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"African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan"

Aired on Tuesday, May 7th.

Our guest is the British scholar Thomas Lockley, an Associate Professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo, where he teaches courses related to the international and multicultural history of Japan and East Asia. He's also the co-author of a new biography titled "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan," which he tells about. The book offers the remarkable life of history's first foreign-born samurai...and his astonishing journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society. That legendary figure is Yasuke, who first arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, and who remains an almost mythic figure. This never-before-told biography profiles a powerful and ever-imposing man whose travels between countries, cultures, and classes offers a new perspective on race in world history and a vivid portrait of life in medieval Japan. Per The Washington Post: "A readable, compassionate account of an extraordinary life."

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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