In Japan, the presence of a black samurai in a video game provokes strong reactions

LETTER FROM TOKYO “Assassin’s Creed Shadows”, which is developed by Ubisoft Quebec and published by Ubisoft, will be released in France on February 14, 2025. UBISOFT For a long time, geishas, ​​samurai and even ninjas (henchmen from medieval times) have fueled the imagination of millions of young people around the world. But when foreigners seize figures of Japanese national identity, this can cause significant tensions in the land of the rising sun. This is what happened with the Assassin’s Creed video game, Shadows, produced by Ubisoft. The final episode of this series takes place in Japan for the first time. The broadcast of its trailer last May caused a flood of online messages in the Archipelago which has just forced Ubisoft to postpone the release of the game until February 2025, although it was initially planned for November 2024. An online petition, gathering nearly 100,000 signatures, is now calling for its cancellation. “I have been following this series since the beginning and I was happy that it was finally taking place in Japan, but today I feel very angry,” regrets one Internet user. The game features two characters, Yasuke and Fujibayashi Naoe. The first, presented as a samurai – but whose status is in reality questionable – did exist. Read also: The rediscovered legend of Yasuke, Japan’s first black samurai Read later Probably born in Mozambique, he arrived in Japan with the Portuguese Jesuits and was received with them by the most powerful warlord of the time, Nobunaga Oda (1534-1582). First surprised by the African’s build and skin color – he examined it carefully, thinking that it was artificially colored – he ended up offering him a saber. “I’m fed up with Western political correctness” And it is precisely the fact that this character is Black that poses a problem for many Internet users. Some see this as the imposition by Ubisoft of criteria of thought prevalent in the West, a sort of “wokism”. “I’m fed up with Western political correctness. Don’t involve Asia in this,” protested another Internet user, reflecting an annoyance that is more widespread in Japan than one might think abroad. Would this not also be a reflection of xenophobic and racist reactions? Certainly for some of them, which have also been relayed by white supremacists in the United States – swooning over the samurai… But surprisingly, few are those who are shocked by the second character, Naoe, a “ninjette “. In history, there has never been a female ninja. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers “Assassin’s Creed Shadows”: Ubisoft is banking on Yasuke, Japan’s first black samurai, for its new opus Read later Because there is another point that the reactions of Internet users reveal: the ignorance of most Japanese of what ninjas really were. The latter, often called shinobi (“those who hide”), appeared during the civil wars of the 16th century. Men of the shadows, mercenaries of the lords, they spied or carried out nocturnal raids on their master’s enemies. During the two centuries of peace of the Edo period (1603-1867), under the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns, there were only a few hundred left. It was then, in the entertainment literature of the time and on the stage of kabuki, the traditional Japanese theater, that ninjas became villains dressed in black or righters of wrongs. Hagiographic texts sought to make them equivalents of Robin Hood. And their technique of camouflage, of fluid movement, was assimilated to a kind of martial art (ninjutsu), if not a “Way”. Le Monde Mémorable Test your general knowledge with the editorial staff of “Le Monde” Test your general knowledge with the editorial staff of “Le Monde” Discover Then, popular novels, mangas, animated films and video games took hold of it, their giving an increasingly distant image of what they were, as recounted in a recent work by the historian Pierre-François Souyri (History of the Ninjas. Henchmen and Spies in Samurai Japan, Tallandier). So much so that today, ninja schools are flourishing – mainly thanks to the foreigners who attend them. Since 2017, Mie University, in the prefecture of the same name, which claims to be the cradle of ninjutsu, has even opened an International Ninja Research Center. Find here all the letters from our correspondents. Philippe Pons (Tokyo, correspondent) Reuse this content



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