Recently, I’ve discovered that Wikipedia keeps a list of “contentious topics”, which require extra care and attention from editors and administrators, since they’re frequent targets of edit wars and vandalism. Wikipedia’s Arbitration committee can move topics onto the list, and topics expire from the list after some predetermined period (at least a year) if the contention seems to have died down.

Most of the topics on this list are well known to be controversial. You’ve got major global issues like “climate change” and “COVID-19, broadly construed”, and regional hot spots like “the Balkans or Eastern Europe” or “the Arab–Israeli conflict”. Then there are more internal administrative controversies like “living or recently deceased subjects of biographical content on Wikipedia articles” and “article titles and capitalisation” (note the UK English spelling – I’m sure that was its own argument).

But sitting by itself, at the bottom of the list, is one word: “Yasuke”. Yasuke is a single historical person that I’d never previously heard of, who somehow managed to get on a list with Kurdistan and The Troubles. What did Yasuke DO??

Since we’re already on Wikipedia, let’s start with what the encyclopedia article says about him. “Yasuke was a samurai of African origin who served Oda Nobunaga between 1581 and 1582, during the Sengoku period, until Nobunaga’s death.”

Sounds cool! The article continues, saying that Yasuke was potentially born in Portuguese Mozambique, or maybe in modern South Sudan. He traveled to Japan in 1579 while in service to Alessandro Valignano, an Italian Jesuit priest known for being particularly tall. The news that there was a very tall European and a black African in Japan soon reached the ear of a powerful Japanese lord (Daimyo), Oda Nobunaga – a name I recognize as Japan’s leader from Civilization V. Nobunaga hired Yasuke as a Samurai, and he fought loyally in that position even through Nobunaga’s assassination by a rebellious vassal, remaining with Nobunaga’s son, Oda Nobutada.

17^th century artwork depicting a black sumo wrestler, possibly Yasuke

So that’s a neat bit of historical information. A black African samurai in feudal Japan is certainly one of history’s more unusual crossovers, but it seems reasonable given the beginnings of global trade and conquest by the Portuguese in the era. But what exactly is the controversy?

Thanks to Wikipedia’s impeccable public record keeping, we can see the problem: was Yasuke actually a samurai, or a retainer for Nobunaga without samurai status? This seemingly minor historical dispute exploded into edit wars¹ in May 2025, when Ubisoft announced the Yasuke would be one of the protagonists of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Wikipedia handles disputes by consensus – which the rules clarify is neither a specific vote count nor total unanimity. For the actual article, a consensus of this kind eventually emerged that Wikipedia should indeed classify Yasuke as a samurai, for these reasons:

• Most importantly, there were no external reliable sources which disputed Yasuke’s status as a samurai. Wikipedia only presents information from such sources, not original research.
• Even though there were significant external critiques of the main source (a book by Thomas Lockley) that claimed Yasuke was a samurai, those critiques didn’t argue against Yasuke’s general samurai status, but rather disputed other topics. Other sources on the subject also called Yasuke a samurai.
• The main argument against Yasuke being a samurai relied on a rigid definition of “samurai” as a hereditary social class, but samurai only became a specific social class a bit later in Japanese history, in the Tokugawa period.

Despite this written consensus, the edit wars continued. As such, through further administrative action, Yasuke wound up on the contentious topics list – again, all by himself at the bottom.

Frankly, I don’t think any of this is Yasuke’s fault – neither the man who’s been dead for several centuries nor the specific article about him. Exactly how media should handle diversity and representation in historical settings is currently extremely contentious. Yasuke just got caught in the crossfire.

If it were up to me, I’d list the contentious topic a bit more broadly – something like “representations of race, gender, and sexual orientation in historical themed media”. That said, the specific arbitration case was initially named “Backlash to diversity and inclusion”, which seems a little too broad for a dispute that started over whether a specific man was a samurai – the way World War One seems a little too broad for the assassination of an Austrian heir. Simply listing “Yasuke” is at least a decent option. And overall, I’m glad that Wikipedia at least has some reasonably functional community method of resolving disputes – which more websites can definitely learn from.

Coming soon: The other “Five Boroughs”