Why is it so difficult for people to understand that Ubisoft is being racist?
I’m a long-time fan of Assassin’s Creed. It’s a part of me at this point: a reason I got interested in history, a reason I opted to take French classes in Highschool. I remember counting the days until the movie came out, going to theaters on release weekend with a friend. It wasn’t a good movie, but it remains a fond memory to this day.
As I played Ghost of Tsushima, I kept thinking about how cool it would be if the protagonist were a Ninja. Sure, there was a skill tree focused on stealth, but the storyline was very much about honor and the internal conflict of being a warrior. I wanted more subversion, loyalty and shady dealings- in short, I wanted to see the Assassin’s creed take on it. Templars funding corrupt kirishitan daimyo, lone assassin shinobi becoming nukenin, that sort of thing.
When I first heard that there would be an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan, I was excited for it. Then, they revealed the protagonists to be a Japanese kunoichi and …a samurai foreigner. Was it a marketing decision? Because we’ve had Italian assassins in Italy and American Assassins in North America and Egyptian Assassins in Egypt. It’s obviously a conscious choice, then. Ubisoft stating that no, having a Japanese woman as the sole protagonist just won’t do. The Japanese Ubisoft statement that has since been deleted spoke of the creative team finding “our” samurai. Are the Asian, much less Japanese, constituents of the AC fandom not “theirs” enough?
If that were all, then it would’ve been business as usual; I wouldn’t have posted anything, albeit with lingering disappointment towards Ubisoft. However, there’ve been claims that the allegations of cultural appropriation and historical fabrication are all racist reactionary backlash to having a black protagonist, which I felt was actively harmful to my continued existence so here I am.
First of all, the fact that Assassin’s Creed is a work of fiction and that there are many works of historical fiction that do outright silly things in Japan is not the center of discourse anymore in Japanese circles so arguing that Ubisoft has artistic license is rather a moot point. Yes there’s feminized Oda Nobunaga in FGO, made by a Japanese company, move on from that please. Most people aren’t concerned about the player base being stupid enough that they can’t tell that AC is a fictional game. We aren’t stupid, neither are you.
The issue about historical fabrication lies in the concern that players will enjoy the game and decide to search about the historical Yasuke and come across Lockley’s book, African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan, which is utter bullsh*t. He is alleged to have edited Wikipedia in small increments over the course of ten years to authenticate his speculations as fact. After being outed on Twitter by Japanese AC fans he deleted his socials. And although I believe gamers aren’t stupid enough to believe AC is completely factual, I can’t believe that people won’t trust a printed book written by a scholar since even Encyclopedia Brittanica believed him. An article in ScreenRant even cites this book; while Japanese fans have been exposing one falsification after another these past few weeks, none of that information is reaching across the waters, where it would actually be relevant to target misinformation. If you think I’m lying, go to the Japanese language version of Wikipedia and click on ‘translate page’ for a quick overview of the problem (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%88%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC). It’s not in the English version. We are rightfully concerned that people will read the book because they like the game and come to believe that Japan participated in the transatlantic slave trade. We are rightfully concerned because we know there’s been wars fought over who has enslaved who and punishing those deemed morally degenerate. We are actually scared because Assassin’s Creed is a big title series god*amn it.
This is honestly my first time coming face to face with racism to this degree. Posts on Tumblr, English Twitter, and gaming media have made it out to be that the only people complaining are white men, as if the backlash is only from gamergate. I enjoy reading articles from IGN and Polygon and whatnot on a normal day, but now I’m faced with articles saying there’s been “some criticisms” (emphasis not mine) being raised in Japan and even claims that Japanese people are overwhelmingly looking forwards to the game while white bigots are the only ones complaining, completely minimizing the issue. There’s 90k+ signatures to cancel the game in a Japanese language petition, and sure, there may be a few thousand racists who took the time to translate the page and sign, but it’s insane to state that it’s composed of mostly white men. Like c’mon. There’s been boatloads of Japanese language tweets about the AC Shadows controversy getting tens of thousands of likes and quotes on Twitter. There were only two English articles that I could find that cut into the issue and one was written by a Japanese writer translated from Japanese media. COME ON. “Ubisoft didn’t need to release an apology since they’re only angering internet trolls” is not the point media should be making. Can someone have the guts to write “Ubisoft needs to release an actual apology instead of dancing around the problem?” And why do we need to say that we want a Japanese Assassin’s creed game to be about Japanese people in the first place? Shouldn’t it have been the obvious choice? I’m looking forwards to playing an African Assassin cutting the throats of colonial traders in Capetown, whenever that might happen, and my non-Asian friends have been looking forwards to playing a Japanese Assassin in feudal Japan, and I think Ubisoft is just giving all of us the finger. A nice, nonthreatening, manicured finger.
I really hope Ubisoft and/or HarperCollins denounces Lockley’s book before the release date for at least some semblance of damage control.
And before anybody says anything stupid, I am in fact not a white dude, I am a Japanese American Female studying Anthropology. So thank you, Ubisoft, for influencing my life decisions. I hope my disappointment reaches you.
