New top story from Time: ‘Some Seeds Are Being Planted.’ How Yasuke Paves a New Path for Black Creators in Anime
https://ift.tt/2PCZdsF It was around 13 years ago when LeSean Thomas first learned of Yasuke. At that time, Thomas came across the 1968 Japanese children’s book Kuro-suke by Kurusu Yoshio and saw illustrations of the real-life African warrior who arrived in 16th century Japan and served under Oda Nobunaga—a greatly influential feudal lord who is widely regarded as the first unifier of the country. “It kind of felt like a secret treasure,” Thomas said. He found it particularly fascinating that the story of Yasuke, largely considered to be the first foreign-born samurai, was told in a Japanese work. “I just thought it was really cool that there was someone in Japan who was validating this because a s a concept in the West at that time, it was kind of viewed as a self-insert culturally to put a Black man with someone who was one of the unifiers of Japan,” Thomas told TIME in a recent Zoom interview. “Even at the time I didn’t believe it.” That disbelief has since faded, a...

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