Assassin's Creed Shadows turns on one night in Kyoto. In 1582, the warlord Oda Nobunaga is staying at a temple called Honno-ji. By morning the temple is burning and Nobunaga is dead, betrayed by one of his own generals, Akechi Mitsuhide. The game puts two people inside those walls: Naoe, a shinobi from Iga, and Yasuke, the African man in Nobunaga's service. This walk follows their Kyoto story in the game's order, from Yasuke's arrival with the Jesuits to the night at Honno-ji and on to the end of the regalia story at the Imperial Palace. At each stop you'll hear the game scene first, then the real place and what the records say. This is an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by Ubisoft, and it is full of spoilers. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 4.9 kilometers from the gate of Nijo Castle to the gate of the Imperial Palace.

Before you set off

The walking takes about 70 minutes; with the stories, allow two and a half hours. Kyoto's center is laid out on a grid, so the route is easy on the feet, mostly along city streets and one covered shopping arcade, then across the gravel of the palace park. Start at Nijojo-mae Station on the Tozai subway line, right by the castle's East Gate. The walk ends at Kenreimon, 10 to 15 minutes from Marutamachi or Imadegawa Station on the Karasuma line. Nijo Castle and the palace grounds have their own opening times and rules, and the castle charges for entry; check before you go. Three stops are stone markers on ordinary city streets, one of them outside a care home, and one stop is a working temple, so keep your voice down there. On a hot day, carry water for the open gravel at the end.

Nijo Castle East Gate

A corner tower and moat of Nijo Castle, Kyoto

Stand on Horikawa-dori, facing the big East Gate across the moat. This is Nijo Castle.

In the game, Nijo Castle is one of Kyoto's landmarks. You can climb its keep, the Nijo Tenshu, to take in the city, and it serves as a fast-travel point. It's also where the side quest The Godless Harvest plays out, with Gennojo and the rice store.

Here is the first thing the game bends: in 1582, none of this existed. Tokugawa Ieyasu set the western lords to work building this castle in 1601, and it was finished in 1603, more than twenty years after the night at Honno-ji. The game puts it in 1582 anyway, a knowing anachronism.

Look past the gate and you won't see a keep on the skyline. The tower you can climb in the game was lost to a fire caused by lightning in 1750. No keep stands today. What you see from the street is the moat, the stone walls and the gate.

Keep one thing in mind for later. The name Nijo will come back on this walk, but the Nijo palace that matters in 1582 was a different place, a mansion a few streets east of here. That palace is part of the real Yasuke's story too.

Ieyasu's castle came after all this was over. To go back to the night it began, walk south down Horikawa-dori, the wide avenue in front of the gate, for about ten minutes. Turn left onto Takoyakushi-dori, then right onto the narrow Aburanokoji-dori. The stone you want stands just south of the corner. About fifteen minutes in all.

Original Honno-ji Site

Look for a large stone outside a nursing home here on Aburanokoji-dori. It marks the site of the original Honno-ji. Please keep your voice low; people live here.

In the game, Yasuke has just come to Kyoto with the Jesuit missionaries, and Mitsuhide brings them here. Nobunaga rides in from a hunt, receives the Jesuits, then asks to speak to Yasuke alone, and takes him into his service.

A year later comes the mission Temple of the Horseman. On Mitsuhide's orders, Naoe is smuggled in hidden in a rice cart, and Yasuke himself checks the cart at the gate. Fire spreads through the temple. Naoe demands a box from Nobunaga, fights him, and beats him. Yasuke steps in to stop the killing blow, then sees her hidden blade and refuses to kill her. Nobunaga denies any part in the Shinbakufu, the game's secret conspiracy, and takes his own life, with Yasuke assisting him.

Now the record. The meeting between Nobunaga and Yasuke was real, on March 27, 1581, but the sources don't say where in Kyoto it took place. Putting it here is the game's choice. Nobunaga had Yasuke undressed and scrubbed with water, to make sure his skin wasn't painted with ink. The chronicle of Nobunaga's life gives his age as about 26 or 27, and his strength as greater than ten men.

The attack was real too. At dawn on the second day of the sixth month in the tenth year of the Tensho era, which is June 21, 1582, Mitsuhide's army surrounded this temple. The number usually given is about 13,000 men. Back then Honno-ji's grounds covered the blocks just north of this stone, from Takoyakushi-dori up to Rokkaku-dori, walled and moated like a small fort, with stables inside. Nobunaga fought with a handful of attendants, among them Mori Ranmaru, and took his own life in the fire.

There's no ninja in the records, and no source says Yasuke helped Nobunaga die. That scene is the game's. Nor does anyone know for certain why Mitsuhide turned on his lord. Grudge, ambition and conspiracy have all been suggested, and none is proven.

A few streets east, the Jesuits heard the noise that morning. Walk back north to Takoyakushi-dori and turn right. Follow it east about five minutes, and just before Muromachi-dori look for a stone post on your left.

Nanban-ji Church Site

The stone post and signboard on the north side of Takoyakushi-dori, outside an office building, mark the site of Nanban-ji, the Jesuits' church in Kyoto.

In the game, this is where Yasuke's Kyoto story begins. The mission The Lord's Favor opens with Yasuke, still called Diogo, arriving in the city with the Jesuits Valignano and Frois, bringing a European chair as a gift.

The real church was dedicated in 1576. The Christians who worshipped here called it the church of Santa Maria. And in the spring of 1581, it saw a real scene that sounds like fiction. Crowds came to the Jesuit house to see the African in Valignano's party, so many that they broke down the gates. Frois wrote, in one translation, that they "marveled at the height of the Father and at the blackness of our Moor."

Now stand here and think about distance. Honno-ji was only a few minutes' walk away. According to the Jesuits' later annual report, early on the morning of June 21, 1582, local Christians came to warn a priest here, who was dressing for early Mass, that a commotion had broken out in front of the temple. Then came gunfire, and flames. Only after that did word arrive that this was no brawl: Akechi had turned on Nobunaga.

They didn't know it yet, but Yasuke would soon be brought to their door. That story belongs to the next stop.

The church itself didn't last. After Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the missionaries expelled in 1587, it was destroyed. This post is all that marks it now.

Continue east to Muromachi-dori, turn left, and walk north, crossing the broad Oike-dori. Just before Oshikoji-dori, look for a slim stone post on your right. About ten minutes.