We don’t know anything of what happened to Yasuke, the world’s first and only black samurai, after the year 1582. We know that he was an African man, likely Ethiopian although he may also have been from Mozambique. He joined with a group of Italian Jesuits in Japan in 1579.
The African man met with the mighty Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga, who was impressed by him as he stood six feet tall and had a body “as black as ink”. He was also a fine wrestler and, according to Nobunaga, “possessed the strength of ten men”. So impressed was the warlord that he took the man under his wings, and gave him the Japanese name of Yasuke. He was given a sword, a house and made into an official retainer of Nobunaga.
In 1582, Yasuke’s lord and master, Nobunaga, was killed. Yasuke fought off his enemies bravely, who eventually spared his life. Jesuit missionaries nursed back the only black samurai to good health, as was later reported in letters. He then disappears from history. There is one final mention in a letter some six months after Nobunaga’s death, in which it is reported Yasuke recovered well and is doing alright. Whatever he does next, or where he goes, is unknown.
Now does he have descendants? He may well have — Dutch seaman Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn and English seaman William Adams were both made samurai, too, and given Japanese wives by whom they had families. Yasuke was a man of relatively high status within Nobunaga’s Japan, and it is fairly likely he was given a wife at some point. It wouldn’t necessarily have been recorded, just as his fate never was.
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