A writer for lefty woke outlet Medium is facing ridicule for penning an article complaining about the lack of black actors in a new TV show about Samurai warriors in Japan in the year 1600.
The show, produced by FX, is a remake of the popular Shōgun series from 1980, which also featured no black actors.
Because it’s about ancient Japan.
The network’s guide to the series states “FX’s Shōgun, based on James Clavell’s bestselling novel, is set in Japan in the year 1600, at the dawn of a century-defining civil war. Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him, when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village.”
There are European people in the series too, because Europeans travelled to Japan in boats at that time.
Japanese and Europeans, but no blacks? Medium writer and critical race theorist William Spivey cannot abide that.
He writes “The white characters appearing in the first episodes representing Portugal, Spain, England, and Holland could hardly be deemed heroic. However, the character John Blackthorne, now played by Cosmo Jarvis, is already a pivotal figure and will be a hero, along with several Japanese characters.”
Oh no! the horror.
” I ask the question now that I naively didn’t ask in 1980. Where are the Black people?” he adds.
In Africa, that’s the short answer. But no, Spivey isn’t done. He goes on to claim that there absolutely were black people in Japan in 1600 and some of them were Samurai warriors.
“I don’t ask out of a desire to see representation when it wasn’t historically accurate. I inquire because there were Black people in Japan in 1600 and before, though Japan could teach Florida a thing or two about rewriting history,” he claims.
Spivey continues, “According to multiple sources, one of the early real-life Shoguns, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758–811), was Black, though denied by others. There is a consensus he was something other than pure Japanese, and he is often considered descended from the Ainu, the darker-skinned indigenous people of northern Japan who were subjected to forced assimilation and colonization.”
Not content with that unverifiable and inaccurate claim, he made up a ‘Japanese’ proverb, that goes “For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of Black blood.”
Note Spivey’s capitalisation of the word ‘black’. This proverb, if it exists at all which it likely doesn’t, is not referring to black people, but rather darkness of the soul.
Respondents, including black people, pointed out that all of this is nuts and yet another example of the insane fringe effort to blackify history, which has included baseless claims of black ancient Britons, Romans, scholars, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, and the list goes on.
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YASUKE did not come to Japan himself, but was brought to Japan on July 25, 1579 as a servant of Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano. Oda Nobunaga, the ruler at the time, was very fond of things from other cultures that he had never seen before. Nobunaga liked Yasuke’s size and inherited him from a white man.
Naturally, Nobunaga’s goal was to acquire Yasuke as a soldier in his own army and as Nobunaga’s own bodyguard.
In Japan, it is said that Yasuke was with Nobunaga in his final moments.
Although it is a very rare example, Yasuke is a black samurai who actually existed in Japan.
It is also true that Nobunaga died in 1582, and that there were no black samurai in the 1600s.
Seems like William Spivey is taking “cultural appropriation” to a whole other level. I thought the radical Left were against that very thing.
What a dumbass…(HUGE face palm)
history is rewritten now. they have movies with black, gay wikings.
Just look at something random. like “american writers of 19th century.” It had about 20 people on the list. white. male. We cannot have that. they added any women that has written a letter or an article in a newspapper to the list. than they added any black that could sign his name. writer. not diverse enough. than they turned few man gay. thay are dead cannot defend themselves. almost done. remove Mark Twain he makes the rest look like idiots. done. newnormals history.
We are the Woke. Lower your shields and surrender yourself. The life as you know it, is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
We will never surrender. We arent weak mask-wearing soyboys like you.
Only White Cowards let the Foreign Nazis tell them what to do!
Japanese say; “Screw you, Nazis!”
You just displayed how historically illiterate you are. Nazi doesn’t mean woke or anything you dislike. Japan and Nazi Germany were allies. What you meant to say was communists. Go read a book.
What a dumb comment.
You are a prime example of letism lack of culture/brain power.
Open an history book.
I like movies that are historically accurate. Not absolute pandering bullsh*t.
Let me ask this though, where are all the Latinos in ancient Japanese samurai movies?
What a stupid question!
We all know that since before 2020 there was a massive media effort to promote Blacks in all media. It’s disingenuous and does the disservice of portraying Blacks solely in the White cultural context. Ultimately, most media efforts portray Black-skinned White people. Now with AI and CG technologies, it’s a simple matter to further propagandize the masses by making all of recorded history to include Blacks when that is not factual.
Naturally, we all know that this is an attempt to further seed guilt, doubt and uncertainty in the easily lead, media addicted masses in an attempt to normalize the migrant crises in America and abroad.