ASCL Statement

We are members of the faculty of the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages (ASCL) at Dartmouth College.  We are issuing this statement in response to a recent wave of hateful and scurrilous online attacks directed at our colleague, Professor Sachi Schmidt-Hori, who has taught at Dartmouth since 2015 and who currently serves as the Vice Chair of ASCL. 

In opposing this abhorrent online harassment, the members of the ASCL department declare our unequivocal support for Prof. Schmidt-Hori.  Furthermore, we strongly denounce and expose those attacks for what they are: attempts to promote a toxic mix of anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism, homophobia, and misogyny, all in the name of a war against "wokeism."

The attacks on Prof. Schmidt-Hori are linked to a controversy over Assassin's Creed: Shadows, the forthcoming installment of a popular video game franchise produced by Ubisoft. AC: Shadows is set in sixteenth-century Japan and features two main protagonists: Naoe, a Japanese female shinobi, and Yasuke, a male samurai of African descent.  Ubisoft based the character of Yasuke on a real-life African man with the same name who arrived in Japan in the 1570s and subsequently served a Japanese warlord. AC: Shadows is actually just the latest in a long line of quasi-fictional narratives about Yasuke created in Japan and elsewhere over the last several decades.

Although many video game fans have reacted positively to Ubisoft's inclusion of Yasuke in AC: Shadows, a vocal minority have responded with vitriol and outrage.  For these critics, the inclusion of a Black protagonist in a game set in Japan is intolerable.  Since the release of the game's world premier trailer on May 15, they have filled chat rooms and social media feeds with allegations that Ubisoft is using Yasuke to "demote" or "replace" the Japanese male samurai character they would prefer to see.  They also assert that the historical Yasuke was not a "real" samurai—even though the historical evidence on this point is at best ambiguous.

Unfortunately, some of the critics of AC:Shadows have not been content merely to complain about Ubisoft.  Many have also participated in a wave of ad hominem attacks on Prof. Schmidt-Hori, whom Ubisoft recruited in 2022 to work as a narrative consultant on the game.  As a prominent scholar of medieval Japanese literature and culture, Prof. Schmidt-Hori is highly qualified to advise the game's designers on the representations of the history and the cultural practices depicted in AC: Shadows.  But her enraged attackers are neither knowledgeable about medieval Japan nor interested in learning about it.  Instead, they have sought to discredit Prof. Schmidt-Hori by misrepresenting her published research on sexuality in premodern Japan.  Among other things, they have falsely accused her of promoting pedophilia and circulated specious allegations that her work has been "banned" in Japan.  Sprinkled throughout these attacks on Prof. Schmidt-Hori are references to "LGBTQ+ activism," "wokeism," and many of the other dog whistles used to signal support for anti-queer, misogynistic, and racist beliefs.

In today's polarized political climate, extremist efforts to manufacture outrage through online harassment of women, people of color, queer people, and other marginalized groups will undoubtedly continue.  But even if we cannot prevent such hostile and antisocial behavior, we can and will condemn the hateful agendas that lie behind it.  As members of the ASCL Department at Dartmouth College, we hereby affirm our solidarity with Prof. Sachi Schmidt-Hori, as well as our continued support for the outstanding research and teaching work that she has undertaken at Dartmouth. We will not be cowed in the face of these attacks, and neither will she.

The publication of this statement was unanimously endorsed by the members of the Department of Asian Societies, Languages, and Cultures in a vote conducted by anonymous ballot on June 6, 2024.