This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Biography: Arts and Entertainment This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles This article is supported by the arts and entertainment work group (assessed as Low-importance). An editor has requested that an image or photograph be added to this article. Horror This article is within the scope of WikiProject Horror, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to fictional horror in film, literature and other media on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.HorrorWikipedia:WikiProject HorrorTemplate:WikiProject Horrorhorror articles ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. This article has been automatically rated by a bot or other tool because one or more other projects use this class. Please ensure the assessment is correct before removing the |auto= parameter. United States: Ohio Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by WikiProject Ohio (assessed as Low-importance).

On July 4th of this year, five days ago, an accountless user (just like me) altered this section from 'Nonfiction' to 'fiction,' without even updating the capitalization. As many are likely aware, there has recently been controversy over the facts surrounding the purported individual known as 'Yasuke,' who is primarily sourced from the mentioned book. This section, formerly Nonfiction, then fiction, is a potential source of additional controversy and is a vandalism risk. I was actually extremely surprised to find no Talk sections for this article at all, let alone about this topic.

I'm not an actual editor; I don't even have an account, so I'm not really qualified to weigh in on this beyond what I've been able to dig up. I've done some reading through articles both English and auto-translated from Japanese, and they all point back to this book as a primary source. All of them. They source-by-proxy some of THIS book's alleged sources, however, but this book itself is the linchpin of the entire controversy due it making many, many assertions.

The problem: Geoffrey Girard is not only a historical nonfiction writer, he is, to directly quote the article itself: "an author of nonfiction, thrillers, historicals, and speculative fiction." I specifically would assert a hypothesis that Thomas Lockley, the primary author, worked with Geoffrey Girard, the secondary author, to pad out the work from a collection of nonfiction into speculative fiction more readily entertaining to the masses, and thus more marketable.

Alleged from those who have read the book, per reviews on Amazon from 2019 near its original release, is the following:

'Zap Rowsdower,' verified purchase, May 28, 2019: "There are not footnotes leading to sources for any of the ideas presented in the book, which is necessary for any book of history. This book is written exactly like a novel, complete with what the weather was like and what the characters said. The opening scene is even 100% fiction, made to seem like a Kurosawa film. The authors make it known that there is little verifiable information about their subject so they clearly just filled in teh details with their own ideas."

'Historian Skeptic,' July 25, 2019: "If you like historical fiction like Last Samurai Yasuke is the new Tom Cruise. Check the sources again. One that is cited throughout is Stephen Turnbull a corrupt historian that turns history for profit just like this gentleman. Turnbull his associate, lifted work from Japanese academics during his career and never credited them and profited off of THEIR work While passing them off as his own via translation. This man uses Turnbulls stolen work for source points. Turnbull just translated and stole work, this man used that work to create his Yasuke fictions background. The work as a whole is a work of fiction, the author Thomas gave his work and conjecture on this character and worked with a fiction author to create this narrative. Furthermore there is no first person eye witness account of "Yasuke" in existence from his point of view do not be fooled the man was not fully Japanese court literate as is claimed in this book. The author has spun a narrative hoping to get to holly wood for money that doesn't exist again this account is highly embellished fiction. The other sources used are based on a childrens book written in the 1960's a jesuit account written by a researcher that looked into Jesuit activity in Japan during the time period which is sparse in relation to Yasuke, and a universal priamary source that is used when researching Nobunaga. The account is extremely small concerning Yasuke or whatever his real name was. The main documentation is from a samurai in Nobunagas court that kept detailed records about what was going on. This is what is primarily used by scholars to get an idea of what life was during Nobunagas reign. Everything about the story is conjecture by the authors part based on these limited accounts."

So... tiny sample size, but these claims should be easily verifiable by someone better able to put in the legwork than I am. First of all is checking out the actual structure and trustworthiness of the text, and second (and much harder) would be to check its citations.

Until then, I will be updating it from 'fiction' to 'Speculative fiction' as from everything I CAN verifiably tell, it is neither accurate to call it 'Nonfiction' OR 'fiction.' It's somewhere in between and should be respected as such until further work is able to be performed.

But why is this a problem? Well unfortunately, dozens of media and cultural organizations are quoting the book verbatim as nonfiction and have been for years. This book has, in fact, per the assertion of the anonymous Amazon user 'Historian Skeptic' actually prompted a bout of 'holly wood [for] money' (sic) despite allegedly being 'highly embellished fiction' and 'made to seem like a Kurosawa film.'

Someone with the time and ability please investigate and put this to rest. As I'd previously stated, this seems to be THE central, root factor and must be looked in to--and perhaps even have a new article made entirely specifically for the book, with a warning of the controversy and its history. 70.67.165.83 ( talk) 00:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC) reply