Ryukyu Kingdom

In the fourteenth century Okinawa was divided among three rival principalities, Hokuzan in the north, Chuzan in the centre and Nanzan in the south, each built around stone castles (gusuku) held by local lords known as aji. In 1372 King Satto of Chuzan answered an invitation from the Hongwu Emperor and sent tribute to Ming China, and soon all three principalities were trading with the Ming court. Sho Hashi, the lord of Sashiki in the south, overthrew King Bunei of Chuzan in 1406 and installed his father, Sho Shisho, as king. He conquered Hokuzan by taking its castle at Nakijin, traditionally in 1416, succeeded his father in the early 1420s and completed the unification of Okinawa in 1429 by defeating Nanzan. The Ming recognised him as king of Chuzan, the name the kingdom kept in its dealings with China, and the royal surname Sho is traditionally said to have been granted by the Ming emperor. Sho Hashi governed from Shuri, on a hill above the port of Naha, and enlarged its castle. His First Sho dynasty proved unstable: after a series of short reigns and the Gosamaru–Amawari conflict of 1458, the royal treasurer Kanemaru seized power on the death of Sho Toku and was proclaimed king as Sho En in 1470, founding the Second Sho dynasty, which reigned until 1879.

Okinawa had few resources of its own beyond sulphur from Iotorishima, horses and shells, so Ryukyu's wealth came from carrying other people's goods. From the ports of Fujian it brought Chinese silk, porcelain and copper coins; from Japan swords, lacquerware, fans and copper; and from Southeast Asia sappanwood, pepper and other spices, ivory and aromatic woods. Ming restrictions on private overseas trade (the haijin ban) gave tribute missions a privileged position, and the court's own ships sailed to Ayutthaya in Siam, Malacca, Palembang, Java, Patani and Annam; letters and documents of these voyages survive in the Rekidai Hoan, the kingdom's diplomatic archive. Kume village near Naha, settled by Chinese from Fujian, supplied interpreters, navigators and scribes. Society was divided between the Shuri gentry (yukatchu) and the farmers of the villages, who grew rice, millet and later the sweet potato, introduced from China in the early seventeenth century. Religion combined worship at sacred groves (utaki) led by village priestesses (noro) with Buddhism patronised by the court and, later, Confucian learning. Trade with Southeast Asia faded after the Portuguese took Malacca in 1511 and the Ming relaxed the maritime ban in 1567; the last royal voyage to Siam is usually dated to 1570.

The kingdom was created by war among the three principalities, and its early kings continued to expand by force across the archipelago. Sho Toku sent an expedition against the island of Kikai in 1466, Sho Shin's forces crushed the resistance of Oyake Akahachi in the Yaeyama Islands in 1500, bringing the southern islands under Shuri's control, and Sho Sei campaigned in the Amami Islands in 1537. Armies were levies raised by the aji and the court, armed with swords, spears and bows, and the kingdom later acquired some firearms. To guard Naha harbour against wako pirates, the forts of Yarazamui and Mie Gusuku were built at its mouth in the sixteenth century. These forces proved no match for Satsuma. In 1609 the Shimazu clan, with the consent of Tokugawa Ieyasu, sent about 3,000 samurai armed with arquebuses in more than 100 ships under Kabayama Hisataka. They seized Amami Oshima, landed at Unten in northern Okinawa, took Nakijin and marched south while Naha's harbour defences held off an attack from the sea; King Sho Nei surrendered Shuri less than two weeks after the landing. Under Satsuma rule the kingdom kept no real army. The popular image of Ryukyu as a weaponless kingdom is overstated, but the unarmed fighting arts from which karate developed probably took shape among the Shuri gentry in this later period.

The king ruled from Shuri Castle, assisted by a regent (sessei) and a council of three ministers (sanshikan), who sat in the deliberative body known as the Hyojosho. Sho Shin (r. 1477–1526), the third king of the Second Sho dynasty, built the centralised state: he required the aji to leave their castles and live at Shuri, ranked the gentry by the colour of their caps and the metal of their hairpins, placed the islands under districts (magiri) supervised from the capital, and organised the noro priestesses under a royal high priestess, the kikoe-ogimi, chosen from the king's female relatives. He also built the royal mausoleum of Tamaudun in 1501. Relations with China rested on investiture: each new king was confirmed by envoys from Beijing, whose visits were the greatest ceremonies of a reign, and the kingdom sent regular tribute missions to the Ming and later the Qing. After 1609 Satsuma kept a magistrate at Naha, annexed the Amami Islands, fixed an annual tribute and approved senior appointments, but concealed its control so that the profitable Chinese tribute trade could continue. Within these limits Ryukyuan statesmen reformed the state: Sho Shoken (Haneji Choshu), regent from 1666 to 1673, cut court expenses and ritual spending, and Sai On, a member of the council of three from 1728, promoted forestry, flood control and agricultural reform.

For about a century and a half Ryukyu was one of the great intermediaries of East Asian maritime trade, linking Fujian, Korea, Japan and the ports of Southeast Asia, and the bronze bell cast for Shuri Castle in 1458 proclaimed the kingdom a 'bridge of all nations'. Its double subordination after 1609, openly to China and quietly to Satsuma, became a classic example of how the Chinese tributary order and the Tokugawa system overlapped. Through it Satsuma gained access to Chinese goods and information, while Ryukyuan embassies travelled to the shoguns at Edo between 1634 and 1850, dressed in Chinese style to display the reach of Tokugawa authority. Ryukyuan court culture drew on both neighbours and on local tradition: the Omoro Soshi, a collection of sacred songs compiled between 1531 and 1623; Haneji Choshu's official history Chuzan Seikan (1650); the kumi odori dance-drama, created by Tamagusuku Chokun and first performed for Chinese envoys in 1719; red and gold lacquerware; bingata dyed textiles; the three-stringed sanshin; and the distilled spirit awamori. The Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Shuri Castle's main hall, rebuilt in 1992 after its destruction in the Battle of Okinawa, burned again in 2019, after which a new reconstruction began. The kingdom remains central to Okinawan identity.

Ryukyu's commercial decline began long before its political end, as Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese merchants took over the routes its ships had served, and after 1609 Satsuma's demands left the kingdom heavily indebted. In the nineteenth century Western ships arrived: French missionaries were landed in 1844, and Commodore Matthew Perry used Naha as a base in 1853–1854 and signed a compact with the kingdom in 1854, followed by agreements with France in 1855 and the Netherlands in 1859. After the Meiji Restoration Japan moved to end the ambiguity of Ryukyu's position. In 1872 it declared the kingdom the Ryukyu Domain, with Sho Tai as domain king, and it used the killing of Ryukyuan sailors shipwrecked on Taiwan in 1871 to justify its expedition to Taiwan in 1874. In 1875 the court was ordered to stop sending tribute to the Qing, while Ryukyuan officials appealed secretly to Beijing for help. In 1879 Matsuda Michiyuki arrived at Shuri with police and troops, the domain was abolished and replaced by Okinawa Prefecture, and Sho Tai was removed to Tokyo, where he was later made a marquis. Some officials fled to Fujian to seek Qing support, but negotiations, in which the former American president Ulysses S. Grant offered his good offices, came to nothing, and the islands remained Japanese.