Yasuke — Black Samurai Edition
The tribute at the heart of the series. Yasuke — the African retainer who served Oda Nobunaga and earned the rank of samurai — honored in the Oda mon and his name, 弥助. A working tribute, worthy of his name.
Who was Yasuke?
Yasuke reached Japan in 1579 in the company of the Jesuit visitor Alessandro Valignano. In 1581 he was presented to Oda Nobunaga in Kyoto — the warlord who had done more than anyone to end a century of civil war.
Period accounts record that Nobunaga took him into his own service, granting him a stipend, a residence and a sword, and kept him close. He was with Nobunaga in June 1582, when the Honnō-ji incident ended the warlord’s life. Historians still debate the exact standing his place carried; few dispute that it was extraordinary.
The edition carries the Oda family crest, the five-petalled mokkō, and his name in the kanji 弥助.
Yasuke is the only edition offered in both nickel and gold, and the only one built as a rifle and as an A5 pistol. It is also the only edition on a different platform: the Caracal CAR816 short-stroke gas piston upper, with Second of Ten additions. Every Yasuke carries the Battle Arms Development enhanced magazine release.
4 firearms, each one of a kind.
Four tributes, one standard.
The heritage is what changes across the series. What every edition shares is the standard — and none of the hand finishing comes at the expense of the rifle.
Built to order in the SOT Custom Shop by our builders, to documented standards and processes, under the supervision of our Master Armorer.
Every firearm in the series is its own serial. No two are identical, and none is a run of a catalog item.
The maki gold and silver foil crests are laid by hand; the menpō masks are painted and blended by hand over Cerakote®.
Validated to the same protocol as every Second of Ten firearm. A piece of functional art is still a working rifle.
The three kamon editions — Maruni, Takanoha and Tokugawa — are built on Second of Ten’s direct-impingement house architecture on the Sharps Bros. Showdown billet lower. The Yasuke flagship is built on the Caracal CAR816 short-stroke gas-piston system. Every one is photographed on both sides; the serial is masked and nothing else is retouched.
