Japanese gamers angry at Ubisoft’s lack of ‘cultural respect’

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes online in their life knew instinctively that Ubisoft’s first depiction of the Land of the Rising Sun in an Assassin’s Creed game was going to be, at best, eyebrow-raising.

Either way, Assassin’s Creed games can rarely be accused of being steeped in historical accuracy, but making the two main characters look nothing like the historical setting they’re placed in was going to annoy big fans of accurate representation of cultures and the like.

In Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, for starters, the woman – Naoe – is a fictional ninja. So what do you think? The second character, Yasuke, seems to be the one that most people have had issues with.

African Yasuke, in real life, served for a short time as a vassal or retainer of the warlord Oda Nobunaga. In AC Shadows, he is a true samurai.

Does it matter? Japanese gamers think so, and one of them started a petition that states (in part):

The game focuses on the samurai in Japan and ignores the fact that the samurai are the upper class of the samurai class and should be “gokejin” or nobles who serve them. In fact, William Adams, the first European to be given the title of samurai, was a man in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu as the standard-bearer of the 250 koku.

In this story, Ubisoft continues to misunderstand the nature and role of the samurai. This is a grave insult to Japanese culture and history, and can also lead to Asian racism. We call on Ubisoft to immediately stop releasing Assassin’s Creed Shadows and show sincere research and respect for Japanese history and culture.

The petition is targeting 35,000 signatures and, at the time of writing, is rapidly approaching 29,000.

Of course, this will not make a difference. Many of the problems seem to come from the fact that the game is presented as accurate while it is perceived by the signatories of the position as pure fiction.

One comment, however, reads: “This is a falsification of history. We cannot stand by and let this happen. Furthermore, the game’s content and the manufacturer’s response have shown no respect for Japan. It is unbearable to see black samurai slaughtering Japanese people. I hereby object.”

We look forward to the time-honored tradition of good old review bombing.