Writer asks “Where are the black people?” in FX’s Shogun series

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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.

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“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.”

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