Netflix’s new anime of ronin, race and robots is entrancing, if overstuffed with action-genre elements.
In “Yasuke,” Lakeith Stanfield voices a Black sword slinger in medieval Japan who is roused from retirement by a cross-country quest.Credit.Netflix
April 28, 2021, 11:19 a.m. ET
A partial list of the marvels in Netflix’s samurai anime series “Yasuke” includes sorcerers, a shape-shifting woman-bear, astral-plane duels and giant robots in feudal-era Japan. But the novelty that its characters are most surprised to encounter is a Black man who speaks Japanese.
Yasuke (Lakeith Stanfield, “Judas and the Black Messiah”) is a real-life figure, an African who in the 1500s served under the shogun Nobunaga Oda (Takehiro Hira), who came close to unifying Japan under his rule. (On their first meeting, Nobunaga assumes that the hue of the man’s skin must be inked on.)
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In 1579, a Black slave arrived in Japan with an Italian Jesuit missionary. Awestruck by his black skin, daimyō Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese feudal lord, acquired him as a servant under the belief ink covered his body. The two formed a quick bond, and Nobunaga bestowed the name “Yasuke” to him. Yasuke rose from servant to nobleman to samurai. Through a series of gruesome campaigns, which witnessed untold slaughter, Nobunaga worked to unite Japan. The 6’ 2” Yasuke accompanied Nobunaga on his travels, but following the feudal lord’s suicide, a death precipitated by a coup, Yasuke disappeared from the history books.
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