out of 60 citations in Wikipedia only 4 have his name on them.
A character assassination of Thomas Lockley is a lazy way of proving anything.
And what's more... argh!
If you only find one researcher on a topic (he is not), does that mean no one else is researching because a YouTuber googleed it for 2 seconds and found none (have they looked on the second page of Google?)
Have these people ever done academic research before? Do they not know what primary resources are?
Imagine if you, Dave writes a book a non-fiction biographical, some game company use as a reference
the game company claims in a podcast "Oh yes we used Dave's book and we talked to Dave about his book"
on is this line we are going to say yes Dave work on the game and its historical accuracies.
On a tweet, Hi I am Dave, I am getting hate mail. people think I worked on the game, but I didn't, and I am not responsible for it (because he is not a designer or creative director)
Suddenly its,
"he falsely claimed.... he deleted his account.... He thinks
YOU as a customer
is stupid"
That's why I fucking hate rage-baiting bastards.
yasuke-san.com
Screenshot_20240724-153222_1.jpg
Screenshot_20240724-154659_1.jpg
Screenshot_20240724-154043_1.jpg
Screenshot_20240724-155137.jpg
Screenshot_20240724-154439_1.jpg
