Category Archives: Japan

by Joel | 7 September 2025 · 1:02 am

Korean POWs in Hawaiʻi, 1940s

From Most Prisoners In Hawaiʻi’s WWII Internment Camp Were Korean, by Kirsten Downey (Honolulu: Civil Beat, 5 September 2025). While hundreds of Japanese-Americans were the first held at Honouliuli, many more Koreans followed:

The Honouliuli internment camp in central O’ahu is best known in Hawaiʻi as the place some 400 Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.

But new research is bringing to light the fact that Koreans were the largest single population group there.

In fact, there were seven times as many Koreans held there as Japanese Americans. Of the 4,000 people held, about 2,700 were Korean, captured elsewhere and brought to Hawaiʻi, and about 400 were Japanese Americans who had been living and working in Hawaiʻi when the war broke out.

The Koreans were prisoners of war who fell into American hands as U.S. forces made their way across Oceania fighting Japanese imperial forces, who had seized lands all across the Pacific, including in China, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and French Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos), Guam, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Most of the Koreans were in fact doubly prisoners: The Japanese, who had invaded and conquered Korea in the early 1900s, had conscripted many of them against their will. Dragooned by the Japanese, they then ended up American prisoners when the Japanese garrisons fell.

The little-known fact that Koreans made up the lion’s share of residents at the internment camp is becoming the focus of new academic scrutiny and discussion.

Korean Prisoners Identified

Last year, researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi’s Center for Oral History began a new collaboration with the National Park Service to collect accounts from the Korean or Korean American descendants of people who were detained at the camp or who worked there to incorporate this new information into current understanding and historical interpretation.

This work builds on the scholarship of Duk Hee Lee Murabayashi, president of the Korean Immigration Research Institute in Hawaiʻi, and Professor Yong-ho Ch’oe, who taught Korean history at the University of Hawaiʻi and was the author of a book about Korean immigration to Hawaiʻi called “From the Land of Hibiscus: Koreans in Hawai‘i, 1903–1950.” Ch’oe died last year.

Murabayashi has identified the 2,700 Koreans held at Honouliuli, providing their names and home locations, which is helping people identify their deceased relatives.

…

‘A Complete Shock’

The fact that so many Koreans were present in the camp during World War II has come as a surprise even to the Korean community.

“Until a few months ago, I certainly did not know about Koreans who, during World War II, ended up as prisoners of war right here in Hawaiʻi at Honouliuli Internment Camp,” said David Suh, president of the United Korean Association of Hawaiʻi, at a recent talk hosted by the park.

“It came to me as a complete shock,” said Edward Shultz, former director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi and the immediate past president of the Korean American Foundation.

…

As the war progressed and American forces began advancing on Japanese-controlled strongholds, they took a number of Koreans into custody as prisoners of war, bringing them to the internment camp at Honouliuli. According to the National Park Service, hundreds arrived after each battle in the Pacific, including from Guam, Peleliu, Tinian and Palau, sometimes intermingled with Japanese prisoners.

Following the 1944 battle in Saipan, the NPS reported, about 350 Koreans arrived, all noncombatants, many with bullet and slash wounds. The bullet wounds came from the American troops, but the Koreans also appeared to have been victims of sword attacks by Japanese, suggesting they suffered systematic abuse.

Relations between the Koreans and the Japanese Americans at the camp became at times so strained that they had to be kept separate from each other, said Professor Alan Rosenfeld, the associate vice president of academic programs and policy at the University of Hawaiʻi, who has spent years studying Honouliuli.

“There are archival incidents of Koreans and Japanese fighting,” said Mary Kunmi Yu Danico, director of the University of Hawaiʻi’s Center for Oral History, who is leading the project to gather oral histories of the descendants of people who lived or worked at the camp.

…

Word began to seep out in Hawaiʻi that Koreans were there, probably because the American military hired some local Korean Americans to serve as translators and guards at the camp.

The first published report that Koreans were living at Honouliuli came in the pages of the Methodist Church bulletin in 1944, according to Murayabushi [Murabayashi!]. Church leaders had apparently been told that many Korean men in their 20s and 30s were being held there, and that they were bored and lonely. The first notice about their existence came when the church asked if anyone had spare musical instruments they would be willing to donate so the men could entertain themselves.

Later, church leaders began organizing an outreach to them, delivering Christmas gifts and arranging to loan them books.

That means there may be people living in Hawaiʻi today who recall those years and those interactions. Murayabushi [Murabayashi!], Danico and Ogura are asking people to come forward to share those memories.

For an earlier blogpost about Korean POWs in WW2, see Koreans, Taiwanese, and Okinawans Among Japanese POWs. See also Origins of Korean POWs in Hawaii, excerpted from an article by the late Yong-ho Ch’oe, mentioned above. Prof. Ch’oe was a fine scholar and a kind gentleman.

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by Joel | 3 August 2025 · 6:11 am

Poles in Japan vs. Russia, 1904

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 526-528:

In 1904 war broke out between Russia and Japan. As odd as it may seem, the clash with its tiny Asian neighbor proved troublesome for the Russians. The war effort led to problems at home and provided new opportunities, and new challenges, for the Poles of the Russian Empire.

The hostilities provided impetus for the Poles (always on the lookout for opportunity in the international arena) to plot. Both Piłsudski and Dmowski made their way to Tokyo, independently of each other, and each with a different agenda. Piłsudski offered the Japanese Polish military services; his men would fight the Russians on their home front, thus helping Japan win the war. Dmowski came to warn the Japanese against taking up Piłsudski’s offer; he expected that the war might compel the Russians to make concessions to the Poles. While the double visit might have been seen as a comedy of errors (the two men actually met while in Tokyo, discussed their respective views, and respectfully chose to differ), the fact that the bemused Japanese were willing to hear each side suggests the Poles were being treated as if they were genuine players in the international realm, and not subjects of Russia. And, although they declined to use the Poles to fight, the Japanese general staff did provide Piłsudski with some money and war materièl in the hopes he might gather intelligence for them.

The Revolution of 1904–1907

In the meantime the Russo-Japanese War continued, increasingly showing the weakness of the eventual loser, Russia. This weakness had repercussions for the Poles of the empire. The diplomatic efforts of Piłsudski and Dmowski notwithstanding, the events of 1904 and beyond would be more noteworthy for the upheaval and bloodshed they engendered. In the fall of that year, a working-class demonstration broke out in Warsaw’s Grzymułtowski Square in which Piłsudski’s PPS fighters (some sixty strong) defended the crowds against the Russian police and mounted Cossacks. A number of participants were injured, while over four hundred were arrested and six lost their lives—as did one Russian policeman. This was the first armed clash between Poles and Russians since 1863….

Back in the Polish lands, strikes in places such as Warsaw and Łódź raised the specter of revolution; martial law was declared. Poles were becoming radicalized, especially the Polish workers, many of whom lost their jobs as a result of the economic decline brought on by the war.

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by Joel | 27 June 2025 · 6:01 am

How Ryukyu Became Less Japanese

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 400-403:

Migration was the driving force in early Ryukyuan history. The initial king of the first Shō dynasty, Shō Shishō, may have been a first-generation immigrant to Okinawa. Moving ahead to the early seventeenth century, Yamazaki Nikyū [Morizō, 山崎二休守三, not “Nikyūshuzan”!], Kian Nyūdō, and Sōmi Nyūdō were examples of first-generation Japanese immigrants to Ryukyu who served Shō Nei….

Were language barriers significant in the Ryukyu islands or between Ryukyu and Kyushu? Probably, although these barriers are difficult to map from documentary sources. Moreover, sociolinguistic circumstances were probably significant. For example, the two Ryukyuan envoys to Satsuma in 1575 could make themselves understood only with difficulty and therefore had to use interpreters to facilitate negotiations. Those interpreters were sailors. Recall the difficulty that Chinese-employed interpreters experienced during the 1590s distinguishing between Ryukyuan and Japanese sailors on cultural grounds, including language (see chapter 13). It suggests that, at least among seafarers, sharp cultural differences between Japanese and Ryukyuans had yet to emerge. Based on the limited evidence appearing in these pages, there may have been few sharp cultural dividing lines between the Ryukyu islands and maritime regions of Kyushu, even as late as circa 1600. Government officials in Naha and Kagoshima may not have been able to converse freely in 1550, but sailors in the region and Buddhist priests probably would have experienced fewer difficulties. Insofar as cultural barriers remained relatively small across the region through the sixteenth century, the circulation of people must have played a key role.

Closed-off Ryukyu

We know that a significant cultural divide existed between “Ryukyu,” however defined, and Japan circa 1900. If my hypothesis that this divide was present but relatively minor around 1600 is correct, then how did a significant cultural divide develop over the relatively short span of approximately three centuries? Stated differently, what accelerated the rate of cultural change in Ryukyu? There were probably three major contributing factors. The most important was the cessation of the flow of people. During the early seventeenth century, Ryukyu became part of the Shimazu territories, and the practical effect of this change was for it to be closed off from the rest of Japan. The diverse wajin community or communities in the Naha area faded into the broader society. Satsuma prohibited Japanese from traveling to or residing in Ryukyu except for one Satsuma official and his small staff, who kept a low profile, and occasional ship crews from Satsuma, whose range of motion on shore was restricted. At approximately the same time that Satsuma severely restricted the flow of people into and out of Ryukyu, the bakufu was doing the same thing with respect to Japan as a whole. The boundaries of Japan and of Ryukyu became clearer than they had ever been before, and also distinct from each other.

Cultural Policies

Another contributor to the acceleration of cultural divergence were active de-Japanification policies. Satsuma initiated these policies, but Ryukyuan officials carried them out with vigor because they were connected to the very survival of the kingdom. After the failure of bakufu attempts to forge a diplomatic relationship with China in 1615, Satsuma began to fashion Ryukyu into an ostensibly independent country that could serve as a conduit to China. Maintaining the China connection became essential to the continued survival of the Shuri royal court and its officials. In this context, Kumemura, which had been languishing for a century or so, became a magnet for talent throughout the capital area during the latter half of the seventeenth century. Knowledge of Chinese high culture gradually improved among the Ryukyuan elites, some of whom took Chinese names and relocated to Kumemura. The modern notion that Ryukyu was culturally Chinese stems from these early modern circumstances.

Specific de-Japanification policies were intended, not as attempts deeply to transform people’s cultural identity, but to ensure a plausible non-Japanese appearance for Ryukyu in Chinese eyes. Regulations forbade Ryukyuans to appear as Japanese with respect to names, clothing, hairstyle, and language. Similarly, Ryukyuan ships no longer received a -maru name. After the 1620s, Shuri went to great lengths to mask any ties with Japan when Chinese investiture envoys were in Okinawa or when Okinawans were in China. When a disabled Ryukyuan ship drifted toward the Shāndōng coast in 1673, for example, its crew threw all Japanese items overboard. In Miyako, an overseer from Shuri arrived in 1629, in part to ensure that no Japanese language, songs, clothing, names, or other ties to Yamato would be evident when there was even a remote a possibility of any Miyako resident encountering Chinese (for example, when investiture embassies were at sea).

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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

Gusuku Etymologies

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.

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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.”