Yasuke

Yasuke was a retainer of African origin who served under the Sengoku period Japanese daimyō Oda Nobunaga. In 1579 Yasuke arrived in Japan in the service of Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, Visitor of Missions in the Indies, in India. Yasuke was present during the Honnō-ji Incident, the forced suicide of Oda Nobunaga at the hands of his samurai general Akechi Mitsuhide on 21 June 1582. Yasuke is thought by some to have been the first African that Nobunaga had ever seen and he was one of the many Africans to have come with the Portuguese to Japan during the Nanban trade.