Category Archives: Japan

by Joel | 25 June 2025 · 3:53 pm

Why Satsuma Invaded Ryukyus in 1609

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 358-360:

The war of 1609 had several causes, but the overwhelmingly important one was Ryukyu’s refusal to serve as an intermediary between the Tokugawa bakufu and the Ming court. At this point, we have sufficient information to understand the basic reason for what might otherwise seem like an irrational policy. Shō Nei’s bending to pressure from Shimazu and Hideyoshi probably prompted an armed revolt in 1592. The Chinese decisions to hold the investiture ceremonies in Fujian and, later, to send a military official might well have been justifiable as wartime expedients. However, from the standpoint of the Ryukyuan court—Shō Nei, his supporters, and his enemies—such measures appeared to be a reprimand for Shō Nei’s having supported Hideyoshi’s invasion. The year 1593 was a turning point. After that, Shō Nei became determined never again to appear as an agent of any Japanese polity.

The massive Ming resistance to Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea also played a psychological role. From a Ryukyuan perspective, it appeared that the Ming court would go to war for its tributary states. As we will see, leading Ryukyuan officials apparently became convinced that China would back Ryukyu in a military conflict, that Ryukyu was too geographically dispersed and remote for Shimazu successfully to launch an invasion, and that Ryukyu’s deity, Benzaiten, would protect the kingdom.

THE REGIONAL GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION AFTER 1598

Control of piracy was an issue of much concern during the late sixteenth century. Hideyoshi, Shimazu, and the council that succeeded Hideyoshi in 1598 issued prohibitions against piracy and demanded active cooperation by Ryukyu in this endeavor. Moreover, very soon after Hideyoshi’s death, Shimazu and other powerful lords in Japan sought to establish trade relations with Ming China. Shimazu may have come close to succeeding. The domain enlisted the Bōnotsu merchant Torihara Sōan to head an expedition to repatriate captured Ming general Máo Guókē. According to Satsuma’s account, Torihara traveled all the way to Beijing in 1600, and the Chinese court promised to send two ships to Satsuma each year. In 1601, the ships sailed, but pirates attacked and destroyed them in the vicinity of Iōjima in the Satsunan islands. Key details concerning these events are not clear.

For our purposes, the main point is that after Hideyoshi’s death leaders of Japan vigorously pursued paths to reestablish good relations with China, and the Shimazu lords understood the importance of this opportunity. Ryukyu’s location made it an integral part of the process. From the standpoint of Shimazu or Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ideal option was that Ryukyu actively cooperate in suppressing piracy and restoring Sino-Japanese trade. The less desirable option was to use coercive force in an attempt to compel such cooperation. Ryukyu’s continued resistance to Satsuma and bakufu entreaties to assist in restoring relations with Ming China eventually tipped the scales in favor of military action.

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by Joel | 23 June 2025 · 11:47 am

Buddhism in the Ryukyus

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 326-328:

Ryukyu’s temples were either Shingon or Rinzai Zen. Until approximately the sixteenth century, all or most of their abbots and priests came from Japan. During Shō Shin’s reign, native Ryukyuan priests became increasingly common, although the leadership posts in large temples typically remained in the hands of priests from Japan. As part of their training, Ryukyuan priests often resided in Japan. Therefore, Buddhist temples constituted an important network linking Ryukyu with Japan. Geographically, the most important of these priest-mediated connections to locations in Japan were Kagoshima, Suō Province in western Honshu (the domain of the Ōuchi), and especially the Kyoto Gozan temples.

Buddhist priests served as Ryukyu’s diplomats to powers in Japan, and they typically drafted and transmitted diplomatic correspondence. Because well-trained Buddhist priests could write classical Chinese, they were also in a position to facilitate trade and diplomacy with China. When in 1525 Ryukyu intervened to reduce tensions between Japan and China, priests served as the envoys. During the sixteenth century, priests performed many of the functions that resident Chinese had performed in the previous century. Recall that the population of Kumemura declined significantly during the sixteenth century.

Priests with diplomatic experience sometimes served as foreign-policy or general political advisers. For example, it is likely that the Ryukyuan Rinzai priest Kakuō (dates unknown) of Tenkaiji served as a political adviser to Shō Sei circa the 1530s. We have seen that the Satsuma Rinzai priest Nanpo Bunshi was an influential political adviser and diplomat during the years leading up to the 1609 war. When that war broke out, the king called on the Ryukyuan priest Kikuin (d. 1620) to serve as lead negotiator, in part because he had lived in Satsuma and was on good terms with Bunshi and several leaders of the invading force. Trusted by both Satsuma and the king, Kikuin served as Ryukyu’s prime minster (kokusō) until 1616.

Buddhist temples functioned as academic centers that could provide knowledge and know-how to Ryukyuan rulers. Priests were involved in culture, scholarship, and essential functions of state. Their activities included inscribing Shō Taikyū’s bells, creating the Omoro sōshi by writing down the songs, inscribing many of the monuments of Shō Shin and his successors, and drafting letters from the king to send to powers in Japan. During the sixteenth century, Buddhist priests served as tutors to elite Ryukyuans, Kaiin being the outstanding example (chapter 8). Moreover, we have seen that Enkakuji played a role in the education of the sons of elite families in Amami-Ōshima, and it likely functioned similarly vis-à-vis other islands.

Although Buddhism, Chinese thought, and native religion often occupied separate textual, rhetorical, and ritual realms, Shō Shin and his successors combined all three into a potent synthesis to enhance royal authority and defend the state. Some priests undoubtedly pursued Buddhist enlightenment through their own study and practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism in Ryukyu functioned mainly as a public state institution, not as a private spiritual path.

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by Joel | 21 June 2025 · 4:49 pm

Ryukyu Seacraft

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 288-291:

During period two [1450-1520s], Ryukyu continued to obtain vessels from China. However, instead of receiving used military vessels for free, Ryukyu bore the costs of vessel construction and subsequent repairs. Ship size did not change, an indirect indication of the continuing vigor of the tribute trade. During this period and the previous one, each ship received a single-character name such as “vigor,” “wisdom,” “courage,” or “longevity” at the shipyard when built. After arriving in Ryukyu, the ship received a Japanese name ending in -maru. Probably from around the late fifteenth century onward, ships also received a Ryukyuan name ending in -tomi. These names of ships are found in the Omoro, and vessels appearing in the songs would usually have had alternative Chinese and Japanese names.

…

During this period [1520s-ca. 1570], the Ryukyuan fleet continued to consist of relatively small ships, possibly even smaller than before. The question is whether Ryukyu continued to purchase ships from China or whether it built its own. The first ship of the designation “small ships of [our?] country” (honkoku shōsen) appears in documents in 1541, and ships with this description, as well as other terms with “small” in them, were common from 1549 onward. Okamoto and Tomiyama Kazuyuki regard these ships as having been made in China. However, it is likely that they were civilian merchant ships. Tomiyama points out that in 1555 Shō Sei asked to purchase such a ship from the Ming court with the express proviso that “it need not be large.” By contrast, Mamoru Akamine states that during Shō Sei’s reign (1527–1555), “the shipbuilding industry shifted to Ryukyu itself and Ryukyuan-built hulls came to be used in the tribute trade.” Recall from chapter 3 that Ikuta Shigeru also regarded the smaller ships built after 1548 as Ryukyuan-made vessels.

We cannot be absolutely certain where ships were made during this period or precisely when the first Okinawan-made ship (other than vessels of a relatively simple dugout design) was built. Nevertheless, Okamoto and Tomiyama present good evidence that the 1540s or 1550s marked a transition from smaller military ships to somewhat smaller Chinese-made merchant ships as the mainstay of Ryukyu’s fleet. It is likely that the first Okinawan-made ships used in trade and diplomacy were built in the 1570s, during the reign of Shō Ei (r. 1573–1586). In documents, these ships are called “local ships” (tsuchibune), “small ships,” and possibly by other terms.

…

As we have seen, Omoro songs often mention ships. One describes the ship of an elite lord (aji) as having a cloth sail and the ship of a low official as having a sail made from matting. The details of local boat and ship manufacturing in the Ryukyu islands are unclear in most cases. However, extrapolating backward from the early modern era and piecing together other information such as the omoro mentioned here, it is almost certain that early Ryukyuans manufactured boats and small ships (known by sabani and other terms). These were dug out from large trees to form canoe-like hulls that could be rowed or sailed. Tying four of these hulls together and placing boards across the top created a henzabune, which during the early modern era were sometimes used to transport liquor (awamori) to Amami-Ōshima and return with as many as eight head of cattle. It is almost certain that Ryukyuans manufactured a variety of dugout vessels for use in local and island-to-island transport between Okinawa, Amami-Ōshima, and other northern Ryukyu islands.

Did Ryukyuans manufacture ships more complex than dugout vessels before the 1570s? A shipbuilding tradition in Uruka in Miyako began in approximately the early fifteenth century and continued into the early modern era. These Uruka ships (Uruka-miuni) were built mainly in the Japanese manner by attaching two layers of planks to a keel, with the mast located in the middle of the ship and capable of being lowered during severe weather. Uruka ships conducted trade and transported tribute shipments across the Kerama gap to Okinawa, and Inamura Kenpu regards them as part of the wakō legacy in Sakishima. There is some evidence that mariners from Miyako were able to sail as far as Southeast Asia during the fourteenth century.

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by Joel | 20 June 2025 · 5:03 am

Histories of the Ryukyu Archipelago refer a lot to important sites called gusuku, a term whose etymology is the subject of much disagreement. Here is a an admirably open-minded summary from Wikipedia:

There is no consensus about the etymology of gusuku. [Basil Hall] Chamberlain analyzed the word as the combination of gu (< honorific go 御) and shuku (宿). Kanazawa Shōzaburō also segmented gusuku into gu and suku but considered that the latter half was cognate with Old Japanese shiki, in which ki was a loan from Old Korean. Iha Fuyū proposed that suku was cognate with soko (塞, fortress). Hirata Tsugumasa considered that suku was cognate with Japanese soko (底, bottom). Similarly, Higashionna Kanjun raised doubts over the analysis of gu since older records always used honorific u (< o) instead of gu (< go). Nakahara Zenchū identified gu as go (stone).

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by Joel | 19 June 2025 · 9:01 am

Remaking the Ryukyu Monarchy

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 237-239:

The unstable condition of Ryukyuan kingship probably constituted Shō Shin’s most pressing early challenge. His own rise to power, of course, had been a violent intervention. During the fifteenth century, reign changes based on personal military power had been the norm. Local rulers maintained their own armies, ships, and trade networks. In Okinawa, perhaps a dozen lords possessed significant military power. Remnants of deposed rulers from the first Shō dynasty and rulers based in other islands constituted additional potential sources of instability. The monopoly on tribute trade was an advantage to whoever controlled Shuri, but it also made that person a target. Shō Shin struggled for supremacy and legitimacy throughout his long reign. Military campaigns included local warfare not appearing in the official histories, as well as invasions of Yaeyama in 1500, Kumejima (1506 and possibly earlier), and continuing military tensions in Sakishima that included an invasion of Yonaguni around 1522 (or earlier) by forces at least nominally allied with Shuri.

Perhaps the greatest act of power consolidation was Shō Shin’s causing Okinawa’s major warlords (aji) to give up their castles and relocate to Shuri in 1525 or 1526 in return for high noble status—at least according to the common story. Survey histories routinely present this relocation as a simple fact, but we have no indication that it happened as a discrete, orderly event. It is not mentioned in any monument, in the 1701 Genealogy of Chūzan, or in any other text until Sai On’s 1725 Genealogy. Even there, the claim occurs with no explanation, only in the introductory material, and not under a specific year. The 1725 Genealogy text states that the presence of warlords had long been a source of uprisings and disorder. Shō Shin relocated all of them to Shuri, disbanded their military forces, and sent his own officials out to govern their territories. Kyūyō goes into more detail, but its only basis is Sai On’s assertion in Genealogy. Perhaps Sai On had in mind Japan’s early modern sankin-kōtai system.

The relocation of the warlords to Shuri makes logical sense within the overall trajectory of Shō Shin’s reign. We know that he stored weapons in a central armory under his control and reorganized military forces and other key state functions into the hiki system. There was plenty of turbulence and factionalism in the royal court after Shō Shin’s time, but there is no indication of an independent regional power elsewhere in Okinawa that could rival Shuri. Shō Shin brought potential regional rivals such as Nakijin, the Sashiki area, and Kumejima into orbits around Shuri. Regardless of whether and how he relocated or displaced regional rulers, Shō Shin succeeded in concentrating power at the capital to such an extent that no other entity in Okinawa or within the rest of the Ryukyu islands could seriously challenge it by the end of his reign.

Shō Shin’s reign marks the first known use of written documents for government administration. He also created an eclectic ideology in support of royal power. These measures had the effect of transforming Ryukyu’s monarchs and their governments. Before Shō Shin, kings of Ryukyu resembled powerful wakō chieftains. After Shō Shin, they resembled Chinese-style heads of a centralized bureaucracy. The official histories, and most modern ones, project this later, sixteenth-century model of the monarchy back to previous generations. Historians often perform this type of maneuver.

Shō Shin’s centralizing project did not stop with his death. His successor, Shō Sei, further enhanced Shuri’s military capabilities and continued to systematize the bureaucracy and official state rituals. He created a new type of military gusuku and developed the religious ideology of royal authority known later as tedako shisō (son-of-the-sun thought). Shō Sei also brought out the first volume of the Omoro sōshi.

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by Joel | 17 June 2025 · 8:27 am

Ryukyu’s Golden Age

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 221-222:

Survey histories tend to treat Shō Shin’s long reign as an idyllic age. Ryukyu prospered as an international trade hub, peacefully engaging in commerce throughout a large part of the world. Trade wealth contributed to cultural vitality. Shō Shin ushered in Ryukyu’s golden age, the “Great Days of Chuzan,” in the oft-repeated words of George H. Kerr. The empire Shō Shin created was indeed larger, wealthier, and more powerful than any previous iteration of Ryukyu. The institutional framework that Shō Shin initiated and Shō Sei completed lasted until 1879 and even later. Shō Shin was Ryukyu’s most important king by almost any definition. Why, then, is the man who brought about the Great Days of Chūzan missing in Reflections on Chūzan?

Reflections is organized in de facto chapters, most corresponding to a royal reign. There are chapters for many of the actual and legendary kings before Shō Hashi, for the first Shō dynasty kings (except Shishō), one for Shō En, and even one for the brief reign of Shō Sen’i. The chapter after his jumps to Shō Sei, skipping Shō Shin. The 1701 Genealogy of Chūzan includes a brief chapter on Shō Shin, even though ostensibly the 1701 Genealogy was simply a Chinese translation of Reflections. Likewise, the 1725 Genealogy includes a chapter on Shō Shin, and there are extensive Kyūyō entries covering the events of his reign. Is it possible that his chapter was irretrievably lost in our extant editions of Reflections? Yes, but it is unlikely that a chapter of such importance would disappear without any comment or attempt to reconstitute it later from Genealogy.

Throughout his reign Shō Shin worked to consolidate power. Military conquest was essential, of course, but so too was what we might call “soft power.” The king and his officials erected temples, shrines, monuments, stands of trees, and other structures not only to proclaim the glory of royal rule but also to create a new political geography, with Shuri as the undisputed and comprehensive center of a Ryukyuan empire. Shō Shin also worked to erase, minimize, or transform the legacies of potentially problematic predecessors, of which there were several. His reign was prosperous, and it was a time of momentous change. One price for this prosperity and change was bloodshed on a scale greater than that under any predecessor. Moreover, internal family problems and questions of legitimacy dogged Shō Shin, and to some extent the entire line down to Shō Nei. These points probably explain why Shō Shin is missing, for the most part, from Reflections: his reign included too many skeletons in too many closets.

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by Joel | 14 June 2025 · 3:42 pm

Ryukyu Exports to Ming China

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 115, 122-124:

By the late fourteenth century gunpowder weapons had become crucial in warfare. The Hóngwǔ emperor, “the gunpowder emperor” according to Tonio Andrade, embraced this powerful technology. “The extraordinary success of the Ming dynasty,” argues Andrade, “was based on the effective use of guns.” Sulfur was a key ingredient in gunpowder. Japan produced it in abundance, especially in and around Kyushu. China possessed abundant potassium nitrate (saltpeter) but lacked sulfur in a form that was readily usable. Therefore, sulfur had great profit potential as a trade item.

…

The frequency of tribute trade increased dramatically after 1383. Total Ryukyuan tribute trade, including the number of embassies per year, number of ships, and quantity of goods, reached a peak during the 1420s and 1430s. Subsequently, it began a gradual decline, followed by a sharp decline during the 1520s.

No single metric captures the entire picture of official trade. The number of tribute missions per year is one possible measure, but each mission might consist of variable numbers and sizes of ships with different mixes of cargo. It is more useful to measure the quantity of sulfur, an item shipped with each tribute voyage. Ryukyu had access to a steady supply of sulfur from the island of Iōtorishima [Sulfur Bird Island]. Here, I follow Ikuta Shigeru’s analysis, with quantities derived from Rekidai hōan documents. Ikuta divides Ryukyuan tribute trade into seven periods, each based on significant changes in circumstances affecting the trade.

Period two was the approximate peak of Ryukyu’s tribute trade. The average annual shipment of sulfur to China on Ryukyuan tribute vessels during this time was 38,013 jīn. Using this quantity as 100 percent, table 1 shows the decline in Ryukyuan sulfur shipments to China relative to each immediate previous period and to period two, the peak of trade. Period three marks the start of Ming-imposed restrictions on Ryukyu’s tribute trade, the most important of which was limiting tribute missions to one per year. By 1440, once per year was already the typical frequency, so the practical impact on trade volume was small.

…

Sulfur and horses help illuminate the maritime network in which Ryukyu was embedded and the role of wakō. Ryukyu’s tribute cargo of sulfur was not simply a token. Elemental sulfur was scarce in China, requiring that it be manufactured from pyrite, an iron sulfide. During the Ming dynasty “the number of areas producing pyrite-derived sulfur greatly increased. Ming dynasty documents (1564) mention that the emperor allowed the central and four local governments to buy about 10,000 jin of sulfur per year to replenish their supplies for gunpowder manufacture.”

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by Joel | 13 June 2025 · 4:31 am

When Ryukyu Became a State

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 130-133:

Ryukyu became a formal state in the East Asian international order because of Ming policy to tame the region’s wakō and the related Maritime Prohibitions. When Yáng Zài traveled to Naha in 1372, Okinawa was an island governed by dozens of local lords. Although many or all of them engaged in private trade, none of them would have been capable of conducting formal tribute trade on their own. The lord of Urasoe became “king” for tribute purposes. Satto, the kings who followed him, and the kings associated with the northern and southern principalities, profited from the situation. Ryukyuan ships began sailing to Southeast Asia, typically via Fuzhou, but they did so in Chinese-made ships with Chinese captains guided by Chinese pilots and supported by Chinese interpreters. Similarly, as we have seen, Ryukyuan ships sailing to Korea were typically Japanese vessels commanded and piloted by Japanese or by mariners of mixed Korean and Japanese origins. Ships sailed to destinations in China, Southeast Asia, and Korea under the auspices of a Ryukyuan king, and Naha served as an international port. Ryukyuans were actively involved in this maritime activity, but the common image of Ryukyuan mariners independently sailing to a variety of far-flung kingdoms requires some modification. In many respects, during the late fourteenth century and well into the fifteenth, “Ryukyu” functioned much like a shipping company. Its two largest clients were the Ming court supported by Chinese living in Naha and the Ashikaga shoguns aided by Sakai [Osaka] merchants.

…

Citing research by Akamine Seiki demonstrating that Ryukyu did not conduct independent trade with Southeast Asia, a hypothesis by Ōta Ryōhaku that Chinese merchants in Naha constituted a shadow government that held the real power in early Ryukyu, and the relatively inferior quality of native Ryukyuan ships, Irei Takashi lamented that the image of Ryukyu’s “golden age” as a prosperous, independent maritime kingdom appears to be an illusion. In light of Ryukyu’s early modern and modern history of having been controlled by outside powers, Irei concludes, “That the ‘golden age’ was a falsehood is indeed a gloomy matter, but thinking about the storms of outside pressure that have scoured this cluster of islands, it is something we must accept.” Irei’s essay addresses the emotive impact for many contemporary people of the idealized image of early Ryukyu.

Early Ryukyu was not an illusion, but its history was more complex than … the official histories, or many modern accounts acknowledge. One point to underscore is that although early Ryukyu was never formally part of any other country, it was not a de facto country itself until well into the reign of Shō Shin. Early Ryukyu was a frontier region within the East China Sea network generally and Japan in particular. Until the sixteenth century, there was no Okinawa-wide or Ryukyu-wide government, little or no literary culture outside of a few Buddhist temples, and there was a high level of internecine violence. Ryukyu did eventually become a centralized state and a far-flung empire. Moreover, from roughly 1510 to 1550, this Ryukyu empire enjoyed significant power and wealth. We could reasonably call this period a “golden” age, although it was fairly short and was more golden for some Ryukyuans than for others.

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by Joel | 12 June 2025 · 5:13 am

Heyday of Piracy in Japan & Korea

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 84-88:

A crucial context for the development of Ryukyu was the warfare between Japan’s Northern and Southern Courts, especially in Kyushu. Wakō attacks on the Korean coast intensified in 1350 and continued for decades. Attacks occurred on a large scale, sometimes involving hundreds of ships and thousands of combatants. The most intense period of wakō marauding was from 1375 to 1388. Some scholars point to lack of agricultural productivity in the classic wakō havens as a major reason for these depredations. Paddy land, for example, comprised only 3 percent of Tsushima. Similarly, poverty was also a severe problem in Kyushu at this time. Given the massive scale of wakō attacks, however, another impetus was the need for grain to supply Southern Court armies. Prince Kaneyoshi, the court’s leader in Kyushu, actively collaborated with wakō toward this end. In other words, wakō based near the coast of Higo [Kumamoto area] and at Tsushima, Iki, and Matsuura supported Prince Kaneyoshi and his Southern Court by providing needed supplies, plundered from Korea. In return, Kaneyoshi provided protection for the wakō. In contrast, Kyūshū tandai Imagawa Ryōshun, head of the Northern Court in Kyushu, sought to suppress wakō piracy.

Envoys from Korea traveled to Japan in an effort to stem the tide of piracy, the first of whom arrived at Kyoto in 1366. The Muromachi bakufu sought good relations with Korea, but its control over Kyushu was limited at the time. The piracy problem prompted the bakufu to pursue military pacification of Kyushu. It eventually succeeded, but the Southern Court wakō became even more active during the 1370s, prompting the following 1375 message from the bakufu to the Korean court via the Tenryūji priest Tokusō Shūsa: “Kyushu is broken apart by rebelling subjects and does not pay tribute; the stubborn subjects of the Western seacoast have become pirates. But these are not the doing of the bakufu. We are planning to dispatch a general to Kyushu to pacify the area and can promise to suppress the pirates.” Success in carrying out this promise required more than fifteen years. Southern Court wakō also attacked China, albeit less frequently. While the Korean court had obvious reasons to be gravely concerned with putting a stop to the wakō attacks, the reasons for the similarly intense concern by the Hóngwǔ emperor require further explanation. …

It is possible that the Korean court misunderstood the contours of political power in Japan at the time, especially the Seiseifu–wakō connection. By contrast, the Ming court dealt directly with Prince Kaneyoshi, attempting to make him into king of Japan. Some scholars have taken this move as a sign that Ming officials did not understand Japan’s internal conditions. However, it is more likely that the Ming court knew exactly who controlled the wakō and thus initially focused on Kaneyoshi.

The basic timeline of the rise and fall of the Southern Court in Kyushu begins in 1348 with a castle on the Higo coast near Yatsushiro that had two names, Hanaoka castle or Sashiki castle. It was in the territory of the Nawa family, who provided naval forces for the Southern Court. Seiseifu [征西府 ‘subjugation of the west’] headquarters moved around Kyushu with the changing tides of war. Seiseifu occupied the same space as the old Dazaifu between 1360 and 1372, the peak of Southern Court power. It relocated to Kikuchi in the mountains of Higo until 1381. … The Southern Court reunited with the Northern Court in 1392 ….

The defeat of the Southern Court in Kyushu caused migrations of wakō into the Ryukyu islands. … The collapse of Seiseifu power during the 1380s and 1390s put pressure on the Southern Court wakō in Kyushu to migrate. Moreover, developments in Korea also pressured wakō bands to change their tactics. Analysis of the number and size of wakō attacks compared with what they obtained and the losses they incurred reveals that even during the period 1364–1374, they had begun to experience diminishing returns to scale. The trend continued. The number and size of attacks increased during the 1370s and 1380s, but Korean resistance and evasion resulted in fewer per capita gains. For the most part, the effectiveness of wakō marauding in Korea tracked the rise and decline of Seiseifu. One result of decreasing wakō gains in Korea was an increase in raids on the Chinese coast. An element in this complex mix was increasingly effective Korean defenses, including costal fortifications, coordinated signal beacons using fire, more and better ships, better commanders, and more soldiers along the coast. The founding of the Joseon (Yi) dynasty in 1392 accelerated this process.

By the 1390s Southern Court wakō lost their state sponsors and many of their bases. They could still operate from islands such as Tsushima, but a hostile Muromachi bakufu, improved Korean defenses, and lower demand for the possible spoils of their attacks on Korea had the effect of pushing wakō bands southward. By this time, the busiest harbor in the Ryukyu islands was Naha.

…

The port of Naha served as a major intersection within the East China Sea network through which “pirates, captives, fishermen, divers, envoys, monks, traders, and other people traveled” during the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Merchants or wakō in Japan would have found sailing to Naha for trade more practical or more profitable than journeying directly to the coast of China or farther afield. The result was the creation of “a strange relationship of dependency” between Ryukyuan and Japanese merchants.

The first appearance of Ryukyu as a state in Korean records begins with a 1389 statement that an embassy from Ryukyu returned Koreans who had been captured by pirates. The repatriation of captured Koreans recurred frequently thereafter as a reason for Ryukyu-sponsored voyages to Korea. Although the Korean court granted favorable treatment to these embassies, it did not actively encourage trade with Ryukyu. In this context, Korean people were valuable commodities, whose repatriation permitted potentially lucrative trade embassies. Repatriation was not necessarily an act of benevolence. It constituted “one variety of the slave trade.”

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by Joel | 11 June 2025 · 1:31 am

Origins of Ryukyu People & Culture

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 58-61:

The flow of people, culture, and technology into Okinawa, Kumejima, and Sakishima was mainly from north to south. Some of this flow came from Michinoshima, some from Korea, and most of it from Japan, especially western Kyushu and nearby islands. Tanigawa Ken’ichi has metaphorically called it an “attack of northern culture.” Subsequent sections and chapters explore this topic further. Here I mention several physical manifestations of the north-to-south flow.

The climate in Okinawa is not suited to preserving skeletal remains, but there has been sufficient excavation and testing to warrant several conclusions. One is a significant break between the physical structure of prehistoric residents of Okinawa and those of later eras. Okinawan skeletal remains from about the eleventh or twelfth centuries onward begin closely to resemble their counterparts in Japan during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. As Thomas Pellard points out, “The bearers of Gusuku [castle walls] culture expanded within the whole Ryukyu Archipelago, and preexisting foragers, who were few, simply died out or were assimilated without leaving a significant trace.” Omoro descriptions of the clothing and other aspects of the appearance of local rulers suggest that at least some were direct arrivals from Kamakura-era Japan. Furthermore, excavations of Okinawan weapons and armor reveal that they were the same as those used in Japan during the era of the Northern and Southern Courts (ca. 1335–1392) and the Muromachi period. In general, most military items excavated in Okinawa were made in Japan.

DNA evidence from recent studies is consonant with this situation. Studies of both modern and ancient DNA “tend to show that Ryukyuans form a group closely related to Mainland Japanese.” Moreover, despite geographical proximity, “Southern Ryukyuans do not show any particular affinity with the Austronesian populations of Taiwan, and they form a clear subgroup with Northern Ryukyuans.” Genetic diversity in the Ryukyu islands is relatively low, which indicates a lack of long-term isolation. In other words, the Ryukyu islands were part of a larger network, and the migration from regions to the north that populated the Ryukyu islands and brought Gusuku culture, “agriculture, ceramics, and the Proto-Ryukyuan language,” took place between approximately the tenth and twelfth centuries. Most likely the [turbo] shell trade was the major economic driving force behind much of this migration.

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Early Okinawa’s ties with China are well known and frequently discussed, whereas ties with northern areas typically receive less attention in survey histories. China played a vital role in early Ryukyuan history as a conduit of material wealth. Nevertheless, prior to the seventeenth century, Chinese high culture had little impact on Ryukyu. Early Ryukyu’s technology (metallurgy, agriculture, weapons), literary and aesthetic culture (including oral traditions), religious culture (including Buddhism), the various Ryukyuan languages, and the vast majority of Ryukyu’s people came from the north. Much of the region’s economic activity also took place north of Okinawa. One additional indication of the interconnectedness of the northern routes was the fact that distinctive Ryukyuan place-names found in the Omoro [ancient poems] were known to Hakata merchants and to Koreans and appeared on their maps.

The Takase-Fujian route mentioned above became popular around the 1340s, diverting maritime traffic from the previous route, a line from Hakata to Níngbō. The new route greatly increased traffic through the southern Ryukyu islands, but smaller-scale private trade, piracy, and smuggling based at locations in Okinawa and points to the southwest had been occurring since the twelfth century and probably earlier.

During the thirteenth century, Chinese ceramics began to appear at major gusuku sites in Okinawa and the southern Ryukyu islands. Fragrant wine and other products from as far away as Thailand and Vietnam also began to make their way into the Ryukyu islands at this time. For example, a four-eared jar from the Khwae Noi River in Thailand was excavated at Nakijin. After the start of formal tribute relations with Ming China in 1372, the material wealth of several major gusuku sites such as Kumejima, Katsuren, Shuri, and Nakijin increased dramatically. Celadon (green ware) ceramic dolls, Buddhist statues, candleholders, and other specialized products have been excavated at these sites, as well as a wide variety of metal goods. China was a source of great wealth, both directly and indirectly. To understand Ming China’s role in the development of Ryukyu, it is necessary to undertake a close study of wakō, the topic of the next chapter.