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Sakanouye no Tamuramaro (Sakanoue no Tamuramaro) (c.758 – 811) was Japan’s first shogun and according to some, an Afrikan. James E Brunson, Runoko Rashidi and Wallace Magsby Jr in their essay entitled “Black Shogun: The African Presence in Japanese Antiquity”, state that the first scholar to take note of Tamuramaro may have been anthropologist Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865 – 1914) and who was born in Kenninghall, Norfolk, England but raised in America and Canada.
They also write “stated in an exceptionally frank and matter of fact manner” the following:
” And we can cross the whole of Asia and find Negro again, for, when in far-off Japan, the ancestors of the modern Japanese were making their way northward against the Ainu, the aborigines of that country, the leader of their armies was Sakanouye Tamuramaro, a famous general and a Negro”.Sakanouye was a warrior who is symbolised in Japanese history as a “paragon of military virtues”. He was regarded as an outstanding military commander of the early Heian royal court (The Heian Period, 794 – 1185 C.E.). It was during this period that the term “samurai” is said to be first used. It comes from “the verb samurau”, or better “sabarau” which is said to signify to be on “one’s guard, to guard; it applied especially to the soldiers who were on guard at the Imperial Palace”.
He served as a palace guard and proved “himself by his strategical talent and personal prowess”. Tamuramaro became one of the great warriors in Japanese history due to his heroic struggle and victory over the the Ainus (Ainos).
