Ba Kensai

• Other Names: 与那原 良傑 (Yonabaru Ryouketsu)
• Japanese/Chinese: 馬 兼才 (Ba Kensai / Mǎ Jiāncái)

Yonabaru Ryôketsu, also known by his Chinese-style name Ba Kensai, was a Ryukyuan scholar-bureaucrat who rose to the position of Sanshikan (one of the top three advisors to the king).

After serving as a gakudôji (teenage entertainer) on an early 19th century mission to Edo, Kensai rose to the ranks of the Sanshikan; in the 1870s, he witnessed the fall of the kingdom and its annexation by Imperial Japan.

References

• Ryûkyû gakki no hibiki 琉球楽器の響き, exhibition catalog, Shurijo Castle Park (2016), p13.