A book about Japan that you should read: African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke

Book review by Matt S. 

Almost every single samurai throughout history was Japanese. That's perhaps the most obvious thing a person could say of course, but by the time that Japan was genuinely opening its boarders to international trade and cultural exchange, the samurai had already come and gone as a social class. Roughly the equivalent to a knight in medieval Europe, the closed nature of Japan prior to the modern era meant that if you weren't Japanese, but somehow ended up in the country, you needed to be someone truly spectacular, or do something spectacular, if you were going to get that particular promotion.

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