Kingdom of Ryukyu

The rebuilt Seiden (main hall) of Shuri castle, as it appears today

A posthumous official royal portrait of King Shô En

• Existence: 1429-1879
• Territory: most of the Ryûkyû Islands
• Kokudaka: 89,086
• Capital: Shuri
• Kings: First & Second Shô Dynasty
• Japanese: 琉球王国 (Ryuukyuu-ou-koku)

The Kingdom of Ryûkyû encompassed and ruled over most of the Ryûkyû Islands, which stretch between Kyûshû and Taiwan, from 1429 to 1879.

Ruled by the Shô Dynasty of kings from Shuri Castle, on the island of Okinawa, the kingdom was formed by the unification in 1419-1429 of the island, which had been previously divided into three chiefdoms. It was an independent state, though a tributary to Ming China, until the 1609 invasion of Ryûkyû by forces of Japan's Satsuma han. From then until its dissolution in 1879, the kingdom served as a semi-independent vassal state under Satsuma, and continued its tributary relationship with China.

The kingdom's territory expanded over the course of the 15th-16th centuries, as the islands of the archipelago were absorbed into the kingdom one by one; after 1624, Amami Ôshima and a number of its neighboring islands were annexed by Satsuma han. The Amami Islands today remain part of Kagoshima Prefecture while the rest of the Ryûkyûs constitute Okinawa Prefecture.

History

Origins

Prior to 1314 or so, the Ryûkyû Islands were controlled by a myriad of small chiefdoms; those on the main island of Okinawa were loosely united under a "king". Tamagusuku, who ascended to this post in 1314, lacked the charisma, leadership qualities, and skills to maintain this unity, and the island fractured into three polities: Nanzan in the south of the island, Hokuzan in the north, and Chûzan in the center.

Over the course of the next hundred years, the three polities consolidated their power, build a great many fortresses (gusuku), and expanded through trade. Chûzan entered into tributary relations with Ming China in 1372, the other two polities following suit within the next decade, and began to receive royal investiture from China as well. The three polities expanded their territory in this period as well, slowly acquiring the other nearby islands either as tributary states or as outright annexed territories, and entering into diplomatic and trade relations with Japan and Korea, as well as with a number of Southeast Asian polities.

A local lord (anji) by the name of Hashi rose to power at the beginning of the 15th century, and overthrew the king of Chûzan, Bunei, around 1407. Hashi originally set up his father as king, but continued to wield power behind the scenes, succeeding his father in 1422. The two received formal investiture from the Ming Court, and were granted the surname Shô (尚, "Shang" in Chinese); father and son thus became Shô Shisho and Shô Hashi respectively, marking the beginning of the first Shô Dynasty. Under their leadership, Chûzan conquered Hokuzan in 1419 and Nanzan in 1429, uniting the island of Okinawa, establishing the Kingdom of Ryûkyû, and moving the capital from Urasoe to Shuri.

Independence

A replica of the Bankoku shinryô no kane, or Bridge of Nations Bell, hanging at Shuri castle. The inscription speaks of Ryûkyû as a bridge between all nations

The Shureimon gate to Shuri castle, bearing a plaque reading "Nation of Propriety"

The main gate to the Confucian temple in Kumemura

Despite its tiny land area, the kingdom came to play a crucial role in regional trade networks as a transshipping point. Much of the tribute goods paid by the kingdom to China came originally from Southeast Asia. Hundreds of Ryukyuan vessels, many of them acquired from the Ming, but operating on behalf of the Ryukyuan royal government, traversed the seas, making port in China, Korea, Japan, and at least eight different ports across Southeast Asia, engaging not only in trade but also in diplomatic exchanges. Goods from Japan consisted primarily of precious metals and objects of fine art; the kingdom acquired primarily medicinal herbs, ceramics, and textiles from Korea and China. These were then exchanged in Luzon, Siam, Java (Sunda), Melaka, Palembang, Sumatra, Pattani, and Annam for a variety of spices, aromatic woods, skins, ivory, and other animal products, and sugar. Ryukyuan ships traveling to Southeast Asia were typically manned by entirely Chinese crews, with Chinese navigators, though they were always captained by native Ryukyuans, with the exception of missions to Java.

Siam was perhaps the most important of Ryûkyû's trading partners in Southeast Asia, and was the only Southeast Asian polity to which Ryûkyû sold sulfur. Interactions with Siam began as early as the 1380s, via Chinese intermediaries, but in the 15th century came to be handled more directly by Ryukyuan merchants. With perhaps only one exception, Siamese ships did not travel to Ryûkyû; the trade was conducted entirely on Ryukyuan vessels. Ryûkyû traded with the sultans of Melaka from 1463 until 1511, when Melaka fell to the Portuguese, and the Ryukyuans diverted their trade activities to Pattani. Records of Ryukyuan activity in Java indicate interactions in 1430-1442, and again in 1513-1518; unlike in relations with Siam and other regions, in Java and Sumatra local Chinese merchant communities directed the trade with Ryûkyû.

Much of Ryûkyû's trade with Korea in the 15th-16th centuries was conducted by Japanese merchants from Hakata and Sakai, patronized by various daimyô. Ryukyuan individuals also sometimes traveled themselves to Korea, or elsewhere, aboard these Japanese ships; at times, Japanese ships were able to get better treatment in Korean or other ports if they carried official Ryukyuan envoys. After 1592, however, Japanese relations with China and Korea were at a nadir, and so Ryukyuan envoys and trade to Korea traveled via Beijing, and not via Japanese channels.

Most sources indicate that, while the majority of the Ryukyuan peasantry were illiterate and led very simple lives, they always had enough to subsist on. The great wealth acquired by the royal government, government officials, aristocrats, and merchants did not spill over into conspicuous prosperity for all, but neither did the government truly oppress or impoverish the peasantry.

Shô Hashi relocated the capital from Urasoe to Shuri, nearer to the scholar-bureaucrat center of Kumemura, and the port of Naha, and expanded the gusuku (castle) there into a royal palace on the Chinese model. There, he worked to construct a notion of kingship based on the Chinese model, in which the king's rule was seen as legitimate not because of military might, but based on his virtuous character, and on a perception of the king as the benevolent ruler whose virtue united and sustained the kingdom. This discursive project, of constructing in Ryûkyû a Confucian kingdom, was continued by Hashi's successors, and may be said to have reached its full realization under King Shô Shin, in the first decades of the 16th century.

The bureaucratic and governmental structures of the kingdom, based on those of Chûzan, developed and solidified over the course of the 15th century, following, in many ways, a Chinese model. A complex bureaucracy ran the kingdom, the heads of each branch known collectively as the Council of Fifteen. The king was of course at the top of the hierarchy, his chief advisor known as the sessei. After 1556, when the mute Shô Gen ascended the throne, a council of regents or advisors known as the Sanshikan emerged and gradually came to wield significant power, eventually eclipsing the sessei. In these and other ways, the kingdom adopted Confucian & Ming customs, political philosophy, and practices in order to present a discourse of power and legitimacy both to China and other neighbors in the region, and to the Ryukyuan people, through an adoption of the Confucian rhetoric of the benevolent monarch from whom virtue and civilization emanates. Still, the royal court exercised considerable agency in shaping its adoption of Chinese customs and forms as it saw fit, maintaining much indigenous forms and elements as well. While the Chinese system of court ranks was adopted, Ryûkyû did so with its own indigenous system of colored robes, hairpins, and court caps indicating court rank, not adopting the Chinese system entirely. Further, internal government documents were regularly written in kana, in the Okinawan language, not in Chinese; students studying to join the scholar-bureaucracy were educated in Chinese, Japanese, and Okinawan, and in fact from the 17th century onwards, Neo-Confucian and classic Confucian texts were taught largely in Japanese forms, rather than in the original Chinese. Chinese was used in formal communications with Ming (and later Qing) China, but even from quite early on, communications with Japan were written in a Japanese form called wayô kanbun, and not in standard classical Chinese.

The village of Kumemura, a short distance from the capital at Shuri, had been founded in 1393 by a number of Chinese scholars, bureaucrats, and craftsmen from Fukien settled there with their families by order of the Ming Court. The town rapidly developed into a center of scholarship and Chinese culture, and came to be something of a training ground for the kingdom's bureaucrats; nearly all of the administrators in the royal government came from Kumemura, and positions were based on showing in royal examinations, rather than purely on birth. A system was also established by which a select few members of the Kumemura community would travel to Fuzhou and Beijing to study. In addition to becoming well-versed in the Chinese classics, and being educated and trained in the ways of a bureaucrat, these students would frequently bring back specific skills or knowledges to be implemented in the kingdom, such as geomancy, navigation, or various craft skills.

King Shô Shin (r. 1477-1526) is often said to have ruled over a golden age for the kingdom. He solidified and strengthened the power of the king (and of the central royal government more generally), both practically and ideologically. Areas outside of Shuri had previously been ruled by anji, local/regional rulers akin perhaps to feudal lords, with considerable power and autonomy within their lands. Under Shô Shin's predecessors, and especially under Chûzan prior to the unification of the island, anji wielded considerable power, occasionally even toppling and replacing kings. The anji were not fully secure in their power, however, as local elites beneath them could also overthrow their anji when they perceived him to be politically or spiritually weak; priestesses also wielded considerable local political power.

Shô Shin addressed these competing powers by forcing the anji to reside in Shuri, transforming them into an aristocratic-bureaucrat class, and reorganizing their lands into magiri (districts) and shima (villages). Officials not of an anji ("warlord") background were appointed by the royal court to govern these districts; thus, the power of the anji to act as independent feudal states was removed, and put into the hands of administrators who were reliant on the royal court for the ability to continue to hold that post. By the end of Shô Shin's reign, all military forces in the kingdom were under his command, rather than under the command of individual regional lords; regional forces were now known as magiri gun, rather than anji gun, associating them with the districts, and not with the regional lords. Shô Shin also expanded the reach of the kingdom by sending military forces to conquer or subjugate other islands, sometimes coming into conflict with Japanese forces from Satsuma province seeking to expand their influence south into the Ryukyus.

Shô Shin and his predecessors also worked to consolidate royal power, and weaken the threat of rivalry from the anji, by developing royal monopolies on maritime trade. They acquired oceangoing vessels from the Ming, monopolized lacquerware production, and maintained royal sources of various other goods, including horses and sulphur; much later, in the 1680s, the royal government ordered all potters in the kingdom to relocate to the Tsuboya neighborhood of Naha, thus solidifying a royal monopoly on pottery as well.

Shô Shin also addressed the power of the priestesses by establishing a new religious hierarchy, with his sister Utuchitunumuigani as the first kikôe-ôgimi, spiritual protector of the king and kingdom, and head of a hierarchy overseeing all noro and yuta priestesses in the kingdom. Though quite powerful still, the priestess establishment was now contained within the kingdom's institutions, and was less of a separate, independent, autonomous, power unto itself.

The kingdom's booming trade declined around the 1570s, as the seas came to be dominated by other powers. Spanish and Portuguese galleons arrived around the mid-16th century, followed by the agents of the English and Dutch East India Companies at the beginning of the 17th. Meanwhile, Ming China lifted its bans on Chinese trade with, and in, Southeast Asia, in 1567, and Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi began to engage in licensed trade under the shuinsen system after around 1582. The dispatch of Ryukyuan trading ships to Siam in 1570 was to be the last act of direct Ryukyuan involvement in maritime trade in Southeast Asia.

Invasion and Vassalage

Around 1590, the royal government was ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, through agents of the Shimazu family of Satsuma to provide troops, weapons, and other munitions to aid in his planned invasions of Korea. King Shô Nei refused, and went beyond that, informing the Ming Court of Hideyoshi's plans by way of a letter from Jana ueekata in 1591. This was but one in a series of instances in which the kingdom refused or ignored requests or demands from Hideyoshi.

Hideyoshi died in 1598, and was replaced as secular, martial, ruler of Japan a few years later by Tokugawa Ieyasu. Shô Nei ignored demands that he formally recognize the new Tokugawa shogunate; the Shimazu family in turn requested permission from Ieyasu to launch a punitive mission. Permission was granted in 1606, and the invasion of Ryukyu was undertaken in 1609. After a few battles on smaller outlying islands, the samurai forces seized Shuri Castle and took Shô Nei, along with a number of his chief officials, captive. All were brought to Japan, where they met with Ieyasu and his son, the reigning Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada, and were forced to submit to a number of demands and conditions. The kingdom became a vassal state under the Shimazu, and was forced to submit tribute on a regular basis. The king was restored to his castle and his kingdom in 1611, and was returned to power, though only within strict limits set by the Shimazu. In addition, while the kingdom retained the Ryukyus from Okinawa south (to the Sakishima Islands and Yonaguni), the Amami Islands and all other islands in the chain north of Okinawa Island proper were seized by the Shimazu and fully incorporated into their territory. A vassal state, Ryukyu was not considered an integral part of Japan until it was formally annexed as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879; while the provinces of Japan were regarded as takoku (他国, "other lands"), Ryukyu was considered ikoku (異国, "foreign lands"), along with China, Korea, Holland, and the rest of the world. However, Nantô zatsuwa, a Japanese text published in the 1850s, reveals that Ryukyuan people continued to travel between Okinawa and Amami, and to engage directly in trade in pottery, marine goods, and other products, despite the ostensible "national" boundaries (i.e. with travel to Amami, as part of Satsuma's territory, now being "foreign" travel and therefore theoretically subject to more strict control).

For the remainder of Japan's Edo period, the kingdom served two masters, ostensibly independent, though a vassal to Satsuma and a tributary to China. As formal relations between Japan and China were severed, extensive efforts were made to hide Japan's control or influence over Ryukyu from the Chinese Court. If Beijing believed Ryukyu to be a part of Japan, it would have likely severed ties with Ryukyu as well, denying the kingdom and the shogunate not only a source of income and foreign goods through trade, but also a source of intelligence on events in the outside world, particularly China. Foreign trade, along with tributary missions and student exchange to China continued throughout this period, though overseen by Japanese authorities, and controlled so as to best benefit Satsuma and the shogunate, not the kingdom itself. Ryukyuans were forbidden from speaking Japanese, dressing in Japanese fashion, or otherwise revealing the Japanese influence upon them; the very few who were allowed to go abroad were to speak Chinese and to espouse a combination of native Ryukyuan and Chinese culture.

The kingdom became in various ways a tool for both the Shimazu and the shogunate, not only for purely economic benefit, but also to political ends. Ryukyuan students and embassies to Beijing provided unparalleled intelligence on Chinese matters which could not be gained from Korea or from merchants at Nagasaki, who largely knew only of coastal and maritime matters. Tributary missions from Ryukyu to Edo were accompanied by great pomp and circumstance, and considerable entourages, though subsumed within the much larger Shimazu party making its obligatory sankin kôtai journey to the capital. The enforced exoticism of the Ryukyuan embassies reinforced for the shogunate and the Shimazu family both the notion that an entire foreign kingdom submitted to their authority. The shogunate made use of this to consolidate perceptions of the legitimacy of its authority, while the Shimazu used it as leverage to gain higher court rank and to negotiate for the bending of laws and taxation.

Still, despite the overlordship of the Shimazu, the royal government enjoyed some flexibility in instituting domestic polities and reforms. Two governmental officials are of particular significance. Shô Shôken, sessei from 1666-1673, wrote the first history of Ryukyu and helped institute a number of key reforms. He cut down on royal and aristocrati extravagance, in order to streamline expenses and ensure greater prosperity for the kingdom. He also suppressed the political influence and cultural importance of the priestesses of the native religion and cut down on royal involvement in many traditional rituals. This served to not only cut down on extravagance, but also was intended to help suppress elements of Ryukyuan culture which could be seen as backwards by China and Japan. Sai On, royal regent roughly a century later, in the 1750s, continued and re-enacted many of Shô Shôken's policies, and went further, making considerable reforms to the kingdom's domestic economy, particularly in agriculture and forestry. His reforms helped the kingdom recover from a series of fires, famines, and other difficulties.

Dissolution

Statue of Emperor Meiji at Naminoue Shrine in Okinawa, identified as kokka, or, "The State."

Main article: Ryukyu shobun

Conditions changed dramatically for the kingdom in the 1850s, as they did for Japan as well. Commodore Matthew Perry was but one of a number of Westerners who made landfall in the Ryukyus around this time, seeking trade and diplomatic relations. Perry in fact signed treaties with the royal government in Ryukyu before ever traveling to Japan.

The years following the 1868 Meiji Restoration brought drastic changes within Japan, and for the kingdom in turn. The kingdom was briefly transformed into "Okinawa han", before the han were abolished entirely in 1871. The dissolution of Satsuma han brought the end of Ryukyu's vassal relationship. The kingdom itself was dissolved eight years later, in 1879, "Okinawa han" becoming Okinawa Prefecture and the royal family being incorporated into the new Western-style Japanese aristocracy. Shô Tai, the last king of Ryukyu, was brought to Tokyo from Shuri, along with his family, and made a Marquis. The vast cultural, educational, and social changes which swept Japan in the Meiji period came to Okinawa later and more slowly. By the turn of the 20th century, however, assimilation efforts were well underway, aimed at transforming Okinawa, and its inhabitants, into part of a single homogeneous Japanese nation.

References

• Hamashita, Takeshi. 沖縄入門 (Okinawa nyuumon). Tokyo: Chikumashobou (筑摩書房), 2000.
• Kerr, George. Okinawa: the History of an Island People. (revised ed.) Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2000.
• Smits, Gregory. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999.

See also

• Government of the Ryûkyû Kingdom
• Ryukyuan court ranks