Invasion of Ryukyu

• Satsuma han (3000 men in 100 ships) vs. Kingdom of Ryûkyû (Forces unknown)
  • Date: March-May 1609
  • Location: Ryûkyû Islands

The invasion of Ryûkyû by forces of Satsuma han took place in 1609, and marked the beginning of the Ryûkyû Kingdom's status as a vassal state under Satsuma. The invasion itself involved few casualties, as Ryûkyû had little military strength, and its people were ordered by their king to surrender and to spare themselves any bloodshed.

Ryûkyû would remain a vassal state under Satsuma, alongside its already long-established tributary relationship with China, until it was formally annexed by Japan in 1879 as Okinawa Prefecture.

Background

Satsuma's invasion of Ryûkyû was the climax of a long tradition of relations between the kingdom and the Shimazu clan of Satsuma. The two regions had been engaged in trade for at least several centuries and possibly for far longer than that; in addition, Ryûkyû at times had paid tribute to the Muromachi shogunate (1336-1573) of Japan as it did to China since 1372.

In the final decades of the 16th century, the Shimazu clan, along with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who ruled Japan from 1582-1598, requested or demanded various types of aid or service from the kingdom on a number of occasions. The repeated refusals of these demands by King Shô Nei (r. 1587-1620), who also ignored outright many communications from Shimazu and Hideyoshi, spurred the Shimazu, with the permission of the newly established Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867), to invade Ryûkyû in 1609, claiming it a punitive mission.

One of the chief events which spurred Satsuma to aggression occurred when Hideyoshi launched the first of two invasions of Korea in 1592. Through messengers from Satsuma, he ordered that Ryûkyû contribute warriors to the invasion efforts, and was refused; he also commanded that Ryûkyû temporarily suspend its official missions to China. The mission traveled to Beijing anyway, on business relating to Shô Nei's formal investiture, and related Hideyoshi's plans to Chinese Court officials there. Shimazu Yoshihisa, lord of Satsuma, then suggested that Ryûkyû be allowed to supply food and other supplies instead of manpower; Hideyoshi agreed, but Shô Nei ignored the related missives.

Following Hideyoshi's death in 1598, and Tokugawa Ieyasu's subsequent rise to power, Shô Nei was asked by Satsuma to formally submit to the new shogunate, a request which was also ignored. The Shimazu then requested to launch a punitive mission against Ryûkyû and, in 1606, were granted permission by the shogunate.

Invasion and aftermath

The invasion began in the second lunar month of Keichô 14 (March 1609), as over 100 ships carrying roughly 3000 warriors left Kagoshima Harbor, under the command of Kabayama Hisataka. After several skirmishes on the smaller, more northern islands of the Ryukyu archipelago, the fleet landed at Unten Harbor on the Motobu Peninsula of Okinawa Island. They encountered fierce resistance there from the local peasants, and suffered considerable losses, but were ultimately victorious and moved on south to the Ryûkyûan royal capital of Shuri.

The capital desperately tried to organize a defense, but the kingdom's military capabilities were no match for those of the invaders. Ryûkyû's hereditary aristocratic class, unlike that of the Japanese samurai, was not a warrior class, and in any case the kingdom had faced no threats greater than the occasional pirates in nearly two hundred years.

The invaders entered Shuri Castle and looted it, along with a number of nearby temples and noble residences, stealing or destroying Buddhist scriptures and a variety of other objects of religious or historical significance, along with considerable portions of the royal treasure. Shô Nei surrendered on the fifth day of the fourth lunar month of 1609, and was taken, along with roughly one hundred of his officials, to Sunpu to meet with the retired Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, then to Edo for a formal audience with Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada, and then to Kagoshima, where he was forced to more formally surrender and to declare a number of oaths to the Shimazu clan. In 1611, two years after the invasion, the king returned to his castle at Shuri.

In the king's absence, Kabayama Hisataka and his deputy Honda Chikamasa governed the islands on behalf of their lord Shimazu Tadatsune. Fourteen samurai officials from Satsuma, along with 163 of their staff, examined the kingdom's political structures and economic productivity, and conducted land surveys of all the islands. Following the king's return to Shuri and the resumption of governance under the royal establishment, three Ryûkyûan officials remained as hostages in Kagoshima until Satsuma was convinced that Shô Nei and his officials were operating in accordance with their oaths. The following year, the lords of Ôzato and Katsuren returned to Okinawa, while the third, an Anji (noble) by the name of Kunjan, chose to remain in Kagoshima. He took on a Japanese name and became a samurai retainer to the Shimazu, serving them in battle in the 1615 Osaka Campaign.

Consequences and effects

The surrender documents signed at Kagoshima in 1611 were accompanied by a series of oaths. The king and his councilors were made to swear that "the islands of Riu Kiu have from ancient times been a feudal dependency of Satsuma", and that there was a long-standing tradition of sending tribute and congratulatory missions on the succession of the Satsuma lords, those these were all falsehoods. The oaths also included stipulations that the kingdom admit its wrongdoing in ignoring and rejecting numerous requests for materials and for manpower, that the invasion was justified and deserved, and that the lord of Satsuma was merciful and kind in allowing the king and his officers to return home and to remain in power. Finally, the councilors were forced to swear their allegiance to the Shimazu over their king. Tei Dô, a royal councilor and commander of the kingdom's defense against the invasion, refused to sign the oaths and was beheaded.

The kingdom's royal governmental structures remained intact, along with its royal lineage. The Ryukyus remained nominally independent, a "foreign country" (異国, ikoku) to the Japanese, and efforts were made to obscure Satsuma's domination of Ryûkyû from the Chinese Court, in order to ensure the continuation of trade and diplomacy, since China refused to conduct formal relations or trade with Japan at the time. However, though the king retained considerable powers, he was only permitted to operate within a framework of strict guidelines set down by Satsuma, and was required to pay considerable amounts in tribute to Satsuma on a regular basis.

This framework of guidelines was largely set down by a document sometimes called the Fifteen Injunctions (掟十五ヶ条, Okite jûgo-ka-jô), which accompanied the oaths signed in Kagoshima in 1611, and which detailed political and economic restrictions placed upon the kingdom. Prohibitions on foreign trade, diplomacy, and travel outside of that officially permitted by Satsuma were among the chief elements of these injunctions. Ryûkyû's extensive trade relations with China, Southeast Asia, and Korea were turned to Satsuma's interests, and various laws were put into place forbidding interactions between Japanese and Ryûkyûans, travel between the two island nations. Likewise, travel abroad from Ryûkyû in general, and the reception of ships at Ryûkyû's harbors, were heavily restricted with exceptions made only for official trade and diplomatic journeys authorized by Satsuma.

In addition, Amami Ôshima and a number of other northern islands now known as the Satsunan Islands were annexed into Satsuma Domain and removed from the kingdom's territory. These islands remain today part of Kagoshima Prefecture, not Okinawa Prefecture.

References

• 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.
• Toby, Ronald. State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.