OKINAWA

The History of an Island People

 OKINAWA
The History of an Island People

Revised Edition

George H. Kerr
with an afterword by Mitsugu Sakihara

TUTTLE Publishing
Tokyo | Rutland, Vermont | Singapore
First published in 1958 by the Charles E. Tuttle Company. This revised
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 INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF

HIGA SHUHEI

WHO HAS FOLLOWED MAKISHI PECHIN

INTO THE PAGES OF O KIN A WAN HISTORY

 TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii

A NOTE ON NAMES, CHRONOLOGY, WEIGHTS, AND MONEY xvii

INTRODUCTION: OKINAWA, THE UNITED STATES, AND CURRENT HISTORY 3

PART ONE

CHUZAN: INDEPENDENT KINGDOM IN THE EASTERN SEAS

1. THE LEGENDARY PAST (TO A.D. 1314) 21

ISLAND PATHWAYS ON ANCIENT SEA FRONTIERS, 21

PREHISTORIC LIFE IN THE RYUKYUS, 26

THE "EASTERN SEA ISLANDS" OF CHINESE TRADITION, 29

OKINAWAN ORIGIN MYTHS AND SAFE HAVENS IN THE SEA ISLANDS, 35

CHINESE AND JAPANESE NOTICES BEFORE THE 12TH CENTURY, 39

TALES OF TAMETOMO, AN EXILED JAPANESE, AND OF HIS SON SHUNTEN,

45

TRADITIONS OF SHUNTEN AND OTHER EARLY "KINGS" ON OKINAWA, 50

THE SHIMAZU FAMILY IN KYUSHU: "LORDS OF THE TWELVE SOUTHERN

ISLANDS," 56

2. A CENTURY OF CONFLICT (1314-1398) 60

 THREE RIVAL CHIEFTAINS BID FOR CHINESE RECOGNITION, 60

SATTO OF CHUZAN: OKINAWA AND THE CHINESE TRIBUTE SYSTEM, 62

OKINAWA IN MARITIME TRADE THROUGHOUT FAR EASTERN SEAS, 74

GROWTH AND CHANGE ON OKINAWA, 78

3. THE GREAT DAYS OF CHUZAN (1398-1573) 83

HASHI AND THE "FIRST SHO DYNASTY," 83

THE "SECOND SHO DYNASTY" AND ITS FOUNDER, SHO EN, 101

SHO SHIN'S REIGN: THE "GREAT DAYS OF CHUZAN," 104

OKINAWA AND THE OUTER ISLANDS: MIYAKO, YAEYAMA, AND AMAMI

OSHIMA, 116

OKINAWAN TRADE WITH THE INDIES AND SOUTHEAST ASIA, 124

FORMAL RELATIONS WITH CHINA, 130

RELATIONS WITH JAPAN: TRADE AND POLITICS, 135

THE TURNING POINT, 143

PART TWO

ISOLATION: "LONELY ISLANDS IN A DISTANT SEA"

4. CONTINENTAL WAR AND LOSS OF INDEPENDENCE (1573-1609) 151

WAR IN KOREA SPELLS DISASTER IN OKINAWA, 151

 SATSUMA INVADES THE RYUKYU ISLANDS, 1609 (KEICHO 14), 156

THE CONDITIONS LAID DOWN FOR A KING'S RANSOM, 160

SERVING TWO MASTERS: THE PROBLEMS OF DUAL SUBORDINATION, 166

PROTESTANT TRADERS AND CATHOLIC PRIESTS IN 17TH-CENTURY

OKINAWA, 169

WAR AND REBELLION IN CHINA AND ITS EFFECT IN OKINAWA, 174

SATSUMA AND THE OKINAWAN TRADE WITH CHINA, 179

5. THE YEARS OF ISOLATION (1609-1797) 183

A NEW ECONOMIC LIFE: AGRICULTURE TAKES THE PLACE OF FOREIGN

TRADE, 183

GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE UNDER SATSUMA'S WATCHFUL EYE, 185

SHO JO-KEN, PRINCE AND PRIME MINISTER, 191

SAI ON'S STATESMANSHIP: THE STRUGGLE FOR ECONOMIC SURVIVAL,

199

CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE 18ΤΗ CENTURY, 210

STUDENTS ABROAD AND RIOTS AT SHUR1, 225

THE WESTERN BARBARIANS REAPPEAR: A SECOND TURNING POINT, 227

PART THREE

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

6. THE BARRIER ISLANDS (1797-1853) 237

 WESTERN RIVALS IN EASTERN WATERS, 237

THE RYUKYUS ON JAPAN'S DEFENSE PERIMETER, 239

YEARS OF ECONOMIC DISASTER, 241

SATSUMA EXPLOITS OKINAWA TO EVADE THE SECLUSION EDICTS, 245

CHINA'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE WESTERN BARBARIANS, 248

BRITISH VISITORS: CAPTAIN HALL'S MOMENTOUS VOYAGE AND

NAPOLEON'S INTEREST IN THE RYUKYUS, 249

MISSIONARIES, MERCHANTS, AND NAVAL DIPLOMATS: THE ANGLO-

CHINESE WARS, 260

FRENCH PRESSURE AT SHURI AND SATSUMA'S REACTION, 275

THE MISSIONARY BETTELHEIM APPEARS IN OKINAWA, 279

BETTELHEIM CREATES A PROBLEM FOR THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, 289

7. THE MOUSE AND THE EAGLE: PERRY IN OKINAWA (1853-1854) 297

AMERICAN PRESSURE ON JAPAN: PERRY'S PLANS FOR OKINAWA, 297

PERRY'S FIRST VISIT, MAY AND JUNE, 1853, 307

THE AMERICAN BASE ON OKINAWA: JULY, 1853—JULY, 1854, 320

THE "LEW CHEW COMPACT" WITH THE UNITED STATES, 330

THE END OF THE BETTELHEIM AFFAIR, 337

8. JAPAN "PROTECTS" THE OKINAWANS (1855-1878) 342

 OKINAWA, SATSUMA, AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS: THE MAKISHI-ONGA

AFFAIR, 342

CONFUSION AND HARDSHIP, 1861-72, 350

THE LAST ENTHRONEMENT AT SHURI AND THE MEIJI RESTORATION IN

JAPAN, 352

UNDEFENDED OKINAWA: A FRONTIER PROBLEM FOR JAPAN, 354

THE FORMOSA INCIDENT: JAPAN'S EXCUSE FOR STRONG ACTION, 356

TOKYO PROCLAIMS PARAMOUNT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE RYUKYU

KINGDOM, 360

SHURI CHALLENGES AND ANGERS THE TOKYO GOVERNMENT, 365

DIRECT INTERVENTION: THE MATSUDA MISSIONS, 1875 AND 1879, 371

PART FOUR

OKINAWA-KEN: FRONTIER PROVINCE

9. THE RYUKYU KINGDOM COMES TO AN END (1879-1890) 381

CRISIS AT SHURI: THE KING'S ABDICATION, MARCH 27, 1879, 381

THE RYUKYUS AGAIN BECOME AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE: GENERAL

GRANT'S MEDIATION, 384

UNDER THE SHADOW OF WAR: PROBLEMS OF POPULATION, EDUCATION,

AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 392

THE JAPANESE IN OKINAWA AFTER 1879, 397

TOKYO'S POLICIES: THE "DO NOTHING" ERA AND THE PUBLIC WELFARE,
 400

ECONOMIC CHANGE UNDER THE NEW DISPENSATION, 402

FOREIGNERS IN OKINAWA AFTER PERRY'S VISIT, 409

SUBSTITUTING NEW LOYALRIES FOR OLD, 411

10. ASSIMILATION BY JAPAN (1890-1940) 42O

WAR AND POLITICS: THE CHINESE THREAT REMOVED, 420

ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGE AND THE BASIC LAND REFORM, 423

DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESENTATION IN GOVERNMENT, 427

ECONOMIC CHANGE IN THE 20TH CENTURY, 430

POPULATION PRESSURE AND THE EMIGRATION PROBLEM, 435

SCHOOL STRIKES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION, 440

RELIGION AND POLITICS IN JAPAN'S ASSIMILATION PROGRAM, 449

CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN THE 20TH CENTURY, 454

BETWEEN HAMMER AND ANVIL: OKINAWA AND THE COMING OF WORLD

11. 459
WAR II (1941-1945)

"NATIONAL SOLIDARITY" AND THE JAPANESE MILITARY PROGRAM FOR

OKINAWA, 459

THE COMING OF WORLD WAR II, 462

THE BATTLE FOR OKINAWA, 468

NOTES 475

BIBLIOGRAPHY 491

INDEX 519

AFTERWORD BY MITSUGU SAKIHARA

PART A: PRE-MODERN OKINAWA, 543

PART B: OKINAWA SINCE 1945, 550

PART C: REVISIONS TO CHAPTER 4, 560

PART D: ERRATA IN ORIGINAL EDITION, 568

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
following page
1. Approach to the Main Gate of the Enkaku-ji, Shuri
70

2. Interior Court of the Enkaku-ji 70

3. Ceremonial Shurei Gate, Main Approach to Shuri Castle 70
4. Sonohyan Utaki Gate, Near Shuri Castle 70
5. An Okinawan Prince 70
6. Sogen-ji's Main Gate 70
7· Benzaiten Shrine, at Shuri 118
8. Shuri Castle Walls and Encircling Road 118
9. Walls and Gate Near Enkaku-ji, Shuri 118
10. Shikina-en, a Royal Country Residence, Mawashi District 118
11. Sho En, Founder of the "Second Sho Dynasty" 118
12. Madama Bridge, Near Naha 118
13. The Prince of Ryukyu and His Sons, 1816 262
14. A Priest and a Gentleman of Ryukyu, 1816 262
Okinawans Bidding Farewell to Their British Friends,
15. 262
1816
A Tribute Ship Being Prepared for the Voyage to China,
16. 262
1828
17. A "Gentleman of Loo Choo" 262
18. Commodore Perry Demanding Admission to Shuri Castle 310
19. The Royal Audience Hall 310
Tomari Temple, Commandeered for Rest and Recreation,
20. 310
1853
21. The Old Regent and Two Aides, 1854 310
22. The Chief Magistrate of Naha, 1853-54 310
23. The American Flag on Okinawa 310
24. Machiminato Harbor in 1894 326
25. The Court Interpreter, 1853-54 326
26. The Reverend Doctor Bernard Jean Bettelheim 326
27. His Royal Highness Sho Tai 326
28. A Naha Street-Scene, 1854 326
29. The Ruins of Nakagusuku Castle, Near Shuri 326
30. Marquis Sho Ten 422
31. Ota Chofu 422
32. Majikina Anko 422
33. Iha Fuyu 422
34. Vice Admiral Kanna Kenwa 422
35. The Honorable Higa Shuhei 422
36. Aerial View of the Shuri Castle Site in 1957 422

FIGURES

1. Map: Ancient Pathways into the Sea Islands page 25

2. Ancient Storehouses 28
3. Symbols of Okinawan Religions 55
4. Map: The Islands of the Ryukyu Archipelago 57
5. Map: Boundaries on Okinawa 87
6. Tomb and Burial Urn 98
7· Plan of Shuri Castle 113
8. Map: Trade Routes and Cultural Areas, 15th Century 125
9· Tenshi-kan, a Residence for China's Envoys at Naha 134
10. Seals of State 176
11. King of Chuzan and His Sons, 1756 189
12. Centers of Community Life 197
13. Shuri Palace, 1756 212
14. Chinese Envoys at Sogen-ji, 1756 213
15. Typical Okinawan Tombs 218
16. Okinawan Bridges 223
17. Objects of Veneration 244
18. Gateways, Shuri Castle 287
19. The Audience Hall, Shuri Castle 317
20. Map: Okinawa on Japan's 19th-century Frontiers 349
21. Views of the Shikina-en 383
22. Column Bases 405
23. Crests in Okinawan History 471
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 1951 the Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council
inaugurated a series of scientific investigations of the Ryukyu Islands.
These are known as the siri series, authorized by the Department of the
Army and subsidized by funds appropriated for the relief and rehabilitation
of occupied areas, the so-called garioa funds. In 1952 the Civil
Administrator for the Ryukyu Islands (Brigadier General James M. Lewis)
asked the Board for a supplementary study concerning the history of the
islands. This, he believed, might throw light upon many problems which the
military administration encountered from day to day.
Acting upon suggestions made by Dr. Harold J. Coolidge and Dr.
George P. Murdock, of the Pacific Science Board, General Lewis asked me
to prepare a historical summary with a view to having it translated into
Japanese for distribution in Okinawa. He felt that Okinawan youth,
uprooted by war and cut off from Japan, knew very little of its past history
and vitually nothing of the circumstances which had drawn the United
States to the western Pacific frontier and into Okinawa for a second time
within a hundred years. It was apparent, too, that civilian employees of the
occupying military organization needed to gain some historical perspective
for their tasks.
I undertook a reconnaissance of the historical topography, visiting
Okinawa, Iriomote, Ishigaki, Miyako, and Iheya-Izena islands, checking
sites of special interest, and listening to local folklore and traditions. I am
indebted to Mr. Yonaguni Zenzo for lengthy chronological tables and
historical notes to carry into the field. These have since been published by
him in Japanese. Messrs. Kakazu Sunao, Nakachi Tetsuo, Kamemura
Toshio, Kabira Chosei, and many others proved most helpful guides on
these field trips. At Naha and Shuri I was given invaluable assistance by the
late Professor Shimabukuro Zempatsu, Mr. Shiroma Chokyo, Mr.
Minamoto Takeo, Mr. Kabira Choshin, and the late Mr. Hamada Zenkichi,
Curator of the Shuri Museum.
At Tokyo, meanwhile, I inaugurated a search throughout Japan for
materials concerning the Ryukyus. An informal committee of prominent
Okinawans advised me from time to time on bibliography and on disputed
points in history. Among them were Professors Higaonna Kanjun, Nakahara
Zenchu, and Takazato Ryokun, and Mr. Yoshida Shien. The principal
burdens of research fell on Mr. Higa Shuncho and his most faithful aides,
Kuniyoshi Masakane and Kudeken Kenji. Mr. Kudeken continued to serve
as research assistant after coming to the United States as a garioa scholar.
Many points in Okinawan history are in dispute and many may never
be settled conclusively, for the prime resources—the ancient archives of the
old kingdom—were destroyed in 1945. Students must now rely upon
materials surviving in Japan and upon the works of Japanese scholars who
had access to original documents before 1945.
I assume full responsibility for interpretations of fact which may be at
variance with traditional views, or may be subjects of irreconcilable dispute
among the scholars, and shall be happy if this survey by a foreigner
provokes interest among Okinawan students and elicits new appraisals of
Okinawan history.
 The original study (the Pacific Science Board mimeographed edition)
was entitled Ryukyu: Kingdom and Province before 1945. It was submitted
to General Lewis shortly before his death in 1953. In 1956 a Japanese
translation appeared; this was entitled Ryukyu Rekishi (Ryukyuan History.)
In fairness to my associates in Japan and Okinawa, and to the Pacific
Science Board, it should be noted that they may be absolved of all
responsibility for the Japanese-language version of the original siri report. It
was prepared without consultation with them (or with the author) after the
original text had passed through the hands of the Director of Civil
Information and Education then holding office at Naha, and had been
assigned as a project to a committee of eight translators, each undertaking a
portion of the work.
On February 10, 1956, the author obtained clearance to publish an
English-language edition based on the siri report of 1953. For this I wish to
thank Colonel Norman D. King and Mr. Joseph E. Harbison, of the Office
of Civil Affairs and Military Government, Department of the Army,
Washington.
The original text has been enlarged and recast to bring forward the
story of European and American interest in the Ryukyu Islands in the 19th
century, and to note (by way of introduction) the manner in which the
United States government established a legal basis for the present
occupation. These additional materials were developed largely in response
to questions raised in 1953-54 at the University of California (Berkeley) by
students examining the history of American activity on the western Pacific
frontier—the Ryukyus and Formosa— in an attempt to discover the sources
of information upon which policymakers at Washington based far-reaching
decisions to hold Okinawa after Japan's surrender in 1945. The general
bibliography of Western-language references to the Ryukyus available to
them has been appended to this summary history.
Neither the Army nor the Pacific Science Board is to be held
responsible for the present work.
I am indebted to the Pacific Science Board and to its talented
Secretary, Lenore Smith, for support in carrying through the original siri
project, and to Mary Hawkins Johnson, my secretary at the Hoover
Institute, for tireless assistance in preparing the present text. I am likewise
under obligation to Dr. Mitsuna Nagamine, Director of Library Research at
Tokyo University, and to the librarians at the University of California
(Berkeley) and the University of Hawaii for friendly, patient, and
painstaking cooperation. So, too, my thanks to Professors E. Wiswell, H.
Ikeda, and Y. Uyehara, and to K.M. Thompson for aid in translation and
proofreading.
For permission to quote from published materials I am indebted to
Professor William G. Beasley and Messrs. Luzac and Company (Great
Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834-58); Professor Charles Boxer and
the Hakluyt Society of London (South China in the Sixteenth Century . . .);
Dr. Schuyler Cammann (China's Dragon Robes); Dr. John K. Fairbank
("On the Ch'ing Tributary System"); Dr. Earl Swisher ("China's
Management of the American Barbarians . . . "); and to Professors Ryusaku
Tsunoda and L. Carrington Goodrich and their publisher Mr. P.D. Perkins
(Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories). The University of California
Press has given me permission to quote from the late Professor Yoshi S.
Kuno's Japanese Expansion on the Asiatic Continent. I am grateful to the
authors and publishers of 19th-century materials, no longer under copyright,
which I have quoted extensively here.
Plates 1-4, 6-10, and 12 are reproduced from photographs made by
Mr. Sakamoto Genshichi in 1937. Figures 9, 11, 13, and 14 are reproduced
through the courtesy of the East Asiatic Library, University of California
(Berkeley). Portrait photographs reproduced as Plates 26, 27, and 30-35 are
used with my thanks to Dr. Yukihide Kohatsu, Mrs. Takahiko Chinen, and
Mr. Shuncho Higa. The aerial photograph of the old castle site was supplied
through the good offices of Dr. Genshu Asato, President of Ryukyu
University. Mr. Clemente Lagundimao, Jr., and the author collaborated on
the maps and sketches.
The book is inscribed to my friend the late Higa Shuhei, Chief
Executive of the Ryukyu Islands, 1952-56. He was unsparing in his effort to
mediate between the Okinawan people and the American administration,
attempting always to interpret the needs of the one to the other. His career
recalls that of "Ichirazichi," who performed somewhat similar, onerous
tasks at Naha more than one hundred years ago.

Honolulu, June, 1958

GEORGE H. KERR
 A NOTE ON NAMES,
CHRONOLOGY, WEIGHTS,
AND MONEY
1. Ryukyu and Liu Ch'iu are the Japanese and Chinese readings,
respectively, of the characters In preparing this text I have found more than
sixty variant readings and transcriptions in Western-language sources,
ranging from the common Lewchew and Loo Choo to such oddities as Reoo
Keoo, Likiwu, Liquii, Liquea, and Leung-Khieou. In the Okinawan dialect
heard at Naha in the 19th century Liu Ch'iu became approximately Doo
Choo.

2. Shuri speech—the language of the old royal court—is considered

standard or classic. There are many local variant dialects so marked as to
render speech mutually unintelligible within a relatively small district or
area. A distance of two or three miles brings notable variation. The off-
lying islands show the widest diversion from Shuri standards. Standard
(Tokyo) Japanese is taught in the primary schools. Japanese texts and
European language translations concerning the Ryukyus sometimes record
these local variations, sometimes attempt to preserve the classical Shuri
readings, and sometimes transliterate into standard Japanese.

3. The Japanese name-order is observed, i.e., the family name

precedes the personal name, as in Yoshi Shigeru, in which Yoshi is the
surname. Family and personal names precede titles if the title is not
translated, e.g., Kudeken Kenji Oyakata, in which Oyakata is the title.

4. One character may be given variant readings in personal and family

names, e.g., the character very commonly found in surnames and place
names, may be read -shiro, -gusuku, -gushiku, -ki, and -jo. Thus KanesRiro
can also be read Kinjo.

5. Names have become fairly standardized in late years, but in the

days of the kingdom a man might have a childhood name, an adult name, a
posthumous name, and a name derived from court honors or the place from
which an honorary stipend was derived.

6. Local usage clearly distinguishes among the inhábitants of Miyako,

Yaeyama, Okinawa, and other insular and regional subdivisions within the
archipelago. The term "Ryukyuan" is awkward. I have therefore adopted
Okinawan as a general term in this text unless closer identification is
required, for the political subdivision of the Japanese empire known as
Okinawa-ken (Okinawa Prefecture) embraces all the subdivisions and
peoples of the archipelago south of Amami Oshima, with minor exceptions
(Okinoerabu, etc.). "The Ryukyus" or "the Ryukyu archipelago," used in a
geographical and cultural sense, embraces all of the islands of Okinawa
Prefecture plus the Amami Oshima island group and intermediate islets as
well.
 7. Many chronological problems have yet to be solved. All dates
attributed to events in Okinawan history before the 15th century are open to
question; many dates thereafter are subject to dispute. The adjustment of the
old lunar calendar to the solar calendar and equation with the years of the
Christian era has raised many problems not yet wholly resolved. Before
1875 the Okinawans followed Chinese usage in dating official records at
Shuri, although there were special practices in dating records at the
important trading depot at Ch'uang-chou on the Fukien coast. Old Japanese
records relating to the Ryukyus followed the Japanese imperial court usage.
Since 1875 the Okinawans have been required to follow standard Japanese
usage established at the time of the Meiji Restoration. Nevertheless, the
lunar calendar is still referred to in the agricultural communities, and the
lunar New Year remains an occasion for annual frolic throughout the
countryside. I have adopted dates here upon which there appears to be fairly
general agreement, but the reader is warned to allow a margin of error for
all dates assigned to events which are not subject to cross-checking from
external sources.

8. Japanese units of measurement and value varied considerably

before the Meiji era. In modern times the kin has been standardized at
approximately 13 ounces and the koku at 5.11 bushels. The yen as a
monetary unit was originally based on the value of a koku of rice. In early
Meiji one yen was worth a little more than one American dollars; in late
Meiji the exchange was approximately two yen per dollar; and by 1941 this
had fallen to approximately four yen to the dollar.
 INTRODUCTION
OKINAWA, THE UNITED STATES, AND
CURRENT HISTORY
A "Compact between the United States and the Kingdom of Lewchew"
ended the first American occupation of Okinawa in 1854. The second
occupation, begun in 1945, was given a legal basis in the treaty with Japan
of 1951, but with a masterly lack of precise definition.
America's position in the Ryukyus is unique: the islands are neither a
possession, a colony, nor a trust territory. The archipelago shares the fate of
many frontier territories too small and too poor to attract attention in times
of peace, but doomed to rise to international prominence during crises
among the world powers. It lies on the western Pacific rim, between the
maritime world and continental Asia. It cannot escape the consequences of
wars and revolutions in larger states nearby; the postwar "Okinawa
problem" was produced by events set in train long ago by accidents of
geography and history.
Commodore Perry's "Lewchew" was a small principality maintained
without arms through a period of 450 years, a nation of courteous officials,
farmers, fishermen, and traders. It was founded in the 14th century upon a
commerce in luxury goods carried from the markets of Southeast Asia and
the Indies to the ports of China, Korea, and Japan.
 In the early 17th century, Japan felt the pressure of militant Europeans
coming overseas from the south—from Portugal, Spain, Holland, and
England. Fearing invasion from that quarter (and coveting Okinawa's
profitable trade), Japanese from Satsuma invaded the Ryukyus in 1609. The
defenseless Okinawans ransomed their king by accepting Japanese control
of overseas commerce and by promising to pay heavy annual tribute.
Japanese agents in the Ryukyus thereafter kept watch on the southern sea
approaches to Japan. In 1816, when the Western powers were again
approaching Japan from the south, Napoleon discussed Okinawan history
with Captain Basil Hall, R. N. He concluded that no such peace-loving
nation could endure. Hall's grandson later wrote that "the most prominent
race-characteristic of the Luchuans is not a physical but a moral one . . .
their gentleness of spirit and manner, their yielding and submissive
disposition, their hospitality and kindness, their aversion to violence and
crime."
Submissive mildness brought about the kingdom's downfall. England,
France, Russia, and the United States each thought to use Okinawa. In June,
1853, Perry landed a token force from the U.S.S. "Mississippi," marched
into the royal castle at Shuri, and asked for Okinawan cooperation in
exchange for American friendship. He also demanded permission to
establish a military base at Naha. To Washington he proposed,
unsuccessfully, that the United States should take Okinawa "under
surveillance" pending satisfactory settlement of American claims upon
Japan. President Pierce thought conditions did not justify a prolonged
occupation. "If, in future, resistance should be offered and threatened, it
would also be rather mortifying to surrender the island, if once seized, and
rather inconvenient and expensive to maintain a force there to retain it."
With only a fruitless "compact of friendship" in hand, Perry withdrew.
England, France, and Holland then asked the bewildered Okinawans to
enter into treaty relations. These demonstrations of Western interest in
defenseless Okinawa alarmed Japan. Soon after the Meiji Restoration an
imperial military force landed at Naha. The Okinawans protested that a
garrison would attract Japan's enemies, with whom they had no quarrel.
Seven years of stubborn, non-cooperative argument followed. At last
exasperated, Japan deposed the king, abolished the royal government, and
created Okinawa Prefecture. From 1879 to 1945 Tokyo pursued policies
designed to win Okinawan loyalties and to assimilate the island people.
The world heard little of Okinawa until it was wrested from Japan's
control in 1945. The invasion began in late March; in June the modern
U.S.S. "Mississippi" moved in to train its guns upon the ancient walls of
Shuri Castle. Within lay Japan's military headquarters for the raging Battle
of Okinawa, and here Japanese resistance was broken. After eighty-two
days of bitter fighting the island was in Allied hands. Some twelve thousand
Americans and more than ninety thousand Japanese military men had lost
their lives.
Okinawans had no part in formulating Japan's military policies which
led to this, and fewer than five thousand trained Okinawan conscripts took
part. Nevertheless, the Okinawan people were forced to make a hideous
sacrifice on Japan's behalf. More than 62,000 Okinawans perished; the great
majority were civilians caught helplessly between opposing armies. The
physical heritage of the old kingdom vanished, and more than ninety
percent of the population was adrift and homeless when surrender came.
Capitulation at Tokyo in August virtually ended Okinawa's military
importance vis-à-vis Japan. The island became an immense, neglected
military dump, strewn with the war's debris. Towns and villages were
rubble heaps; tens of thousands lived in caves, tombs, and lean-to shacks, or
took shelter in relief camps established by the military forces. They were
expected to live at subsistence level until a formal peace should restore
them to Japanese administration and permit American withdrawal. Farmers
became air-base laborers; fishermen became truck-drivers; the old
aristocracy disappeared. Cast-off G.I. clothing, American soft drinks,
cigarettes, and canned goods supplied a new luxury trade for a totally
impoverished people.
Washington virtually lost sight of the Ryukyus, for responsibility lay
with the Supreme Commander at Tokyo, who in turn delegated authority
through the ranks to distant, obscure Okinawan outposts. For military men
the Ryukyus became a place of exile from us and Japan proper, and for
ambitious civilians with the army it was "no man's land," "the end of the
line," or "the Rock," a veritable Siberia much too far from Tokyo's neon
lights. Few men of high caliber and administrative skill were willing to
remain on Okinawa. An appalling indifference blanketed the island.
In 1949 the Defense Department suddenly became aware of the
neglect of civil affairs; the so-called Vickery Report to the Department of
the Army caused anguish at the Supreme Commander's headquarters.
Generals were reprimanded, colonels transferred, civilians dismissed, and
new policies formulated which called for progressive rehabilitation of the
civil economy.
Then came the Korean War. Okinawa's military importance revived. A
vast military base-expansion program inaugurated in 1950 at once
overshadowed plans for civil rehabilitation. Funds and energies had to be
diverted to meet immediate military needs. Responsible and conscientious
officers delegated to manage the civil economy did the best they could, with
an inadequate budget. They had no sustained political guidance to relate the
social and political consequences of base-expansion problems to political
issues affecting United States' prestige throughout Asia—especially in the
area of American relations with Japan.
Meanwhile it was proposed that Okinawan bases should be held
indefinitely, and in due course this was arranged, as we shall see.
The Korean truce and crises elsewhere diverted public attention;
Okinawa was forgotten. Occasional rumors and published stories of
Okinawan discontent were condemned out-of-hand as malicious
Communist propaganda. Nevertheless, Washington slowly discovered that
treaty right to use the island entails heavy obligations. Okinawan
restlessness under an alien government, however benign, is inevitably
translated into political terms affecting United States relations with Japan.
As President Pierce foresaw, prolonged occupation is costly and
embarrassing; some 800,000 Okinawans must be cared for in a wretchedly
poor archipelago. More than fifty thousand families have become landless
since 1945. Each new facility for American use in Okinawa reduces areas
for cultivation; and fields once covered with concrete, macadam, or gravel
can never be restored to agricultural use. They become a poor heritage for
succeeding generations, and there is relentless population growth.
Okinawan demands for some guarantee of future livelihood (and for a
clarified national status) inevitably clash with declared military necessities.
While some Okinawan leaders wait for the Congress at Washington to
demonstrate sustained and informed interest in Okinawa's long-range
economic problems, others translate popular discontent into demands for
immediate reversion to Japan. If it is to Japan's political advantage, Tokyo
will not hesitate to use the "Okinawa reversion" issue in bargaining with
Washington on larger international questions which may have little to do
with the Ryukyu Islands.
History throws much light on the dimensions of this American
problem vis-à-vis Japan in the Ryukyus, but before we turn to it, we must
note events—quite external to Okinawa—which led to the American
occupation and provided a legal basis for it.
During negotiations leading to the San Francisco Treaty Conference
there was wide public discussion of probable treaty terms. Since Okinawa
had been a prefecture of Japan, Okinawans and Japanese alike expected that
the islands would revert to Tokyo's control and that the local military bases
would come under general provisions governing other foreign bases in
Japan. It was expected that the forthcoming document would spell out
conditions for reversion, and would name the date terminating U.S. military
control of the civil population and economy.
The treaty, signed on September 8, 1951, contained this paragraph:

"ARTICLE 3. Japan will concur in any proposal of the United States to

the United Nations to place under its trusteeship system, with the United
States as the sole administering authority, Nansei Shoto south of 290 north
latitude (including the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands), Nanpo Shoto
south of Sofu Gan (including the Bonin Islands, Rosario Island, and the
Volcano Islands) and Parece Vela and Marcus Island. Pending the making of
such a proposal and affirmative action thereon, the United States will have
the right to exercise all and any powers of administration, legislation, and
jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants of these islands, including
their territorial waters."

The Chinese invasion of Korea in 1950, with Russian aid, underscored

the need for the United States to retain a foothold in the Ryukyus to support
the interests of disarmed Japan, the United Nations forces in Korea, and the
over-all interests of the United States all along the western Pacific rim.
Nevertheless, Article 3 roused deep concern among the Okinawans and
provoked sharp political criticism in many quarters. India, for instance,
refused to sign the treaty on the representation that it could not thus signify
consent to the continued military occupation of an Asian territory by a
Western power. Undoubtedly a continued occupation would provide
nationalist governments in Asia many propaganda barbs with which to
irritate the Western powers. Of more immediate importance, military
occupation of a Japanese prefecture continued beyond the effective treaty
date would weaken any government at Tokyo desiring to cooperate with
Washington. Future premiers and cabinets in Japan would have to explain
themselves to a critical electorate if they did not endeavor to recover the
"lost" prefecture. As long as the United States maintained jurisdiction in the
Ryukyus, parties on the Right and on the Left would find common cause
with which to embarrass Japanese-American relations. Of less concern but
of latent interest would be the need to maintain a continued occupation in
the face of American antipathy to the words "colony" and "colonialism" and
of the doctrine that democratic nations must foreswear territorial gain
through military conquest.
It must be presumed that Washington weighed all these problems and
dangers against the need for Okinawan bases. The hard fact remained that
the United States government felt compelled to stay in the Ryukyu Islands.
Some thoughtful Okinawans recognized that in truth the United States
was in a better position than postwar Japan to underwrite economic
rehabilitation for the Okinawan people, if the occupying authorities cared to
undertake the task; Washington could promote emigration (as Japan could
not), which must take place to relieve overcrowded Okinawa. Many other
Okinawans, however, continued to insist that it would be better to return the
civil administration to the Japanese, leaving only military reservations
under foreign control. A minority, hearkening to arguments of the left- and
right-wing groups at Tokyo, clamored for an immediate end to all American
activity in the Ryukyus.
The truce in Korea in 1952 seemed to remove the sense of immediate
threat and crisis which had justified the treaty reservations; there was an
increased agitation for reversion to Japan. This embarrassed Tokyo and
Washington. As a countermeasure, the United States announced that the
northern islands of the Ryukyu Archipelago (the Amami Oshima group)
would revert to Japanese control as of December 25, 1953. This had
something of a soothing effect; soon word spread on Okinawa that the
Amami people had paid a material price in economic hardship in return for
the emotional and patriotic satisfaction of reunion with impoverished Japan.
Meanwhile the Secretary of State at Washington, John Foster Dulles,
formulated and proclaimed a doctrine of "residual sovereignty," designed to
mollify the Japanese and to appease critics everywhere. The United States
affirmed that Japan retained legal title to the Ryukyu Islands, although all
sovereign rights and obligations were to be in abeyance as provided in
Article 3 of the treaty. This new doctrine implied that the United States
would not recommend a trusteeship for the islands and that in good time
and good faith Okinawa Prefecture would one day return to Japanese
control.

Thus, in brief, American interest shifted through three postwar positions,

each determined by conditions external to the islands, and each calling for
new policies within. Okinawa first had military importance vis-à-vis Japan,
which brought about its conquest. Next came the years of indifference, the
patrol of a minor area used as a "dumping ground" or place of exile for
American personnel unwanted at Japan proper. The third position, assumed
in 1949, endowed Okinawa with new importance as a base to be held
indefinitely and developed vis-à-vis Russia and rising Communist power in
nearby China.
In August, 1956, Secretary Dulles unexpectedly shifted American
interest in Okinawa to yet a fourth position. He broadly hinted that if, in its
search for formal peace with Russia, Japan were to acquiesce in permanent
Russian occupation of certain islands in the southern Kuriles, then the
United States might have to reconsider the doctrine of "residual
sovereignty" he had put forth in 1953. In other terms, the United States
might yet decide to hold the Ryukyus permanently.
For American purposes, Okinawa had assumed important trading
value vis-à-vis Russia and Japan in the day-to-day bargaining of power
politics. This—on a grander scale—is precisely the use to which
Commodore Perry put Okinawa when he proposed to hold the Ryukyus
"under surveillance" in 1853 while bargaining for a treaty with Japan. Of
more importance, it opened before the American people and the Okinawans
a prospect that the United States government might be ready to assume
something more than year-to-year responsibility for the Okinawan people
and economy.

The present summary of Okinawan history is not concerned with the period
of the American occupation, nor with the postwar development of an
"Okinawan problem" in international affairs. At the very heart of these two
subjects lies the story of Okinawa's traditional relationship with Japan, for it
is difficult to believe that the Japanese government would have signed a
treaty of peace which permitted unlimited, exclusive alien military
occupation of any other prefecture in the country.
Why, then, Okinawa province?
Two things bear on this, which we must examine briefly.
Neither the formal documentation which underlies the postwar
occupation nor the treaty anywhere recognizes and defines precisely the
traditional or legal relationship of the Ryukyus to Japan. Left thus in a
diplomatic twilight zone, uncommitted by the victors or the vanquished, this
frontier territory became that diplomat's delight and essential tool, the quid
pro quo.
Fundamental "Japanese polity" does not hold Okinawa to be a vital
part of the nation's body; it is expendable, under duress, if thereby the
interests of the home islands can be served advantageously. The mystical
Japanese sense of national identity centers in the home provinces, imperial
domain (in theory, at least) since the dawn of history. Okinawa, a separate
kingdom and a separate people, was annexed only in 1879. Put thus bluntly,
the Okinawans reject this thesis, and many Japanese are startled by it, but
the record bears out such an interpretation.
First of the formal documents came the Cairo Declaration, issued on
December 1, 1943. It smacks of propaganda, designed essentially to mollify
Chiang Kai-shek and to keep the Chinese active in the war. Chunking had
let it be known that it was dissatisfied with Allied failure to press the war in
China and South Asia. Insufficient supplies were reaching the hands of the
Nationalist government. The Chinese people were exhausted after many
years of civil war and prolonged Japanese invasion. Chinese generals and
prominent political figures had a wellknown capacity for switching
allegiance if there were suitable rewards. It is probable that Chiang himself
would not have forsaken the Western alliance—it was his sole source of
strength—but he had to prevent further defections among his subordinates.
Japan's senior statesman Shigemitsu Mamoru had been in China in 1942
exploring the possibility for arranging terms of peace, and in early 1943 he
had become Japan's foreign minister, with increased interest in offering
attractive terms to China's vacillating leaders.
 Washington and London therefore sought means to hold the Chinese in
the conflict as active participants by spelling out the territorial rewards to be
made at the war's end. Roosevelt and Churchill met with the Chiangs at
Cairo to come to a new understanding. The declaration publicized the
schedule of rewards, and concluded with mutual commitments to continue
active for the duration of the war. But it also reflected inexact or "slanted"
data with which President Roosevelt approached his Asian problems.
After stating that the United States, Britain, and China were fighting to
"restrain and punish the aggression of Japan" and that "they covet no gain
for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion," the signatories
promised that: "Japan shall be stripped of all islands in the Pacific which
she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in
1914." And that: "All territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as
Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic
of China. Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has
taken by violence and greed. ... In due course Korea shall become free and
independent."
The declaration was made in the heat of war, when the enemy is
always wrong. But in the cold light of retrospection it is fair to note that
Japan's position in most of these territories (excluding Manchuria) had been
covered by treaties long unchallenged. The use of the word "stolen" here
gives the document its propaganda flavor and suggests that sovereign rights
which have been transferred by treaty can be recovered without recourse to
legal process. It was careless phraseology and held an element of danger for
nations which had not yet won the war. Chiang, in his manifesto Chinas
Destiny (Chinese edition), had not abandoned China's traditional claims to
Hongkong, British Burma, and French Annam. Other Chinese leaders had
advanced claims to the Ryukyus. In point of fact, Japan had acquired the
Kuriles through peaceful negotiation of a treaty with Russia in 1875, during
which the United States played a minor role in an advisory capacity. John
Foster, former Secretary of State, had advised the Japanese in negotiating
the Shimonoseki Treaty, by which China bargained away Formosa in 1895.
Karafuto—the southern half of Sakhalin—had been ceded to Japan by the
Portsmouth Treaty, negotiated in New Hampshire, U.S.A., in 1905, under
the aegis of the first President Roosevelt. Britain had bargained secretly
with Japan during World War I, promising to give her Germany's Pacific
islands if, in turn, Japan would enter the war and come to Britain's aid. This
bargain was later translated into a permanent League of Nations mandate to
Japan. Korea had been made a "protectorate" and then annexed by Tokyo to
preclude occupation and control of the peninsula by Chinese or Russian
agents. China, in 1943, had no legal claim to any of these territories except
Manchuria, which the United States, at Yalta, was soon to bargain away to
Russia without Chinese consent.
The promises to return "stolen" territories to China were a quid pro
quo; the Cairo Declaration concluded with the words: "The Three Allies . . .
will continue to persevere in the serious and prolonged operations necessary
to procure the unconditional surrender of Japan." The fundamental purpose
of the declaration was made clear.
Fourteen months later the Yalta Agreement in a similar fashion spelled
out rewards to be made to Russia if she would enter the war against Japan.
Moscow agreed to break its neutrality pact with Tokyo three months after
the war in Europe should come to an end, which was to say, after the other
Allies had time to shift the full weight of armament into the Pacific and
against Japan, reducing Russia's risk. Russia was to be readmitted to
dominant positions throughout Manchuria, from which she had been driven
by Japan in 1905. The third condition read: "The Kuril Islands shall be
handed over to the Soviet Union."
None of this was known to the few Japanese civilian leaders who were
exploring secretly the possibilities of seeking peace through Russian
mediation.
On June 8, 1945, the members of an imperial conference at Tokyo
reaffirmed, under pressure, the nation's determination to fight to the bitter
end, even though Japan, as a nation, might be destroyed forever. But on
June 22 the long Okinawan campaign ended in Allied victory.
When it was realized at Tokyo on that day that the "Okinawan barrier"
was irrevocably lost, the emperor summoned his highest ministers of state,
his admirals and his generals, and let it be known that the army must
consider "other means" to bring about an end of war. The "home islands"
must not suffer as Okinawa had suffered. The decision to sue for peace and
to negotiate surrender had to be made quickly, before a great assault upon
Japan proper could get under way. On June 23 the diplomats and imperial
councilors redoubled efforts to secure Moscow's aid and a renewed
assurance of Russia's continuing neutrality at this supreme crisis in the
nation's history.
The Potsdam Declaration, on July 26, spelled out the threat of
impending doom and prescribed terms under which the Japanese could
escape invasion. Article 7 required Japan's acceptance of an occupation
"until such a new [democratic] order is established, and until there is
convincing proof that Japan's war-making power is destroyed." According
to Article 8, "the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and
Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido,
Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine." The Ryukyus
were nowhere named. They were "minor islands."
Then, within a matter of days, came Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and
Russia's cynical entry into the war upon the terms arranged at Yalta.
Japan surrendered.
World attention focused on Tokyo and on the "big" issues at the
capitals, where diplomats and generals sometimes talked in geographic
terms and sometimes in terms of political administration. The niggling
problems of "fringe areas"—the Kuriles, Ryukyus, and Formosa— received
scant attention. Long-range interests were often sacrificed to expediency.
Russia promptly moved into the Kuriles. American ships and planes
ferried the Chinese over to Formosa. The Ryukyus were swept into the
backwash of the occupation of Japan. Neither the victors nor the vanquished
were committed to long-range settlement of the Okinawa question. In
effect, Tokyo had "deposited" the Ryukyu Islands with the United States for
an indefinite period. From time to time Chinese spokesmen revived old
claims to the Ryukyus, but no one paid attention to them nor to a minor
Filipino agitation opposing Chinese claims with a proposal that the
Philippine Republic should seek U.N. trust responsibility for all the islands
lying southward from Japan.
From June, 1945, until April, 1952, Okinawa Prefecture was held as
"enemy territory" governed by the rules of land warfare. Under these the
occupying power had no obligation to meet damage claims against it or to
maintain the Okinawan economy above bare subsistence levels. With the
technical advent of peace on April 28,1952, Okinawa ceased to be "enemy
territory"; a new terminology was adopted. The Ryukyus became "friendly
territory" under United States Civil Administration; responsibility rested
with the Department of Defense, delegated downward through the
Department of the Army to the Commanding General, Ryukyus Command,
and through him to the Civil Administrator, a brigadier general of the U.S.
Army.
Provision was made for consideration of claims made by Okinawans
against the occupying power; a representative of the Japanese government
was admitted to residence at Naha, to assist in supervising trade and travel
between Okinawa and the other prefectures. A local legislature was created,
and Okinawan leaders became responsible for the social and economic
welfare of the populace, and for its full cooperation with the U.S. forces. A
native government of the Ryukyu Islands began to operate under the
directives and with the advice of the United States Civil Administration. A
Chief Executive—an Okinawan—was appointed by the military governor.
Okinawan administration throughout was paralleled by a "watchdog"
organization staffed by military men and civilian citizens of the United
States. Strong efforts were made to diversify the economy and to increase
production. In 1956 the Civil Administrator stated publicly that planning for
economic development could now proceed on the basis of a maximum five-
year limit at any given time.
Military histories of the Pacific War devote appropriate space to the
Okinawa campaign. The record of the occupation will be a new chapter in
Okinawan annals—an "American chapter"—which may not be written in
full detail until the occupation's end, when the decision will have been made
to retain Okinawa as an American possession or to restore it to Japan.
The present text offers a summary review of Okinawa's past, from
remote and legendary times until the years of World War II and the
surrender. The history of Okinawa is essentially the story of a minor
kingdom with few resources, and of an unwarlikc people, forever seeking
balance between powerful neighboring states. They are of a pliable and
easygoing nature, eager to please, responsive to friendly consideration, but
with quick recourse to stubborn inaction and evasion, the weapons of the
weak who wish to resist unwanted change.
The most noteworthy feature of their social history has been
subservience to, and willing acceptance of, two quite different alien
standards. The basic structure of society and language indicates that in ages
past they were closely akin to the early Japanese. For five hundred years
they looked to China for cultural guidance and pridefully counted
themselves as tributaries of the Chinese court. But for three hundred of
these years they were under heavy obligation to Japan, which they
discharged faithfully. An interlude of fifty years, and they have now
returned to this old pattern, called upon to divide allegiance, once more
obeying one power while aspiring to emulate another. Japan has taken
China's old place as the home of spiritual allegiance, while obligations to be
discharged in day-by-day economic life and conduct of government are now
owed to the United States.
The old Okinawan kingdom produced a culture peculiarly its own, the
product of isolation and poverty of human resources. (It is doubtful if there
were ever as many as 300,000 people in the islands before 1879.) A
multitude of popular heroes are named in folklore, song, and drama, but not
a hundred emerge who exercised decisive personal leadership or left strong
individual imprint upon the culture and course of history.
There was an even greater poverty of material wealth with which to
work. It is extraordinary that, with such meager economic endowments —
harsh, thin soil, no metals, and little forest wealth—the Okinawans were
able to construct and preserve so long a complex society and government. It
was a toy state, with its dignified kings, its sententious and learned prime
ministers, its councils and its numerous bureaus, its organization of temples
and shrines and its classical school, its grades in court rank and its codes of
law, all developed in faithful effort to emulate great China. The whole
fragile, minuscule structure survived throughout the centuries at bare
subsistence level, suffering a never-ending cycle of storm, drought, famine,
and plague. Such was Nature's cruel way of maintaining precarious balance
between resources and population. It is noteworthy that the one era of
colorful and creative activity in which the Okinawans found a rich
expression of their own peculiar culture was that in which the independent
kingdom was in full control of its own far-ranging commerce overseas and
could supplement, unchecked, the meager resources available to the
governing elite. After Satsuma laid hands on Okinawan trade in 1609 the
creative genius of the Okinawans began to fade.
Dissolution of this old and curious culture began a hundred years ago
with the Western world's intrusion. Soon after Japan annexed the kingdom
and introduced a new technology, the population began to increase. The
great Japanese sugar corporations moved in; land reforms were imposed
which completely altered the traditional economic system. Thousands
became landless laborers. Emigration to relieve pressure became imperative
at the opening of the present century. By 1944 a total of 331,927 Okinawans
and their descendents were living abroad. Of these, more than 180,000 were
repatriated perforce after 1946, returning to war-shattered Okinawa without
lands and without employment. By 1956 it was estimated that the island of
Okinawa had only 61,800 acres of farmland upon which to support 660,000
people.
The area of land left for cultivation has diminished rapidly as the U.S.
forces steadily expand installations required for their manifold activities—
airfields, rocket-sites, firing ranges, barracks, dependent-housing areas,
highways, and recreational areas. By 1955 more than 40,000 acres or 12.7
percent of the total land area of Okinawa had passed into military hands,
and there were plans underway to double this. Much of old Okinawa is
covered with steel and mortar, cement and stone, and crossed and crossed
again with necessary barricades.
Thoughtful Okinawans recall the past with melancholy pride, but few
fail to recognize that there can be no return. As their ancestors drifted from
the continent in prehistoric times to seek new opportunities on the islands of
the sea frontier, so must the Okinawans today move on to other islands
nearby, to Japan, and to strange lands beyond the sea.
 PART ONE
CHUZAN: INDEPENDENT
KINGDOM
IN THE EASTERN SEAS
 CHAPTER ONE
THE LEGENDARY PAST

To A. D. 1314

ISLAND PATHWAYS ON ANCIENT SEA

FRONTIERS

At some remote time in the past, primitive men and women transported
children, meager household gear, and simple weapons from continental
Asia to the offshore islands lying on the edge of the great sea. No one now
knows what prompted them to venture at great risk from place to place by
raft or dugout canoe. Some were undoubtedly driven to the islands by
storm. Perhaps some were driven on by enemies; some may have been
driven by hunger to seek better hunting or fishing grounds or better land to
till. If such was the case, they made a poor choice, for the islands between
Japan and Formosa are inhospitable reefs of coral and rugged, rocky
mountain peaks thrusting up from the depths of the sea. Nature has never
been generous in these islands.
There were three pathways by which continental peoples made their
way into the Ryukyus. Wanderers from northern Asia moved southward
through the Japanese islands. There are prehistoric sites on Okinawa which
contain relics of the ancient Jomon neolithic culture commonly found
throughout eastern and northern Japan. Migrants from the tropical Indies or
Southeast Asia may have come up through die Philippines or along the
China coast, converging on Formosa and passing over the channel waters to
Yonaguni, Yaeyama, and Miyako islands. Sites on Ishigaki Island (in the
Yaeyama group) have yielded evidence of Malay settlement in the fairly
recent past. Adventurous travelers from the heartland of Mongolia or
Manchuria may have moved southeastward along the Korean Peninsula,
across the narrow straits to the island-dotted coasts of Kyushu. From there
some pushed on eastward and northward into the principal Japanese islands,
and others went southward along the Ryukyu chain. Many elements in
contemporary Okinawan cultural life and legend suggest that here was a
well-used pathway into the sea islands. As the migration stream from the
continent and the Korean Peninsula spent itself in the islands, it distributed
related racial and cultural elements in western Japan, Kyushu, and the
Ryukyus.
Thus we may assume that Malay, Mongol, and Caucasoid Ainu stocks
mingled in the Ryukyu Islands, but in what proportions we do not know.
The migrants who lingered in the Philippines or Formosa or in the islands
of Japan proper were fortunate, for there they found fertile lands, rich forest
cover, sheltering bays, and deep rocky inlets. Those who for one reason or
another pushed on into the smaller and most distant islands found only thin
soils and little to protect them from the fierce seasonal storms which sweep
through these seas. The process of gradual infiltration and settlement took
unnumbered centuries, and even with the dawn of historic times the total
population did not exceed a few tens of thousands in the Ryukyu Islands.
The name Okinawa means literally a "rope in the offing" and is an apt
enough description for the long, narrow island which dominates our story.
On a map the island chain itself suggests a knotted rope tossed carelessly
upon the sea. The southernmost island (Yonaguni) lies within sight of
Formosa on an exceptionally clear day; the northernmost, seven hundred
miles away, lies just off the tip of Kyushu Island in Japan. Between these
two points are 140 islands and reefs, but only thirty-six now have
permanent habitations on them; the majority will not support human life.
In passing among the islands today, one occasionally sees sunburned
fishermen bobbing about in dugout canoes or paddling from place to place
with simple gear and a load of silvery fish as ballast on the choppy waters.
On clear days and in calm weather it is relatively easy to move from one
island to another, for rocky headlands are within sight from any midway
point en route. One cannot be many hours afloat offshore without glimpsing
the blue line of a distant landfall.
There is one exception to this, an important one, which has some
bearing upon the distribution of prehistoric settlements and upon the rate of
cultural change (and its direction) within historic times. When traveling
northward from Okinawa toward Japan on good days, land is always within
sight. When moving south, however, it is necessary to cross a stretch of
turbulent sea in which no land may be seen in any direction at the midway
point; it is 175 miles from Okinawa to the nearest islands in the Miyako
group.
 This means that prehistoric migration southward from the larger
islands of Japan as far as Okinawa was relatively easy; a day of hard
paddling in good weather would bring a man's canoe into safe shelter by
nightfall. But to move southward willingly from Okinawa toward the empty
horizon, seeking Miyako or the Yaeyama Islands, proposed a greater
challenge. This required planning, courage, and a seaworthy craft. It
required skillful navigation, as well, to ride out the heavy storms common
here throughout the year and to counter the strong, northward-sweeping
Black Current. Modern records indicate that a minimum of twelve and a
maximum of forty-five typhoons may be experienced in Okinawan waters
in the course of any year. At least three pass directly over the main island;
others linger nearby. A small storm may be only forty or fifty miles in
diameter revolving about the baleful eye; the greater storms sometimes have
a two-hundred-mile diameter and a wind velocity in excess of 150 miles per
hour. These fearful tempests have been an ever-present element in the
changing history of the islands, affecting at once the distribution of human
settlement, the physical patterns of Okinawan culture, and the general
economic life.
The Black Current too has exercised a constant and pervasive
influence, for it runs like a powerful river in the sea, moving up past the
Philippines, past Formosa, through the Ryukyus, and on past the islands
ofJapan.
No one can know how many helpless men and women reached the
Ryukyu Islands from the south by riding out the storms, tossed relentlessly
before the wind and driven by the ocean currents. Cast upon strange shores
with such simple artifacts as they might salvage from a damaged craft, they
were forced to make the best of a desperate situation. This was disorganized
and involuntary migration. It is fairly safe to suppose that more people
entered the archipelago voluntarily from the north in organized groups,
bringing with them household goods and personal effects, domesticated
animals and tools, weapons and sacred objects, and above all, bringing with
them fire.
We have no evidence of large-scale movements of people with'η the
last two thousand years. Chinese colonies and petty kingdoms on the
Korean Peninsula effectively blocked off the routes from the inner-Asian
regions to the west. Between the 2nd and the 7th centuries of the Christian
era the emergence of the Yamato state in Japan blocked off any mass
migrations of people from the north.
When the most recently developed techniques of archeology have
been brought to bear in the Ryukyus, we may be able to set an outer limit of
time upon prehistory of mankind there and to establish the essential details
of population movements, throwing light upon racial and cultural
developments of nearby Japan as well. Such studies were neglected before
1945. There were no Okinawan scholars trained in archeology in the 19th
century, and the Japanese were then preoccupied with problems rising in the
home islands. In the 20th century it was Japan's policy to hasten
assimilation of the old Ryukyuan kingdom, and thus there was little official
enthusiasm for the study of the ancient past. Nationalist policy frowned
upon research which might question details of approved mythology, the
"Age of the Gods" and the lineage of Japan's first emperor, Jimmu.
Until the 2nd or 1st centuries B.C. there was probably little to
distinguish the level of neolithic life throughout the Ryukyus from life in
islands to the north and south. About two thousand years ago the
accelerated introduction of elements of Chinese civilization via Korea
transformed daily habits and language among the Yamato people—the
Japanese—who created an active and self-conscious political life centered
at the eastern end of the Inland Sea, near present-day Osaka. By the end of
the 6th century A.D. Japan had emerged as an organized state prepared to
establish formal relations with the Chinese empire on the continent. The
Yamato people were conscious of less-developed communities beyond the
borders of their authority—the Ainu in eastern and northern Japan, the
Kumaso and Hayato people in central and southern Kyushu, and the
ancestors of the present-day Okinawans, living in the islands to the south.
The Ryukyu people did not share with the Japanese this early
transformation from a loose association of rival clans into a formal state
with an established government. Until the 13th century A.D. they continued
to live in a shadowy, primitive border region, known at the Japanese capital
simply as Nanto (Southern Islands).
 Still further south, Formosa lay unexplored and undeveloped for an
even longer time.

PREHISTORIC LIFE IN THE RYUKYUS 1

Fragmentary materials found on prehistoric sites tell us something of
ancient man in the archipelago. Chipped arrowheads, harpoon points made
of wild-boar bone, chipped and polished stone implements (axes, hoes,
hammers), and shell ornaments are found in the shell mounds and kitchen
middens. Simple decorations applied to crude pottery suggest that the early
settlers attempted to gratify a primitive aesthetic sense. The bones of dogs,
deer, and swine suggest something of the economy. Human skeletal remains
are rare and incomplete. Most perishable articles of wood, fiber, or bone
have long since mouldered away.
Archeologists have made a preliminary study of some of these
remains. Dr. Kanaseki Takeo suggests that "the last stage of the stone age in
Yaeyama ... was in the early Ming dynasty" or not much before that, i.e., the
14th century. He finds no basis in physical anthropology to support belief in
the presence of Ainu elements among the Oki-nawan people, but on the
basis of cultural anthropology he suggests that successive waves of
migration from the south worked some modification upon the Jomon
culture met with in Okinawa and the islands farther north.
There is evidence of a prehistoric "Yaeyama culture" having strong
affinities with the south, with Indonesian and Melanesian cultures; certain
forms of agriculture and fisheries and the use of the composite "plank-built"
boat have been identified.
On Ishigaki and Takctomi islands in the Yaeyama group such cultural
remains are overlaid by strata containing fragments of early Ming pottery.
Superimposed on all of this are the complex culture-forms which penetrated
these islands from Japan and later, in historic times, from China by way of
Okinawa. On Okinawa and the islands north of it the ancient "Yaeyama-
type" remains are overlaid and intermingled with the remains of Jomon
cultures carried down from Japan proper. Physical characteristics of the
Ryukyuans show that they belong to a group which may be called "South
Kyushu and Ryukyuan" peoples. Language forms throughout the
archipelago show close alliance with the early language of the Japanese
islands, and there have been authoritative suggestions that the intonations
with which Japanese dialects are used "seem to bear resemblance to that of
the Indonesian languages."
In other words, cultural elements penetrated the islands from both the
south and the north, overlapping and reacting upon one another. Dr.
Kanaseki suggests that the interchange of language and culture was more
far-reaching than the interchange or blending of race and physical types,
and that "in some features and in some districts the cultural interchange has
not been completed yet."
Contemporary Okinawans preserve many visible links with the past —
legends, artifacts, and folkways—which have not yet been wholly
submerged by importations from die continent (or from the West) in historic
times. The so-called "curved jewels" or comma-shaped stones (magatama)
used by the village priestesses provide a good example. In Korea and Japan
they are found in archeological sites associated with the Late Neolithic and
Bronze ages, the age of the great burial mounds; they form the sacred
jewels of the imperial Japanese regalia, but are never seen in daily use. The
curiously shaped "humming-bulb" arrow of early continental origin may be
seen in Japan only in a few museums; in Okinawa it still has ceremonial use
(in replica) on numerous occasions, such as the dedication of a new house
or the festival launching of a canoe, and in village holiday processions.
Many legends incorporated in the lively dances of the islands—and the
rhythms and patterns of the dances themselves—represent a heritage from
prehistoric days.
 In historic times the townsmen of Naha and Shuri, Nago and Ito man,
and Hirara and Ishigaki have developed an architecture modeled after
Chinese and Japanese structures, but in the distant countryside and oft-lying
islands we may still find farmers and fishermen living in thatched huts
whose walls are daubed with clay and whose floor is the beaten earth. More
substantial dwellings suggest a tropical origin, for in these a thatched roof
covers a mat-covered, raised, wooden platform, with sliding panels or mats
which can be raised to throw the structure open on the sides. Communal
storehouses survive in many out-of-the-way villages and these seem to be
close counterparts of the storehouses which are the most prominent feature
in the primitive mountain villages of Formosa. High stone walls enclose
individual dwellings and create the most distinctive characteristic of an
Okinawan village. These have their counterpart in the massive stone
embankments which enclose the individual dwellings of the primitive Yami
people on Botel Tobago Island, some two hundred miles south of Yaeyama.
To the layman's eye many current folkways suggest affiliations with
other areas and strong surviving links with prehistoric settlement. In well-
defined areas of northern Okinawa (and on some of the smaller out-lying
islands) the women manage heavy burdens by means of a band which fits
across the forehead, passes over the shoulders, and supports weights carried
on the back. This is common practice among the tattooed Tayal people of
northern Formosa. By contrast, the women of southern Okinawa skillfully
balance heavy loads on the top of the head, as the women of Korea do.
Until quite recent years the women of Okinawa frequently tattooed the back
of the hand and the fingers, and in remote districts one occasionally still
sees older women wearing the katakcishira, a curious off-center topknot
into which the hair is drawn in a fashion to be found among the Yami of
Botel Tobago, among the Malays on Mindanao in the Philippines, and
elsewhere among the islands which served as steppingstones along the sea
frontier.

An exploration of the great cave sites, together with a careful mapping

of artifacts, religious practices, myths and traditions, and language
variations, may someday give us a clearer picture of life in the ancient Ryu-
kyu Islands. There is no ready answer to the question "Where did the early
Okinawans come from?" We must turn to early Chinese and Japanese
sources for our first written notices of the archipelago.

THE "EASTERN SEA ISLANDS" OF CHINESE

TRADITION2
Certain ancient knife-shaped coins known as mei-to-sen have been found in
a shell-heap at Gusuku-dake, near Naha. These indicate a probable contact
with the continent as early as the 3rd century B.C. or shortly thereafter.
Similar coins were manufactured in North China in the Kingdom of Yen,
which fell in 265 B.C. These may have been brought directly into the islands,
although it seems more probable that they were traded from settlement to
settlement across southern Manchuria, along the Korean Peninsula and
southward to Okinawa. Taking a clue from their presence in the refuse
heaps of ancient Ryukyu, we may briefly notice the character of legends
and historic notices scattered through early Chinese records which concern
the "Islands in the Eastern Sea."
According to the Shatt Hai Ching, the Kingdom of Yen had relations
with the Wa (Dwarf) people living in the islands southeast of Korea, i.e., in
the neighborhood of present-day Japan. The Kingdom of Yen itself came to
an end in a great revolution which overtook Chinese society in the 3rd
century B.C. Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the "first emperor" (221-210 B.C.),

destroyed the feudal states, dispersed the ancient hereditary aristocracy, and
created an administration which concentrated the physical and human
resources of the entire Chinese nation. He was a builder, as well as a
destroyer, and conceived his projects in a grand manner. He is famed for his
attempt to burn all records of the past (he thus intended to "begin history
anew") and for work 011 the Great Wall of China. We are interested in him
because of several expeditions he sent into the Eastern Sea to search for the
secret of immortality and for the formula by which base metals could be
transmuted into gold. To this end, in 219 B.C. he sent out a mission said to
have included three thousand young men and women, numerous artisans,
and a cargo of seeds. With these he hoped to win the cooperation of the
"Happy Immortals" who dwelt on the islands. His ships never returned, and
the legend grew that the expedition had sailed over to Japan or to the
Ryukyu Islands and there made settlement. 3
Ch'in Shih Huang Ti's ambitions and projects set in motion a
tremendous revolutionary process in China. Centralization of resources and
authority made possible the development of the powerful Han empire which
followed (210 B.C. to A.D. 220). Han Chinese armies marched to the borders
of India on the west, established outposts in Indo-China, and created
important settlements at Lakliang, in northern Korea. Han embassies and
trade missions traveled westward to the far-distant Roman frontiers near the
Mediterranean and pushed eastward and south through Korea to trade with
representatives of the Wa people living in the sea islands. We have no
evidence that Han Chinese missions reached the Ryukyu Islands, but we do
know that Japanese missions from Kyushu reached the Han capital at Lo-
yang; notes concerning an embassy of A.D. 57 refer to a general practice of
tattooing among the people of the "hundred kingdoms" in the eastern
islands. This is of interest because today tattooing survives only among the
primitive Ainu living in Hokkaido, the older generation of Okinawan
women, and certain of the mountain communities (notably the Tayal
people) of northern Formosa.
The imperial expansion of Han China disturbed and agitated all the
"barbarians" living beyond Chinese frontiers. Military expeditions,
diplomatic missions, and trading activities created a centrifugal pressure
upon weak border peoples.
 The Han Chinese court inherited and developed the old Taoist
traditions of magic islands in the Eastern Seas. The powerful Han emperor
Wu Ti endeavored to send messengers to three fabled islands called P'eng
Lai, Fang Chang, and Ying Chou. Among the deities worshipped at the Han
court was a "Princess of the Spirits," who spoke through a sorceress. It is
said that her cult was introduced at the capital from the North China coastal
frontiers. This is consistent with other evidence that in the general area of
Korea and the offshore islands women exercised great influence as
intermediaries between the spirit world and mankind, and as temporal rulers
or chieftains as well.
Han records note that the country of the Wa—i.e., the islands beyond
Korea—was divided into more than one hundred independent units, of
which thirty-odd had established relations with Chinese settlements in
North Korea. Later Chinese records (of the Wei dynasty) note that during a
period of intense civil conflict in the 2nd century A.D., an old, unmarried
woman referred to as Pimeku became preeminent in the islands through her
influence as a sorceress, and that she sent embassies to Chinese settlements
in Korea in the period A.D. 238-47 seeking support in local wars. Her death
precipitated civil conflict in the sea islands, which subsided only when a
girl of thirteen, a relative of Pimeku's, was made ruler. Japanese traditions
preserved in the Kojiki and Nihongi indicate that female rulers were often
encountered in western and southern Japan. Chinese writers alluded to the
islands as the "queen countries."
These Chinese accounts suggest that until the 2nd century A.D. the
inhabitants of western Japan and of Okinawa may have had much in
common in their political and social institutions. Elements which were
submerged in Japan under the stream of Chinese influence are still visible in
the Ryukyu Islands.
A history of the Later Han dynasty (compiled in the 5th centuryA.D.)
says that the Wa people were ruled by women, that they were short and
small, that they covered only the upper part of the body, and that they were
fond of rearing oxen and swine. Far to the south of the Wa kingdoms lay
another "kingdom" inhabited by people said to be only three or four feet
tall. This vague record of hearsay contains elements of contemporary
interest. Such notes on stature, dress, and swine culture are valid today in
describing the primitive Yami people who live on Botel Tobago Island,
approximately two hundred miles due south of Yaeyama and Miyako. The
tioro priestesses of Okinawa were closely associated with local government
until the 20th century and are still held in awe and esteem in the smaller off-
lying islands along the Ryukyu chain. Swine culture was of central
importance in the Ryukyuan economy until World War II. Many Okinawans
—especially in the older generation—are remarkably small. Politics and
religion were closely related. From legendary times until the present day the
noto priestess has exercised a powerful influence in the Ryukyuan
community. Until 1879 a daughter or sister of the king at Shuri usually
assumed the role of the chief high priestess as intercessor between the spirit
world and the king's household, and was often an important counselor in
royal affairs. 4
It was the noro 's duty in most ancient times to preserve the fire on the
hearth. It can be imagined with what difficulty fire was transported from
island to island in primitive days, and what hardships a community suffered
if the precious flames were extinguished by accident. A daughter in each
household was assigned the task of conserving and feeding the hearth fire.
Fire was a communal treasure, in itself a living thing, handed on from
generation to generation. A tabu system grew up about the office of the fire-
custodian. She was expected to remain a virgin and was thought to be in
close communication with the ancestors from whose care the fire
descended. When new households were established, fire was transferred
from the family home to the new dwelling or kindled anew with ceremony.
In this way the continuity of the fire came to represent blood relationships
and family continuity as well. The custodian of the fire upon the oldest
hearth in the community assumed an official distinction; her office was
hereditary, passing usually to a female child of the noro's brother. A plot of
land was set aside for her support. Thank offerings brought by members of
the community enlarged her income. Within her house, or near it, three
simple hearthstones served as a center of worship, for these formed the
locus of the root-deity (ne-gami) of the village.
It has been suggested that in ancient days fire was always made by
striking stones together and that, through association, the stones themselves
became sacred. Another theory suggests that the three stones originally
were used to support the earthenware pots over the fire, and so became
associated with it. It is noteworthy that the stones are usually brought from
the seashore, no matter how far inland the house or village altar may be, and
that among the pantomimic seasonal dances performed by Okinawan
villagers, there usually is one which tells a legend of the "fire-bringing
visitors."
Vestments of white cloth (symbolizing ritual cleanliness) and a string
of beads (including the magatama or curved jewels) have been symbols of
the noro's office since prehistoric times. Her duties require care of the
hearth fire, worship of the ancestors through ritual devotion, and divination
to settle upon auspicious days for marriage, burial, travel, or the simple
tasks of the agricultural community.
The cult is a "living fossil" of a prehistoric age. Although the nor o has
lost prestige and support at Naha and Shuri, she still commands an awed
respect as diviner and intercessor for the common man in country villages
of Okinawa and in the outlying islands, where she guards the ritual objects
on the sacred hearth and attends springs and sacred groves associated with
the welfare and protection of the village life.
Here perhaps we glimpse surviving elements of neolithic matriarchal
cults once found in many regions of the Eurasian land-mass long before the
literate and historic cultures of China, the Middle East, and the
Mediterranean areas were evolved. The sacred groves, springs, and wells,
the oracular shrines, and the guardian priestesses of pre-Homeric Greek
tradition, and of pre-Christian northern Europe and the British Isles, find
close counterpart in the 20th-century mysteries of the noro cult.
During the period of great agitation among the "queen countries" in
southwestern Japan noted by the Chinese annalists, one well-organized
military group emerged preeminent in southern Kyushu and gradually
pushed on to the fertile plains at the eastern end of the Inland Sea. There it
found a permanent base, and there a new state came into being. This was
the country of Yamato, the Japan of historic times. Legend ascribes
leadership in this important movement to Jimmu, grandson of the Sun
Goddess, makes him the first emperor, and names him direct ancestor of the
Japanese emperors of modern times.
 The succession conflict which rose after Pimeku's death suggests that
the ancient matriarchal system was being challenged. Queens who reserved
to themselves the exercise of the sacred mysteries, but delegated secular
power to the male members of the family, in time found themselves
challenged or ignored. They ceased to wield effective temporal authority.
Gradually the balance shifted: in Japan the chief high priestess at the Ise
Grand Shrine was an imperial princess, living in virginal seclusion.
Important political decisions were referred to her with ceremony; oracular
decisions were delivered through her on questions of state. As we shall see,
traces of this ancient system lingered on in some strength in the Ryukyu
kingdom long after they had withered away in Japan proper and the
priestesses at Ise had lost all secular power.
We are concerned with these events only as they may throw light on
the early history of Japanese-Ryukyu relations. In Japan: A Short Cultural
History, Sir George Sansoni notes the probability that there were large
numbers of people in southern Kyushu who had come up into Japan from
Southeast Asia or the soudiern islands along the Ryukyuan chain, and that
some of the fighting forces used in the victorious migration eastwards
toward Yamato may have been recruited from this southern element in the
Kyushu population. There has also been some suggestion that a significant
number of defeated people may have fled southward into the Ryukyu
Islands during the local warfare which marked the departure of the Yamato
migrants from Kyushu.
The study of language throws some light on the distant past. The
British scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain, then Professor of Philology at
Tokyo Imperial University, made the first modern approach to problems of
early linguistic relationship between Japan and the southern islands in his
Essay in Aid of a Grammar and Dictionary of the Luchuan Language
(1895); in the years since, many Japanese and Okinawan scholars have
addressed themselves to the subject. They are agreed that the contemporary
speech of Japan and of the southern islands springs from a common parent
language. The Japanese, however, learned to read and write at least a
thousand years before the Okinawans did, and absorbed an overwhelming
quantity of Chinese into the older language forms. This enlarged the
Japanese vocabulary and accelerated language change reflecting—and
reflected in—a host of changing institutions. Nevertheless, it is pointed out
that the language of the conservative imperial court of Japan, and of the
early literature which records it, preserves archaic Japanese words and
forms upon which Okinawan dialects of the recent past can shed much
light. 5
For this study the Japanese and Okinawan scholars turn to a collection
of ancient songs and rituals, the Omoro Soshi, which were first recorded in
the phonetic hiragana script and brought together in written form at Shuri
in the 16th century.
The most indefatigable Okinawan student of these early records was
undoubtedly Iha Fuyu, who devoted much time to an analysis of language
and legend to discover the origins of the Okinawan people and to establish
their prehistory. In the story of the two divine progenitors of the Okinawans
he detected a fable embodying the meeting and blending of two peoples,
possibly on the island of Amami Oshima. The name of the female deity was
Amami-kyu, which by process of linguistic analysis he identifies with a
fishing people from Kyushu who moved into Oshima and thence, after a
long time, pushed on southward into Okinawa. The people of Oshima in
turn say that they are descended from Amami-dake, who created Amami
Oshima. Some of the Omoro songs refer to the Amami-ya ("Dwelling of the
Ama-bo" or fishers' community). In the language of the Okinawan country
people today the north is referred to as nishi, which Iha derives from inishi
("the past" or "behind"), whereas the Japanese speak of the west as nishi.
Iha suggests that in both instances there is preserved an immemorial sense
of the direction from which migration took place into the sea islands. In the
language of the Omoro the verb noboru (to go up) is used in referring to
travel to Japan from Okinawa, in the sense that country people "go up" to
the capital or to the seat of authority. 6
These are problems which must be left to the philologist and his
confreres while we turn here to explore some of the shadowy legends with
which the Okinawans seek to explain the remote past.

OKINAWAN ORIGIN MYTHS AND SAFE

HAVENS IN THE SEA ISLANDS

Legends of Japan's Sun Goddess, and traditions surrounding the appearance

of her grandson Jimmu, concern Hyuga, near the southeast tip of Kyushu
Island. Let us note briefly some of the so-called "origin tales" of the Ryukyu
Islands nearby.
Two principal origin myths have been handed down. They were not
reduced to writing until the 17th century, but one (preserved in the Ryukyu
Shinto-ki, about 1603) is presumably the older.
According to this account, at the beginning of time two deities were in
existence, a male deity named Shineri-kyu and a female named Amami-
kyu. In due course they built huts side by side. Although they indulged in
no sexual intercourse, the female deity Amami-kyu became pregnant,
thanks to the influence of a passing wind. Three children were born to her.
The eldest, a son, became the first ruler of the islands; the second, a girl,
became the first noro or priestess; and the third, a son, became the first of
the common people. Fire, which was essential for their well-being, was
obtained "from the Dragon Palace," traditionally believed to rest on the
bottom of the sea. 7
With this simple tale the Okinawans provide for the virgin birth of
demigods who personify the essential social functions of administration,
religious practice, and economic production. The Dragon Palace episode
hints at a folk-memory that at sometime in the dim past the fire treasured on
every hearth was brought with religious care from somewhere over the open
seas.
A more elaborate version of the origin myth was incorporated in the
first formal history, the History of Chuzan, prepared by Sho Jo-ken (Haneji
Choshu) in 1650. Chinese and Japanese elements have crept in, just as the
origin myths of Japan, first recorded in simple form in the Kojiki (A.D. 712),
were enlarged with many Chinese elements in later versions. According to
this second account, after the appearance of the male and female deities,
generations of mankind lived in caves and fields. At last there emerged a
"heavenly grandchild" (tenteishi), who had three sons and two daughters.
The eldest son became founder of the Tensón dynasty, the first line of
Ryukyuan kings; the second was ancestor of the lords (the anji); and the
third became the first farmer. The elder daughter became the first high
priestess (kikoe-ogimi) associated with the royal family, and the younger
became the first community priestess (noro).
In this unsubstantial but interesting realm of tradition and folklore we
must note the existence in the Ryukyus of many stories of the Sun Goddess
Amaterasu. One of these repeats the tradition of her descent into a great
cave and of her return to bring light to the world after fearful darkness. In
Japan this legend is associated with a cave near the Ise Grand Shrines on the
Shima Peninsula; in Ryukyu it is associated with a deep hillside cavern
overlooking the sea on the eastern shores of Iheya Island. This legend of
Ama no Iwa To may have been introduced from Japan in later years. The
cave is still held sacred by the local priestesses, and the Okinawans have not
lost pride in repeating local beliefs that the first Japanese emperor, Jimmu,
began his great northeastward-moving conquest of Japan from this minor
island in the Ryu-kyus.
The great cave on Iheya Island is also known as the Kumayaa (Hiding
Place), and about it cluster legends that suggest its early and frequent use as
a refuge in times of great storms or of threatening enemies. Hundreds of
people could find shelter in its depths. The small entrance is high and safe
above the pounding surf; nearby springs seep down through grassy land
toward the shoreline; and the outgoing tides each day leave delectable and
easily harvested marine food on the mudflats and exposed rocks.
Iheya Island has been held in peculiar reverence in the folklore of
Okinawa, as if some dim memory persists of the arrival and shelter there of
ancestral people. It is noteworthy, for instance, that until modern times the
noro priestesses of Okinawa gathered annually at Nakijin, on the Motobu
Peninsula, on the tenth day of the eighth month in the old calendar, the
month of the most severe typhoons. At a high point in the hills overlooking
the channel toward Iheya, they perform a complex ceremony, three times
passing around the sacred structure of the hearth gods (uganju) with
pantomime, and chanted prayers, making the motions of rowing over the
waters as they go. Similarly, until the 15th century the lords of Nakijin
Castle caused a special place to be constructed from which they could
worship facing toward Iheya. It has already been noted that Iheya itself was
governed by priestesses until the 19th century, longer than in any other
district.
There are other large sheltering caves on the island of Okinawa proper
(and on Miyako), each with a legendary or sacred tradition concerning it.
All deserve the most careful archeologie investigation for the light they may
throw upon successive waves of immigration and periods of settlement.
There are sacred caves at Kin and at Futenma, opening to the south and
east, which have been associated with Buddhist or (Japanese) Shinto
practice in modern times. The Seifa Utaki, on Chinen Peninsula, has been a
place of worship since the most remote legendary period. Until the 18th
century, all kings of Ryukyu were obliged to visit and worship there, and
the site was held in the greatest popular veneration until recent years. The
shrine area itself, located on a high promontory over the sea, consists of a
number of sheltering caves and overhanging ledges opening to the east and
south among towering rock formations. All buildings have been destroyed,
but the outer and inner precincts can still be traced.
 Nearby and below it to the south, are the twin springs Ukinju-Hain-ju
("Quiet Water" and "Running Water"), held sacred as the traditional site of
the first rice plantation on Okinawa. These two small, clear-running springs
supply water to an area of level fields surrounded on three sides by steep,
sheltering bluffs. The fourth (eastern) side opens away to extensive flats
exposed at low tide. A barrier reef offshore protects lagoon-like fishing
areas.
Some distance beyond the reef lies the small island ofKudaka, which
has occupied a place of peculiar interest in Okinawan legend and history,
for it is here that tradition says the "five fruits and grains" were first
introduced by a divine people. It has been suggested that at some prehistoric
time strangers put in here from an unknown land bringing with them new
fruits or grains and advanced agricultural techniques, and that they made an
unforgotten contribution to the barren economy of Okinawa.
Standing among the sheltering rocks at the Seifa Utaki, looking out
across the surf-streaked reefs to Kudaka and beyond, one is struck by the
persistence and strength of these local traditions which associate the
southward coves and promontories and beaches with folk heroes and the
age of the gods. It is noteworthy too that the services of worship at these
spots embodied ritual prayers of gratitude. We can imagine the joy and
relief with which primitive men and women came ashore nearby, to find
abundant seafood within the reefs, fresh water and fallow land beyond the
beach, and on the hills above a natural shelter from the fearful storms which
sweep in across these islands every year.
Research, in rime, may lay bare something of the pattern of early
settlement. Carbon tests on the camp-sites within the caves may establish
some approximate dating for successive waves of immigration.
In a sense "prehistory" ended in the Ryukyus when the Chinese and
the Japanese began to record notices of these islands far out on the edge of
the world. It is to these notices we turn now to follow the story of Okinawa
in historic times.

CHINESE AND JAPANESE NOTICES BEFORE

THE 12TH CENTURY

For many years China had been torn by dynastic wars, but in A.D. 581 a
powerful general named Yang Chien seized the throne through treachery
and declared himself first emperor of the Sui dynasty. He ruled well, and
byA.D. 589 China was unified after decades of turmoil.
Chinese influences had long since penetrated the Japanese islands
through outlying Chinese colonies and the small kingdoms of the Korean
Peninsula. Knowledge of reading, writing, administrative organization, and
court ceremonial had slowly transformed many primitive communities in
the island of Kyushu and in western and central Honshu. Refugees from the
war-torn principalities and colonies of northern China and Korea made their
way into the sea islands, welcomed there because of the skills—the arts and
crafts—they brought with them. ByA.D. 600 Yamato people had been
transformed from a loose association of rival, semi-autonomous clans into a
nation governed from a settlement established near present-day Osaka. At
the time of the incident we are about to relate, the Yamato clans were ruled
by the Empress Suiko, who entrusted the secular government to her
nephew, Prince Regent Shotoku. This remarkable person desired to
reorganize and strengthen the administrative organization of the state and to
establish direct communication with China. To this end, in A.D. 605 he
ordered the first official embassy to go from the court of Japan to the
Emperor of China.
Drawing on wide resources, Yang Chien presided over a brilliant court
at Lo-yang. Missions reached the great capital from distant and semi-
civilized peoples. Chinese ambassadors and expeditions were sent into the
barbarian border states beyond China's frontiers. At the court Taoist priests
and magicians were in high favor. Royal patronage was lavished on the
never-ending search for the means of transmuting base metals into gold, and
the emperor—like so many of his predecessors— was eager to find the
supreme secret, the secret of immortality.
The tradition of an elusive Land of Happy Immortals in the distant
Eastern Seas had persisted since the emperors Ch'in Shih Huang Ti and Han
Wu Ti had sent out their fruitless expeditions eight centuries earlier. It had
not been enough for an emperor to achieve imperial supremacy; temporal
success was incomplete without possession of everlasting life.
Ambitious Taoist priests assured the emperor at Lo-yang that the
secrets could be found. Thus it was that orders to prepare for an expedition
were issued in A.D. 605. The first attempt to reach the Land of Happy
Immortals (made in 607) was unsuccessful, but in the next year an
expedition reached islands in the Eastern Seas.
They were not peopled by Happy Immortals, and were not composed
of gold and silver, as legend had promised. Nevertheless, the Chinese envoy
who commanded the expedition advised the primitive islanders to yield to
Sui rule and to acknowledge the Chinese emperor as their suzerain. They
refused, a battle ensued, and many captives—said to have numbered a
thousand persons—were taken back to China. The records note that the
invaders were unable to make themselves understood in the islands, for the
natives knew no Chinese and the Chinese could not comprehend the
language of their captives.
The exact location of these islands has never been determined; the
annals are vague, and for centuries the Chinese referred to all the islands
lying between Japan proper and the Philippines as Liu Ch'iu, writing the
name with characters which the Japanese pronounce Ryukyu. 8 There is a
strong presumption that the Sui expeditionary force had indeed reached the
island of Okinawa or the islands north of it. While the expedition was
abroad, Japan's first ambassador to China (Ono no Imoko) reached Lo-yang
accompanied by students and "national leaders" sent abroad for study at the
expense of the Japanese government. When the Chinese explorers and their
captives returned to the imperial court and laid souvenirs before the
emperor, the Japanese envoy exclaimed at once that they must have come
from the island of Yaku, which lies just south of Kyushu. The secret of
immortality was not among the souvenirs, but the cloth, the weapons, and
the uncouth captives excited the curiosity of the Chinese.
This gives us a clue that the Japanese court at Naniwa was acquainted
with the islands south of Japan proper. The heart of Kyushu was not yet
fully brought under control, but the waterways of the Inland Sea were open,
and the coasts of Kyushu were accessible from the sea.
 In A.D. 616 the Japanese annals themselves record notice of a
"Southern Islands people" for the first time. Thirty persons were said to
have been naturalized and settled within territories controlled by the
Empress Suiko's officers. In the next half-century there were occasional
notices of barbarians who came into Japanese settlements from the islands
of Yaku and Tane and of the dispatch of officers to investigate and make
reports concerning the islands lying south of Kyushu. The court maintained
a supplemental headquarters in northern Kyushu known as the Dazai-fu,
near the present-day cities of Hakata and Fukuoka. It had been established
to supervise trade and diplomatic intercourse with the Korean Peninsula and
to control administrative outposts in the unconquered mountains of Kyushu.
It may be presumed that the Dazai-fu officials treated border peoples
in Kyushu much as the Ainu in eastern and northern Japan were treated in
these centuries. Those who were willing to enter into peaceful relations, to
receive gifts, and to render tribute were rewarded. Those suffered who
refused to accept Yamato rule; military expeditions were sent against them,
their setdements were disrupted or pushed back, and their lands placed
under officers holding appointments from the distant capital.
Each decade brought some extension of Japanese authority within
Kyushu and an increased knowledge of the primitive people settled among
the islands in adjacent waters. In the records for A.D. 698 we find clear
indication of attempts to establish relations with the Southern Islands
(Nanto) people, for the Shoku Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan) states that in
the fourth month of that year a learned courtier named Fumi no Imiko was
ordered to claim the islands and was dispatched with a small force for that
purpose. Presumably he had authority to enlist the aid of local officials
along the way, for this was the custom of the times. Some sixteen months
later it was recorded at court: "Men from Tane-jima, Yaku-shima, Amami,
Toku-no-shima, and others, accompanied by court officials, came and
presented produce from their places. They were given titles and presents,
varying in each case. From this time on Toku-no-shima began to obey the
central government." 9
Within the month, these tributes were offered at the Grand Shrine of
the Sun Goddess at Ise and at other shrines, in token of a new extension of
the imperial authority. Four months later Fumi no Imiko and his aides
themselves returned to court, to receive rewards and new ranks. It thus
appears that the first Japanese expedition to the Ryukyu Islands known to us
had relative success, whereas the Chinese, ninety years earlier, had failed.
This was only part of a general campaign to subjugate restless and
defiant communities (the Hayato people) throughout central and southern
Kyushu and the small adjacent islands. Ultimately they were forced to
submit to superior Japanese arms and organization. A note in the Chronicles
indicates that the ancient system of female chieftains continued among
them, for it is recorded that in A.D. 701: "The female head of Satsuma,
Kumehadzu .. . [and other chieftains] . . . followed by Hi people
[inhabitants of Hizen and Higo] using arms, threatened the Imperial envoy
Osakabe no Maki and his party, who had come to claim their country.
Hereupon the viceroy of Tsukushi was given an Imperial order to punish
them according to their misdeeds." 10
In the following year there is a further record: "[Tane-ga-shima]
Satsuma, far away from authority, disobeyed orders. [In this predicament]
military [forces] were dispatched to bring them to order. After that, census
was taken, officials appointed." 11
Gradually one name and then another appears in the chronicles;
Amami and Tokara in 699, Shingaki and Kume in 714. In 720, some 232
persons were received at Nara. They brought tribute and were "given rank,"
which is to say that they had submitted to Japanese authority and could be
assigned a proper place in the elaborate hierarchy of titles and social grades
which Japan had adopted from the Chinese court and modified to meet its
own needs.
At last, in 753, the name Okinawa itself is recorded, upon the occasion
of a shipwreck suffered by a mission sent to China from Nara in the reign of
the Empress Koken.
The chronicles in the 7th and 8th centuries tell many stories of border
warfare and crude diplomacy on the land frontiers, and of the effect these
events had upon policies and government at the capital. It was a struggle
which strained further the resources of the imperial court, overburdened as
it was with the cost of building and maintaining new capital cities and great
temples at Asuka, Fujiwara, and Nara.
A period of early, organized Japanese expansion had run its course by
the 9th century, when the natural water barriers north of Honshu and south
of Kyushu had been reached. Nevertheless, during these years (and in
subsequent centuries) Japanese influences were slowly penetrating
communities in the Southern Islands.
We know that from earliest times it was Japanese custom to send into
distant exile any noble or official thought dangerous near the court, or in the
home provinces. Rugged, isolated peninsulas or small offshore islands
served this purpose well. History is full of the exploits of men who, with
their faithful retainers, were forced to exchange the luxuries of court life for
the hardships of life in exile beyond the frontier. Occasionally criminals,
deserting conscripts, vagrants, and others marked for punishment were
transported in large numbers to border settlements. Intermarriage with the
local inhabitants was common, and it must be presumed that the
establishment of each frontier Japanese settlement carried a civilizing and
modifying influence into more primitive communities nearby.
We know too that there was a gradual increase in ocean shipping, for
the Japanese sought direct intercourse with China, although ships were
primitive and the arts of navigation undeveloped. It was customary to avoid
the high seas, to hug the coast, and to navigate by sighting promontories
and islands along the way. Official missions between Japan and China,
inaugurated in 607, continued to pass to and fro at irregular intervals, but in
894 it was recommended that no further official embassies be sent, for the
way was long, the rigors of the journey very great, and conditions within
China deeply disturbed by revolution and war. The missions were costly;
some of them were on a large scale for the times, with five hundred men or
more in the ambassador's train, embarked upon several ships. Few if any of
these expeditions returned without loss en route. In the earlier years they
sailed across the Straits of Tsushima and up the island-studded coast of
Korea, then struck across to the Shantung Peninsula. In later years a more
southerly route was taken, cruising just west of the Ryukyu Islands while
making for the Yangtse River estuary.
There are hints that ships bound for China occasionally touched in the
Ryukyus; it is said that the ambassador Kibi no Makibi and his companions
went ashore somewhere along the way when he was making his second visit
to the Chinese court in 753. One hundred years later a priest-scholar named
Chisho was stranded for a time; upon his return to Japan he reported that he
had encountered people who were cannibals. Okinawans today are most
reluctant to accept this story, and there is no evidence to support it. He may
have reached the islands in a time of great famine, which may drive men
anywhere to desperate measures. It may be more likely that he heard a
confused tale of the ancient ritual burial preparations in Okinawa, which
required that the bones of the dead be cleansed in liquor during a time of
family ceremonial feasting near the tomb-site.
Be that as it may, it is established that maritime disasters were frequent
in these stormy seas, and there are notices of many shipwrecks along the
shores of Kyushu. It must be presumed that some of the Japanese castaways
remained permanently in the outer islands. The chronicles are dotted with
references to priests, ambassadors, scholars, students, and craftsmen who
failed to return from the southern waters. We can only guess what influence
these castaways may have had upon the less advanced people they
encountered under such circumstances. Official missions were suspended in
the 9th century, but sea traffic continued, for enterprising merchants, pigus
priests, and eager scholars made their way across to China and home again
throughout these centuries.
Having no record of conditions and events in these years, the
Okinawan people in later times invented a legendary history. According to
this, one line of paramount local chieftains was singled out and styled a
"royal house," called the Tensón dynasty, descended from the gods, who
ruled for "seventeen thousand years." We can merely assume that there were
many petty local chieftains scattered throughout the islands, often
quarreling among themselves, plundering one another's settlements, or
joining sometimes in association under outstanding leaders. Japanese
adventurers or castaways possessed of superior weapons or cunning in war,
or with new technical skills, must have been welcomed into these primitive
communities and given honorable place beside the chieftains.

TALES OF TAMETOMO, AN EXILED

JAPANESE, AND OF HIS SONHUNTEN

We are about to consider the tales which surround the first of these
outstanding men to emerge with some semblance of historic probability, one
who is held to be the founder of the Okinawan kingdom. His name is
Shunten, and he is at best a shadowy figure. Thirty-five kings follow him in
history, and we should therefore note for a moment some of the ideas of
monarchy which have prevailed in Okinawa.
The tradition of the Tensón dynasty, which ruled for seventeen
thousand years, illustrates a late effort to find a basis for royal authority in
"divine right" and to explain and rationalize the unknown and unrecorded
past. It was patterned after Japanese traditions and may have been
introduced at a late date. But in fact the Okinawan attitude toward
monarchy shows an interesting blend of elements drawn from the continent
as well. From China the Okinawans adopted the moral interpretation of
kingship as a Heaven-sent mandate to rule through succession in one
family, but only as long as the ruler himself is virtuous. A wicked ruler
deserves to be overthrown, when the mandate of Heaven is withdrawn and
given to a chieftain of another family. Such was the interpretation provided
to explain the fall of the Tensón dynasty and of later families in the royal
succession. In contrast, the Japanese held that the institution of monarchy
can be conserved only within one family, of divine origin, and that the
"divine right" continues unbroken, whatever the virtues or shortcomings of
individual members may prove to be. As Japanese influence grew stronger
in Okinawa, these views were compromised by attributing to the first king,
Shunten, a lineage which linked him with Japan's imperial family by a
devious route.
Shunten's mother was the daughter of an Okinawan chieftain; his
father was a Japanese adventurer of heroic cast. The year of his birth is
traditionally said to have beenA.D. 1166, but to understand the story as a
mirror of those times we must go back a little, for at this point Okinawan
legend begins to merge with established history in nearby Japan, China, and
Korea. The story itself was not recorded in the Okinawan annals until six
centuries after the alleged events took place, and then under circumstances
which suggest tampering inspired by political necessity. For our purposes
we will strip the account of the many variant details. The Tametomo legend
cannot be verified at this time; neither can it be dismissed as pure fiction,
for there is nothing in it essentially incompatible with the general conditions
of the age. It first takes form at the hands of a Japanese priest named Taichu
soon after Satsuma seized the islands (1609), and was written into the
formal History oj Chuzan about 1650 by a regent whose policy centered in
the need to reconcile and accommodate Okinawan interests with the
demands and interests of the Japanese.
We have already noted that the Japanese (Yamato) center of authority
was established at the head of the Inland Sea by the beginning of the 7th
century, and that it required some two hundred years to complete the
conquest of the Ainu on the northern frontier and the Kumaso and Hayato
people in southern Kyushu. The Japanese who went down into these
districts were tough and hardy fighting men. Some of the settlements were
enlarged by the transfer of outlaws to this frontier. Other Japanese drifted in
to take advantage of open lands ready for cultivation. By the 9th century the
central government seems to have established preponderant authority;
nevertheless, although the garrison forces alloted to the Dazai-fu
(Governmental Headquarters) in northern Kyushu were reduced, it appears
that no garrison member on the registers was recruited from Satsuma,
Hyuga, or Osumi districts, the region which today constitutes Kagoshima
and Miyazaki prefectures.
Districts near the imperial capital (Kyoto) were crowded. It was
common practice for the court to make grants of land or income-bearing
appointments and titles to court favorites and to cousins, nephews, and
grandsons of the imperial household. These men, reluctant to leave the
capital, often sent resident managers (jito) to oversee distant estates.
Similarly the title of Provincial Governor was sometimes given to men who
remained at the court to enjoy the governor's income, deputizing their duties
to acting governors willing to live in the countryside far from the capital
city. The growth of the semi-independent domains far from Kyoto is a
complex subject, which need not detain us here. Life in the distant
provinces was hard. As the work of opening up new lands progressed, the
acting governors and the estate managers became less and less willing to
respond promptly and obediently to orders sent down from Kyoto. This
spirit of independence led in time to the emergence of powerful clans and
families who were rivals for power at the court and military rivals in the
field.
In the 9th century a grandson of the Emperor Kammu founded the
Taira family, which developed important estates and alliances throughout
Japan, and in the ioth century a grandson of the Emperor Seiwa founded the
Minamoto family, with vast estates in the eastern districts. Minamoto no
Tametomo, the traditional link between Okinawa and Japan, was a member
of the fifth generation of this Minamoto family.
As the Taira family increased its estates and its power in the outlying
border districts, it came to wield growing influence at the Kyoto court. The
founding of the immense Satsuma domain (to which the Ryukyu Islands in
time became subordinate) is an excellent example of the process. About
1030 a member of the Taira family was acting as viceroy in charge of the
government's administrative headquarters in northern Kyushu. He was
joined there by a brother who held high office among the powerful police
commissioners (kebiishi-cho), an organization whose duties included the
maintenance of order among landholders and estate managers in the
countryside. The brothers, acting in each other's interests, developed huge
private estates in southern Kyushu, apparently by using forced labor
available to them in their capacity as government officials. These estates in
time became part of Shimazu's territory. 12 This was an age of general
unrest and turmoil; China was divided and harassed by wars throughout the
12th century, which closed as the Mongols swept out of Central Asia to the
sea. Japan was torn by the bitter rivalry of the two powerful families which
claimed descent from the imperial house.
The Taira family grew in prestige and authority. In the early 12th
century its most bitter enemies were members of Tametomo's family.
Tametomo himself was a precocious youth, noted for his great stature,
enormous strength, and skill as a bowman. There is a legend that his
powerful right arm was several inches longer than his left arm, with which
he grasped his bow; hence he could draw his bowstring to much greater
advantage than an ordinary man. If the records are to be believed, he was
unruly and turbulent as a small boy. His father, Tame-voshi, sent him far
away to a distant post in Kyushu. Soon thereafter he associated himself with
Ata, the Acting Governor of Kyushu, and secured for himself the grand title
of General Superintendent (Sotsui-bushi). In time he married Ata's daughter,
but almost immediately left Kyushu to join in a Minamoto attack upon the
Taira-held capital city. He was on the losing side in this affray. The leaders
were executed, and young Tametomo was banished after being cruelly
punished; the sinews of his bow-arm were cut, and he was sent to the
distant islands of the Izu Peninsula in eastern Japan.
This was in 1156; for twenty-nine years thereafter the Taira family
were supreme in authority at the court and preeminent throughout many
parts of Japan.
To this point the Tametomo traditions agree, but here the story fades.
One account say s that Tametomo died in Izu and makes no mention of the
Ryukyu Islands. A second says that he remained in exile fourteen years and
then 011 a spring day in 1165 attempted to escape by making his way
southward through the coastal islands to Oni-ga-shima (Devil's Island),
traditionally said to be Okinawa. In this account he is said to have been
given aid by his father-in-law, Ata, in Kyushu. A third version of the legend
says that he was sailing one day between two of the Izu islands when
overtaken by a violent storm. He was blown far out to sea, drifting at last in
the storm's wake to Okinawa.
There he and his men were welcomed by a local chieftain, the Lord of
Osato, with whose daughter he contracted a marriage. Shunten was born of
the union. This was a temporary arrangement; he was eager to get back to
the wars in Japan, and after one vain attempt to take his Okinawan wife and
child with him, he and his men left Okinawa. They made their way back to
the island of Oshima in Sagami Bay and there were destroyed by a military
force commanded by the Vice-Governor of Izu. This legend says that when
he found himself trapped at last, Tametomo committed suicide with a
ceremonial flourish, setting the precedent in Japanese history for seppuku
(hara-kiri).
Meanwhile, the abandoned wife and infant son settled at the village of
Urasoe, 011 the leeward side of Shuri Hill and just inland from the harbor
where farewells had been said. For this reason the shallow inlet has been
known until today as Machi-minato (Waiting Harbor).
What reality may underlie this romantic story?
Japan was in a state of political turmoil. The struggle between the
Taira and the Minamoto marked in fact the breakup of an old administrative
order which had been established in the 7th century. The conflict at the
court, hitherto the center of all administrative authority, deeply affected the
border regions. Authority itself was shifting to quasi-independent provincial
centers. Tametomo's nephew Minamoto Yoritomo at last destroyed the Taira
organization in 1186, and removed the center of military government
administration from Kyoto to Kamakura, in eastern Japan. The defeated
Taira fled into remote mountain retreats or to distant offshore islands to
escape ruthless Minamoto vengeance. There is some reason to believe that
many Taira adherents fled southward from Kyushu into the Ryukyu Islands.
Traditions of such a movement remain strong today.
A shrine dedicated to Taira Kiyomori's second son still stands near
Naze on Oshima. Graves on Ishigaki Island (Yaeyama) and on Yona-guni
are known locally as Yamato-haka or Yashima-haka, which links them by
tradition to Sanuki Province in Shikoku, the site of a battle lost by the Taira
there in 1184. The villagers on Yonaguni who live nearby have always
claimed descent from Taira refugees and have kept themselves somewhat
aloof from other natives on the island.
It is a reasonable guess—but only a guess—that at some time in the
12th century roving Japanese fighting men and their retainers came into
association with petty chieftains on Okinawa and that one of these
chieftains, strengthened by the relationship, emerged as a paramount leader
in central Okinawa. The Japanese may well have been exiled Taira men, but
when the time came centuries later to prepare a history and adorn the
legends (that is to say, in the early 17th century) the de facto rulers of Japan,
the Tokugawa shoguns, were of Minamoto stock. What better man to serve
as a link between Okinawa and Japan than the legendary Minamoto
Tametomo?
 TRADITIONS OF SHUNTEN AND OTHER
EARLY "KINGS" ON OKINAWA

Tametomo's son displayed precocious talents, not unexpected in a

scion of the Minamoto, who in turn claimed descent from the Japanese
imperial house. As a promising lad he won the respect and admiration of the
local people within the territory of his maternal grandfather. When he was
only fifteen years old he was chosen to succeed as Lord of Urasoe by
popular will.
This was a time of great confusion on Okinawa; the local lords and
petty chieftains (known as anji) were in revolt against the twenty-fourth
overlord of the Tensón dynasty. His dissolute behavior brought about his
downfall. At last he was assassinated by one of his own retainers, named
Riyu, who sought to establish himself as paramount chief. Riyu in turn was
destroyed by a popular revolt led by Shunten, the young Lord of Urasoe,
who was then twenty-two years old. Shunten was immediately recognized
as overlord among the anji and ruled thereafter for fifty-one years.
Under Shunten's guidance the people of Okinawa made great progress
in developing the political, economic, and social life of the island. Upon his
death in 1237 his son Shumba-Junki became king and ruled for eleven
years. He too guided his people well. A castle was built on the heights of
Shuri, back of Urasoe, one of the most magnificent castle sites to be found
anywhere in the world, for it commands the countryside below for miles
around and looks toward distant sea horizons on every side. It is related that
the art of writing was introduced to Okinawa at this time, when the forty-
seven Japanese phonetic kana symbols were adopted under Shumba-Junki's
patronage. New styles in clothing and headdress were introduced, and
annual observances of the New Year were altered significantly.
Shumba-Junki's death brought his eldest son, Gihon, to the throne in
1248, at the age of forty-four. It was a time of disaster; many typhoons
swept over the islands; and a drought caused the crops to fail. Then came
famine, followed by a year of epidemic sickness when more than half the
population succumbed.
Gihon accepted responsibility for conditions within the country, as a
king's duty. He therefore called to his side a young lord named Eiso and
appointed him Regent (Sessai). Six years later Gihon abdicated and
"withdrew into the forest alone." The time and place of his death are
unknown, although tradition says that he vanished somewhere in the hills at
the most remote northern tip of the island, Heda-misaki.
Eiso thus governed as regent from 1235 to 1260 and as king from
1260 until his death in 1299. It is related that this was a half-century of
great importance in foreign relations as well as in local development.
Okinawa recovered from the years of famine and epidemic; economic
order was restored; the land was divided anew; and a regular taxation
system was introduced. Systematic levies upon rice fields and upon
household production took the place of earlier haphazard levies, which had
been made whenever occasion demanded. Controls were extended from
Okinawa to other islands, and in 1264, soon after regular taxation was
instituted on Okinawa, the off-lying islands of Kume, Kerama, and Iheya
began to send in tribute. In 1266, officials were sent northward into Amami
Oshima, halfway between Okinawa and the Japanese island of Kyushu. To
accommodate this expanded administrative work a government office was
established in Tomari, at the head of an inlet lying immediately below Shuri
Castle.
In 1272, King Eiso received a message from the court of the great
Mongol overlord, Kublai Khan, who was then preparing to invade Japan by
way of Korea. Okinawa was ordered to submit to Mongol authority and to
make a contribution toward the proposed expedition. The demand was
rejected. Four years later envoys came again from the Mongol court with
new demands, and these were again rejected. This time the envoys from
China made a show of force, but were driven off, taking some 130
Okinawan captives with them.
Eiso died in his seventy-first year. His son Taisei and his grandson Eiji
ruled in succession after him. These were uneventful reigns, but when
Eiso's great-grandson Tamagusuku came to the throne in 1314, at the age of
nineteen, there began a new time of trouble for Okinawa, and a new era.
The story of Tametomo's amorous adventures in the Southern Islands
is frankly romantic and heroic and needs no basis in fact for its appeal to the
imagination of latter-day Okinawans. The story of Shunten, on the other
hand, has more substance. Shunten may well have been the offspring of a
Japanese adventurer and the daughter of an anji of some eminence. It was
entirely in keeping with custom that some such arrangement would be made
for a temporary marriage. The biographical touches suggest a composite
picture of the culture hero, based in the first instance on an exceptional
leader who made substantial progress in asserting authority over adjacent
petty chieftains. It is misleading to attribute full-fledged "kingship" to an
Okinawan chief in these early centuries, for it was only by degrees that
leadership was institutionalized. That is to say, distinctly individual
leadership exercised through force of personality or preeminent skill in
arms or political shrewdness was only slowly replaced by formal
institutions of government—laws and ceremonies—supported and
strengthened by a developing respect for the royal office, regardless of the
character or quality of the person holding it.
So it is that tradition assigns to the 13 th century an extraordinary
number of innovations and developments in the social and political life of
the Okinawans. The knowledge and use of writing became known, and it is
noteworthy that this was not the use of the complicated Chinese-Japanese
characters used at the Japanese court in Kyoto, nor the pure Chinese
introduced at a much later date from China. It was the simple phonetic
syllabary which had been developed in Japan centuries earlier. It was to
become and remain the language form in which the Okinawan court
prepared its official documents for use within the island kingdom, and it
remained the language of poetic expression among the educated gentry.
Shunten's story involves an interesting point concerning the succession
of kings and matters of political virtue. The mandate of Heaven was
withdrawn from the last king of the Tensón dynasty; he was wicked and
doomed to fall; but tradition does not fasten the crime of regicide upon the
heroic Shunten. A wicked and disloyal retainer (Riyu) killed the king and
was in turn destroyed by the admirable son of Tametomo.
Meanwhile, what is the meaning of Gihon's strange fate? We are told
simply that it was a time of great hardship and that Shunten's heir gave way
voluntarily to a regent who claimed descent from the ancient Tensón
dynasty and from the gods. Gihon "accepted responsibility," which was in
good form according to the Chinese doctrines of royal responsibility for the
public welfare. It is possible that Shunten and his adherents were not able to
maintain themselves in the face of great disasters and that discontent made
it necessary to share authority with a representative chosen from the family
of the old paramount chieftains, or that a rival from among the descendants
of the Tensón chieftains may have forced Gihon to relinquish power.
Okinawan traditions which preserve memories of great natural
disasters—storm, flood, and famine—and attribute them to the 13 th
century, coincide with the records of a series of calamities suffered by Japan
about that time, when earthquakes toppled cities, and typhoons and floods
swept the countryside. Crop failures were followed by famines, and famine
brought epidemic disease. Across the world medieval Europe likewise
suffered great climatic disturbances and exceptional human hardship in the
years which embrace reign-periods attributed to Gihon and Eiso.
If for our purpose we accept the stories of Gihon and Eiso as well
founded, we may surmise that until Eiso's time the Okinawans were not
prepared to cope with the demands of a famine year. Tradition says that
more than half the people died of hunger and disease. Stirred by this,
Gihon's successors reorganized and regularized land distribution and the
collection of taxes in kind (weapons, grain, and cloth). This meant reserves,
and reserves meant strength. We have today a very clear idea of the
warehouse system which may have been used in Eiso's day. In Okinawan
villages untouched by World War II—that is to say, principally in the off-
lying islands—there are thatched community storehouses of an ancient type.
They are usually associated with village shrines or community common
land. In all respects they could have served as models for the line drawings
which we find on bronze bells (dotaku) unearthed in prehistoric sites in
Japan; they are virtually indistinguishable (to the layman's eye) from the
"thatched and elevated structures of the primitive Yami tribesmen who
dwell on an island three hundred miles south of Okinawa, or from the
storehouses built in aboriginal Tayal villages of Formosa.
These repositories of grain and of arms enabled the government (under
Eiso?) to organize and support levies of men needed in the development of
public works—such as construction of the Urasoe Castle near Shuri. It is
interesting to note that the extension of Okinawan authority to Amami
Oshima at the north and to other nearer islands (Kume, Iheya, and Kerama)
is said to have taken place during or shortly after the institution of regular
taxation on Okinawa Island itself. This suggests that the government at
Urasoe was gaining strength.
The tradition that Eiso was called upon to contribute aid to Kublai
Khan at Cambulac (near present-day Peking) is worthy of special note, for
it is the first demonstration that a major military contest for possession of
the Korean Peninsula nearby brings Okinawa inevitably into temporary
prominence. The Great Khan ruled the most powerful empire in the world
of that day, a vast area nearly coextensive with the combined Soviet
Russian and Chinese Communist empires of the 20th century. Mongol
rulers controlled the vast Eurasian continent, from the tip of southern Korea
to the borders of Hungary and Poland in Europe, and from the frigid
Siberian tundra on the north to the hot jungles of Burma on the south.
Mongol rule penetrated the Middle East, covering Persia and the Arabian
shores of the Persian Gulf. No continental empire like it had ever risen
before, and none has been known since.
 The Mongols were preparing to invade Japan by way of the Korean
corridor-peninsula, but in 1274 and again in 1281 they were driven from the
shores of Kyushu.
Nothing more is said in traditional history concerning relations
between Ryukyu and the continent in the 13 th entury. Chinese sources must
be used with caution because the Chinese referred to all the islands between
Japan and the Philippines as Liu-ch'iu, and only later in history make
distinction between the Okinawan group of islands ("Great Liu-ch'iu") and
Taiwan or Formosa ("Small Liu-ch'iu"), where the name lingers today for
an islet just south of the Formosan port of Kaohsiung.
It helps us to set these stories of 13th-century Okinawa in perspective
if we recall that during Shunten's long life Marco Polo and his uncles were
at the court of Kublai Khan, picking up those persistent tales of gold and
silver islands and of happy people who had discovered the elixir of
immortality somewhere far out in the Eastern Seas. These talcs Polo retold
in later years in Italy, at Genoa and Venice. We shall hear more of the
legend as our later story of Okinawa and the Western world unfolds.
To the late 13th century and to Eiso's reign tradition ascribes the
introduction of Buddhism into Okinawa. A Japanese priest named Zenkan
is said to have been shipwrecked and washed ashore sometime between
1265 and 1274. He was given permission to construct a small place of
worship, and under the king's patronage a temple was built at Urasoe,
named the Gokuraku-ji.
 This story is wholly in keeping with the spirit of the times in Japan;
there was a far-reaching missionary activity generated by the growth of
evangelical sects throughout the islands. Old temples were rebuilt at Nara
and Kyoto, which had suffered heavily in the civil wars. Immense temple
organizations sprang up at Kamakura, the seaside town in eastern Japan
which Minamoto Yoritomo made the seat of military administration or
"camp government." Kamakura was the eastern terminus for shipping
between Japan and China, and monks and missionary-priests as well as
merchants embarked there for the long and hazardous journey into the
Yellow Seas west of Okinawa. It is said that archeological reconnaissance at
Urasoe in recent years has revealed fragments of tile and other artifacts
which appear to be of Kamakura origin. It is not difficult to believe that a
priest, shipwrecked somewhere on Okinawa in those early days, could make
his way to the seat of government on the island, and that his missionary
efforts to win a hearing would gain support.
Buddhism served thereafter as an important agency for the
introduction of arts, crafts, and ceremonial, and to some degree for the
promotion of Japanese language and learning.
 THE SHIMAZU FAMILY IN KYUSHU:
"LORDS OF THE TWELVE SOUTHERN
ISLANDS"

We must now go back a few years to trace the rise of the Shimazu princes in
southern Kyushu, the foundation of their claim to be rightful lords of the
Ryukyu Islands, and the justification in recent years (the 1870's) of Japan's
continuing claims to sovereignty.
We have referred to the origin of the vast Shimazu estates in Kyushu
aboutA.D. 1030, sometimes declared immune to taxes, or subject only to
limited control by agents of the central government and court. We shall not
attempt to trace the agreements, feuds, and transfers of title, or the
subdivisions of some estates and the additions of others during and
following the period of civil wars. Suffice it to note that when Tametomo's
nephew Yoritomo overthrew the Taira and made himself virtual master of
Japan, he assumed in succession the offices and titles Superintendent of the
Sixty-six Provinces (1190) and "Barbarian-Sub-duing Generalissimo" or
Sci-i Tai-Shogun (in 1192). It was within his power to grant titles or to
recommend that titles and honors be granted by the imperial court to his
own family, retainers, and favorites.
According to accounts which are widely accepted but sometimes
challenged, one of his many illegitimate sons, named Tadahisa, was adopted
into the Koremune family, and in time received appointment as High
Constable (Shugo) of Satsuma, in southern Kyushu. Proceeding to his
territories in 1196, Tadahisa soon enlarged them by bringing Osumi district
and part of Hyuga under his control. He built a castle in Satsuma and
adopted its place name as the name for his domain. His formal
appointments and titles, which were many, included references to him as
Lord of the Southern Islands, though there is nothing in the records to
indicate that he attempted to govern any territories south of the main island
of Kyushu and a few islands scattered nearby in offshore waters. These
included Tane-ga-shima.
 It has been customary throughout Japanese history to hand down such
titles and honors from generation to generation within a great family, unless
specifically canceled or forbidden by the emperor's court or the shogun.
Often the title continued to be used long after the office for which it was
created had lost its meaning or substance.
In this instance, the title Lord of the Southern Islands when first
bestowed (not later than 1187 for Tadahisa) may have been only a reference
to the small islands known vaguely to exist southeast of Kyushu. No
specific delimitation of territorial authority may have been intended. The
title is sometimes given as Lord of the Twelve Southern Islands, and
sometimes the "Twelve" is omitted.
But as the title was renewed again and again with each succeeding
generation (in 1227 for Shimazu Tadatoki, for Shimazu Hisatsune in 1263,
for Shimazu Sadahisa in 1325, and so on), the conquest of Ryukyu in 1609
nicant that the title and traditional claims of the Shimazu family came
ultimately to cover all of the Ryukyu Islands as far south as Miyako,
Yaeyama, and Yonaguni, which is within sight of Formosa. In other words,
the facts were made to match the title some four hundred years after the title
first came into use.
We cannot accept without further proof all the names and dates and
details which tradition ascribes to the 13th-century events on Okinawa, but
neither can we dismiss them as groundless fictions. We can assume that the
period did indeed mark the transition of the islands from a state of
prehistoric social organization and primitive political arrangements to a new
mode of living in which social, political, and economic institutions were
centered at Urasoe, near central Okinawa. The Okinawans in their scattered
settlements were responding to mounting pressure from Japan.
Stories of the Shunten and Eiso dynasties cover eight reigns (a span of
160 years) and reflect the increasing penetration of Japanese influence
among the Southern Islands. It may be assumed that under this influence the
petty chieftains or "kings" in the archipelago were brought together under a
paramount chieftain who based his government near present-day Naha and
Shuri. Hardships of famine, storm, and epidemic sickness were mitigated as
this emerging central administration learned to improve economic
organization and administration to meet recurrent crises. This in turn
strengthened the Okinawans at Urasoe and made it possible for them to
extend their more organized controls and influence to the less-developed
outer islands.
We may assume too that with the increase in local revenues made
possible by Eiso's economic reorganization, the petty chicftains (anji)
enjoyed a rising living standard. For the ruling family and its adherents this
may have meant a comparative degree of luxury. Traditional history says
that upon the death of Eiji in 1314, his young son Tama-gusuku became
paramount chief, but that he was dissolute, unfit to rule, and unable to
maintain intact the heritage of his ancestors. It is to a consideration of his
reign, the breakup of the small kingdom, and the development of foreign
intercourse that we must now turn.
 CHAPTER TWO
A CENTURY OF CONFLICT
1314-1398

THREE RIVAL CHIEFTAINS BID FOR

CHINESE RECOGNITION

Tamagusuku was only nineteen years of age in 1314 when he

succeeded his father as paramount chief or king among the territorial lords
on Okinawa. The administration fell into confusion; he could not command
the loyalty and respect of his principal officers. Disputes at Urasoe soon led
to open rebellion.
The Lord of Ozato left Urasoe and retired to his own castle on a high
bluff about ten miles south of Urasoe and a little to the southeast of the
present-day fishing port of Itoman. His retainers and associates controlled
all of southern Okinawa. Each had his own stronghold on a rocky hilltop,
from which the surrounding farms and woodland could be controlled.
Today the broken walls of these enclosures may be traced at many sites, a
number of them scattered over the rolling countryside which became the
last battleground of World War II. Ozato Castle was the largest of these.
Little is left of it; a modern primary school stands within the stone walls of
the inner court. Nothing remains of the ancient residential buildings, and the
wellsprings which supplied it are choked and overgrown. Tradition says that
a deep inlet from the sea at one time reached to the base of the bluff and the
walls, bringing to the very gates of the castle trading ships and fishing craft.
The food-producing farm villages lay to the south and east.
Here the Lord of Ozato now declared himself to be King of Nanzan.
Despite its territorial limitations and the poverty of its resources, his
principality was destined to endure for a century, sustained by the ambitions
of seafaring merchants, the boldness and persistence of its chieftains, and
the fortunate location of the castle.
Meanwhile, far to the north of Urasoe, in the mountainous isolation of
Motobu Peninsula, the Lord of Nakijin Castle likewise declared himself
independent of Tamagusuku. His territories and the territories of the less
important anji who were associated with him comprised a district far
greater in extent than either the lands left to Tamagusuku or the territory
controlled by the self-styled King of Nanzan. This northern principality was
now called Hokuzan (Northern Mountain), a poor country, embracing many
square miles of wild mountainous terrain, with few isolated valley areas and
marginal fields between the steep hills and the sea. The farming and fishing
settlements of Hokuzan were the most primitive on Okinawa. Land poverty
and sparse settlement offset the advantages of extended territory. Even
today the people of central Okinawa, who consider themselves more
sophisticated, apply the term jambara to the people of northern Okinawa, a
name which has some of the belittling connotation of the term "hillbilly" in
American slang. They continue to be marked off by strong local dialect
variations and by a significant number of curious everyday customs, habits,
and traditions, enough to suggest the possibility of a strong differentiation
in prehistoric times—perhaps even a different geographic and racial origin
for the settlers who spread among these northern valleys and seaside coves.
At Nakijin itself a strong castle was erected on an isolated mountain
outcropping. Back of it the land falls away steeply for a short distance, then
rises toward the central mountain mass of Motobu. On the cast there is a
precipitous drop into a stream-filled gorge. On the north and northwest the
land slopes only a little less steeply toward the shore and a harbor inlet
which at one time reached to the mountain foot. Unten Harbor lies
approximately five and one-half miles to the east. Enough remains of the
old castle-keep and its encircling defensive walls to give evidence of a
relatively high degree of engineering in that age. The lord's residence
occupied the innermost and highest enclosure. Here was a small, clear
spring and a park or garden area. Service buildings and residences for
important vassals were at a lower level, but within the principal walls. The
remains of three shrines (uganju) stand at the crest of this eminence,
overlooking the port-inlet below and the channel between Motobu and the
Iheya-Izena islands. Much of the stonework is solid and massive, but it
everywhere shows roughness and lack of fine cutting and precision fitting
characteristic of castle walls and residential building in central and southern
Okinawa of the same period.1
Thus three small rival principalities came into being on Okinawa. The
territory left to Tamagusuku became known as Chuzan (Central Mountain),
which enjoyed the advantages of the most developed castle towns and
harbor facilities and a measure of prestige derived from its history as the
established source of authority. The lords of Chuzan, Hokuzan, and Nanzan
were in fact not "kings" at all, but petty barons, each with his own retainers
owing him direct service, and his own estates. Each had the allegiance of
anji or lesser chieftains whose lands lay nearby. The anji in turn were
masters of farming and fishing villages and of a body of retainers who bore
arms and owed indirect service to the lords who lived in the castles at
Urasoe. Nakijin, and Ozato. The lesser anji had castles of their own, but
these for the most part were stockaded, thatch-roofed dwellings built on
defensive hilltop positions from which the nearby agricultural villages
could be controlled. We do not now know what feuds and alliances over the
centuries had brought into being this division of Okinawa into three units.
The defection of the lords of Hokuzan and Nanzan meant a serious
loss of revenue for Tamagusuku's government. Local lords in the outer
islands were quick to take advantage of Chuzan's weakened authority and
ceased sending tribute to Urasoe.
Tamagusuku died in the third month of 1336, leaving a child often
years to succeed him. Then followed difficulties which have been
experienced in many courts in many parts of the world; the young king's
mother meddled in government affairs, abused her privileges and position
of authority, and further alienated popular support for her son.

SATTO OF CHUZAN: OKINAWA AND THE

CHINESE TRIBUTE SYSTEM
About this time a man named Satto rose to the governorship of Urasoe
district, in which the Chuzan court was situated. The king's authority
extended very little beyond Urasoe, to embrace only Shuri, Naha, and
adjacent villages. When the young king died, in 1349, Satto made himself
master of Chuzan. Tradition says that he enjoyed widespread popular
support. This may or may not be true; we can assume that he was a vigorous
and farsighted man with a talent for effective leadership, for by the time of
his death nearly a half-century later, he had brought about fundamental
changes in die pattern of Okinawan life.
We now move into consideration of a period of rapid development in
the economic and cultural institutions of Ryukyu, for it was in Satto's reign
that Chuzan assumed a tributary relationship with China that was to endure
for more than five hundred years. Okinawa itself continued to be divided
into three small principalities, each competing with the others for
recognition by China. The development of formal relations with Korea,
China, and Japan, the introduction of Chinese administrative forms
modified to meet Ryukyuan needs, and the expansion of trade as far south
as the East Indies (Java, Sumatra, and Malacca) are perhaps the three most
significant features of the era.
Conditions of formal subordination to China developed which were to
become a basic cause of Sino-Japanese disputes in the 19th century, and to
give rise to both Chinese Nationalist and Chinese Communist claims to
Okinawa in the years following World War II. To understand them we must
glance once again at circumstances in nearby Japan, Korea, and China
insofar as they influenced the history of Okinawa.
 Records of the 14th and 15th centuries suggest evidence of more
favorable climatic conditions for development of seaborne trade and
exploration. Within Central Asia the organization of the Mongol empire
broke up, while under the Ming dynasty, which succeeded it (1368-1644),
China's trade dwindled on the long caravan routes though Inner Asia.
Transport by sea largely took its place in foreign commerce and was based
principally upon the ports of Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. In these
years the Japanese and Koreans, sharing the benefits of a milder climate and
calmer seas, began to develop far-ranging maritime trade.
A shift in the distribution of power in Japan had important indirect
consequence for Ryukyu. Ashikaga Takauji (a Minamoto scion) moved the
seat of military government from Kamakura to the Muro-machi Ward of
Kyoto in the year 1336. The imperial house was divided: for years
thereafter two emperors and two imperial courts existed in bitter rivalry in
Japan, each supported by a coalition of quarreling feudal barons. Although
the Ashikaga shoguns long maintained the fiction of shogunal supremacy at
Kyoto, their scattered family estates were steadily diminished. Other great
barons felt strong enough to take advantage of the weakened central
administration and often defied it with impunity.
We are interested in two effects of this process. The Ashikaga shoguns
maintained a show of authority by giving or withholding territorial titles
among the barons long after Kyoto lost its power to enter at will upon the
territories of these vassals. To create new titles was flattering, but to cancel
or withhold an old title provoked hostility and trouble. Thus the Ashikaga
shoguns perpetuated the ancient title Lord of the Twelve Southern Islands
by conferring it upon successive generations of the Shimazu family. In this
way a Shimazu claim to authority in Ryukyu was kept alive, though in fact
it was exercised by neither the Ashikaga shoguns nor the lords of Satsuma
themselves. The second effect of diminishing territorial authority at Kyoto
was to make it impossible for the shoguns to control the activities of
Japanese pirates who worked out of local ports in southern and western
Japan. Loss of internal revenues which could not be collected from the land
by force caused the shogunate to pay more attention to promotion of
overseas trade with China.
Turning to 14th-century Korea for a moment, we discover that the
peninsula was harassed by Japanese pirates from the south and east, and by
raiding continental enemies from north of the Yalu River. An invasion in
1361 marked the beginning of the end for the old Koryo dynasty, and in
1382 Yi T'ac-jo established a new government.
Every nation adjacent to China was deeply disturbed by the collapse of
Mongol authority at Peking and the breakup of the vast Mongol empire.
Asia was in turmoil. Political refugees, ambitious generals, and dissatisfied
princes sought to assert themselves. The established patterns of trade were
disrupted, old commercial centers lost importance, and new ones appeared.
It was a time of general confusion in Mongolia and Manchuria, Korea and
Japan, Annam, Cambodia, and Siam—all the bordering states which had
been for a time in the shadow of Mongol power. When the Chinese could
tolerate Mongol rule no longer, country-wide rebellions led at last to the
overthrow of the Great Khan at Peking.
For a score of years China was torn by civil wars. At last a new central
government was established under Hung Wu Ti, first emperor of the Ming
dynasty. He had been born a peasant and had become in turn a Buddhist
monk, a beggar, and a bandit leader. His organized followers took city after
city until, in 1356, he took Nanking. In 1368 he declared himself Emperor
of China and began an administration which lasted thirty years. Order was
restored throughout the country. Internal administrative reorganization
made it possible for the central government to draw on the total resources of
the Chinese nation. All bordering "barbarian states" were called upon to
submit to imperial Chinese authority. Much of Manchuria came under Ming
control; Korea acknowledged Chinese overlords; Nepal and Burma sent
tribute missions to Nanking; Chinese armies and envoys penetrated far into
Central Asia.
Hung Wu Ti sent envoys overseas to Okinawa in 1372. Satto was
called upon to acknowledge Chinese supremacy and to send representatives
from Chuzan to Nanking. It is not difficult to imagine what an impressive
show the Chinese mission made. The economic life of the tiny principality
on central Okinawa depended upon uninterrupted seaborne commerce.
Formal submission meant official license to trade with the largest and most
powerful nation in the Far East. Satto seized the opportunity. In 1374 the
king sent his younger brother Taiki over to Nanking with suitable attendants
and a gift of local Okinawan products, a token of readiness to accept
Chinese suzerainty in return for the opportunities to trade. Hung Wu Ti
acknowledged the gesture by conferring elaborate gifts upon the Okinawan
visitors. All their expenses were defrayed by the imperial government as
long as they were within the boundaries of the country. Upon his return to
Chuzan, Taiki was accompanied by a high-ranking imperial court official,
who carried gifts of books, textiles, ceramics, and ironware from his
imperial master to the Okinawan king. It was his duty to deliver to Satto a
seal, the symbol of investiture, and documents which in lofty and
condescending terms confirmed the Okinawan king in offices which, in
point of fact, he had assumed quite without Chinese help in 1349. Members
of the Chinese envoy's suite were permitted to carry goods to be disposed of
in private trade on Okinawa.
In this way the year 1372 became one of the most important in
Okinawa's history, for it marked the beginning of a formal relationship
between the court of China and the Ryukyu Islands which was political,
cultural, and economic in character and was destined to be maintained
without interruption for five hundred years.
Within the next two decades at least nine official missions crossed to
the Chinese capital from the Chuzan principality. Prince Taiki led three of
them. The tribute goods delivered to China included Okinawan textiles,
sulphur (from Tori-jima), and horses, which the Chinese appear to have
valued highly. Each mission upon its homeward journey carried costly gifts,
but we may assume that reports upon life at the Chinese court and news of
Chinese activities throughout Asia were of far greater importance. The
process of change which now began to take place among the Okinawans
may be compared with the changes which had transformed Japanese court
life eight centuries earlier, following the first official missions to China, and
were to occur again in the 19th century.
In political terms the Chuzan kingdom on Okinawa took its place in
Chinese records on equal basis with many other "barbarian countries"
willing to send missions to the Ming court on Chinese terms. With Ryukyu,
Korea, Annam, Champa (Vietnam), Cambodia, Siam, and Tibet, China's
tribute relations remained formal and constant until the 19th century, but the
number of tributary states recorded in Chinese annals changed according to
political and economic conditions in the subject countries, or along the
routes leading from them into China.
Thus, within the century following Satto's first mission we learn that
more than fifty tributary states sent missions to the Chinese court over the
southern sea-routes alone. Java, Malacca, Ceylon, and Burma continued
with some regularity to comply with Chinese formality as "tribute states,"
but embassies from Persia, the Coromandel Coast of India, and other distant
points were most irregular.
China's traditional claim to the Ryukyu Islands, revived briefly during
and after World War II, was no greater and no less than her traditional
claims to suzerainty in Korea, Annam, Burma, Cambodia, or Siam, and
grew out of a Chinese world-view which admitted no other nation or people
to be China's equal. The elaborate tribute system was the formalized
expression of this view.
This tribute system must be understood if we are to comprehend the
peculiar position into which the Ryukyu Islands now moved. Here lies the
key to Okinawa's external relations after 1372. An excellent review of
China's traditional attitude toward tributary states—including of course the
Ryukyu kingdom—is found in an essay entitled "On the Ch'ing Tributary
System" by S.Y. Teng and J.K. Fairbank, published in 1941 in the Harvard
Journal for Asiatic Studies. Let us summarize some of the important points
which affected the Ryukyu Islands after 1372 and baffled Western
diplomats throughout the 19th century.2
The Chinese had developed a unique and extraordinary culture in the
valley of the Yellow River at least thirty centuries before the Ming emperor
Hung Wu condescended to recognize the existence of King Satto and his
island principality. For centuries China's great state organization and
complex ceremonial, her theories of government, her literature and her arts,
crafts, and architecture flourished in isolation, ringed about by barbarians.
Roving nomads of the steppe country were on the north and west, and the
peoples to the south and east (including the coastal provinces of southern
China until fairly late in history) lived in primitive simplicity. The Chinese
saw gradual change take place among the barbarians as Chinese trade and
Chinese armies and colonial settlers penetrated the border regions. This
process continued through many centuries. In time the Chinese became
aware of the existence of other great cultural centers—Rome, Persia, India
—which lay far beyond the encircling barbarian peoples, but the basic
attitude of superiority toward all non-Chinese people remained fixed. It was
firmly held that all non-Chinese had much to learn from China; China had
little or nothing to learn from them.
The Ming (and Ch'ing) dynastic records list Ryukyu among the
"unconquered barbarian countries" whose embassies to China were
managed by die Reception Department of the Board of Ceremonies rather
than by the Department of Colonial Affairs. At one time or another this list
included Korea, Japan, Small Ryukyu (i.e., Formosa), Annam, Cambodia,
Siam, Champa (Vietnam), Samudra, the Western Ocean people (Hsi-
yang),Java, Pahang, Paihua, Palembang, and Brunei (in Borneo). In point of
time Ryukyu was first to establish nominal tributary relations, in 1372, with
Korea, Annam, and Champa recorded in the next year. Of all these only
Ryukyu and Korea remained constant in the relationship throughout
succeeding centuries.*
 Although the Chinese emperors could recognize no equals, they were
prepared to recognize that even among barbarians there were kings and
princes. To them the emperor condescended to grant recognition, usually
patents of authority in the form of an engraved seal bestowed upon the
barbarian king at his first submission. This seal was to be handed down
from generation to generation. The king's heirs were expected to notify the
Chinese court of change in the succession and to ask for confirmation and
investiture.
Tributary princes and kings were notified of changes in the imperial
succession as well, so that envoys might bear expressions of sorrow upon
the death of the Chinese ruler and congratulations and good wishes to the
new emperor. Official envoys were exchanged upon the birth of an heir or
the assumption of office by a crown prince or heir apparent.
It was expected that such official courtesies should also be an occasion
for the exchange of gifts, selected with scrupulous regard for the importance
of the event and the status of the principals. The Chinese Board of
Ceremonies stipulated that gifts which were tokens of submission must be
products of the tributary state. In Okinawa's case, as we shall see, an
exception was made; since it had no important resources of its own, it was
allowed to present rare goods from other lands as well.
Exacting rules governed the size and conduct of official missions.
China met the expenses of each mission while it was within Chinese
territory. Conversely, the tributary state was expected to defray expenses for
Chinese missions sent to them in return. This meant that the value of
China's gifts to Chuzan's envoys and the Chuzan court, and the profits from
trade conducted by the envoys in their private capacity and by their
companions, had to offset the cost of entertaining Chinese missions to
Okinawa.
Each mission was led by a chief envoy. A vice-chief accompanied him
to sustain the venture if death or serious accident befell the principal
ambassador. These men were met at the point of entry into China by special
officers sent from the capital to conduct them to the imperial presence.
Regulations rigidly specified the number of persons who could be sent from
each tributary state and how many of these could advance beyond the point
of entry to the imperial capital itself.
For many years it was stipulated that the Ryukyu kingdom could send
no more than three hundred persons to the border station (a port on the
Fukien coast) and that of this company no more than twenty persons should
proceed to the court. They went overland and by canal, escorted by a large
suite of Chinese officials. The route was strictly prescribed and could not be
altered.
All this provided a masterly display of imperial power and authority,
well calculated to impress barbarian envoys. It is not difficult to imagine the
sense of awe with which Satto's envoys first entered the enormous city
gates of Nanking, penetrating massive walls which extended for twenty
miles or more around glittering new Ming palaces and temples, extensive
gardens, and a great complex of streets and avenues. The population of
Nanking alone probably exceeded that of the entire Chuzan kingdom in that
day. Once within the city, the Okinawan envoys were lodged in a special
residence set aside for the entertainment of foreign ambassadors. Before
participating in any of the official ceremonies and entertainments—even at
the port of entry—the "barbarians" were coached in the minute details of
Chinese court etiquette. Of all ceremonies the most important in Chinese
eyes was the complicated ritual of the kowtow (k'o-t'ou) required of
representatives of tributary rulers and of court ministers of the highest rank.
This was prostration of the body nine times in succession and bowing thrice
in the direction of the emperor's presence. It was established that this ritual
must be performed with minute exactitude at the port of entry upon arrival
and departure from the country, and again at the capital. The formula for
entertainment required the presentation of gifts (local products of Ryukyu)
at the Imperial Audience Hall, at the palace of the empress, and at the
residence of the heir apparent. These lofty persons then caused banquets to
be given in honor of the Okinawans at the tributary mission residence.
All these immensely complex tributary ceremonies were carefully
rehearsed under watchful eyes, and it is recorded that the Okinawan envoys
proved so accomplished that the exacting and haughty Chinese officials
took special note of it in the court annals.
Not so with the Japanese. For purposes of comparison we may note
that the Japanese in that day and in later years took a quite different attitude;
they could not bring themselves willingly to make even this formal display
of submission to the Chinese emperor and to the haughty Chinese court. In
1368 Wu Ti had sent envoys to call upon the Japanese court to submit and
pay tribute, but the Chinese embassy was blocked at Hakata, in northern
Kyushu, near the point at which the Mongol invaders had been repelled less
than a century earlier. Memories of that continental attempt to subjugate
Japan were vivid and fresh. Local barons unfriendly to the Ashikaga
shoguns (Japan's nominal military rulers) barred the way and held the
Chinese visitors for four years.
 When at last their credentials were presented to the Shogun Yoshi-
mitsu, he found them couched in the most condescending terms. Thirty
years were allowed to elapse before the Japanese sent a reply to the Chinese
message, and this was done even then more in the hope of establishing a
profitable luxury trade than in any desire to submit to China. At last a
merchant and a priest were ordered to proceed to the Chinese court. They
were received, entertained, and then sent back to Kyoto carrying rich
presents and a letter for their master, Yosliimitsu, addressed to him as King
of Japan. The shogun was willing to accept it, prompted in part by his
excessive personal admiration for things Chinese and in part because of his
desire and great need for trade. The incident caused intense displeasure
among his courtiers and among the Japanese barons. Yoshimitsu's
successor, Ashikaga Yoshimochi, broke off all formal relations with the
Chinese court, though trade continued intermittently. The diary of a
Buddhist priest traveling in China soon thereafter records a serious clash
which occurred when certain Japanese refused to be tutored in elaborate
ceremonial and demanded instead that the Chinese officials get on directly
with the business of trading, for which they had come.
This was rare defiance. The Chinese for the most part succeeded in
maintaining observance of their rigid protocol; anyone who wished to trade
with them on an official basis was expected to make a show of submission.
 When Okinawan envoys withdrew from the Chinese capital they were
accompanied through the countryside by high-ranking officials. At the port
they rejoined the fellow countrymen who had been detained there,
concluded trading affairs, and saw that the cargoes were loaded properly.
After a last ceremonial leave-taking (the elaborate kowtow performed while
facing in the direction of the distant imperial capital), they embarked for the
hazardous homeward voyage.
In time the very life of the small Ryukyu kingdom came to depend
upon successful managment of international commerce and the maintenance
of a neutral trading position which kept Chinese ports open to Okinawan
shipping. The meager resources of the Okinawan countryside could provide
only basic foodstuffs and simple building materials. The wealth required to
support the king's court and administration had to be found in overseas
trading adventures.
The first missions proceeded through Ch'uang-chou, the port of entry,
to Nanking, but from 1402 until 1873 they made the long and arduous
journey to Peking.
If Satto's successors had observed the Ming trading regulations to the
letter of the law, only one mission—three ships—should have been sent
across to China every second year, with certain carefully stipulated
exceptions. Official records show a fairly close adherence to this rule, but
there is evidence of a vastly greater trade carried on in Chinese ports with
the connivance of local officials, whose indulgence could be bought.
Excuses were found, for instance, to send extra ships to greet Chinese
envoys—flattering to the envoys and profitable, to the Okinawans, for each
ship carried goods for private trade. Sometimes extra ships were dispatched
to escort an ambassador upon his return to the Fukien coast.
The recognized official tribute missions carried two kinds of goods
with them, "tributary goods" and "supplementary goods." Tributary articles
were forwarded to the Chinese court in the name of the King of Chuzan.
After suitable presents had been distributed, the goods were offered for sale
at prices stipulated by the Chinese court, usually considerably higher than
prevailing market prices. On these the Okinawan government could realize
a profit, and to this was added the value of the imperial gifts returned to the
King of Chuzan and conferred upon the envoys according to their rank.
While all these stiff ambassadorial formalities were taking place there
was usually a lively trade in progress. "Supplementary goods" included
articles which the envoys and members of their suite were allowed to carry
with them for private sale. Theoretically these too were limited in quantity,
but in fact both kind and quantity seem to have been determined by
Okinawan ability to capitalize the venture and opportunities to arrange
successfully for transport to the imperial capital. Goods carried into the port
of entry to be disposed of to local Chinese buyers formed the genuine base
of the "tributary" system. Upon this foundation was erected the structure of
elaborate ceremonial visits to the emperor's court.
Ming regulations—altered from time to time—authorized the
reception of one trading mission in each two-year period. Each mission was
to consist of not more than three ships and the total number of its members
was not to exceed three hundred persons. When envoys went up to Peking
—two representatives from the king and eighteen servants and assistants—
the large company of sailors, clerks, and traders were expected to linger at
the port of entry under close surveillance. There they passed the days in
idleness, enjoying such diversion as merchant seamen are wont to find in a
port city and its near suburbs. Gradually a permanent Okinawan settlement
grew up at Ch'uang-chou. In the 19th century, Europeans noted the
ceremonial coming and going of Okinawan envoys, the reception and
despatch of tribute missions under the surveillance of the local
superintendent of river police, and the presence of many Okinawan tombs
in the nearby countryside, which bore silent witness to the age and
continuity of this Okinawan community on Chinese soil.
The importance of this settlement cannot be overestimated. Here
plebian Okinawans became thoroughly familiar with the daily town life of a
Chinese city and with the arts and crafts developed in urban Chinese
centers. Returning to Okinawa after a long sojourn abroad, the ordinary
seaman, merchant, or clerk carried with him a sampling of the artifacts, the
manners, customs, and beliefs of China. Nor of China only; the Okinawans
were not alone among the foreigners trading into the ports of Fukien. Arabs,
Indians, Malays, and Siamese entered China for trade and diplomacy at the
port of Ch'uang-chou. This was probably the great city of "Zaiton" in which
Marco Polo had held an official position at one time. By 1400 the Moslem
community at Ch'uang-chou had won the interest and protection of the
imperial court. (The ruins of a great mosque stood there late in the 19th
century, when the Moslem community continued to number in the
thousands.) These were China's "foreign settlements" under the great
dynastic governments, usually tolerated, sometimes patronized and
protected, but always under restraint and surveillance.
Knowledge of China, which Okinawans carried back to Naha and
Shuri, entered at two levels of Okinawan life—affecting the lives of the
gentry and officials at the court who were both literate and influential, and
the lives and daily habits of the common people living in and near Naha and
Shuri. From the waterfront, Chinese influence spread slowly, penetrating in
due course to the most distant villages on the outer islands, meeting,
modifying, and blending with indigenous cultural elements and the
elements of social and political life introduced from Japan.
The benefits of this interchange were enjoyed principally though not
exclusively 011 the Okinawan side. The imperial court took occasion to
gather intelligence of political conditions on China's borders; envoys to
Chuzan prepared detailed reports and published interesting diaries and
travelogues based upon their experiences in the sea islands. The choice of
envoys was carefully made. Since Korea took precedence over Ryukyu at
the Chinese court, envoys to Korea were chosen among men of the third
rank or higher, whereas envoys to Ryukyu (and to Annam) might be of the
fifth rank or below, selected from members of the Board of Ceremonies, the
Imperial Censorate, or the Hanlin Academy. For the purposes of their
journey, however, they enjoyed a temporary "assimilated first rank." That is
to say, the Chinese emperor conferred on each envoy the robes and
equipment appropriate to men of the first rank, but upon his return to
Peking from Ryukyu he turned in his magnificent robes and reverted to his
permanent status.
This then was the tribute system into which Satto took his people in
1372. His rival, the Lord of Nanzan, was not to be outdone by Chu-zan's
success in trade and diplomacy. In 1383 he too sent envoys to China to ask
for recognition. This was granted, with the stipulation that Nanzan should
send only one ship to China in each tribute period. The Lord of Nakijin sent
envoys from Hokuzan as well, and the Chinese, with impartial benevolence
toward all these sea-island barbarians, granted seals, investiture, and the
right to trade.
Throughout the centuries of tributary relations there was an unresolved
conflict of interest; the very proper officials at the Chinese court were never
able to prevent the smuggling, bribery, and customs evasion to which the
Chinese merchants at the ports, the ships' crews, and the servants in the
ambassadorial suites resorted. In 1381 the Chuzan ambassador's interpreter,
intercepted at the capital gates, was found to be smuggling a very large
quantity of spices. The envoy from Nanzan at about this time was
reprimanded for bringing in silver with which he proposed to purchase
porcelains.

OKINAWA IN MARITIME TRADE

THROUGHOUT FAR EASTERN SEAS3

Okinawa's royal archives were burned during World War II. The oldest
documents preserved there were letters exchanged between the King of
Chuzan and the King of Siam, dated 1425, in which the text made clear that
an extensive trade between Okinawa and Southeast Asia had long since
been established. Diplomatic relations followed commercial enterprise.
Official communication with the Korean court is noted for the first
time in 1389, when Okinawan envoys bore presents of rare woods, pepper,
and other desirable goods from Satto to the King of Korea. These were not
products indigenous to Okinawa but came from the East Indies or Indo-
China.
In 1390 the local lords of Miyako and Yaeyama began to send tribute
and envoys to Satto, for by this time these southerly islands in the Ryukyus
had become useful way-stations for the far-ranging merchant ships passing
over to the China coast from Naha, en route to ports in Southeast Asia and
the Indies. Other off-lying islands such as Kume-jima, just west of
Okinawa, resumed the subordinate relationship to Shuri which had been
broken off in Tamagusuku's reign fifty years earlier. To the northeast the
small island of Tane-ga-shima became a transfer and supply point for
Okinawan shipping bound for ports in Japan proper at the head of the
Inland Sea.
In 1393 a Chinese immigrant community of clerks and craftsmen was
settled on Okinawa at the direction of the imperial government. The records
speak of the "Thirty-six Families," but this must not be taken as a literal
numeration; it was customary to speak of the "Thirty-six Families of
Fukien" or of the "Hundred Names" of China in figures of speech which
merely meant a widely representative group.
According to Chinese accounts, the founding of the emigrant
community was a gesture of benevolent interest in the welfare of the
Okinawans, an extension of imperial grace, through which the Okinawans
would learn better methods of shipbuilding and the civilizing arts of
Chinese administration.
The Okinawans received the immigrants with genuine and practical
expressions of gratitude. The newcomers were given tax-free land upon
which to establish homes near the chief anchorage for trading ships. A rice
stipend was set aside for the entire community, based on the number of
adult males above fourteen years of age. The Chinese were given social
privileges at the Shuri court and enjoyed great prestige and special position
among the common people.
There is no evidence that they were more than very ordinary folk at
home on the China coast from whence they came. On Okinawa, however,
they were eagerly looked to, for they were the "modern" people of their day
and represented the great nation of which so many Okinawan leaders were
eager to learn and from which so many admirable tales had been brought
back by envoys and traders.
 The immigrants undoubtedly had much to offer the Okinawans. Some
of them who were literate taught the Chinese written language and assumed
many official and quasi-official clerical duties required in the exchange of
communications and trade with China. Some appear to have been
shipwrights and navigators. Most of them were specialists in arts or crafts,
which were handed down thereafter on Okinawa from father to son until the
late 19th century. Papermakers, ink-makers, and writing-brush makers were
numbered among them. Of the Chinese customs introduced at this time and
taken over into Okinawan life many became so well assimilated to local
tradition and custom as to be indistinguishable today, but the origins of
others remain traditionally identified with the founding of the village.
Among these, for instance, is the haryu-sen (dragon-boat racing), a popular
festival of South China now held annually in many villages throughout the
Ryukyus.
The founding of Kume Village marked a great moment in Okinawan
history; thenceforth into modern times the very name Kume-mura carried
with it connotations of social prestige on the one hand (based on admiration
for Chinese literary traditions and etiquette) and, on the other, connotations
of alien blood. Association with Kume Village suggested distinction in
scholarship and association with matters of foreign trade and diplomacy,
just as residence in Shuri suggested association with government and the
native Okinawan aristocracy. These distinctions persisted in local social
attitudes long after real differences in accomplishment had disappeared and
intermarriage had blurred the racial lines. The traditions were strong at the
opening of the 20th century and linger today among the older generation. In
1907, for instance, an American visitor took his Chinese interpreter into
Kume-mura upon the assurance that he would find there scholarly
descendents of the "Thirty-six Families." He did find old men proudly
claiming Kume-mura Chinese descent, but otherwise they were
indistinguishable from other Okinawans in literary accomplishments,
physical characteristics, or social life.4 In 1954 a young Okinawan was
heard to remark, "My cousin is from Kume-mura, but he doesn't look
Chinese," indicating that tradition and expectation of differences has so
long outlived the fact of distinction.
Did the founding of this Chinese settlement on Okinawa reflect a
larger policy on the part of the Chinese government? Although Chinese
emigrant communities were to be found throughout Southeast Asia and the
Indies, the Chinese themselves were not notably active as seafarers. There
was a coastal trade in Chinese junks, but adventurous open-ocean voyaging
over long distances was not common, and the government had no traditional
policy in support of maritime activity. China was essentially a land power,
with long-established traditions of overland continental trade. Seaborne
trade was brought to China's ports in foreign ships. The Annamese, the
Koreans, the Japanese, and the Okinawans were the only neighboring
people on the sea frontiers who were conversant with the Chinese language.
The collapse of Mongol power in China created turmoil in the vast areas
which the khans had ruled to the westward from Karakorum through
Samarkand and beyond, and closed the ancient trade routes across Inner
Asia. Though Chinese generals pushed westward through the great desert as
far as the oasis of Hami, they were unable to carry Ming authority into the
non-Chinese regions beyond. Tamurlane was creating a new empire in that
quarter and planning the reconquest of China by the Mongol hordes when
death ended his career in 1405.
Blocked on the continental west then, the Ming leaders turned to the
sea. The timing and the circumstances surrounding the founding of the
emigrant community and trading base on offshore Okinawa suggest that this
was only a small part of a carefully calculated policy. In the Okinawans the
Chinese found excellent middlemen for trade with Japan, Korea, Champa
and Khmer, Siam, and Java. However condescending the Chinese showed
themselves to be toward these tributary barbarians, it is possible that they
recognized in Satto's envoys, and in Satto himself, qualities to exploit in
China's interests. Envoys from the Chinese court sent to Okinawa were
instructed to report on conditions within the island.
In 1393 the emigrant Chinese community was established at the
offshore trading port of Naha, and ten years later the Chinese admirals Ma
Pin and Ch'eng Ho began that series of eight extraordinary maritime
expeditions which carried Chinese arms and Chinese merchants into the
Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. These undertakings involved scores of ships
and thousands of men, an immense effort to establish China in maritime
trade and to extend Chinese suzerainty throughout South Asia. The
ambitious policy continued in effect for a quarter-century. How many years
were spent in preparation, and how mercantile interests won the necessary
official support at court we do not know. The effort was unique in the long
range of Chinese history. We have no evidence to link the establishment of
Kume-mura on Okinawa with the policies which flowered in this dramatic
undertaking, but it is safe to assume that the interest which approved the
sponsorship of one is re-fleeted iti the other, and that both were products of
a new and shortlived official interest in the promotion of maritime trade.5
There can be no doubt that Okinawan sailors, merchants, and
diplomats passing back and forth between Naha and Fukien ports were well
acquainted with these vast Chinese maritime adventures. It is not
impossible that Okinawans were among the crews who manned the
expeditions' ships, for they were proved seamen, and many were acquainted
with the ports of Southeast Asia, Java, and Sumatra.
These grandiose efforts to establish Chinese trade in the Indies and the
Indian Ocean collapsed; the last expedition returned to its home port in
1430, and nothing more is heard of such ventures. By contrast, the little
kingdom of Chuzan increased its trade under official direction all along the
western sea frontiers. Okinawa maintained its economic life—its very
existence—on this far-flung commerce through the succeeding two hundred
years.
In accepting formal tributary relationship, Satto brought the
principality of Chuzan under direct Chinese cultural influence and laid
foundations upon which the Okinawans thereafter were to build a modest
but prosperous national life. The Chinese did not need to make a show of
arms to secure the relationship; so long as the Okinawans fulfilled
ceremonial obligations required to regularize their trade, China made no
attempt to interfere in any way with Chuzan's internal administration. It was
a highly satisfactory relationship for the island people; it was implied that
China would protect them; they received the benefits of a flourishing trade
and the gifts of a highly developed civilization. They were (despite all this)
free to govern themselves as they wished. Although the quantity and
frequency of trade under such a political relationship varied from period to
period, and although China failed notably to come to Okinawa's aid in time
of crisis, the formal bonds between China and Chuzan endured until 1872.

GROWTH AND CHANGE ON OKINAWA

A few pages back we took note that Satto sent his younger brother Taiki to
the Ming court in 1372 and that it became customary thereafter to send
promising youths of good family to the Chinese capital to enroll in the
school for foreign students (the Kuo Tzu Chien or Kokushi-kan). Through
this institution, maintained by the government as a "cultural affairs agency"
in the service of foreign policy, the Chinese hoped to influence governments
and peoples in the tributary states and to ease the problems of diplomacy.
Certainly no single instrument served its purpose so well as this in
strengthening ties between the imperial court in China and the small trading
kingdom in the Eastern Seas.6
Students selected for "national scholarships" came at first from the
king's household and the families of his chief ministers and territorial lords.
In later years sons of the Kume Village immigrants were eligible for
appointment as well, and all were selected on the basis of individual
capacity to master the Chinese language. They left Naha with the tribute
envoys, making the arduous and hazardous trip to Nanking or Peking as
members of the official party. They remained at school in the Chinese
capital at the expense of the Chinese government for two or three years, or
until such time as they were allowed to return with a subsequent tribute
mission.
Students abroad were expected to apply themselves to a study of the
classics—history, ethics, poetry—and to cultivate the arts of polite
intercourse so highly prized by the Chinese. This they did with such
distinction that a Chinese emperor in later years conferred upon the
Okinawan king a tablet inscribed to "The Land of Propriety" in recognition
of the constancy and perfection of formal relations between the empire and
the island kingdom.
To learn the classics and the precedents of Chinese history was to learn
the language of diplomacy and of the Chinese bureaucratic system.
Certainly there were no courses in "public administration" or in-service
training programs comparable to the "national leaders" programs with
which we have become familiar since World War II, but the Okinawan
student at Nanking or Peking was in a position to observe something of the
administrative skills and organization of the Chinese, and to become
acquainted with the wide range of interests to which officers of state were
expected to address themselves.
It can be presumed that while living on a government stipend in
government quarters at the Chinese capital, the Okinawan students, few in
number and strangers in the crowded cities, attracted very little attention
and were from time to time assailed by all the pangs of homesickness which
assault the Okinawan student today who is sent abroad to study in New
York, Chicago, and the cities and towns of the American Middle West.
When these young men returned home to Okinawa, however, they
formed an elite; high offices in government were open to them; they had
prestige gained from foreign travel and firsthand knowledge of the great
continental power upon which the Okinawan economy grew steadily to
depend. Among themselves there was bound to be developed a strong sense
of comradeship and common interest.
Prime importance lay in their role as purveyors of Chinese ideas and
Chinese ways of doing things, and as agents who could cultivate trading
relations with the Chinese, to Okinawa's great advantage.
In his declining years Satto strengthened the new relationship with
China by selecting an Okinawan well known to the Ming court to receive
the title of O-sho (King's Assistant). Personal rule was not yet a thing of the
past on Okinawa, but this may be said to have foreshadowed its end and the
substitution of a system of king's ministers who could govern in the king's
name. Iratu, the man appointed to this important new post, had been five
times envoy to the Ming court.
Satto died in 1395 at the ripe age of seventy-five. His eldest son and
heir, Bunei, continued the development of commercial ties with China.
Envoys and students went to Nanking to announce Satto's death and to seek
confirmation of Bunei's accession, and in 1396 the Shuri government built
special headquarters at Naha for Chinese diplomatic and commercial
missions. Here a suitable residence (the Tenshi-kan) was constructed in
which to conduct ceremonial receptions and entertainments for Chinese
envoys of high rank. The mansion and its gardens rivaled the king's
residence in size and quality. Nearby, a trading center (the oyamise)
provided for entertainment and business transactions with the foreign
merchants. Special warehouses were established to handle incoming and
outgoing trading goods. There is some evidence that about this time a
Korean community developed near the anchorage at Tomari and the
Chinese immigrant village, and it is probable that merchants and seamen
from tropical Asia were seen frequently in the streets and alleyways of
Naha. A Japanese priest had long since built a temple on the Nami-no-ue
headland, which dominated both Tornan and the Naha harbor-inlet. This
was the Gokoku-ji, founded with royal patronage in 1367 and destined to
play a curious role in the opening of Okinawa to the Western world nearly
five hundred years later. The number of Japanese immigrant settlers on
Okinawa was growing.
All three Okinawan principalities sent missions to Korea in 1397, but
only Chuzan appears to have established formal relations with the court of
the Ashikaga shoguns at Kyoto (1403). In 1409 an official embassy was
dispatched to Siam. Traders had long since established relations with
Sumatra and Java far to the south. This was a time of great development for
the Okinawans, for they were now in a position to draw upon neighbors in
periods of great creative cultural activity. A new dynasty in Korea (founded
in 1392) was moving into a period of brilliant achievement; while the
administration was being organized according to proper Confucian
principles, a new capital city (Seoul) was built, a phonetic alphabet was
perfected, a movable metal type font was developed, encyclopedias and
histories were being written, and ceramic techniques of a high order were
perfected. Bunei and his successors sent missions up to Seoul to study as
well as to trade, and it is to Korea that Okinawa owed certain developments
in Buddhism. Buddhist texts, ceremonies, and ritual furniture were
introduced, and possibly some Korean influence was felt in architecture. As
a gesture of friendliness, the King of Chuzan ordered that shipwrecked or
stranded Koreans should be taken back to Korea, including those who
escaped servitude under the Japanese pirates roving in adjacent seas.
It is said that certain (Japanese) Shinto practices were introduced to
the Southern Islands about this time and became popular. Certainly Shinto
rituals and attitudes toward the worship of natural forces, benevolent and
otherwise, had much to recommend them to the common villagers in
Okinawa. These were an unphilosophic people, not given naturally to the
intellectual effort which a proper study of Buddhist thought demands.
Shinto, in its Japanese forms and practices, was closely akin to indigenous
Okinawan beliefs, but it offered a more elaborate ritual plus a body of
legends and a catalogue of deities which could easily be added to the local
pantheon.
With examples of Japan, Korea, and China now so near at hand, with
the elaboration of government offices, and with the spread of literacy at the
court, it is not surprising to discover that the Ryukyuan leaders ordered the
preparation of their own royal annals. The first volume of a Treasury of the
Royal Succession (Rekidai Hoan) was issued in 1403. This series of
records, a most important source for the study of Okinawan tradition, was
maintained faithfully until 1619.
Meanwhile, political changes were underway that were to alter the
succession at Chuzan, unify Okinawa again, and make the Ryukyu Islands
known throughout maritime Asia as a profitable trading base.
The last decades of Satto's rule had brought greatly increased
prosperity and commercial activity to Naha. This in turn intensified the
sense of rivalry felt by the princes at Hokuzan and Nanzan. In 1396 and
1397 all three principalities sent tribute and students to the Ming court,
vying with one another for attention and trade.
The old Lord of Hokuzan expired a few months after Satto's death.
Haniji, his heir, immediately petitioned China for recognition as lord of all
of Okinawa. Envoys were sent to Korea to announce his succession. The
situation on Okinawa was tense with rivalry, heightened to the breaking
point in 1398 by the death of the Lord of Nanzan, whose brother Yafuso
seized power amidst great confusion at the Nanzan court. He too
immediately sent envoys to ask for confirmation by the Chinese emperor.
Okinawa was thrown into turmoil. Succession disputes blazed up at all
the castle courts. Chuzan's trading relations with China, so carefully
nurtured by Satto, were threatened. China in the recent past had recognized
one prince on Okinawa; now three were clamoring simultaneously for
support and recognition.
To the Okinawan princes this was vital; recognition meant improved
trading positions in Chinese ports and elsewhere in southern Asia, where
much business was done through the established overseas Chinese
communities. The strength of each principality lay in foreign trade, not in
local resources. At Nanking decisions were put off. Bunei's petition lay
neglected for eleven years, for China itself was torn with succession
quarrels and rebellion.

Footnote

* In later years England, Holland, Spain, Portugal, the Papal States, and France were also classed as

"barbarian states" paying tribute to China's emperor.

 CHAPTER THREE
THE GREAT DAYS OF CHUZAN

1398-1573
HASHI AND THE "FIRST SHO DYNASTY"
China was shaken by succession quarrels on a vast scale. The aged Emperor
Hung Wu died in 1398, leaving the throne to a young grandson Hui Ti, who
was soon driven from Peking by an uncle. It was believed that he was dead,
though no one knew where the boy-emperor had died or by what hand.
Thirty-six years later he was discovered living the life of an obscure monk
in a Buddhist monastery.
The usurper, known in history as the Emperor Yung Lo, established
himself as one of the greatest rulers China has ever known, dedicating
himself to the extension of Chinese dominion on all frontiers. He addressed
himself at once to the problem of tributary states adjacent to his empire. In
the second year of his reign (1406) envoys were sent to Okinawa to confirm
Satto's heir Bunei in the title King of Chuzan.
For Bunei this was almost too late. Satto's death had loosened ties
which bound the territorial lords, the anji, to the prince at Chuzan Castle.
One of the younger anji, named Hashi, had begun to rise to prominence,
first as an able, well-liked administrator within his own estates, and then as
leader of a minor rebellion which brought about the downfall of the lord of
Azato district, adjacent to Bunei's castle at Urasoe.
This took place in 1402, and thus matters rested for five years. History
is discreetly silent concerning intrigues and rivalries about the court, but in
1407—the year following Bunei's recognition as King of Chuzan —Hashi
led a wider rebellion within the principality, drove Bunei from Urasoe, and
made himself King of Chuzan. The deposed prince vanished, leaving not a
trace. Tradition says that no one knew where he died, but it is safe to
assume that if he did not escape to some distant island hiding place, he
suffered death at the hands of Hashi's partisans. Okinawans in later years
may have adapted Hui Ti's story to their need to cover up a case of regicide.
Hashi's career marks one of the high points in Okinawan history. The
thorough reorganization of administration on Okinawa and the great
expansion of trade under his direction is represented in conventional
Japanese histories as a more or less autonomous and logical development of
Okinawan affairs. There is ample reason to believe, however, that it
reflected in large degree creative forces then stirring in contemporary
China. Hashi moved with the times.
Within the next twenty years the Emperor Yung Lo extended Chinese
rule into Annam and received tribute and trading missions from Cambodia,
Siam, Malacca, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Luzon, and Ceylon. Ch'eng Ho's
expeditions reached Bengal, South India, and ports in Arabia; they may also
have touched Africa.
Yung Lo's envoys to Okinawa had just time enough to return to the
Chinese capital with a report on Bunei's investiture when Hashi's envoys
followed them with news of Bunei's downfall and Hashi's assumption of
authority. China's fundamental indifference to the internal affairs of
tributary states made it possible for the court at Nanking to accept this swift
change without objection. Hashi, on his part, did two things which could be
well calculated to please the Chinese sense of propriety and to flatter the
top-lofty pride of court officials. He did not assume royal authority for
himself, but proclaimed his father King of Chuzan, and he began a wide
reorganization of the administration on Chinese patterns.
Envoys went to Peking in 1407 and again in 1408, when at last the
coveted patents of investiture were granted. Essentials of Chinese court
hierarchy, rank, badges of honor, and boards of administrative supervision
were adapted by Hashi on a suitable scale, severely modified, of course, to
meet conditions on Okinawa. (The entire area of the Chuzan principality, it
must be remembered, was scarcely greater than the area encompassed by
Peking's vast city walls and adjacent parks.) The Okinawans adopted
Chinese ways quite voluntarily, and by Chinese standards they became
"civilized." We must assume that Hashi was able to introduce such changes
because he had about him men who had been sent abroad to study after
1372 and had returned from China full of prestige and eager to "modernize"
Okinawa.
Under Hashi's direction Shuri Castle was embellished and enlarged as
the seat of government for Chuzan. Within the principality distance markers
were set out on roads leading from Shuri into the countryside. Naha
expanded to accommodate growing trade, and was opened to ships of all
nationalities in the Eastern Seas.
Chuzan's rivals were not idle. Although they did not enjoy the natural
advantage which the superior Naha and Tomari anchorages could provide,
they were eager to trade. Taromai, Lord of Nanzan, won Chinese investiture
(in effect a license to trade) in 1415, but his small castle-court was
weakened by continuing disputes among his vassals.
The Lord of Hokuzan was harassed by quarrels and defection among
his subordinates. Hokuzan offered Chuzan little competition in politics,
commerce, or culture, but Nakijin Castle on the Motobu Peninsula was a
persistent military threat to Hashi. Surviving records indicate that in the
14th century only nine Hokuzan missions made the long journey to China,
whereas nineteen from Nanzan and fifty-two from Chuzan crossed to the
continent in the same period. No Hokuzan students ventured over to study
at the Chinese capital, and trade was limited to junk traffic in the small inlet
below the castle walls.
Hashi shrewdly took advantage of opportunity when three of the
northern anji came over to his side. Motobu Peninsula was overrun in a
short campaign, Nakijin Castle was reduced, and after a fierce defensive
action the Lord of Hokuzan and his principal retainers committed suicide.
Today the Hokuzan tradition has faded; the tombs of the Hundred
Faithful Retainers (Momojana) are pointed out in a cave on the bluffs back
of Unten Harbor; and in the countryside a few families cherish heirlooms
handed down from the Nakijin period.
The northern principality had been maintained through ninety-one
years. Grudgingly, the Hokuzan people submitted to the superior
organization of men and resources which Shuri could bring to bear in the
rough northern countryside. In 1422 Hashi appointed his younger brother
Warden of Hokuzan to ensure order in that quarter, and for many years
thereafter special garrisons had to be stationed on Motobu.
 Nanzan—almost within sight of Shuri Castle on the southern borders
of Chuzan—offered Hashi greater political and commercial competition,
but when a bitter succession dispute arose among Taromai's heirs, Hashi
moved swiftly to seize control. In 1429 Okinawa was unified; henceforth
"Chuzan" meant all of Okinawa, but the old divisions were perpetuated in
new administrative names and offices, and the terms "Kunigami,"
"Nakagami," and "Shimojiri" in the 20th century preserve a lingering
memory of the three ancient principalities.
Now at last all of Okinawa's meager resources could be used to
support the castle town at Shuri and the settlements below at Naha port and
Tomari roadstead. The countryside produced foodstuffs, fuel, and the
ordinary artifacts required in daily use. The village people lived at the
barest subsistence level. There was no significant accumulation of surpluses
in the outlying settlements or within individual households.
Standards of living for the anji were very little better than for the
poorest peasant and fisherman whose windowless thatched hut stood at a
sheltered spot on his lands. The soil was poor, the forest cover thin, and the
water supply often insufficient. There was no significant supply of metals.
This general poverty of natural resources fostered a readiness—born of dire
necessity—to pool community resources in skills and manpower, and to this
may be attributed an extraordinary-sense of community solidarity, an
Okinawan tradition of mutual aid and of mutual obligations which must be
met within the family and community.
Local government rested with the anji, of whose origin we know little.
We can surmise that they descended from chieftains whose prowess and
skill in leadership in some prehistoric day had established ownership over
tracts of land when the islands were first penetrated and thinly settled. By
the time Hashi appeared, local government was in fact merely the personal
rule of an anji within his estates, while he in turn was responsible to one of
the princes at Hokuzan, Nanzan, or Chuzan. The common people farmed
and fished, paid over their taxes in kind to the anji, and provided the labor
and services required of them.
Hashi's success in forcing all the anji to look to Shuri, and his skill in
developing the possibilities of foreign trade and of formal relations with
China opened a new era. Some of the anji may have accepted the new
central authority with reluctance, remaining for the most part interested
only in maintaining their own local interests, but for those who elected to
work closely with Hashi and his liegemen there were opportunities for
unprecedented wealth and prestige. Cooperation with Shuri meant shares in
the profits of seaborne trade, and these, accumulating, meant comparative
prosperity for the little Okinawan kingdom through the 15th and 16th
centuries. The nominal king, his strong son (Hashi), and their chief retainers
were now prepared to devote all energies to the promotion of foreign
commerce.
 We know nothing of the personality and character of these leading
men, and too little of the formal arrangements which sustained the trading
organization. There is little to throw light on the growth of customary law
and of documentary forms which secured to each participant his rightful
share in the trading ventures or defined his liabilities and risks. It is evident
that the princes of the royal house and members of the most important anji
families were actively engaged in business, traveling abroad themselves to
Japan, Korea, China, and to the trading cities and the courts of Southeast
Asia. Young men who had studied in China and the anji who returned to
country estates after oversea adventures—or merely from a short sojourn at
Hashi's court—brought with them great stories as well as gifts and trading
goods.
A document dated 1425, which survived in the archives of prewar
Okinawa, had to do with a state mission Hashi sent to the court of Siam and
to Java in 1419. Shuri's envoy Kakinohana had been directed to settle a
misunderstanding which impeded Okinawan trade at Ayuthia. The records
showed that earlier trading relations with Siam had been good, but that
greedy officials at the Siamese court had of late prevented the free sale of
Okinawan cargoes on Siamese markets. Kakinohana persuaded the King of
Siam to relax monopolies and to allow Shuri's merchant-mariners once
again to sell their wares to highest bidders in an open market. The King of
Siam responded to Hashi's respresentations by dispatching a royal mission
to exchange courtesies with the Shuri court. The Siamese traveled on
Okinawan ships, and we can imagine with what excitement and pleasure the
people of Naha and Shuri welcomed the event. On another occasion an
Okinawan ship was burned while at anchor in Siamese waters, whereupon
the King of Siam dispatched one of his own ships to carry the distressed
Okinawans back to the Ryukyu Islands.
Shuri's ties with China were growing stronger, and it is evident that the
Chinese court was well aware of the vitality and value of the trading
position which the Okinawans were establishing for themselves.
Hashi's father, the nominal king, fell ill and died in 1421. At last Hashi
assumed the royal title, which matched the powers he had long held. After a
year's mourning he petitioned the Chinese court for recognition and
investiture. The writ was delivered at Shuri in due course.
Now followed a test of Okinawan diplomacy measured by the
exacting standards of Chinese formality. Hashi's trusted and experienced
ambassador Kakinohana was ordered to proceed to Peking to bear thankful
acknowledgment of investiture. But this was not all; within the year the
great Emperor Yung Lo had died, and so too had his successor Hung Hsi.
Kakinohana therefore was required to discharge four obligations, each of
which called for complicated and tedious ritual. He had first to convey
Hashi's own expression of gratitude, then to express the official distress and
sorrow appropriate to the demise of two Chinese emperors, and finally to
congratulate the new emperor, the boy Hsuan Te.
Apparently the mission was a marked success; the pleased Chinese
officials raised the rank of Peking's ambassadors who should go thereafter
to the court of Chuzan, and upon Hashi the emperor conferred the family
name Sho (pronounced Hsiang in Chinese). A new title Liu Ch'iu Wang
(King of Ryukyu) was recorded in the annals to recognize Hashi's success
in bringing the three principalities under one ruler. To underscore these
marks of high esteem the Chinese court sent over to Hashi a great lacquered
tablet upon which was inscribed the characters for Chuzan, together with
rich gifts of lacquer and embroidered ceremonial robes.1
Hashi proudly caused a handsome gate to be erected at the approach to
Shuri Castle, and there, in 1428, the Chuzan Tablet was installed for all to
see, and there it remained until the 20th century.
In order to remind his officers and vassals that Chuzan's prosperity
rested entirely upon successful management and development of seaborne
trade, the king caused a great bell to be cast and hung in the audience
chamber at Shuri Castle. Upon it were inscribed these words: "Ships are
means of communication with all nations; the country is full of rare
products and precious treasures."
In the next two hundred years Okinawa could be likened to the city-
states across the world in Europe which were flourishing then in maritime
trade devoted in large part to the import and transshipment of exotic wares
from the countries of Asia and Africa—spices, rare woods, jewels, textiles,
and the curious substances needed by the alchemist and the pill-maker. The
Shuri-Naha urban complex was supported by profitable traffic in luxury
goods purchased in the Indies and the markets of Southeast Asia and moved
through Naha for distribution to the ports of China, Korea, and Japan.
Chuzan did not achieve the wealth of Genoa, the beauty of Venice, or the
power of Lisbon, but the essential pattern of economic life was much the
same.
It is interesting to recall that for nearly half a century Sho Hashi in
Okinawa and the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator were
contemporaries, dedicated to the improvement and expansion of exploration
and commerce on the high seas as a means to offset poverty and limited
territory at home. Prince Henry drew on the sciences of the burgeoning
Renaissance, and the Portuguese were fired with quarrelsome missionary
zeal, loving a good fight and justifying enormities of violence in the name
of Christ. Sho Hashi had no such intellectual force as the Renaissance
behind him (though he may have been stimulated by the short-lived Ming
interest in exploration far afield); the Okinawans had no zealots in their
midst with burning faith to propagate by fire and sword. They shunned
quarrels; they could afford no wars, for they had no strength in manpower
and no surpluses to be spent on arms. From this position of weakness they
had perforce to learn accommodation, and as we shall see, the first
encounter with the Portuguese (at Malacca, 1511) would prove a turning
point in Okinawan history.
Sho Hashi knew nothing of Europe, but we can assume that he knew
vaguely of India and possibly of Arabia, for his officers and men frequented
ports on the China coast and the markets of Southeast Asia, which had
flourishing communities of Arab traders. There is evidence that Okinawan
goods passed into Arab hands and on into the ports and markets far to the
west. References to the Ryukyu kingdom—or at least to its merchants and
their goods—can be found in Arabic texts when Moslem rulers held
dominion as far west as Spain and were pushing into India and the Indies,
and when there was a flow of trade and of information throughout the
Moslem world.2
The seas about Okinawa were no longer barriers but highways over
which goods were brought to warehouses at Naha, and from there
transshipped. Trading vessels usually set out from Naha by twos and threes
together, under command of an agent commissioned by the king. This
responsibility was an honor accepted by princes and high officers of the
court. As many as three hundred persons were sometimes in the company,
subject to the king's agent and the ships' captains.
 Five months were usually required to make the journey to the Indies;
the fleet left in the autumn to cross by way of Miyako and Yaeyama to the
China coast, then moved southward from port to port, keeping within sight
of distant headlands and offshore islands. With favorable winds the outward
voyage to Malacca or Sumatra required about fifty days. After making the
first call, the junks put in at other ports and islands in Southeast Asia,
picking up and discharging cargo as opportunity warranted until time to turn
back and ride the winds toward Naha at the end of spring. The summer
months were usually spent at home port during the season of great storms in
the China Seas.
Much of the trading and exchange was conducted through expatriate
Chinese settled, then as now, in the southern ports of Asia and the Indies.
For this reason Chinese interpreters went along on the Okinawan ships.
There is some reason to believe that Koreans, too, made these long voyages
out of Naha, returning to summer in the Korean settlement near Tomari and
Naha.
Okinawa's commerce with the Indies flourished through two centuries,
but shifted from port to port with the changing political tides in the
kingdoms to the south. Nothing is known in detail of the trade before the
15th century, but between 1432 and 1570 at least forty-four official
embassies were dispatched to Annam, Siam, Patani, Malacca, and the small
kingdoms on Java. There is scant record of the actual organization and
administration of trade from Naha, and no one knows how many unofficial
or private trading ventures set out annually for the southern seas.
Some reached Luzon and Borneo, where small Indian and Malayan
settlements stood at the water's edge between jungle and sea. Okinawan
relations with these islands—never important—had been broken off before
the European powers reached their shores.
The Naha archives lost in 1945 held records of at least fifty-eight
trading missions to Siam over a period of 146 years, and Japanese scholars
who have made careful study of them estimate that at least a hundred other
official voyages may have been made for which no records now exist.
Formal relations with Java appear to have been established in 1430 and to
have continued for approximately one hundred years, first with eastern and
then with western Java (Sunda) as political conditions dictated within that
war-torn island. Relations with Sumatra did not long persist; a ship which
put in at Palembang in 1426 returned to Naha in the next year with a
Sumatran envoy aboard. Shuri returned the courtesy with the customary
gifts, documents, and trading articles, carried by a mission which lingered at
Sumatra for a full ten months. There were later exchanges, but the last for
which records survived returned to Naha in 1440.
Trade with Patani on the east coast of Malaya became increasingly
important as that port grew large with refugees crowding in from war-torn
Java and Malacca. This was the time when the Hindu states of Java were
falling before the Moslem conquest. Records of twelve Okinawan missions
survived; the last of these touched at Patani in 1541 ; but it is presumed that
many more had taken place. The Naha archives contained documents
relating to trade with Malacca in 1463, but these in turn referred to earlier
ventures into the straits which were the gateway to the Indian Ocean. Here
the Okinawans were at the crossroads of Southeast Asian commerce.
Malacca itself had only recently assumed prominence and importance
through the influx of refugees from Java and from areas being pressed by
the Javan kingdoms. Something is known of twenty Okinawan missions at
Malacca, four of which ended in shipwreck.
To the last Okinawan venture at Malacca we will turn our attention on
a later page, for the traders found a Portuguese fleet at anchor in the harbor;
Malacca was a burned and ravaged settlement; and this encounter with
Europeans in 1511 portended disaster of another kind at Shuri.
The Chinese, meanwhile, had recognized in fact the importance of
Okinawan trade to them as a source of coveted luxury goods, for despite
official attitudes of disdain for foreign commerce and haughty pretense of
indifference to mercantile affairs on the part of the literati, Chinese officials
did not forego opportunities to enrich themselves and their kinfolk. The
elaboration of trading regulations was a supreme art among them. Laws and
regulations were put upon the books not so much to be observed as to be
circumvented by an appropriate contribution to officials all along the way.
In 1439 a special Ryukyuan trading depot with a permanent staff in
residence was established at Ch'uang-chou in Fukien Province, creating a
port of entry to which Ryukyuan trade must be confined and through which
it was channeled to Peking. These facilities included warehouses, reception
halls, and a residential area for Okinawans associated with trade and the
diplomatic missions. The depot remained in continuous use for 436 years
thereafter, or until 1875, when the last cargo was brought in from Naha.
Here Okinawan students came to serve as clerks and to study China's
language and its institutions, and it is to this area that we must look for
prototypes in artifacts and architecture, agricultural techniques and social
patterns which distinguished the old Ryukyu tradition from the Japanese.
Okinawa's distinctive tombs and bridges, foodstuffs and textiles, recreations
and deportment owe much to the lessons learned here at Ch'uang-chou in
Fukien.
Ships putting in at Naha after a voyage to the south, or coming from
China or Japan or Korea, provided occasions of holiday interest and
excitement in the town. Returning seamen told of adventures on the high
seas and in distant ports. Curios and fine objects brought back for the king's
court went up to Shuri under the watchful eyes of port officers and the
ship's commandant. The chief of mission and the vice-chief, together with
the principal officers, made reports, delivered documents, and escorted
distinguished visitors to the castle on the hill. Goods for transshipment were
off-loaded to be stored near the quay until the next fleet was ready to set
out. Objects too damaged for the royal palace or for shipment onward
became available for barter and trade among the seamen and their friends.
Who could tell what strange birds, plants, or animals might be brought
ashore, what new musical instruments might be among the souvenirs, or
what colorful bales and bolts of cloth might be disclosed in the cargo? We
read of a shipment of parrots and peacocks sent up to the King of Korea,
who in time sent back in exchange a great bronze bell. Monkeys and bright-
plumaged chickens were brought in. Earthenware from the south and glazed
ceramics from the China coast were imported in quantity, some to be used
in Okinawa and some to be sent on to Kyoto, where it was in great vogue
among the tea-masters at the shogun's court. Books and ceramics came from
Korea; fine screens and lacquerware passed through the Naha warehouses
en route to Chinese buyers, and heavy Chinese brocades were imported in
exchange. Japanese swords, lacquerware, fans, folding screens, and some
textiles were destined for China and the southern ports. From China to
Japan by way of Naha went ceramics, fine textiles, medicinal herbs, and
minted coins especially prized at Kyoto. To China, Japan, and Korea the
ships from Okinawa carried rare woods (such as the dyewood known as
sappan), pepper and other spices, incense, rhinoceros horn (prized as an
aphrodisiac), iron, tin, ivory, sugar, and curious artifacts picked up here and
there in the ports of Southeast Asia.
This richness and variety of material things stood in strong contrast
with the poverty of native Okinawan goods. It is not surprising therefore to
discover that local craftsmen aspired to produce fine wares and that they
were encouraged by the Shuri court. The textile industry began to develop
high specialization. Weaving and dyeing of fine gauzes of a Chinese type
became an important industry in many homes. Using the fibers of a large
plantain—a banana plant—an extremely fine textile was produced which is
known today as basa, peculiarly suited to the needs of a people dwelling in
hot and humid climates.
A second fabric, known in Malay as ikat and in Japan and Okinawa as
kasuri, was imported from the Indies. The technique is said to have had its
origins in India, and from Okinawa this special craft was transmitted to the
Japanese. The threads are dyed appropriately before the weaving begins,
and each thread is selected individually and applied to the loom with
painstaking care to bring out a desired design and pattern. Okinawan skills
brought this to the highest degree of perfection. Tie-and-dye methods and
stencil dyeing were likewise introduced from Java and Sumatra, modified to
meet local requirements and applied to Okinawan fabrics.
The use of bright colors and large patterns of a distinctive type
developed in Okinawa under the influence of imports from the southern
islands and from there too came the distinctive turbans or hachimaki which
the Okinawan gentry used until modern times. (The keen-eyed Captain
Broughton, who knew South Asia well, in 1797 noted that the Okinawan
coiffure and turbans were "in the Malay style.")
A man's rank was indicated by the quality of the cloth, the color and
applied design, and the manner of folding and winding this unique
headgear. Something of the sort, of southern origin, may have been in use
from early times and was now adapted at the king's command to conform to
the Chinese idea of "cap-rank." Headdress thus became the material symbol
of status in the court hierarchy, and hence was governed by most rigid rules.
For the Okinawans the hachimaki was the equivalent of the crowns and
coronets of English princes, dukes, earls, and barons.
The hachimaki was reserved for the higher officers at court, but almost
all males wore their hair drawn up into a small topknot through which they
thrust one or more long pins. The style and quality of these pins (called
kanzashi) proclaimed the status of the wearer. The higher aristocracy wore
pins of chased and inlaid gold; silver sufficed for the intermediate ranks;
while plain brass or copper or wood were the lot of the lower classes.
The topknot was sometimes worn off-center at a jaunty angle; this can
still be seen occasionally among the country women of Okinawa. Tradition
ascribes this quaint custom to the late 15th century, alleging that the king of
that period (Sho En) had an unsightly wen on the side of his head, which he
concealed under his topknot, and that his faithful subjects adopted the mode
in consequence. However, the primitive Yami who live south of the
Ryukyus on Botel Tobago also wear the hair in this fashion and a similar
style may be seen in use in Siam, which suggests that the custom may have
had a much earlier origin and a wider use.
Pictures of a somewhat later date than Hashi's reign show that the
kings and princes of the royal house wore costumes of Ming Chinese style
for high ceremonial occasions. These were made of imported Chinese
textiles cut to conform with local Okinawan styles. Straw sandals sufficed
for the aristocrats; the common people wore no footgear. There is reason to
believe that in Hashi's day the princes, the anji, and their chief retainers
each wore two swords at the side, in the Japanese manner.
Court ceremonial followed stiffly formal Chinese precedents adapted
in scale to Okinawan needs; among the anji and the country people,
however, there was an easy and natural exchange of courtesies.
The social and emotional life of Okinawans, both in Sho Hashi's time
and after, centered in music and poetry, in picnicking and in alfresco
dancing. Merchants coming back from the Indies, Malaya, and the China
coast brought in stringed instruments and introduced dance forms, which
the Okinawans modified and developed to give expression to their own
songs and poems. In later centuries (after 1600) much of this passed on
northward into Japan.
No occasion was overlooked which might provide an excuse for
dancing. Festivals marked each change of seasons; every family gathering,
happy or sad, became an occasion for impromptu performance. Arrivals and
departures were of special interest among an island people whose very
livelihood depended upon the enforced separations and dangers of maritime
activity. Traditions of complex refinement clustered about leave-taking and
welcome. Dancing and feasting preceded the days of departure. Special
emblems were raised on poles before the house from which a traveler was
to be absent for some time. As ships left the safety of home anchorage,
friends of the crew and family members climbed to open clearings on
nearby headlands to watch them go. There they danced and sang about
bonfires set to serve as beacons. The voyagers, moving out to sea, looked
back, with deep emotion, to the flickering signals of farewell, and the
sorrows of parting became preeminent themes in song and story.
In retrospect the reign of Sho Hashi appears to mark the age in which
Okinawan life absorbed many of the exotic elements which thereafter gave
it special color and character.
Hashi died in 1439, at the age of sixty-eight. We know little about his
personality or his private life; nevertheless, he takes his place as one of the
great men of Okinawan history. He had been born in the year in which Satto
secured Chinese recognition and took Chuzan into the tributary system. At
his death he left Okinawa under a unified administration and in a position of
importance and prosperity among the islands along the western Pacific rim.
The kingship was still a personal affair; hence his passing meant a new test
of loyalties at the court and in the countryside, for each succession required
some realignment of officers and disturbed the balance of prestige and
wealth associated with offices held by the princes and the anji.
The old king left a large family. His second son, Sho Chu, took his
place. Ambassadors carried announcement of the change to Peking, with
Sho Chu's petition for investiture. Envoys were sent to notify the shogun's
court at Kyoto in Japan. One of Hashi's younger sons was appointed
Warden of the North and sent to keep watch upon the restless Hokuzan
district, which his father had compelled to submit to Chuzan.
 Sho Chu lived only five years. The succession passed to his son
Shitatsu, but he too ruled only five years. He left no heir. The kingship now
reverted to Sho Hashi's fifth son, Kimpuku, whose reign was noted for
extensive road-building projects around Shuri and Naha. It was too short to
enable him to entrench his own family interests, for within three years he
died.
This precipitated succession quarrels and a crisis at Shuri. The heir
apparent was Kimpuku's young son Shiro, but his right to the throne was
challenged by an uncle, Sho Hashi's sixth son. It is not clear whether this
was simple rivalry of factions at court or represented the intrusion of an
idea that all royal sons should in turn inherit the royal power. In any case,
the consequences were disastrous. Rioting broke out in the castle; both
contestants for power were slain; and the palace buildings were burned to
the ground. The heavy loss of treasure included the prized silver seals of
office which had been conferred by Hung Wu upon the princes of Okinawa
as patents of authority and investiture.
Hashi's seventh son, Sho Taikyu, now became king. The Ming court
granted his petition for investiture and for new seals of office, but it was
easier to acquire these things than it was to win the loyalty and support of
the territorial lords, the anji, on Okinawa. It is not surprising that this period
of conflict gave rise to the tales of romance and loyalty which form the
"classic" body of Okinawan song and tradition.
For example, there is the story of Gosamaru, Lord of Nakagusuku
Castle, who became suspicious of the conduct of his rival and enemy,
Amawari, Lord of Katsuren. Nakagusuku—an immense and impressive ruin
today—lies on the heights midway between Katsuren Castle and Shuri.
Gosamaru learned that Amawari was maturing plans for rebellion, and so
began quietly to mobilize his own men and resources to bar the path from
Katsuren to Shuri and the king's court. Before he had completed a muster of
forces at Katsuren, however, Amawari learned that Gosamaru was alert to
his own treacherous plans. He therefore gained the king's ear, disclosed
Gosamaru's efforts to mobilize, and persuaded Taikyu that it was Gosamaru
and not he who planned rebellion. The king accepted this false accusation
and suddenly sent his own forces against Nakagusuku. Gosamaru refused to
take up arms against the king and chose suicide, leaving his castle open to
the king's men. Too late, the king learned the truth. Orders went out at once
to punish the traitor Amawari, who was soon killed in his own stronghold.

Despite such turmoil at the court, by Okinawan standards the island

was enjoying unprecedented prosperity, thanks to the accumulation of
wealth coming in from overseas. The territorial lords, who shared in this,
expanded their castles and elaborated the gardens and dwellings within
them. Naha began to take on the appearance of a prosperous town along the
waterfront.
It was possible to make extraordinary profits on Naha's seaborne
commerce. Japanese scholars estimate that the Okinawan merchants
occasionally earned a thousand-percent return on shipments of luxury
goods. The maritime risks were terribly high, but they were worth it; the
economic alternative was an unremitting and unrewarding struggle to wrest
something from the harsh soil of Okinawa itself. As a consequence, the
hinterland was neglected, and all the energies of the tiny kingdom were
centered on the Naha trade.
It is evident that a considerable import of metals took place at this
time. Coins struck in 1458 were modeled after a coin of the Chinese Yuan
dynasty (1279-1368), and large bells were cast for temples and shrines
constructed under the king's patronage.3 Upon one of these bells Taikyu
caused to be inscribed: "Ryukyu, Beautiful Country of the Southern Ocean."
This is an interesting reflection of the pervading sense of cultural
orientation at Shuri in Okinawa's days of greatest independence, for here
"south of Japan" and not "east of China" hints at the growing influence
entering Okinawa from the north.
We will have occasion to review Japan's relations with the Ryukyus in
our next chapter. Here it will suffice to note that Sho Taikyu appears to have
come increasingly under the influence of Japanese missionary priests and
been led into a course of lavish patronage for Buddhist temples and Shinto
shrines. At least four new temple foundations were created and endowed—
the Kogen-ji, Fumon-ji, Manju-ji, and Tenryu-ji. These temples were not
built in response to popular demand nor based on popular support; the
king's resources were squandered in building on a scale unwarranted by the
position of Buddhism in Okinawa. Undoubtedly such building stimulated
the arts and crafts and brought to the Okinawans new concepts of fine
workmanship and ceremonial, but there was never the sweeping, popular
emotional enthusiasm which so marked the development of evangelical
sects in Japan.
The Tenryu-ji at Shuri bore the name of the great Zen temple in Kyoto
which at that time had been granted special overseas trading privileges by
the Ashikaga shoguns; a Tenryu-ji missionary supervised the construction
of the Manju-ji, and (as we shall see) Tenryu-ji monks were moving
constantly back and forth as emissaries of Japan to the courts of Korea,
China, and Okinawa. There is a hint here that Kyoto was consciously
pursuing a policy of cultural penetration in Okinawa coupled with a
growing interest in the promotion of Okinawan trade with China and the
ports of Southeast Asia.
In 1456 an immigrant Japanese metalworker was commissioned by the
king to cast a great bronze bell. This was a votive offering, bearing a long
inscription, which reads in part: "May the sound of this bell shatter illusory
dreams, perfect the souls of mankind, and enable the King and his subjects
to Uve so virtuously that barbarians will find no occasion to invade the
Kingdom."* Unhappily, Taikyu's successors were to discover soon enough
that virtue is not a shield and meekness no asset in the struggle for power
among great nations.
The pious king died in 1460, leaving to his heirs and court officers the
problems of an impoverished treasury. Temple building, metal casting,
religious ceremonial, and luxurious entertainment at the palace had
consumed the surpluses accumulated by Sho Hashi and his successors. The
late king's extravagance now had severe political consequences.
His son Sho Toku was a headstrong youth of twenty-one years when
he became king. This was at a time when nearby seas were full of
swashbuckling Japanese pirates and privateers, who preyed on shipping
along the China coast. It has been suggested that the Okinawans shared
largely in these activities, but this is improbable, for the fact remains that
the Chinese continued to welcome Okinawan ships and merchants on their
coast during periods of fierce dispute and conflict with the Japanese.
Sho Toku decided on an overseas military adventure. In 1465 Oki-
nawan forces embarked for an invasion of Kikai Island, which lay to the
north, on the trading route to Japan. The young king himself took
command, adopting the banner of Hachiman, Japanese God of War. The
emblem of this Shinto deity took the form of a circle within which three
comma-shapes lay eye-to-tail. Since Hachiman was generally considered to
be the patron of sea adventurers and pirates (the ivako), it is possible that
Sho Toku fancied himself one of these fearless sea barons and proposed to
emulate them in making himself a power on the high seas.
The invasion of Kikai Island was not difficult, for it lay nearby,
virtually unpopulated and undeveloped. The young king nevertheless
treated the expedition as a great success; an officer was appointed to hold
the island in the king's interest; the Asato Hachiman Shrine was erected at
Naha in token of gratitude; and Hachiman's crest (the three-comma mitsu-
domoe) was adopted as the crest of the royal house.
This much, and no more, the conventional histories tell us. Future
studies may bring evidence that Sho Toku had indeed attempted to link the
fortunes of his principality with those of the powerful wako, the freebooters
and buccaneers who were terrorizing the seaboard provinces of China.
Whatever his motivation, it became evident at once that he did not enjoy
support among his chief officers at Shuri.
Kikai Island had no economic value. No new resources and no
important harbors were acquired by Sho Toku's expedition. The whole
adventure proved a drain on the Chuzan treasury without adequate return.
Kanemaro, the royal treasurer, and a number of other important figures
withdrew from the court and retired to their estates in the countryside.
Tradition says that the headstrong young king about this time became
enamored of the chief priestess of Kudaka Island, to which he had gone on
pilgrimage, and that while he dallied with her, far from the court at Shuri, a
conspiracy ripened into open rebellion. This led to the king's death in his
twenty-ninth year.

THE "SECOND SHO DYNASTY" AND ITS

FOUNDER, SHO EN
Kanemaro, the old treasurer who had served two kings, assumed the royal
prerogatives in 1469 and adopted the name Sho En. His family maintained
the succession thereafter for more than four hundred years. Official histories
—written under the patronage of Sho En's descendents—say that he was
prevailed upon to accept the throne because of popular acclaim. Little is
said of the mystery which shrouds Sho Toku's death, and the traditional
account may be taken to mean simply that Sho En's partisans outnumbered
the partisans of the late king among territorial lords and disgruntled officers
at court.
Kanemaro ranks with Satto and Hashi as a strong, capable ruler. Sho
Toku's family was set aside. His heirs were barred forever from high
government office and from marriage into the new royal family, the
"Second Sho Dynasty." With Sho En, the government of Okinawa began to
be shifted from the personal rule of a gifted individual to an institutional
basis. This enabled the dynastic line to survive until the overwhelming
pressure of external events swept the tiny kingdom out of existence in the
19th century.
We know little more of Kanemaro's personal life and character than
we do of his strong predecessors. In recounting the traditional story of Sho
En we must go back a little.
He is said to have been the son of a farmer who lived on Iheya Island,
a few miles northwest of Okinawa. When he was about twenty years of age
(the story goes) he lost his parents. He undertook to support his uncle and
aunt, his elder sister, and a five-year-old brother. A local girl had become
his wife when both were in their early youth. He was an exceptionally
skilled farmer, and his meager land yielded more than his neighbors could
extract from better soil and larger holdings.
This proved disastrous at the time; during a year of drought he was
accused of stealing water, a capital crime in communities which depend
upon communal resources. His life was in danger; leaving his family, he
slipped away from Iheya and crossed the channel to the village of Ginama,
near the northern tip of Okinawa. Here he lived for five or six years, but
again fell foul of his neighbors. The reasons are not known; we may
surmise that he was both ambitious and talented, and he may have been
intolerant of the shortcomings and dullness of fishing-village life. From
Ginama he went down to Shuri and found employment in the household of
Sho Taikyu, who was then the Prince of Goeku.
As the years passed his talents attracted attention: from one position of
trust to another he rose steadily in favor. Here in Shuri and Naha he could
give play to his skills as a manager. When Taikyu became king, Kanemaro
was taken into the royal household organization. Ultimately he became the
king's treasurer.
This meant that the excessive expenditures made by Taikyu on behalf
of temples, shrines, and ceremonies passed through Kanemaro's hands.
None knew better than he the state of the Okinawan economy, the total
revenues of foreign trade, and the probable effects of unlimited and
injudicious spending. When his patron Taikyu died, Kanemaro was
expected to carry on management of the royal finance. We can only guess
that he disapproved of Sho Toku's military adventure to Kikai, and that the
headstrong young king paid little attention to his treasurer's conservative
advice.
Kanemaro by this time had an estate of his own in the countryside, and
to this he withdrew after resigning his offices at court. Influential officers
nevertheless continued to seek him out for advice and guidance, and it may
well be that here in the seclusion of his farmhouse the plot was hatched
which led to Sho Toku's downfall.
Sho En applied at once to the Ming court for recognition and
investiture and took steps to enhance the prestige and authority of his family
among his fellow countrymen. A handsome tomb was constructed on a high
promontory at the southern tip of Iheya-Izena Island to hold the bones of his
parents. His sister was appointed chief noro or high priestess in Iheya,
founding a line of noro in which the succession continued into the 20th
century. Traditional accounts supplied Sho En with "royal" ancestry by
asserting that he was in fact descended from the lost King Gihon, who had
vanished in the forest nearly two centuries before Kanemaro's birth. This we
can dismiss as the fabrication of myth-makers. Sho En worshipped his
father's spirit as King of Iheya, a proper gesture of filial piety, but took care
that due reverence was shown for all his royal predecessors, including those
of the "First Sho Dynasty," which he had displaced.
Kanemaro's first wife, the wife of his youth, had died or had been set
aside at an unknown time before he became prominent at Shuri. His second
wife, named Yosoidon, gave birth to a son when she was twenty-one years
of age, seven years before her husband became king. This lad was only
thirteen when the old king his father died in 1477. Again there was tension
at court, for once more the succession was in dispute. Sho En's younger
brother Seni was made king, but Yosoidon, the queen mother, was not
content to see her son set aside in this fashion.
What now followed is obscured in the traditional accounts. It is related
that Sho En's eldest daughter occupied the high office of chief noro at the
royal court. She presently received a "divine message" which advised her
uncle Seni to abdicate, and this he did in 1477 after reigning no more than
six months. Yosoidon's son, a boy of fourteen years, now became king,
inaugurating the longest and most prosperous reign in the history of
Okinawa.
 SHO SHIN'S REIGN:
THE "GREAT DAYS OF CHUZAN"

We must surmise that in this instance the struggle for power was confined to
members of Sho En's family and that it had a relatively peaceful outcome.
Korean court annals preserve a commentary on the Chuzan court at this
time, noting that on Okinawa the queen mother was a powerful and
ambitious woman who dominated the scene at Shuri for many years after
her son had become nominal ruler.

The abdicated king, Seni, took the title Prince of Goeku, and it was
arranged that his daughter should marry her cousin, the new king, young
Sho Shin. Presently a son was born to the union, and given the title Prince
of Urasoe, but he was fated never to reach the throne.
Sho Shin ruled for half a century. These were the great days of
Chuzan; Okinawa was indeed an oasis of peace and relative prosperity at a
moment in history when most of Asia was torn by war. The militant forces
of Islam were moving eastward, crushing successively the old Hindu states
of India and of Java and Sumatra, and moving up into Mindanao and Luzon
in the Philippines. There were incessant wars among the petty states of
Southeast Asia, where Burma, Siam, Cambodia, and Annam struggled
among themselves. The coasts of China were harried by pirates, who
plundered cities lying well inland from the open sea. Japan was in a state of
anarchy, its cities gutted by fire and the countryside laid waste by wars
among the barons. Each of these areas was soon to be hard-pressed by the
European Christians in search of souls, spices, and gold.
 For a century after Sho Shin's accession, Okinawa lay untouched by
this turmoil and confusion. We do not know how large the population was,
but it is certain that it did not at any time match the population of minor
cities in China or Japan in that day, and may not have exceeded one
hundred thousand persons. The king and his successors attempted no
conquests and entered into no alliances beyond the mild obligations implied
in the Chinese tributary system. These, we have seen, were scarcely more
than payments for license to trade. It is apparent from the records that
Okinawan traders were welcomed in all the ports they sought to enter from
Japan and Korea southward to the Indies.
Okinawan farmers and fishermen were no doubt as poor then as they
have continued to be in the centuries since, but they were no longer
harassed by local feuds among the territorial lords. The townsmen, the
merchant-mariners, the anji, and the courtiers who lived in and near Shuri
and the port of Naha were sharing in benefits which came with the gradual
accumulation of wealth based in the first instance upon seaborne trade, and
in the second upon the goods and services required to maintain the court
and gentry. Under Sho Shin the organization of Okinawa's economy and
administration assumed a form which it was to maintain in principle until
1879, though in practice Japanese pressure in time compelled many
essential modifications.
To commemorate the thirtieth year of Sho Shin's reign, a monument
was erected in the palace grounds, and upon this were inscribed a list of
achievements which the king's men believed to be the Eleven Distinctions
of the Age. They are a noteworthy reflection of contemporary life, and of
the standards by which the court was guided. They can be summarized:

1. Buddhism was patronized by the king.

2. Taxes were lightened and interclass strife abated.
3. Royal control was asserted and confirmed in Yaeyama and Miyako.
4. Private ownership and use of arms were done away with.
5. Law and order were established throughout the country.
6. Shuri was beautified with parks.
7. Places of amusement and pleasure were provided at Shuri.
8. Works of art were introduced at the palace, and music was
patronized.
9. Relations with China were strengthened.
10. Chinese utensils and books were introduced.
11. A palace in Chinese style was built at Shuri Castle.

Four of these Distinctions of the Age have to do with government.

Whereas Sho En had promoted economic development through land
reclamation, irrigation works, road-building and foreign trade, Sho Shin's
reign was noteworthy for change and improvement in administration. As
the court increased in wealth, the independence and power of the anji
diminished; the days of individual leadership based upon the king's personal
capacities were giving way to institutionalized authority, and paradoxically
this became possible because of the length and quality of Sho Shin's reign.
Hitherto rank, authority, and wealth rested on divisions of the land,
and upon services performed at Shuri and Naha in the king's name. He was
in effect merely the most important and powerful among the many anji
descended from chieftains of the 13 th and 14th centuries. Some of these
lords lived at Shuri near the king's household, and a few held their lands
directly from him, but at the opening of Sho Shin's reign the majority lived
at castle-strongholds within their own hereditary estates. Each maintained
his own men-at-arms, officers, and servants, and drew his economic support
from the labor of hard-working serfs who cultivated his lands or fished in
nearby waters. The common people were not free to move about, but were
expected to remain on the land unless summoned to work at Naha or Shuri
in their lord's interest. There was household work to be done at Shuri if the
anji was a member of the court, or there might be work to be done near the
waterfront, at the warehouses, or on the trading ships in which the anji had
an interest.
Under these conditions every lord who had large landholdings and
many retainers had to be considered potential antagonists to the royal
household and court, or possible rivals to the king during recurrent
succession crises. Traditional rivalries ran deep among the anji, who had
from time beyond record formed coalitions in struggles among themselves
and had demonstrated their independence under the reign of a dissolute king
or the weak reign of a child.
Sho Shin and his advisors proposed to forestall the dangers of
insurrection. They were strong enough to compel the anji throughout
Okinawa to accept a major reorganization which substantially reduced the
threat of armed defiance.
It was first ordered that swords were no longer to be worn as personal
equipment. Next, the anji were ordered to bring all weapons to Shuri, to be
stored in a warehouse under supervision of one of the king's officers.
Finally the lords themselves were asked to move into Shuri to take up
residence near the palace. More than fifty did so at once, each leaving a
chief vassal (known as the anji-okite) to administer the country estate from
which economic support must continue to come and to serve as a link
between outlying areas and the castle town. This move loosened the ties of
the anji with his ancestral holdings and in time led him to identify his
interests as much with Shuri as with the land of his fathers. After a few
years—a transitional period—the court succeeded in placing in the country
districts its own officers and agents, known as jito-dai, who carried out
administrative orders and kept an eye on the anji's deputies.
Students of Japanese history note these things with interest, for they
antedate by one century the so-called "Sword Edicts" issued by Toyo-tomi
Hideyoshi in 1586 and 1587, and by two centuries the edict of 1634
wherewith Tokugawa Iemitsu compelled the feudal lords of Japan to
maintain residence at the shogun's capital.
Success in bringing about these radical changes testifies to a firm
hand, tact, and foresight in the royal court. To minimize friction among
lords whose families perpetuated traditional rivalries, the castle town itself
was divided into three wards, one for the anji from southern Okinawa (the
old Nanzan principality), one for the anji of central Okinawa (Chuzan), and
one for the men who came down from the north. It is noteworthy that
through fear of civil disturbances in the town, or through inability to
enforce the order without provoking rebellion, some of the anji of the old
Hokuzan district were allowed to remain at their homes on Motobu
Peninsula and elsewhere in the north, but the king's third son was made
Warden of the North to ensure order there.
 Carrying the administrative reorganization further, the old divisions of
the Three Principalities (the Sanzan) were transformed and renamed
Shimajiri, Nakagami, and Kunigami, with subdivision according to the
estates and territories of the local anji. Thus the court officers, whose first
allegiance was to the royal house at Shuri, lived side by side with the estate
managers responsible to landholders at the court. Gradually the officers of
the crown superseded the local representative, but a large degree of
autonomy remained with the village communities.
Shuri was transformed. Accommodations had to be found for the lords
and for their principal retainers, for their families and for their servants.
Masons, carpenters, and metalworkers hastened to construct suitable houses
under the shadow of the castle and to surround them with appropriate
gardens and high stone walls. Parks, lakes, and pleasant groves were laid
out at the king's order. New temples, bridges, pavilions, and monumental
gateways were constructed.
Each anji drew from the resources of his own country estate to
maintain his town establishment. This meant that the countryside economy
was stimulated; new areas were opened for cultivation to meet the needs of
Shuri and Naha, and the products of forest, farm, and fishing village moved
steadily into the administrative center. Skilled craftsmen and artists took on
more apprentice-students to meet the demands of the building program. An
unprecedented degree of technical specialization became possible. At last
the Okinawans themselves began to produce luxury goods of their own
design, inspired by imported objects, but bearing the stamp of Okinawan
taste and craftsmanship. It is at this period that the use of gold, silver,
lacquer, and silk came into fairly common use among the townsmen. New
techniques in the cultivation of the silkworm and new weaving implements
were imported. Ornamental hairpins of the finest design and workmanship
became an essential part of every aristocrat's costume after 1509, for these
were regulated anew as important symbols of rank and privilege in the court
hierarchy. There was an elaboration of ceremony which required great
attention to matters of etiquette and deportment.
In requiring the anji to move to Shuri and to break with tradition, Sho
Shin's counselors had to compensate in some way for the difficulties which
so drastic a change entailed. Intermarriage among the families of the anji
from different parts of the island was encouraged as a means of blurring
lines dividing important regional factions at the court. Royal dccrees
banned the ancient custom of self-sacrifice and suicide whereby faithful
retainers sought to follow their lords in death.
Okinawa was entering upon a century of creative activity. The
elaborate new court ceremonies, borrowed from China and modified,
required construction of a large new palace in Chinese style. The stone
"Dragon Pillars" set before the entrance to the main audience hall reflect
cosmopolitan experience. The prototype is not found in Japan or China, but
in the temples and palace compounds of Cambodia and Siam. Enkaku
Temple, constructed in 1492 under the supervision of an immigrant
Japanese priest, was patterned after the great Enkaku-ji which stands in the
seaside groves of Kamakura in Japan. In 1496 the Sogen Temple on the
highroad to Naha was enlarged and embellished by massive stone gates.
Tablets dedicated to the souls of all previous kings were installed within,
and all persons—including the king himself—were required to dismount
and pass these gates on foot as a sign of respect. Enkaku-ji's great bell was
cast in 1496, and a finely-sculptured stone bridge was laid across the pond
before the main gate two years later.
Sculptors in stone and wood were engaged in decorating palaces,
shrines, and bridges, though they were handicapped by lack of suitable
materials native to the island. The palace grounds were surrounded by
finely-laid stone embankments and embellished with red-lacquered fencing
about the royal park. In 1501, stonemasons completed the austere, pebble-
strewn mausoleum enclosure known as the Tama Udon, where eighteen
kings, their queens, and royal children of the Second Sho dynasty were to
be entombed thereafter.*
Reverence for deceased ancestors was of supreme importance in
Okinawan religious life and provided a strong conservative element and
continuity in social institutions. It was this, perhaps, which prompted the
Queen Mother Yosoidon to lavish so much attention on the rebuilding and
enlargement of the royal tombs and the Sogen-ji.
Traditions and forms of ancestor worship offered one of the most
serious difficulties which had to be resolved when the anji were called into
Shuri. Each of the lords as a matter of course expected to continue to
worship at his ancestral hearth and tombs, but this created risks; a lord
dissatisfied with Shuri life or disgruntled under exacting court controls
might find occasion to return to his lands on pretext of worship, and use the
opportunity to foment trouble. An ingenious solution was found; it was
arranged that each lord would send a representative annually to perform the
required ceremonies at the country place while at the capital itself a place
for "worship from afar" (yohai-jo) was established. One yohai-jo was
established in each of the city's wards. To this the lord could repair, and
there, facing toward his distant home, he could perform the appropriate
rituals. In time each of these worship-sites became a major shrine.
Sho Shin sought now for the first time to systematize the indigenous
cult and to bring the influential noro under the supervision of the Shuri
administration. Hitherto they had been autonomous, serving only individual
households and interrelated villages; they were not thought to be
representative of a national cult and had no island-wide organization.4
The rites of Chinese ancestor worship were studied and practiced
faithfully at the settlement of Kume-mura by the descendents of the
immigrants of 1393 and by the Okinawan youths put to school there at the
Confucian temple, but there is little evidence that the practice of these
imported rituals (so largely of literary content and association) was known
beyond the Shuri-Naha complex of settlements. Throughout the countryside
and on the adjacent islands the ancient pantheism and rituals of the noro
priestesses remained predominant.
The chief noro of the king's own household was known as the Kikoe-
Ogimi, who held rank and prestige very nearly equal to that of the king. We
have seen, for instance, that Sho Shin himself owed his position to the
successful intervention of his sister, the chief noro, in 1477. By tradition the
kikoe-ogimi was always a sister, daughter, aunt, or niece of the reigning
monarch. The Chief Noro of Iheya Island (Iheya no Amaganushi) ranked
second in the kingdom by virtue of her succession to Sho En's elder sister.
Sho Shin removed the residence of the kikoe-ogimi from the interior of
the palace to a site just outside the palace gates, and in 1519 constructed a
high-walled park to enclose the sacred symbolic hearth which she attended.
Before it stood a superbly fashioned gate of massive stone, the Sonohyan
Utaki, which reproduced in finest detail every feature of a Chinese gateway
of timber and thatch.
Concurrently the chief priestess was granted authority to confirm the
village noro in local office throughout the islands, issuing certificates from
Shuri. Thirty-three noro held appointment from the king; others were
nominated by the district officers (the jito) from among the noro in the
communities under their control. Lands were set aside permanently in each
locality to provide income for the village priestesses. Individual households
were free to name their own custodians of the hearth fire from among the
women of the family. Between the kikoe-ogimi at Shuri and the community
noro stood intermediary priestesses known as o-amu shirare or kimi-bae.
Although Shuri did not interfere with the choice of hearth-fire
custodians within each individual household, it would appear that, in
practice, friction developed between the community noro holding official
appointment and the representatives of individual households. According to
Spencer, this encouraged the community noro to develop a sense of mutual
interest—as a class—and from that time until the present day the village
noro have drawn together in common meetings and ceremonial occasions.
An indigenous literary tradition began to take form. The Japanese
kana syllabary had long been in use at court. Since Japanese and Okinawan
speech descend from an archaic Japanese parent language, the kana
provided a more supple means of record than the forbiddingly complex
Chinese characters, despite the fact that Ryukyuan possesses several sounds
for which no equivalents exist in Japanese and for which there were no
kana symbols. Under Sho En and Sho Shin the Okinawans became
increasingly self-conscious and interested in their own history and
traditions. In 1532 the traditional chants, poems, and prayers of the high
priestesses of the royal court were recorded under the title Omoro Soshi.
This collection in its later recensions became the most prized literary
treasure of the kingdom, earnestly studied and proudly compared with the
poems of the ancient Manyo collection and chants preserved in the Engi-
shiki of Japan.
Sho Shin enriched and enlarged the temples founded by Taikyu. They
were the seats of learning at Shuri and the chief agencies through which
Okinawa drew upon the arts and crafts of Japan and Korea. The Koreans at
this time were masters of ceramic techniques and of the arts of metal-
casting. The royal court at Seoul patronized the printing of Buddhist texts
which were supreme examples of the art of paper-making, block-printing,
and calligraphy.
Both the King of Chuzan and the shogun at Kyoto sent embassies to
ask for copies of great works which were being issued from the Korean
presses. In 1462 Okinawan representatives returned to Shuri bearing a copy
of the Buddhist canon, in an edition probably dating from 1458, which is
said to have consisted of 110 less than seven thousand volumes. This was
placed in the Tenkaizen-ji; twice again, in 1479 and 1483, Sho Shin
successfully petitioned the Korean king to grant him copies of great texts in
fine editions, to be housed in four of the new temples at Shuri.
The development of Shuri Castle and the palace grounds about it
deserved well to be numbered among the Eleven Distinctions of the Age.
As a royal residence site it was unsurpassed, and into its development the
Okinawans poured all the imagination, skill, and wealth at their command.
It must not be compared with the massive grandeur of the Forbidden City at
Peking, for in total area it would scarcely fill one of the minor parks of that
great complex. Nevertheless, in aesthetic fitness for its purpose, it perfectly
expressed the character of a mild and generous people who were proud of
their tiny island kingdom and looked upon the sea as the life-giving source
of commerce.
In Sho Shin's time immense trees clothed the slopes of the rugged hill.
Massive walls of cut stone rose one above another to provide terracing
among the grey outcroppings of the natural rock. On the level oval which
crowned the summit stood the palace Audience Hall of State, flanked by
lesser halls constructed for the reception and entertainment of ambassadors.
Concentric walls, lacquered fencing, and many gates provided garden
settings for subsidiary buildings and the private appartments of the king, his
wives, concubines, and courtiers. The whole complex faced westward,
although any point at the summit commanded a panoramic view of sky and
sea and distant islands, and of forested hills and cultivated fields to north
and south.* To the southwest, just below the level on which the palace
stood, lay the quiet enclosure of the royal tombs, shaded by great
evergreens; to the right lay Ohana-batake (Flowery Grove), in which stood
the sacred hearth-shrine watched over by the chief noro. To the north,
sheltered well below the summit, lay the enclosure and buildings of the
Enkaku Temple, its quiet pond fed by clear cold waters of an inexhaustible
spring pouring down from the palace grounds. Beyond the principal
watchgate, the outer walls, and the artificial Dragon Lake lay the walled
gardens and homes of princes and officers of state.
 The castle town was in effect a world set apart from the port below at
Naha Harbor, from the foreign settlements at Tomari, and from the fishing
and farming villages scattered over the countryside. Prestige of residence at
Shuri in the 20th century had its origin in these 15th-century days.
Residence at Shuri marked a man as a member of the court or one
associated with it in daily service; residence at Tomari suggested
scholarship and association with the Chinese living there. The Naha man
was presumed to be less conservative, to be more knowledgeable in the
latest songs and dances, the newest patterns and styles of dress, the latest
siano;. Here lived the venturesome seafarers, the traders who matched their
wits with Korean sailors, the Chinese merchants driving their hard bargains,
and the Japanese who sailed these seas as privateers.
Neither China nor Japan exercised significant direct influence upon
the common people who lived far from the capital. Foreign contributions
were introduced at Shuri and Naha and from there filtered into the rural
districts. This process of cultural diffusion was accelerated atter the
territorial lords came up to live near the court, for each anji maintained a
household staff recruited from his own estates. After periods of service at
Naha or Shuri such young men in service returned to marry and settle in the
home village. They took with them new ideas, new songs, new dances, as
well as material gifts, for these cost nothing to learn and nothing to impart.
The outer islands of the Ryukyu chain began to come more directly
under Shuri's control during the long and prosperous reign of Sho Shin.
They were of growing importance to the overseas trade, for ships out of
Naha began to frequent the anchorage at Miyako and the reef-sheltered
coves of Yaeyama. In 1486 a series of disruptive quarrels broke out among
the petty lords who held sway on Yaeyama, and at last, in 1500, Sho Shin
sent a military force to restore order, to establish a liaison office on Miyako,
and to bring Kume Island under firm control. A similar liaison office was
set up on Yaeyama in 1524.
Sho Shin's long reign came to an end in 1526. He had governed for
fifty years, for so long a time, indeed, that his officers and men had
difficulty in finding documents which prescribed the proper rituals with
which to celebrate the succession and the forms required by the embassy
which must be sent to China to ask for investiture of the new king, Sho Sei.
Okinawa had reached the peak of its prosperity, and had perfected in
general terms the institutions and social forms which were to remain intact
until the late 19th century. The islands were independent. They were in
constant communication and at peace with neighboring states. Τhe
Okinawans were in a happy position of freedom to adopt what they wanted,
and to remain indifferent—or at best only mildly curious —about foreign
artifacts and institutions for which they felt no pressing need. China loomed
as the neighbor of unquestioned superiority, and they were in close and
constant communication with Japan, but were overwhelmed by neither.
 During the three reigns which followed (i.e., from 1526 until 1589),
the peak of prosperity was passed. Consumption of wealth at Shuri and
Naha far outstripped the development of Okinawa's own meager resources.
Maintenance of the high living standards achieved under Sho Shin
depended upon the expansion of profitable commerce, but (as we shall see
in the next chapter) trade with the south began to be affected adversely by
the wars besetting Southeast Asia and the disastrous intrusion of European
adventurers in Asiatic waters. The shadow of a militant and aggressive
Japan began to fall across the little seafaring kingdom. Every excuse had to
be found to increase the profit in trade with China and the number of
trading missions which could be sent legitimately to the Chinese court.
Okinawa was never again to know the halcyon days of Sho Shin's reign.

OKINAWA AND THE OUTER ISLANDS:

MIYAKO, YAEYAMA, AND AMAMI OSHIMA5
It is well here to leave the mainstream of Okinawan history for a few pages
to note Shuri's relations with the outer islands of the archipelago. Miyako's
principal settlement, Hirara, lies 176 sea miles from Naha; Ishigaki, the one
settlement of consequence in Yaeyama, is 262 miles distant; and Naze, the
port-town of the Amami group of islands, lies 220 miles away, north from
Shuri. It was natural that these should develop as the government grew in
strength and prestige on Okinawa, and Shuri moved to gain control of
smaller islands along the principal shipping lanes to the China coast and to
Japan. These outer islands have presented peculiar administrative,
economic, and social problems in the years since World War II, and on
these 20th-century problems the early history of the islands throws much
light. Since they were relatively undisturbed by direct attack in 1945, there
was less physical loss and less displacement of traditional values by a
postwar occupation. They hold much promise for the archeologist, the
linguist, the folklorist who would record the last faint evidence of archaic
life in the Ryukyu island chain.
Certain characteristics of legendary accounts and the early historic
period in Miyako and in Yaeyama are shared with the traditions of ancient
Okinawa, but they show a time lag of about two centuries in their evolution.
That is to say, an analogy can be drawn between the traditions of the first
settlement, the introduction and development of artifacts, economic skills,
and community organization in Miyako, and the traditions of Okinawa in
the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. Butin Miyako these things are assigned
dates corresponding to the 14th and 15th centuries. The Yamato people in
Japan passed from a period of intense rivalry among quasi-independent
clans to a period of unified central government in the early years of the 7th
century. The process becomes apparent in Okinawa after the 12th century,
but the inhabitants of Miyako were not brought to a comparable state of
organization and economic development until the 14th and 15th centuries.
We are sufficiently close to prehistory in Miyako and Yaeyama to discern
rather clearly the evolution of institutions which elsewhere in the northern
islands are deeply obscured by the passage of time.
The inhabitants of 14th-century Yaeyama and Miyako lived in almost
neolithic simplicity; they had few metal tools, knew little of shipbuilding,
and eked out a livelihood by the most primitive agricultural methods. It is of
considerable interest to note that the legendary figures to whom they
attribute the introduction of more sophisticated arts, crafts, and
governmental forms appear to have come from China, Japan, and Okinawa
quite late, and usually quite by accident. The time lag in development grew
less as communication increased among the islands. Major changes took
place during the reign of Sho Shin and his successors, but even today, in the
20th century, there is a notable delay in effecting changes decreed at the
center of authority on Okinawa.
One consequence of this has been the development at Shuri and Naha,
long ago, of a distinct attitude of superiority, of condescension toward the
interests and qualities of the inhabitants of the Outer Islands (Saki-shima),
as the Yaeyama and Miyako groups are called. As the Chinese and Japanese
have looked always upon the Okinawans as unsophisticated rustics, so the
people of Okinawa have always looked upon the Saki-shima people as
socially and intellectually inferior "country cousins." This has had political
consequences which continue to be felt. Conversely, a melancholy sense of
isolation and a longing for recognition at the capital permeates the songs,
dances, and folk tales of Saki-shima.
There is reason to believe that trading vessels made Miyako and
Yaeyama points of reference along the coastal sea-routes at least as early as
the 13 th century. Chinese records say that Miyako sailors en route to
Malacca were shipwrecked on the Chekiang coast in 1317, but we may
suspect that these were ships from Okinawa which had made their last
landfall at Miyako before disaster overtook them. It is said that Yaeyama
paid tribute to Shuri as early as 1390.
We have noted that between 1486 and 1500 Sho Shin's officers
attempted to intervene in local conflicts. Under the leadership of Oyake
Akahachi the people of Yaeyama resisted Shuri, and a chieftain named
Untura put up a fight on the neighboring island of Yonaguni. Both were
finally overwhelmed by an invasion led from Miyako under a chieftain
named Nakasone, and he in turn submitted to Shuri. Order was brought out
of confusion; a resident officer from Shuri was placed in charge of Miyako,
with a suitable number of aides and interpreters of the dialects to be found
in Saki-shima.
Officers were sent down from the capital for three-year tours of duty,
during which they acquired local wives and established local families.
When they returned to Shuri, however, they were forbidden to bring these
families with them to Okinawa. Exceptions were sometimes made. If an
officer had no heir at Shuri, he was permitted to take with him one son only;
all other members of his Saki-shima family had to remain behind.
Mountainous Yaeyama has relatively few legendary and quasi-historic
monuments, but the flat, dry countryside of Miyako is rich in traditional
sites, marked now by sacred woods and groves. Here and there in large
sheltering caves are ancient wells and springs upon which the community
must depend for its survival. Near the caves are ruined enclosures referred
to now as "castle" sites, although they appear to represent little more than
rough walls thrown up to protect the dwellings of local chieftains. There are
many tombs; some resemble the dolmens and sarcophagi of Bronze-age
Japan. Others, of quite recent date, resemble the tombs of Okinawa and of
the China coast. There are also enclosures within which the dead at one
time were exposed to the sun, the wind, and the rain.
Miyako legends reflect late settlement in these remote islands, a period
of barbarous lawlessness extending well into the 14th century, with
conditions of unrelieved poverty. The early culture heroes are aliens who
introduced new tools or weapons and new modes of living from overseas,
or natives who traveled far abroad to acquire wealth and strange or precious
objects. A third type is represented by the prominent reformers who
endeavored to "correct" local folkways by reconciling Miyako practices
with the more sophisticated ways of Okinawa. The villain of song and
legend is often an intruder from Yaeyama or the traveling merchant-mariner
or pirate from Japan or Okinawa, here today and gone tomorrow, leaving
behind him broken hearts and many unprotected children.
 It is said that in the old days only two general classes of people were
recognized on Miyako; the sima nu pitu were literally the "island people,"
to be distinguished from the yuku-bitu ("good people"), who were the later,
more sophisticated arrivals.
Most of the culture heroes came down from the north. The "Lord of
Uputaki Castle" is said to have appeared in Miyako "about 600 years ago"
(i.e., sometime in the 14th or 15th centuries) and to have introduced new
farming techniques. He dug two good wells, which are still in use, and in
general raised standards of living among his own people- After his death the
neighboring settlements turned upon his followers, killed them, and took
Uputaki Castle. In later years the village was revived by a farmer named
Pigitari Yunun-usu, whose successes led to deification and posthumous
worship.
The Lord of Takagoshi Castle also is said to have arrived "about 600
years ago" and to have introduced new methods of rice culture and cattle-
breeding. In association with two other anji (one of them a woman) he
attempted to resist the ambitious Lord Yonahabaru of Hirara, who proposed
to conquer all the island group. Takagoshi Anji was betrayed and committed
suicide rather than fall into the hands of his enemy. He was deified and is
worshipped today at the sacred grove of Takagoshi. In a similar manner
Ungusuku Kanedono is worshipped in nearby Tarama Island in gratitude for
his skill in making farming implements and the instruction he gave in their
proper use.
One tradition tells of seven Chinese brothers arriving from the west
who introduced such noteworthy improvements in daily living that they are
worshipped today at seven different sites in Miyako. We may doubt that
these were brothers, or we may suspect that one immigrant Chinese is
worshipped under slightly different names at seven places, or we may
imagine that the crew of a Chinese vessel driven on the island decided to
settle there. The fact remains that the people of Miyako were raised from a
state of primitive simplicity by late arrivals from the north and west, and
that a lively sense of gratitude preserves the memory of individuals who
took the lead in promoting communitv welfare.
Sunakawa Otono was deified in recognition of his leadership in
introducing Japanese shipbuilding techniques, and two villages which
specialize in boat construction are to be found today near the grove in
which he is worshipped.
It is not surprising to discover that a number of leading families trace
their descent from immigrants from Kume and Okinawa.
Of the latter-day heroes—the men who sought to reconcile Miyako
folkways with the more advanced customs of Okinawa proper—we have
the story of Nema Ikari, who deplored local attitudes toward ancestors. This
worthy made his way up to Naha, studied the proper rites, and returned to
introduce new forms of burial and worship and new types of tomb
construction on Miyako.
Although expressions of gratitude and appreciation form such
admirable themes in Miyako folklore, there were other themes of cruelty,
revenge and counter-revenge, attack, and betrayal. Miyako legends are
suffused with sadness, and poetic themes and songs are preoccupied with
the bitterness of poverty, isolation, disappointment, and hopeless aspiration.
It is noteworthy how many heroes are men who died in overwhelming
disaster, and how often the songs and stories tell of tragedy of separation, of
the dismal fate which befell the children of seafaring fathers who never
returned, and of women abandoned by adventurers who came from
overseas, stayed briefly, and moved on to new conquests or returned to
official duties on Okinawa.
There is a legend attached to the Kubaka seaside castle ruins which
tells of the daughter of the Lord of Kubaka, whose husband, an Okinawan
named Tamagushiku, once overheard her address her child as the "son of a
wanderer." In anger he declared that he was a man of great importance as a
trader to the distant southern islands. Taking the child, he returned to
Okinawa. There the boy in time became a great lord, but the disconsolate
mother wandered often on the shore below the castle walls, praying for
death, which came at last one day to release her when she was swept into
the sea by a great tidal wave.
Another tale with a bitter ending concerns the rivalry of two Miyako
women for the love of a Japanese; when one produced a handsome son the
other brought about the boy's death in a cruel fashion.
Miyako was brought under Shuri's control by conquest, and the theme
of subordination and neglect thereafter colors many stories, exemplified
best perhaps in the tale of Mahomaru, a beautiful daughter of the rebellious
Nakaya Kanemaru. In reprisal upon her father she was forced to go up to
Shuri to become one of the concubines of the king (Sho Shin). She became
pregnant, but instead of winning protection by the king she was sent back to
Miyako, the victim of jealous court ladies who considered her of inferior
origin. En route she was shipwrecked and died on Terama Island, where she
was enshrined.
The growth of communication with Okinawa in the 15th century
sharpened the rivalry of competing chieftains on Miyako and Yaeyama. The
contest in Miyako came to a climax in the rivalry of two families. One of
them, the Kaneshigawa, were a shipbuilding clan of the Sunakawa area, and
were said to have had many ships engaged in profitable trade with Naha.
The other was the Nakasone family. Late in the 15th century, Akahachi, the
principal chieftain on Yaeyama, proposed to invade Miyako, taking
advantage of the division there, but hearing of this, Nakasone Toyomioya
organized a skillful counterattack, invaded Yaeyama, overwhelmed
Akahachi, and crossed over to Yonaguni Island beyond. There he
overwhelmed the chieftain Untura and seized Untura's daughter as a prize.
This expedition was the supreme event in Saki-shima history and
forms the theme of its principal legends, songs, and dramatic dances
retelling Nakasone's exploits and the fate of his captives. Soon after his
return to Hirara, Nakasone had to face the formidable expedition sent
against Miyako by Sho Shin. Some three thousand men were in the
Okinawan force, and there could be 110 doubt as to the ultimate decision.
Nakasone therefore negotiated a surrender on terms which saved the
Miyako villagers from disaster. For this he was later deified and worshipped
at the principal shrine in the islands.
It required years to develop a satisfactory administrative relationship
between Okinawa and Miyako and to bring about unity within the island. In
1500 Nakasone was recognized as Chieftain of Miyako Island (Miyako-
jitna Kashira) and the direct administration was left in his hands. Shuri
instituted a system of rewards and punishments. Titles and honors were
devised to confirm local chieftains in landholdings they already possessed,
and merit awards enabled Shuri's representatives to divide and counter local
opposition which could not be put down by direct action.
 The Nakasone family were displaced by Meguro Mori Toyomioya
about 1530, but he had scarcely fought his way to supremacy when he was
overthrown by a youth named Yonaha Sedo Toyomioya. He proved to be the
last of the local rulers, and he too was later deified and shared honors with
Nakasone in Miyako Shrine.
In 1532 Shuri established direct control in Miyako by appointing a
magistrate from Shuri as governor of the island.
Miyako's opposition to Okinawa gradually subsided, and as the years
went by, the meager local resources were made to yield to systematic
taxation. Thanks to extreme poverty, the economy assumed a dual character.
The men took to the sea as fishermen and as crewmen needed on the far-
ranging voyages of the Naha merchantmen. The women stayed at home to
farm and to weave. Farming yielded just enough food to sustain the
population at a minimum subsistence level. Weaving techniques introduced
from Okinawa or by way of Okinawa were gradually perfected.
Late in the 16th century a native of Miyako is said to have been
aboard a vessel engaged in the China trade when it was wrecked in a great
storm. His skill in assisting in the repair and recovery of the ship was
brought to the attention of the Chinese court, which took note of it with
high praise in a dispatch to the king at Shuri. The king in turn made a grant
of land and a title to this obscure subject in Miyako. As a gesture of
gratitude the man's wife devoted immense care and skill to the development
of a weaving technique which was known to her. The product of her loom
was sent up to the royal court as a thank-offering in 1584. Its perfection
attracted attention and patronage, and in time the highly specialized fabric
known as Miyako jofu became the most valued and most priced export
commodity of Miyako, and has so remained until the present day. Its only
rival was sugar, said to have been introduced to Miyako from China about
1597, and within a few years thereafter both of these (and certain valued
shells) were required by Shuri as tax items, and by Shuri were in turn
exported to Satsuma in Kyushu for distribution in Japan.
Under Okinawan direction Miyako thus took its place in the larger
economic system. Miyako sailors were considered the most skilled and
hardy seafarers, and Miyako's place as a way station on the vital line of
communications with China was signified in the Karimata Watch Hill,
where a stone direction-marker was erected on a site from which all the
nearby islands could be kept under surveillance. From here reports were
made to the Shuri officials, giving note of all passing ships and the course
each took.
Despite its greater fertility and area, its resources in forest land and
sheltered inlets, the Yaeyama Islands never acquired the importance
assumed by Miyako in the ióth century and maintained thereafter. Some
mystery attends this: in later years it is explained that Yaeyama has had a
forbidding record of malarial fevers and snake infestation, but this
explanation does not seem to be sufficient, and the question remains
shrouded in mystery.
In concluding this comment upon Okinawa's relations with the outer
islands, it remains only to notice that while extending controls to the south,
Shuri showed comparable interest in the islands to the north, along the sea
route to Japan, but there took less action. The frontiers remained on Kikai
Island from 1486 until 1537, when an expeditionary force of fifty ships
pushed on to Amami Oshima. The occupation was temporary, and a second
force had to be dispatched three decades later, in 1571, to reassert Shuri's
claims.
It may be that the Okinawans sensed the dangers of close approach to
the main islands of Japan or were warned of them, and moved too
cautiously to establish a firm footing in these northern islands. Furthermore,
the move was made at a time of uncertainty at Shuri. Sho Shin's son ruled
from 1526 until 1556, when the throne passed to a prince who was mute.
This unfortunate circumstance proved a test of the institutional basis to
which Sho Shin had done so much to shift the royal office. A Regency
Council of Three (the Sanshikan) undertook to act in the king's behalf and
at his request. Thenceforth the council grew into the most effective and
influential institution within the administrative structure.
The mute king died in 1571. His son, Sho Ei, was the last king of a
truly independent Okinawa. His reign ended in 1588. This was a year of
ominous portent, for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, master of Japan, in the next
season sent down warning to Okinawa that he expected Shuri's coòperation
in a projected invasion of China and conquest of Asia. Here indeed was a
dilemma for a small kingdom whose commercial life and well-being
depended wholly upon the goodwill of its powerful neighbors.

OKINAWAN TRADE WITH THE INDIES AND

SOUTHEAST ASIA
Upon the first contact with the marauding Europeans in 1511, the
Okinawans began slowly to retreat from ports of Southeast Asia, trading
over shorter sea routes and in less varied goods until, in 1611, they found
themselves cut off from the south and confined to a narrow range of
commerce with China at Ch'uang-chou and with Satsuma in Japan.
Events in the 16th century proved that no prosperous trading port in
Asia was secure from the Japanese wako or the European conquistadors.
Behind the Okinawans, to the north, were the Japanese, watching with deep
concern the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English adventurers in turn
come up from India through the Indies, Malaya, the Philippines, Formosa,
and the Ryukyu Islands. The white men were willing to trade, but only on
their own terms; they gave no quarter to anyone bold enough or foolish
enough to refuse their demands. The more prosperous the port, the greater
the danger that it would be seized and sacked, or declared a possession
newly "discovered" for a Christian king.
It is to Portuguese accounts we must turn, however, for notices of the
position, the reputation, and the activities of the Okinawans 111 Southeast
Asia. Our principal sources (reproduced in annotated translations by the
Hakluyt Society) are the Suma Oriental of Thomé Pires, written about
1512-15; the Book of Duarte Barbosa, completed about 1518; and the
Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Second Viceroy of India,
prepared by his son from dispatches forwarded by the viceroy to the King
of Portugal, Dom Emmanuel. In his immense workDa Asia, Joaó de Barros
also noted that Portuguese traders were ne-countering Okinawan ships and
merchants at Patani.6
 Traders at Malacca settled in small communities having common race,
language, or national origin. Along the wharves and in the market place the
visiting Okinawans brushed shoulders with Moslems from Egypt, Aden,
and Mecca, with Abyssinian and Armenian Christians, with Persians,
Parsees from India, Turks from Asia Minor, and representatives from many
of the small kingdoms and enclaves of India. There were traders from
Ceylon, Bengal, and Burma, from Siam, Cochin-China, and Cambodia,
Java, Sumatra, Timor, and the Moluccas, Borneo and the Philippines. (Pires
names sixty nations, cities, or principalities in addition to the men of
Lequeos, or Ryukyu.)
Shipping in the roadstead was supervised on behalf of the rajah by an
Admiral of the Sea known as the Lasamane, under whose control lay the
merchants from China, "Lequeos," Cochin-China, and Champa. On shore
the foreigners were controlled by xabandares, to whom the incoming
merchants must make gifts. These agents of the rajah "have become rich
through this function, because they greatly overtax the merchants; and these
put up with everything because their profits are large and also because it is
the custom of the country to do so and endure it."7
Among the cargoes handled by the Okinawans at Malacca (according
to Portuguese accounts) were gold and copper, arms of all kinds, fine gold-
leaf and gold-dust lacquerware, excellent fans, paper, colored silks, damask,
porcelains, musk, rock-alum, grains, onions, and many other vegetables.
There is a mention of green porcelains brought in by the Okinawans
and transshipped to Bengal. Okinawan goods had a high reputation; they
were well made and, says Pires, "just as we in our kingdoms speak of
Milan, so do the Chinese and all other races speak of the Lequjos
[Ryukyus]."
It is evident from these lists that most of the Okinawan cargoes were
of goods transshipped from Japan, Korea, and China. The Malacca
merchants were aware of this, according to Pires, for: "All that comes from
the Lequos is brought by them from Japan. And the Lequeos trade with the
people of Japan in cloths, fishing-nets and other merchandise." He notes
that the Okinawans picked up cargoes not unlike the cargoes bought by
Chinese merchants, and that they took "a great deal of Bengal clothing" and
were especially fond of a heavy, brandylike Malacca wine, shipping it out in
quantity. Much of their cargo was paid for by them in gold coinage bearing
a distinctive stamp.
As for the people themselves and the distant country from which they
came, the Portuguese learned that.:

"The Lequeos are called Gores—they are known by either of these

names. Lequios is the chief one.
"The king is a heathen, and all the people too, he is a tributary vassal
of the king of the Chinese. His island is large and has many people; they
have small ships of their own type; they have three or four junks which are
continuously buying in China, and they have no more. They trade in China
and in Malacca, and sometimes on their own. In China they trade at the port
of Foqem [Fukien] which is in the land of China near Canton, a day and a
night's sail away. The Malays say to the people of Malacca that there is no
difference between Portuguese and Llequos, except that the Portuguese buy
women, which the Leqos do not.
"The Lequjos have only wheat in their country, and rice and wines
after their fashion, meat and fish in great abundance. They are great
draftsmen and armourers. They make gilt coffers, very rich and well-made
fans, swords, many arms of all kinds after their fashion. . . .
"They are very truthful men. They do not buy slaves, nor would they
sell one of their own men for the whole world, and they would die over this.
...
 "They are white men, well dressed, better than the Chinese, more
dignified. They sail to China and take merchandise that goes from Malacca
to China, and go to Japan, which is an island seven or eight days' sail
distant, and take the gold and copper in the said island in exchange for their
merchandise. The Leqios are men who sell their merchandise freely for
credit, and if they are lied to when they collect payment, they collect it
sword in hand. ...
"The chief [merchandise] is gold, copper, and arms of all kinds,
coffers, boxes . . . with gold leaf veneer, fans, wheat, and their things are
well made. They bring a great deal of gold. They are truthful men, —more
so than the Chinese—and feared. They bring a great store of paper and silk
in colours; they bring musk, porcelain, damask; they bring onions and many
vegetables.. . . The Lequos bring swords worth thirty cruzados each, and
many of them."8

Pires may have met the last Okinawans who reached Malacca, in 1511,
but the presumption must be that he prepared these notes on the basis of
inquiry made among residents of Malacca who were well acquainted with
Okinawans, who had come hitherto regularly to trade at the port. If
allowance is made for the mistake in believing some of the Japanese wares
to be products of Okinawa, the account is a fairly accurate one, though at
one point Pires relays as hearsay a story that after escape from peril at sea
the Okinawans "buy a beautiful maiden to be sacrificed and behead her on
the prow of the junk, and other things like these."
Duarte Barbosa (a cousin of the great Magellan), writing about 1518,
describes the Okinawans as "certain white folk, who they say are great and
rich merchants. . . . The Malacca people say that they are better men, and
richer and more eminent merchants than the Chins [Chinese]. Of these folk
we as yet know but little, and they have not yet come to Malacca since it
has been under the King our Lord [i.e., since 1511]."9
In preparing his Commentaries upon his father's reports, Dalboquerque
the Younger repeats most of the information supplied to Lisbon by Pires,
but discusses the location of the Ryukyus at some length, and remarks upon
difficulty in securing details:

"... they are men of very reserved speech, and do not give anyone an
account of their native affairs. . . .
"The land of these Gores is called Lequea; the men are fair; their dress
is like a cloak without a hood; they carry long swords after the fashion of
Turkish cimetars, but somewhat more narrow; they also carry daggers of
two palms' length; they are daring men and feared in this land [of Malacca].
When they arrive at any port, they do not bring out their merchandize all at
once, but little by little; they speak truthfully, and will have the truth spoken
to them. If any merchant in Malacca broke his word, they would
immediately take him prisoner. They strive to dispatch their business and
get away quickly, for they are not the men to like going away from their
own land. They set out for Malacca in the month of January, and begin their
return journey in August or September. . . ."10

In these brief notices the Portuguese accounts return again and again
to note the presence of gold bars and gold dust in the Okinawan commerce,
and of gold used in the lacquerware brought in from Naha. Their curiosity
was roused by this; perhaps these were the Pica de Oro and Rica de Plata—
the Islands of Gold and of Silver—said to lie far out in the Eastern Seas.
Pires finished his great manuscript about 1515; in 1517 he set out as
ambassador to the Emperor of China. He was escorted to Canton in a fleet
commanded by Fernaô Peres de Andrade, who ordered a subordinate
commander (Jorge Mascarenhas) to proceed with a detachment of vessels
up the coast of China to search for the fabled Ryukyu Islands. Mascarenhas
got no farther than Fukien Province, where he was trading with profit at
Amoy when orders overtook the squadron, directing him to return to
Malacca.
The Portuguese were soon trading along the China coast and
established themselves as far north as Ningpo, near the mouth of the
Yangtse. Gradually they accumulated further data concerning Okinawa. The
first book on China printed in Europe was brought out in 1569, the record
of the Dominican Father Gaspar da Cruz. In it he noted that there had been
misunderstanding concerning the location of the Ryukvus, and has this to
say:

"it is an island which standeth in the sea of China, little more or less
than thirty leagues from China itself. In this island live this people, which is
a well-disposed people, more to the white than brown.
"It is a cleanly and well-attired people; they dress their hair like
women, and tie it up on the side of their head, fastened with a silver bodkin.
Their land is fresh and fertile, with many and good waters; and it is a people
that sail very seldom although they are in the midst of the sea. They use
weapons and wear very good short swords. They were in times past subject
to the Chinas, with whom they had much communication, and therefore
they are very like the Chinas.11

FORMAL RELATIONS WITH CHINA

We have now to retrace the course of these Okinawan relations with
China, the intrusion of Japan upon this relationship, and the events which
led to the loss of independence.
The Ming records indicate that the Okinawans showed an
embarrassing eagerness to increase the frequency of tribute payments,
agreed upon in 1372, and sought every pretext to send official missions to
the Chinese capital. Indeed, for precisely five hundred years Okinawan
kings were to be the most faithful of all the subject kings, princes,
chieftains, and prelates registered as tributaries to the Chinese court.
Undoubtedly in part the Okinawans were deeply moved by a sense of moral
obligation, for they took Confucian discipline and precepts seriously; China
was the "teacher,'' upon whom they looked with veneration.
But these worthy sentiments were not unsupported by grosser
considerations. China was also one of the most populous and powerful
countries in the world, and Chinese literature, at least, was full of
sententious admonitions that all non-Chinese barbarians must tremble and
obey lest they incur the wrath of the emperor and provoke him to
expressions of reproval and acts of chastisement. Neither love nor fear were
at the heart of the matter; for the Okinawans a profitable and expanding
trade with China was vital; China was the best customer for their
commercial wares.
 For the Chinese, however, the Okinawan trade was unimportant.
Peking was in no way dependent upon commerce with the Ryukyus; the
official tribute sent over to China was of token value only, and the trade in
luxuries was of minor interest in the grand total of Chinese commerce with
foreign states and tributaries. In fact, the cost to China in entertainment for
Okinawan envoys and gifts to the Shuri court exceeded by far in value the
symbolic tribute of sulphur, shells, copper, cloth, and trained horses.
The Ming annals show clearly that the haughty bureaucrats at Peking
felt the Okinawans were importunate with their endless requests for
additional or larger missions, and that the Chinese ministers of state sought
to "regulate" and reduce the number of official exchanges with this
overeager tributary.
Had they been allowed to do so, the Okinawans might well have
sought to pay tribute annually; in the course of five centuries the periods
actually varied from two- to twenty-year intervals. The succession-ritual
missions were of unpredictable frequency; upon one occasion at least two
royal deaths and two successions were announced simultaneously, but in the
case of Sho Shin some fifty years had elapsed between his accession and his
death.
It was in the matter of congratulatory missions and condolences that
the Chinese felt the Okinawans overdid a good thing; the records suggest
that the court officials at Peking often would have been willing to accept the
will for the deed. The punctilious Okinawans endeavored to practice what
the Chinese had preached in matters of ceremonial politeness and formal
duty. They insisted that the birth of an heir to the Chinese throne or the
wedding of a crown prince or the death of an emperor required special
recognition and a special mission.
Such polite formalities covered additional opportunities for trade. Dry
entries in the Ming and Ch'ing records and in the annals of the Shuri court
indicate that the Chinese sometimes made the way difficult for the insistent
Okinawans. There was "squeeze" to pay to Chinese officials at the port of
entry and along the road to Peking. There were presents to be distributed
judiciously among the high officers at the court.
There were other troubles; in one instance (about 1477) it was charged
that the Okinawan ambassadors had killed some Chinese peasants and
burned a village somewhere along the road to Peking, but the Ming records
a few years later hint that in fact the disturbances had been caused by
Fukien Chinese who were employed in the Okinawan ambassador's suite.
This was condemned and the court officials advised the emperor to direct
the king at Shuri to employ only Okinawans henceforth in tribute missions.
On another occasion (in the reign of Sho Shi-sho) it was reported at Peking
that an Okinawan embassy had robbed a Chinese vessel on the high seas;
the ambassador was punished at Peking, but his companions—more than
sixty in number— were sent back to Shuri to be dealt with by their own
king. Shuri at once sent a new embassy to Peking to express regret.
There is considerable evidence that the Okinawans were often
accompanied by unwelcome associates on their journeys to the south and to
the Chinese court. Japanese freebooters sometimes represented themselves
as traders from the Ryukyus, capitalizing on the fair reputation which the
peaceable Okinawans enjoyed in foreign ports; sometimes Japanese,
Chinese, and Korean wako traveled aboard ships from Naha. Chinese
dwelling in the foreign settlement at Tomari signed on as crewmen, and
local coolies had to be engaged at China's port of entry to transfer baggage
overland to Peking. The Ming and Ch'ing annals reflect the trouble which
rose from this practice.
Nor were the Chinese always satisfied with the conduct of their own
ambassadors sent to Ryukyu; upon one occasion word reached the imperial
court that the Chinese envoys had accepted gifts of gold, spices, and
Japanese fans in a private capacity, and for this the emperor ordered them to
be flogged. There is one mention of eunuchs sent as a gift from Okinawa
during the reign of Yung Lo (1403-24). This gift was rejected, and the
unfortunate men were sent back to Okinawa with directions that this should
not be done again.*
From time to time it was suggested that the Chinese ambassadors need
not make the dangerous ocean voyage to Naha, but should instead hand
over the documents granting investiture at the port of exit from China,
together with customary gifts. This was unorthodox and unacceptable to the
Chinese; it may have been prompted by Shuri's desire to avoid the high cost
of entertainment which devolved upon the king's treasury while the Chinese
ambassadors were in Okinawa. At another time, when piracy was common
and the coasts of China were ravaged by freebooters, certain Chinese
officials themselves proposed to adopt this device as a means of avoiding
travel on the high seas, but this the imperial court would not allow. As a
compromise, instead, a high military officer and a military force were
substituted for the usual civil mission. They crossed to Shuri, but the
Okinawans in turn made polite objection and petitioned for the resumption
of civil missions and the dispatch of scholars rather than soldiers. The
petition was granted.
In 1471 an envoy en route to Peking was arrested, charged with
wearing robes embroidered with the design of the so-called mang dragon,
reserved in China for the exclusive use of the highest officials in the empire
and for certain ranks of the nobility. The Chuzan ambassador insisted that
he had full right to wear the robes, for they had been sent from the Chinese
emperor to the king at Shuri, whose representative he was.12
To accommodate administration at the busy port of Naha, a town
governorship was established in 1528. New buildings were erected to
accommodate Chinese envoys and traders who paused there en route to and
from Shuri, and a special pavilion in Chinese style was erected within the
palace grounds to serve as a reception hall for distinguished visitors from
Peking.
The Okinawans were zealous in the study of Chinese etiquette and
ritual; the Chinese in turn recognized and admired the fidelity with which
the island people met exacting demands made upon them by the stately
court at Peking. This reached its highest attestation in 1554 when the
emperor deigned to confer upon the king at Shuri a large tablet bearing the
inscription Shurei no Kttni (Country of Propriety). The king in turn
recognized the unparalleled honor which this implied by causing a great
gate to be erected on the approach to his castle, in which the tablet was
placed for all to see.
Okinawa was of little intrinsic interest to the sophisticated Chinese.
Envoys were directed to report on special topics from time to time, and in
1534 the ambassador Chin K'an prepared a history of the Liu Ch'iu
kingdom. Occasionally the imperial court made special grants-in-aid to the
Confucian school at Tomari, where Okinawan youths applied themselves
diligently to the study of the Chinese classics.
In 1908 E. Dennison Ross announced the discovery of a vocabulary of
the Liu Ch'iu language prepared at Peking in 1549. This interesting
fragment had been compiled for the guidance of interpreters who were
associated with the Okinawan missions in China. Similar vocabularies
offering comparative data on the Liu Ch'iu, Chinese, and Korean languages
are preserved in the Korean annals, and have been described by Frederick
Hirth.
For nearly five hundred years there was a community of Okinawan
students continuously in residence at Peking. The majority stayed two or
three years, but in exceptional cases some stayed much longer. The Chinese
government provided clothing, housing, food, and the equivalent of tuition.
There they mingled with students from other tributary states and with
Chinese youths. We must presume that they applied themselves diligently to
their books, did what they could to keep warm during the bitter, dry cold of
the Peking winters, and talked politics and government, art and poetry in the
immemorial manner of students abroad. We know that they were spirited,
forthright, and sometimes disastrously indiscreet, for on one occasion
Okinawan students were arrested, charged with improper criticism of an
imperial decree, and forthwith executed.
 Over the centuries China's purposes were well served by this foreign
student training program. Youths selected for it were outstanding among
their countrymen both in intellectual accomplishments and in social status;
they were assured of high prestige and of lifetime careers in high
government office at Shuri and Naha. They were virtually certain to incline
to China's interests in questions affecting them; they were the instruments
of cultural as well as political diplomacy.
 RELATION WITH JAPAN: TRADE AND
POLITICS
We must now go back a little to review the development of Shuri's relations
with Japan.
It will be recalled that in 1369 the Ming Emperor Hung Wu sent
envoys into states and territories adjacent to China summoning them in
haughty terms to recognize his supremacy and suzerain rights. The princes
of Okinawa and the King of Korea had responded promptly, but the envoy
sent to Japan had carried this message: "If you are friendly toward the
Government, then appear at the Court; otherwise make armed preparations
to defend yourselves. In case you attempt raid or robbery, orders will be
instantly given to start a war of subjugation. We desire you, O King, to
consider well."13 The imperial message and the Chinese envoys were
treated with a marked lack of respect in Japan. Japanese raids along the
China coast continued and increased; villages and large cities suffered
heavy losses; and normal administration was disrupted in the coastal
provinces. For a brief time the Chinese accepted "tribute" from the military
governor of Kyushu, one of the barons of western Japan, and in turn
addressed him as King, either through ignorance of his true status or (more
likely) as a means of saving the imperial face. The great HungWu
repeatedly summoned Japan to pay homage, and repeatedly the Japanese
returned arrogant replies. They were willing to trade, but they held China's
threats in open contempt, for nothing came of them; the raids on Chinese
territory spread as far south as Kwangtung Province.
 Thus matters stood unsatisfactorily for sixty years; China and Japan
were not on speaking terms, as it were, but for different reasons. China
demanded formal acknowledgment of moral and cultural superiority to
clothe all other relationships; Japan wanted trade and acceptance of political
equality in any formal exchange.
Meanwhile Okinawa was free to trade with both countries and with
Korea. Cargoes brought into Naha from the south and from China were
moved on northward, some to Korea direct, but most of them along the
Kikai and Amami Oshima route into Kagoshima. There they were again
divided; the bulk went into Satsuma's hands, but some remained in the
hands of Shuri's agents to be taken by them either to Korea (in company
with Satsuma's men) or to Kyoto.
The Daimyo of Satsuma established a trade relationship with the
Korean court in 1395. Much of the goods sent over to Seoul had come into
Kagoshima in Okinawan ships. In the interests of this highly profitable
trade the Shimazu did not hesitate to allow themselves to be called "
tributaries" to the Li dynasty. Between 1395 and 1504 no less than 126
missions went over to Korea. Under Satsuma's patronage Okinawan envoys
and merchants often traveled with Shimazu's agents.
Okinawan representatives traveled through Satsuma to Kyoto bearing
gifts and goods; records survive of seven missions from Shuri to Kyoto
between 1403 and 1448. Messages for the Ashikaga shogun were written in
the phonetic kana system; medicinal herbs, Chinese lacquerware, coins, and
other luxury items were among the gifts and trading goods. Taking their cue
from the Chinese formula governing these matters, the Japanese recorded
Shuri's gifts as "tribute" and in time began to look back on the year 1415 as
the first in which the Okinawan kingdom submitted pro forma to the
shogunate. There was no attempt by Kyoto to interfere with the internal
affairs of the distant island kingdom.
As the decades passed, Satsuma became increasingly dependent upon
Okinawa as a source of wares to be traded into Japan and Korea. This bred
trouble for Shuri.
In 1432 Sho Hashi was called upon to play the delicate role of
mediator between great China and recalcitrant Japan. The Ming annals
record that: "In the first month of the seventh year of Hsuan Te [1432] the
Emperor's attention was called to the fact that while all outlying peoples on
every side appeared at the Court, Japan alone had not brought tribute for
some time. The eunuch, Ch'ai Shan, was ordered to visit Liu Ch'iu in order
to have the King of that island admonish Japan. An Imperial message was
given [to the king]."14
Sho Hashi was scarcely in a position to "admonish" the hot-tempered
Japanese; nevertheless, his envoys succeeded in bringing about a decided
improvement in official relations between the two quarreling neighbors.
Direct Sino-Japanese intercourse was resumed for a time. Concessions
were necessary on both sides; on the one hand the Ashikaga felt a pressing
need for the profits which regular trade with China could bring, on the other
the Chinese had to reduce the terrible losses which they suffered at the
hands of the Japanese sea barons. We have noted upon an earlier page that
bona fide Japanese traders in China were greatly annoyed by the elaborate
formalities demanded of them, and hinted that piracy would increase if they
were not permitted to trade freely. Relations between the two countries were
growing worse; the situation cried out for remedy, and this could only be
found in some formal arrangement to regularize trade.
A temporary solution was found which saved embarrassment on both
sides. A direct tribute relationship was created between the great Zen
temple Tenryu-ji, at Kyoto, and the Ming court. Peking enjoyed the
privilege of appointing the chief priest for this powerful temple
organization, but neither the Shogun nor the Emperor of Japan in these
circumstances need consider himself subordinate to the Emperor of China.
No definite date can be fixed to mark the change which now began to
overtake Japanese relations with Okinawa, culminating in established
Japanese suzerainty in the Ryukyu Islands. It can be attributed, however, to
the changes in political and economic conditions within Japan itself, which
was entering upon a long period of political anarchy and economic chaos.
The imperial government at Kyoto was powerless and utterly poverty
stricken. The Ashikaga shoguns exercised nominal government by imperial
appointment, but this shadow authority was challenged successfully in
every part of the country. Land revenues needed to sustain a central
government were diminished in proportion to the shogun's loss of power to
collect taxes.
Because of these internal difficulties the shogunate came more and
more to depend upon the profits to be gained in maritime commerce. Out of
dire necessity grew the arrangements which granted Tenryu-ji a virtual
monopoly of the legitimate China trade. But the priests soon began to
subdivide and farm out the privilege (and the revenues) by selling trade
licenses to prosperous merchants, territorial barons, and other temples. Thus
official trade with China was carried in vessels sailing as "tribute ships."
Tenryu-ji missionaries did much to promote intercourse with Okinawa, and
among the barons who shared in Ten-ryu-ji trading enterprises was
Shimazu, Lord of Satsuma.
The shogun was too weak to curb Japanese pirates whose dangerous
enterprises were based on small ports belonging to barons who held the
shogunate and the shogun's orders in light regard. From the main islands of
Kyushu, Honshu, and Shikoku the marauders expanded their activities until
at last they boldly went ashore in China to sack such important cities as
Ningpo and Yangchow.
Chinese and Korean adventurers sailed with the wako. According to
the Ming Annals:

"Because in their own country [of China] they were unable to obtain
what they wanted, they had made their way over the sea to the islands to
become gang leaders. The Wa [i.e., the Japanese] listened to them and were
persuaded by them to start raids. Then these buccaneer chiefs, donning
Japanese robes with Japanese ornaments and insignia, came in various craft
to loot their native land [i.e., China]. As the profit was always enormous,
trouble with these pirates became worse day by day"15
"Generally only about three-tenths of these [pirates] were real
Japanese, while seven-tenths were [others] who followed them. . . . Their
discipline was stern and they all fought to the death; but the government
forces were effeminate and always gave way and ran."16

If the local traditions and folk tales are to be credited, it is probable

that many hardy men of Amami Oshima and of Miyako were aboard the
pirate ships. Neither the Chinese annals nor the Okinawan records make
mention of Naha men as sea rovers.
The Chinese government began to issue passport-certificates known as
kuei-chou which enabled junks from Naha to pass through the guard-ship
cordons stationed at coastal ports and estuaries. To give weight to the
certificates and to cover ordinary merchantmen as well as official tribute
envoys, the kuei-chou stated that the Okinawan bearers were in search of
tribute goods for the imperial court. For Japanese traders a similar tally
system was devised. Legitimate commerce was possible only if the
merchant or envoy could produce documents properly authenticated and
dated, which were in effect limited licenses. Ningpo was designated the
base for trade with Japan.
It was against this background that the princes of Satsuma assumed a
proprietary position between Chuzan, which could trade at Ch'uang-chou,
and the government at Kyoto, whose agents could trade legitimately only at
Ningpo. Shimazu wanted an ever-larger share in the Naha trade; Shuri was
interested in developing its markets in nearby Kagoshima and needed
Satsuma's protection in its trade with Korea. It was prepared to
accommodate itself to Satsuma's interests.
Shimazu, of course, was unwilling to allow any other covetous
Japanese barons to intrude upon this highly profitable arrangement. Many
had already sampled the Okinawan trade. In 1450 the powerful Hosokawa
Katsumoto, based in Shikoku, plundered an Okinawan vessel bearing cargo
into Hyogo for transshipment to Kyoto. Undaunted, the Okinawans
continued to risk the dangerous waters of the Inland Sea, for the profits
were very great. In the next year they delivered one thousand strings of
copper cash to the shogun as "tribute"; nothing could be more welcome at
Kyoto, for the extravagant Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa stood in special
need of Chinese coins with which to maintain his luxurious establishment.
The grant of monopoly interest to Tenryu-ji had failed to meet the
shogun's needs. It now appears that Yoshimasa began to give more attention
to the importance of the Ryukyuan trade and to see that it was in his interest
to cooperate with Satsuma. From fragmentary accounts we sense an
increasing disposition on both sides to formalize relations with Shuri and to
look to Satsuma for favorable management of shipping interests. In 1458
the shogun deigned to grant a personal interview with the envoys from the
king at Shuri, and in 1471 he ordered subordinate daimyo to send their ships
to Okinawa to enter upon the lively trade with China and Southeast Asia.
From this it was a short step to direct interference. In 1480 the shogun
ordered Lord Shimazu to "supervise" Okinawan shipping and directed the
King of Ryukyu to send tribute to Kyoto. As a matter of fact the Ashikaga
government at Kyoto was in no position to enforce such orders, but
Shimazu was glad enough to have his position legitimatized vis-à-vis the
Ryukyus.
Shuri was directed to confiscate all cargoes on Japanese ships at Naha
which did not carry trading permits issued by Satsuma. Tribute missions to
Kyoto henceforth would pass through Kagoshima and be escorted by
Shimazu's agents.
The Okinawans were most reluctant tò accept this interference and to
lose their full freedom to trade wherever they wished and with all who came
peacefully to Okinawa. An embassy proceeded at once to Kagoshima to
negotiate in the matter, but little Shuri was powerless; the king could not
evade the shogun's orders, issued through Satsuma. Henceforth for a
hundred years Shimazu acted (nominally, at least) as the shogun's agent in
the Okinawan trade. Shuri tactfully sent congratulatory missions to
Kagoshima when new lords succeeded to the headship of the Shimazu
family, when new heirs were born, and upon occasions calling for
condolence. Each such mission provided an opportunity for enlarged trade,
and in turn Satsuma assumed an obligation to protect the Ryukyus and the
Okinawan commerce. In a word, Shuri traded on sufferance, and paid
tribute to Peking through Ch'uang-chou and to Kyoto through Kagoshima.
Satsuma had gained a monopoly on the valuable luxury trade moving from
the south to Japan and to Korea.
Other trading barons were jealous. In 1516 the Lord of Bitchu
(Miyake Kunihide) decided to challenge Satsuma, and set sail for Naha with
an expeditionary force of twelve ships. Word reached Kagoshima in time
for Lord Shimazu Tadaharu to assemble forces near Bonotsu Harbor, in
Kyushu. In a swift action he fell upon Miyake, killed him, and dispersed his
fleet. Satsuma was determined not to be outflanked on the south. A military
unit was established in the Tokara Island group, a few miles southeast of the
entrance to Kagoshima Bay. From here close watch could be kept upon the
sea approaches to the Shimazu domain. Soon a trading depot developed on
the offshore island ot Tane-ga-shima, and here an Okinawan settlement
grew up, providing a permanent staff to handle the reception and
transshipment of goods destined for Japan and Korea. All commerce and all
travelers entering Satsuma from the south were required to pass through this
check-point. The growth of a way station here closely paralleled the
development of the Ch'uang-chou trading depot, which had been
established on the China coast in 1439.
Satsuma and Shuri, in close correspondence, served as "go-betweens"
in diplomacy and trade between Kyoto and Peking throughout the 16th
century. It was a painful position for Shuri. Direct legitimate trade between
the two powerful neighbors was coming to an end. War threatened, and the
king at Shuri had to exercise utmost tact and delicacy in serving as a
mediator between the two quarreling governments.
For example, in 1523 the shogun's representative reached the Chinese
port of Ningpo bearing valid tallies required for trade. Concurrently, an
agent of the powerful, quasi-independent Hosokawa daimyo of western
Japan put in his appearance with a considerable body of armed followers.
His documents proved to be invalid and outdated; nevertheless, with bluff
and arrogance he demanded a share in the goods available for export. The
two Japanese factions came to blows. Rioting spread through the city, and
before the Chinese could bring the offending foreigners under control, fires
had swept through much of Ningpo and ships had been burned in the
harbor. The principal troublemaker, Hosokawa's agent, was seized, and died
miserably in prison. The outraged Chinese threatened to close Ningpo to all
Japanese commerce.
By chance an Okinawan envoy was leaving Peking at this time.
Through him the imperial government directed the king at Shuri to forward
to the shogun an order, couched in the most haughty terms, demanding the
arrest of the Japanese official who had been party to the Ningpo quarrel,
and to repatriate a number of Chinese who had been kidnapped during an
earlier raid on the China coast. Furthermore, the shogun must explain the
misuse of tallies issued as a license for trade. If the shogun did not reply in
a satisfactory manner, all Chinese ports would be closed to Japanese
commerce and a punitive force would be sent across to chastize Japan.
Shuri dutifully transmitted this unpleasant message. Kyoto did not
bother to reply until five years had passed, when in 1530 the shogun asked
an Okinawan mission to transmit the answer. This was done as tactfully as
possible: "When the officer of the (Chinese) Ministry of Ceremony
examined this paper [he found that] it was without a signature. Then he
proposed that since the Japanese were too deceitful and treacherous to be
trusted, it might be well for the Court to tell the King of Liu-ch'iu to convey
instructions to Japan to carry out the previous order."17
Thus the Okinawans were repeatedly placed in a most difficult
position, for in this age an envoy's life was not secure; it took courage to
convey China's haughty messages and threats to the hot-tempered Japanese,
although it is just possible that the swaggering barons of Japan were more
tempted to laughter than anger by the Chinese attempt to place little Liu-
ch'iu between them.
Okinawan ships on the high seas were not often molested by Japanese
or Chinese pirates before 1500 but gradually thereafter the dread wako
began to prey upon vessels entering and leaving Naha, and to make sudden
raids upon villages along the shores of Okinawa itself. The most serious of
these took place in 1527 and for a time the port of Naha and nearby villages
were threatened. Shuri issued weapons from the castle storehouses,
villagers were mobilized, and watchmen were established on the headlands
north and south of Naha. The threat was so grave that, at last, in 1551
construction began on two forts (Yara and Miei) flanking the entrance to the
inner anchorage. These were completed in 1553.
In this year the wako carried out their most devastating raids along the
China coast. Chinese outlaws in large numbers joined them in terrorizing
the countryside far inland. In one great attack the freebooters moved up the
Yangtse River to the very walls of Nanking. The Ming court ordered all
Chinese ports closed to Japanese ships. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese
villagers were compelled to abandon coastal settlements and to move
inland. This caused immense hardship; hundreds of Chinese elected to
disobey the law, slipping away from Fukien to establish pioneer settlements
on Formosa, south of Okinawa and well beyond Ming jurisdiction.
Legitimate trade between Japan and China came to an end. The
shogunate, the independent barons, the great trading temples, and private
merchants were forced to look about for alternatives. Overseas trade was
vital.
Their eyes turned to Okinawa with increasing interest. The peaceful
little kingdom was at the height of its prosperity, and at Naha the frustrated
Japanese could purchase Chinese goods and share in the commerce in
luxury items brought in from Southeast Asia. The number of Japanese ships
putting in at Naha increased. With them came priest-missionaries who were
ready to teach and preach while acting as agents in trade. Okinawans
showed an increased interest in Japanese affairs, and a knowledge of the
Japanese language became as important as the knowledge of Chinese
hitherto had been. In 1572, Okinawan students began to go to Kyoto to
study in the Five Great Temples, which were engaged in maritime trade.
 Here began a division of Okinawan sympathies and interests which
was to continue in evidence for three hundred years. The student elite who
returned from China were naturally inclined to be pro-Chinese in outlook;
the students home from Japan (or educated in Japanese at Shuri) tended to
support Japan's position in this never-ending conflict of interests. The
unwarlikc Okinawans numbered then only a few tens of thousands. Of
necessity diplomacy was conducted with scrupulous care and politeness.
Neither China nor Japan challenged the king's position as long as tribute
was paid regularly. But the islands were strategically placed, and
prosperous; this state of neutrality could be maintained only if the balance
of Chinese and Japanese interests remained undisturbed, and if Okinawa
presented no threat, real or fancied, to its powerful neighbors.

THE TURNING POINT

The Okinawans had no desire to be drawn into the Sino-Japanese quarrel,
nor to take sides with one or another of Japan's contending barons. When
the 16th century opened, Japan was in a state of anarchy; when it closed, it
was united under the military leadership of Hide-yoshi, who proposed to
invade China and conquer Asia. At the same time, however, the Japanese
were feeling increased European pressure from the south and reacting
strongly to it.
A series of events related to each of these issues drew critical Japanese
attention to Okinawa's vulnerable frontier position. The Southern Islands, to
which Satsuma's daimyo had titular claim, were no longer merely a cluster
of unmapped, unrelated islands inhabited by primitive people; Ryukyu was
a well-organized kingdom; it had important relations with foreign countries
far to the south in Asia; it lay in the quarter from which Europeans began to
come with firearms, new methods of warfare, remarkably developed ships,
and a new religion which required its converts to look to a foreign prince at
Rome for guidance.
Firearms first entered Japan through the Ryukyu trading depot on
Tane-ga-shima. The time was about 1542. The details are obscure and
disputed, but the general outlines of the event can be accepted, and these
associated the European penetration of Japan with the Southern Islands.
In his book The Grand Perigrination, Maurice Collis has argued
persuasively that Fernaó Mendez Pinto's great tale of adventure and trade,
of physical hardship and spiritual conversion, is a masterly, carefully
planned knitting together of truths, semi-truths, and fictions picked up
during twenty-years' adventuring in India and the Far East.18 It is doubtful
indeed if Pinto was one of the three Portuguese who reached Tane-ga-shima
in 1542 and there acquainted the Japanese with firearms, but there is
sufficient substance to his tales of Kyushu, Tane-ga-shima, and Okinawa to
suggest that he had listened closely to accounts of others who actually had
been there, and wove these into his autobiographical narrative.
Pinto asserts that with two Portuguese companions he took passage
aboard a Chinese junk bound from Macao to the Ningpo trading center. A
storm blew them far off course. After sighting Okinawa they continued
northward until they could put in at Tane-ga-shima, which was, we know,
growing in importance as a point of transshipment for the Okinawan trade
in Japan. There a Ryukyuan woman conversant in both Japanese and
Chinese served as an interpreter. These interviews led to the introduction
and first manufacture of firearms in Japan.
The Portuguese discovered that Chinese merchants were able to
dispose of their cargoes in Tane-ga-shima at a fabulous profit. After a six-
weeks' sojourn there and at the court of Otomo, Lord of Bungo, Pinto
relates that he and his companions returned to Ningpo direct, to spread
word of the riches which might be had in the market on Tane-ga-shima,
trading into Japan.
The Portuguese community at Ningpo was fired with eagerness to get
over to Tane-ga-shima, and despite unfavorable weather and ill-conditioned
ships, set forth immediately with a fleet of nine. Seven foundered at once on
the high seas; two were blown over to Okinawa, where one vanished in a
storm and one—Pinto's ship—foundered on the rocky shore. There were
only thirty survivors, including five women, but of these four soon died of
exposure. The forlorn and miserable castaways sought shelter in the
countryside.
Here follows a dramatic story. Collis suggests that it was contrived to
present Pinto's view that mercy and compassion can be found among non-
Christians as well as among Christians, and that the Portuguese had
established for themselves in Asia an unenviable reputation for violence and
greed.
Briefly, the story relates that the castaways were found by some kindly
villagers, who fed and clothed them and cared for their wounds. The
Okinawans were required, however, to arrest all strangers found wandering
about. This they did with great reluctance and regret, confining the
newcomers in a local temple and sending word to the capital.
 Shuri's orders were returned at once, directing that the Portuguese be
delivered to the Minister of Justice. This done, they were placed on trial as
sea robbers. When they protested that they were merely traders, the
Okinawans reminded them that the Portuguese had seized Malacca and had
killed many of its inhabitants. This, said the Portuguese, was not trade but
war, and therefore was justified.
The king was inclined to release them, and there was every evidence
that the public at large entertained their plight with great sympathy. But a
Chinese trader present on Okinawa accused them of treacherous intent to
raise a rebellion and to seize the Ryukyu kingdom. Upon this, the king
condemned the Europeans to death. Through the intervention of villagers,
ladies at the court, and the queen mother herself, the king was at last
persuaded to grant reprieve and to order their safe return to Ningpo.
Such was Pinto's story. Collis comments that this narrative captures
the essential character of the Okinawans—mildness, unlimited kindness,
and courtesy. "The little drama of Lu-chu stands for the idyllic aspect of the
orient. The East has many faces, and Pinto describes them in turn, giving to
each kingdom its most characteristic features."
As an aside we may note two things about this alleged eyewitness
account of Okinawa, the first recorded in the literature of the West. Internal
evidence suggests that even though he may not have visited Okinawa, Pinto
had talked with persons who had been there. Okinawan reluctance to obey
official orders in this instance suggests that the Portuguese had been cast
ashore in the Hokuzan district of northern Okinawa, which was then held
under such strict surveillance by the Shuri court. The allusion to the
influence of a queen mother may reflect the wide reputation of Sho Shin's
mother, Yosoidon, who had died long before 1542, but about whom many
stories were told, some of which survive in the Korean annals. The
reference to the sack of Malacca suggests that this act of violence had
deeply impressed Okinawans who witnessed it in 1511 and that it was well
known and discussed at Shuri and Naha in Pinto's day.
Thus from the south, in one incident, came European religion, trade,
and firearms. This was the turning point.
In midsummer, 1549, the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier entered
Kagoshima to begin his mission in Japan. He could not have come at a less
appropriate time or with less appropriate companions: for he reached
Satsuma aboard a Chinese pirate junk, out of Malacca, and his companions
in holy orders were three—an ex-soldier, a former merchant, and Yajiro the
interpreter. Yajiro (baptized Paul) was in fact a renegade Satsuma man, a
fugitive from justice who had left Kagoshima in 1546 and was to abandon
the holy faith soon thereafter to take up piracy. Xavier stayed a year in
Satsuma with the permission of the daimyo, but he soon so antagonized the
Buddhist clergy that he moved 011 to another feudal territory.
This was in 1550; Japan was aflame with war among the barons, who
vied with one another in making and breaking alliances, in acquiring new
weapons from the West and adapting them to their own use, and in gaining
strength through trade with the Europeans. These were principally
Portuguese and Spanish soldier-merchants, and with them always in close
association were the priests. Nearly a half-century passed before the
Japanese realized that they could have trade and foreign arms without
having to accept the trouble-making Christian clerics.
 Clerics—Christian and Buddhist alike—were in ill repute in many
quarters. It was well known that the Five Great Temples at Kyoto served the
shogun as a source for agents and spies. Priests could travel from one fief to
another in the guise of devout pilgrims. It was common practice to employ
them as secret agents in diplomacy and in military matters. In those days all
strangers were objects of suspicion; no baron trusted his neighbor. Each
feudatory guarded its frontiers with utmost caution.
So matters stood in Japan when, in 1571, Shuri decided to reassert its
claims to the island of Amami Oshima. The reasons for making this move
are not clear, but the decision was a poor one under the circumstances. This
meant moving a military force—however feeble— close to the borders of
Satsuma. It may be that Shuri thought merely to sccure its line of
communications into Japan, for in the next year(1572) Okinawan priests
and students began to travel through Kagoshima to the Five Great Temples
at Kyoto, and in 1573 a large diplomatic mission was dispatched to
Kagoshima bearing gifts to the Daimyo Shimazu Yoshihisa, an
announcement of the accession of a new king at Shuri, and a request for
increased trade.
At this moment Satsuma was embroiled in a prolonged and deadly
struggle with Otomo Yoshishige, a powerful daimyo of western Japan.
Otomo sought to rouse all the allies he could to bring pressure to bear upon
Satsuma, from all sides. It may have been this interest which prompted him,
in 1577, to send a priest-envoy to Shuri. The embarrassed Okinawans in the
following year hastened to send an exceptionally large embassy to
Kagoshima bearing elaborate gifts and a message congratulating Shimazu
upon his success in conquering three neighboring provinces of Kyushu.
 Unfortunately for Satsuma (and for Okinawa) the great General
Toyotomi Hideyoshi had sided with Otomo and forced Shimazu to
relinquish these hard-won territorial gains. It became evident that Hideyoshi
had employed Buddhist priests of the Shin sect to act as spies and
diplomatic agents during the campaigns in Kyushu. Shimazu angrily
suppressed the sect within his own domains.
The presence of an Otomo mission to Shuri had alerted Shimazu to the
dangers of a flanking attack upon Satsuma through the Ryukyu Islands. A
company of Satsuma's rough soldiers were dispatched to Okinawa, where
they were observed by Chinese envoys attending the investiture ceremony
for the young King Sho Ei.
In Japanese eyes the south harbored a growing danger.
It should be remembered that the Japanese were trading with the
Spanish in the Philippines and Mexico at this time, and it can be assumed
that they sometimes heard of Spanish plans for conquest of all the islands
along the western Pacific rim. For example, a letter from Mexico dated
January 16, 1570, from Diego de Herrera to Felipe II, of Spain, urged upon
that monarch conquest of "China, Lequios, Jabas [Java] and Japan."19 It was
a Spanish mariner's boastful threat (in 1596) which angered Hideyoshi,
provoked harsh measures taken against all Christian converts, and prepared
the way for the later seclusion edicts. By the close of the 16th century the
Japanese were keenly alert to danger coming from the south, and sensitive
to the problems of security in the neighboring islands.

Footnotes
* The bell hangs today (1958) on the grounds of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis,

Maryland, where it rings whenever Navy scores a point in Army-Navy games.

* The last crown prince, son of the deposed King Sho Tai, joined his ancestors here on September 26,

1920. The tombs were shattered under bombardment in 1945 and subsequently looted by vandals.

* Within a few hours' time in 1945 these gardens, ancient temples, gates and shrines, great trees, and

pleasant parks were utterly destroyed. Today a university is slowly rising on the barren site, high

above the desolated countryside.

* This appears to be the only reference to eunuchs in Okinawa; neither the Japanese nor the

Okinawans ever adopted the barbarous Chinese eunuch-system at the royal courts.
 PART TWO
ISOLATION: "LONELY
ISLANDS
IN A DISTANT SEA"
 CHAPTER FOUR
CONTINENTAL WAR AND LOSS OF
INDEPENDENCE

1573-1609
WAR IN KOREA SPELLS DISASTER
IN OKINAWA
Tradition says that 13th-century Okinawa was ravaged by the Mongols
when the Okinawans refused to contribute men and supplies to the Mongol
campaign against Japan. Three hundred years later the Japanese prepared to
invade and conquer China, traveling over the Korean land-bridge which the
Mongols had used. Again the Okinawans were called upon to send supplies
and men, this time to Japan. Again the Okinawans refused, with
consequences disastrous to themselves and their little country.
After two centuries of anarchy a baron named Oda Nobunaga had
made himself de facto shogun in 1568 and was moving over bloody fields
toward the mastery of all Japan. His principal lieutenant, Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, was campaigning in western Japan in 1577 when word reached
camp that Nobunaga had been assassinated at Kyoto. Hideyoshi was at that
moment engaged in a bitter contest with the powerful Daimyo Mori
Terumoto. This was a crisis. Hideyoshi came at once to terms with Mori,
abandoned his drive into western Japan, hastened back to Kyoto, destroyed
Nobunaga's assassin, and asserted his own supremacy at the expense of
Nobunaga's heirs.
This done, he was approached by a minor lord named Kamei Kore-
nori, Daimyo of Shikano (Inaba), who expected a reward for assistance
which he had given in the campaign against Mori. Kamei had an interest in
foreign trade and shipping as far south as Siam and the Philippines. He
thought that he should be given a territory (Izumo) which had a fair harbor
on the Japan Sea. To his chagrin he learned that as part of the price of truce
with Mori, the latter had been confirmed in possession of Izumo.
Kamei, disappointed, suggested a substitute—the Ryukyu Islands.
Hideyoshi was pleased with the idea. He had not the slightest legitimate
claim upon the islands, but already grandiose plans to invade China and
make himself master of Asia were taking form within his fertile mind.
Kamei's proposal meant that Hideyoshi would have a trustworthy vassal
stationed advantageously south of Satsuma, and in islands which flanked
the sea lanes to China. Picking up his fan, Hideyoshi inscribed upon it the
date, his own name, and the legend Kamei, Ryukyu-no-Kami (Kamei, Lord
of Ryukyu).
In 1591, Kamei set out with an expeditionary force to take control of
his "gift," but Shimazu blocked his way and forced him to turn back. In
Hideyoshi's view this was a minor quarrel; he was too engrossed with
preparations for the invasion of Korea to be concerned with Kamei's
discomfiture.
Meanwhile, according to the Ming annals, Hideyoshi proposed to use
Koreans in making the advance upon Peking, and to use Chinese in moving
upon Chekiang and Fukien along the China coast. Disturbed lest the
Okinawans alert Peking to his designs, he ordered them to suspend their
official missions to China. This they did not do. Envoys were leaving for
Peking on business having to do with the investiture of the new king, Sho
Nei. A Chinese at Naha urged them to report Hideyoshi's activities; and this
they did, to Japan's annoyance.
The continental conquest was to begin in 1592 with an invasion of
Korea, the corridor through which Japanese forces could move upon
Peking.
Hideyoshi imagined himself master of an empire which should surpass
that of T'ang T'ai-tsung or of Kublai Khan, the greatest the world had ever
known. Letters were prepared calling upon the "King of India" to submit; a
mission was despatched to Formosa to demand surrender of the island; and
a representative of minor rank carried orders to the haughty Spanish
governor-general in the Philippines directing him to acknowledge Japan's
claims or risk punishment. The letters did not reach India, and no
government could be found on Formosa to which the demands might be
presented. The Spanish ignored the summons but increased outpost
garrisons in northern Luzon and in time constructed two forts and a mission
on the northern tip of Formosa.1
Satsuma had been called upon to convey a message to the king at
Shuri. During the years of confusion preceeding Hideyoshi's rise to supreme
power, the Okinawan court had ceased sending official tribute missions to
the Ashikaga shogun's court at Kyoto. Shuri was reminded of this neglect,
with an order to provide contributions of men and arms for the invasion of
Korea.
 The perplexed Okinawans demurred; they did not wish to offend
China, they had no fighting men, and little goods to spare; and it may well
be that they under-rated Hideyoshi's capacity to carry through with his
announced campaign. A new king (Sho Nei) had come to the throne at
Shuri in 1589. This provided occasion to send an envoy to Kyoto in
midsummer, who was given an opportunity to present gifts, apologies, and
explanations to Hideyoshi in audience.
Sho Nei's letter to Hideyoshi said this:

"According to our understanding, more than sixty provinces having

been completely subjugated, all the people in Japan now pay due reverence
to you and pledge their loyalty to the throne. Moreover, we have heard that
your authority has been extended to Korea, to the Philippines, and to other
islands in the south. Now, under your rule, all the peoples dwelling within
the bounds of the four seas are enjoving peace and prosperity. Permit me to
congratulate you upon the fact that you have put into actual practice the
ancient admonition 'Put aside bows and arrows and protect and bless the
barbarians in all four directions.' Our small and humble island kingdom,
because of its great distance and because of lack of funds, has not rendered
due reverence to you. However, now, in compliance with the instructions
that our great lord, Shimazu Yoshihisa, has sent to us by his envoy, Daijiji
Seiin-Osho, we have caused Jo ten Ryotoan-Osho to proceed to your
country, carrying with him a humble gift which consists of lacquer ware of
the Ming Dynasty, together with some of our local products, as described on
a separate sheet. These articles are sent to you with the sole desire to show
our sincerity and courtesy, and not because we think them of any great
value.
"[Dated] May 17, of the seventeenth year of the Wan-Li era of the
Ming Emperor [1589].
"To His Royal Highness the Supreme Imperial Advisor of the Emperor
of Japan."

Hideyoshi replied in friendly terms:

"Hideyoshi, the Supreme Imperial Advisor of the Emperor of Japan,

hereby addresses His Excellency, the King of Liu Chiù. We have received
your letter and have read it repeatedly with an impression that we were in
the same hall, and that you were there to address us in person. As you stated
in your letter, our nation, which consists of more than sixty provinces,
having been subjugated without leaving a single foot of land unconquered,
our people are now under a benevolent rule and are enjoying peace and
prosperity. Our only regret is that we have not yet established our desired
relations with nations of the outside world. We have now received products
of your country, and these are of great interest to us. We have therefore
become increasingly desirous of extending our observations beyond our
boundaries, and thereby increasing our knowledge. In fact, it has long been
our cherished desire to place foreign lands under our rule and to have the
people therein enjoy our benevolent rule and protection. Of all the nations,
yours is the first to send us an envoy, together with rare and unusual things.
This has pleased us greatly. It is human nature to be interested in things that
come from distant lands, and also to be attracted by things that are rarely
seen. For this reason we are particularly impressed with the gifts that you
have sent. From this time on, although our countries are separated by
thousands of miles, we may nevertheless maintain friendly relations with
the feeling that your country, together with the other nations that are within
the four seas, constitute but a single family. We are hereby sending you
some of the local products of our country, which are described on a separate
sheet. Further details will be given you orally by Tenryuki Toan Todo,
whom Shimazu Yoshihisa will send to you as his personal representative.
"[Dated] February 28, of the 18th year of the Tensho era [1590].
"The Supreme Imperial Advisor of the Emperor of Japan. To the King
of Liu Chiù."2
Shimazu Yoshihisa was not anxious to see an armed force raised in
Okinawa. He advised Hideyoshi therefore that the Okinawan contribution
should be limited to material supplies. Hideyoshi agreed. Yoshihisa notified
Sho Nei in October, 1591, that Okinawa must provide enough supplies to
sustain seven thousand men through ten months, and that these provisions
must be delivered to the harbor of Bonotsu in Satsuma by February, 1592.
The king ignored the order.
In February, Yoshihisa conveyed a warning from Hideyoshi to the
king. This time supplies were gathered and forwarded, most reluctantly. The
shipment was acknowledged in July, and a new demand made on Okinawa.
Again nothing was forthcoming. Yoshihisa was in an awkward position;
three envoys went down to Shuri only to be told by the king's ministers that
it was impossible to raise military tribute from so poor a country.
When this was reported, Hideyoshi ordered an investigation. Two
agents from Satsuma made a survey and reported again to Hideyoshi, but by
this time he was too deeply involved in the Korean campaign to give the
matter attention. The first of the expeditions into Korea (in 1592) had failed
and had been withdrawn. In the course of action the Koreans had captured
several wrecked Japanese warships, and aboard one of them was found
Kamei Korenori's treasured fan recording Hideyoshi's generous gift of
islands which were not in fact his to give.3
Sho Nei was greatly embarrassed. He had no quarrel with Korea
whatever, and it cannot be doubted that his kingdom had no surplus
foodstuffs to send out of the country. Okinawa's limited prosperity was
based on a dwindling trade in luxury goods, and not on the produce of the
indigenous economy.
When Hideyoshi's demands were received at Shuri the Okinawans
immediately notified the Chinese court, but if Sho Nei expected the Chinese
to come to his aid, he was doomed to disappointment. China's concept of
the tributary relationship placed all the painful obligations, if there were
any, upon the side of the subordinate state.
Hideyoshi's death in 1598 ended the Korean campaign and
precipitated a fierce struggle tor supremacy in Japan. Events leading up to
the great battle of Sekigahara in 1600 fully occupied Satsuma's attention;
for a little while pressure upon Okinawa was relaxed. It was a last, brief
respite, destined to come to an end in 1609.
Throughout these troubled years the Shuri court continued to maintain
the cycle of Confucian state rituals. A new form of evangelical Buddhism
was introduced about 1603 and became popular in Shuri and Naha. A
Japanese priest named Taichu preached that salvation was possible for all—
even the poor and the illiterate—through the simple invocation of Amida
Buddha's name. Taichu himself became interested in traditional Okinawan
religious practices, preparing the first account of religion in Okinawa, under
the title Ryukyu Shinto-ki. A number of new temples were established. The
Okinawans as a whole continued to be tolerant of all organized religions, if
not generally indifferent to them.
In 1606 the cultivation of the sweet potato was introduced from
Fukien Province, followed soon thereafter by the introduction of sugarcane
culture. These were events of revolutionary importance to the entire
Okinawan economy, but a comment on the circumstances which attended
these innovations may be left with advantage to a later page.
At Shuri the competition between "pro-Chinese" and "pro-Japanese"
factions among the king's councilors became of grave importance, for it
found expression in political conflict as well as cultural preferences. Men
who had studied abroad formed a substantial element in the government—
perhaps a majority in the policy-making levels of administration. Sho Nei's
decision to refuse supplies demanded of him by Hideyoshi appears now to
have been made largely on the advice of a senior councilor named Jana
Teido Oyakata, a man of the Kume Village immigrant community who had
been educated at Peking. It is recorded that Jana treated one of Satsuma's
envoys in a rude and summary manner, and for this he was soon to pay with
his life.

SATSUMA INVADES THE RYUKYU ISLANDS,

1609 (KEICHO 14)
Feudal lords and soldiers abroad at the time of Hideyoshi's death in 1598
hastened home to throw themselves into bitter succession dispûtes. These
culminated in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600; Toku-gawa leyasu and his
adherents emerged victorious. In 1603 he assumed the title and office of
Shogun and set about skillfully redistributing feudal territories. The barons
who had supported him were styled fudai daimyo and were considered
eligible for high office in the government seated at Edo (present-day Tokyo)
in eastern Japan.
Barons who had opposed leyasu at Sekigahara were styled tozama
daimyo (outside lords). Some were deprived of lands and honors; others
were allowed to govern autonomously within their own domains, treated
with punctilious respect but excluded from services in the Edo government.
leyasu took pains to redistribute territory in a manner which separated the
tozama daimyo from one another and from the capital.
In this manner the Satsuma clan was effectually isolated in southern
Kyushu. Shimazu Yoshihiro had ranged himself against leyasu at
Sekigahara; when the tide of battle turned in favor of the Tokugawa he
hastened back to the clan headquarters at Kagoshima to await the effect this
misjudgment might have upon Shimazu fortunes.
The Satsuma domain lay at a great distance from Edo. leyasu
contented himself with ordering Yoshihiro to abdicate as clan chieftain and
to assume the tonsure of a priest. His son Tadatsune succeeded him as
daimyo in 1602, going up to Edo in the next year to pay his respects to the
new shogun and to give thanks for Tokugawa leniency. leyasu was pleased
by this act of submission. As a mark of honor he conferred one syllable of
his own name upon Tadatsune, henceforth to be known as Iehisa, and
confirmed him in Shimazu's hereditary titles. These included the title Lord
of the Twelve Southern Islands, which had been granted first to a Shimazu
in A.D. 1206.
We may assume that Satsuma-Ryukyu relations were discussed at this
time, for shortly thereafter Iehisa sent an envoy to Shuri to recommend the
king's submission to the new order in Japan and to advise Sho Nei to pay
his respects promptly to the new shogun.
This the king declined to do; it is probable that he and his council did
not fully appreciate the significance of Ieyasu's victory nor the fundamental
changes which had taken place in the Japanese administration. Shuri's reply
to Satsuma referred to conditions in Japan as they had been before 1600, not
as they were in fact thereafter.
Shimazu appealed for permission to chastise the Okinawans for their
rude want of respect. On June 17, 1606, leyasu granted this request.
It is probable that the new Tokugawa government was glad to find
military diversion for the frustrated men of Satsuma, and at no cost to the
shogunate. The Satsuma warriors—a truculent lot by nature—were hemmed
in on the north; there could be no expansion on Kyushu, no raids on
neighboring feudatories, no entertaining forays across the borders of
Satsuma, Osumi, and Hyuga as there had been for centuries past. Shimazu's
relations with all other daimyo were under close Tokugawa surveillance.
A Satsuma expedition to the south would relieve discontent; Shimazu
was ready to return his samurai to their proper employment after three years
of enforced tranquillity, and he was certainly not unmindful of the wealth in
trading goods and opportunities which would be his at Okinawa. leyasu on
his part was at this time deeply concerned with problems of European
pressure upon Japan. He mistrusted Spain and feared Spain's activities
based upon the Philippines. It would be greatly to Japan's interest to extend
garrison forces into these islands through which the Europeans must pass to
approach the shogun's port at Nagasaki. With Satsuma's forces, these
southern islands could be transformed; steppingstones from the south could
become a barrier on the soudiern sea frontier.
In February, 1609, Satsuma moved against Okinawa. A force three-
thousand strong set sail from Yamakawa in Kagoshima Bay under the
command of Kabayama Hisataka, whose family thenceforth were to have a
close relationship with the southern islands for three hundred years.4
A fleet of more than one hundred war-junks moved down through the
Amami Islands, past Toku-no-jima and Kikai. There were several fierce
skirmishes along the way, and when the samurai landed at Unten Harbor on
Motobu Peninsula, they met a brief but stiff resistance, with considerable
losses on both sides.
Shuri made a desperate effort to organize a defense, but the Oki-
nawans were untrained and inexperienced. The last occasion for a general
rally to arms and widespread fighting had been in the days of Sho Hashi,
two centuries earlier; the arms themselves had been called in and put away
during Sho Shin's reign; and there had been infrequent need to man the
coastal defenses during pirate raids in the century thereafter.
The Okinawans were no match for the hardy Satsuma warriors. They
fell away before the Japanese moving down to Naha. On Aprils, 1609, the
Japanese occupied Shuri Castle. The palace was looted and important
treasure taken from the nearby temples and princely houses. Among these
were the stores of irreplaceable Buddhist texts which had been sent down
from Korea many years before.
These material losses seemed of small importance at the time, for with
immense misgiving and alarm the Okinawans saw the king taken prisoner
and removed to Kagoshima to answer for his defiant conduct. More than a
hundred of his principal officers were made to accompany him.
The administration of the kingdom was put into the hands of a
Satsuma samurai named Honda Chikamasa, who acted as deputy for
Kabayama Hisataka. Soon fourteen high commissioners (bugyo) arrived
from Kagoshima, accompanied by a staff of 168 men under orders to make
the first complete survey of the administration and the economic potential
of the Ryukyu kingdom, including, of course, the distant islands of Miyako
and Yaeyama.
After checking, revising, and adjusting reports brought in from the off-
lying islands, they decided that the Ryukyu revenues stood at the equivalent
of 94,220 koku of rice (one modern koku is the equivalent of 5.11 bushels)
and that upon this basis the Shuri government should be required to pay
over to Satsuma an annual tribute of 11,935 koku, or about one-eighth of the
total revenues of the kingdom. In addition to this, the king was expected to
pay over to Shimazu an annual tribute of approximately 8,000 koku from
his private income. The foreign trade was to be monopolized by Satsuma
and directed wholly to its interests.
This was a disastrous blow to the economy. In addition, the islands of
the Amami group, Yoron, Toku, and Kikai, lying between Okinawa and
Kyushu, were removed altogether from Shuri's control and attached to
Satsuma, thus bringing the southern border of Shimazu's domain to a point
within sight of the northern tip of Okinawa.

THE CONDITIONS LAID DOWN FOR A

KING'S RANSOM
Sho Nei endured exile for three years. Self-possession and dignified
conduct won the admiration of his captors, who treated him with
ceremonious courtesy. It was a novel and ambiguous position, for he was
the first ruler of a foreign country ever seen in Japan.
The king and a number of his attendants were taken to Edo to be
presented to the shogun, stopping on the way to pay respect to Tokugawa
leyasu, in retirement at Sumpu. Shimazu Iehisa savored the political value
of the occasion, traveling with great pomp through the Inland Sea and up
the Tokaido to the capital5 with a captive king in his train. Sho Nei was only
a "small" king, to be sure, but not even the great Taiko Hideyoshi had
enjoyed the satisfaction of bringing a foreign monarch in submission to his
court.
The king and his high officers served as hostages in Japan while the
Satsuma officials made their survey of the economic resources of Ryukyu.
This done, it was agreed that Sho Nei could return to Shuri under certain
conditions strictly set forth and sworn to within the sacred precincts of a
Shinto shrine at Kagoshima. The king himself took an oath and subscribed
to three articles which had been drawn up. The document was essentially a
bond formalizing relations between the Ryukyu kingdom and Satsuma.
 "THE KING'S OATH"*

"I. The Islands of Riu Kiu have from ancient times been a feudal
dependency of Satsuma; and we have for ages observed the custom of
sending thither, at the stated times, junks bearing products of these islands,
and we have always sent messengers to carry our congratulations to a new
Prince of Satsuma on his accession.
"Such has been custom; but in the time of His Highness Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, we, inhabitants of this far-off southern land, had failed fully to
comply with the requisitions made upon us for supplies and services;
therein we were remiss in our duty, and were very guilty; thus did we bring
trouble to our shore. You, our Lord, Shimazu Iyehisa sent an army against
us to chastize us; I was dismayed. I was carried off from my home and
became a prisoner in your mighty land; I, like to an unmated bird shut up in
a cage, had lost all hope of returning to my home.
"But our merciful Prince has shown his loving kindness; and taking
pity on master and servants whose country seemed all lost to them, gave
them his leave to return to their homes; not only so, but also allowed them
themselves to govern some of their country's islands.
"This is a boon indeed; we know not how to show our thankfulness.
So will we forever be the humble servants of Satsuma, and obedient to all
commands, and never will be traitors to our Lord.
"II. A writing [i.e., copy] of this Oath I myself will keep and will hand
it down to my posterity that they may observe and keep it.
"III. Each and every article of the ordinances already made and of
those which shall hereafter be made by Satsuma for our observance shall be
faithfully obeyed by us; and herein if we fail, may Heaven visit our sin
upon our heads."

The terms of the King's Oath display the highly developed political
skills of the Satsuma men who prepared them for the king to sign. Sho Nei
is required to state that there is an ancient precedent for Satsuma's claims to
an overlordship in the Southern Islands, although the facts of the matter
could not substantiate the claim. The king is then made to assume
responsibility for the evil days which have befallen his people and himself.
Next he enlarges upon the generosity of the Prince of Satsuma, establishing
and acknowledging a profound sense of obligation or moral indebtedness
which has the most binding ethical force within the Okinawan and Japanese
frame of social reference and ethical conduct. Sho Nei acknowledges this
obligation and accepts it for his posterity. To make it stronger, he agrees that
his court and his heirs will accept any new or further obligations laid upon
them by Satsuma.
The king's councilors and associates who were in exile with him were
then required to make an oath of three parts and to subscribe to fifteen
articles or "admonitions." This was essentially a bond formalizing
principles which were to guide them in the internal administration of the
kingdom.

"ARTICLES SUBSCRIBED TO BY THE KING'S

COUNCILLORS6
 "I. The islands of Riu Kiu have from ancient times been a feudal
dependency of Satsuma; therefore we would have obeyed and carried out an
order of any kind whatever given to us upon any matter. Yet now but little
time ago, neglecting our duty, [we] fell into the sin of disloyalty. We, master
alike and men, were carried away captive and were in despair of returning
even with our lives. How great then was our joy when you, Great Lord, had
compassion upon us and not only allowed us to return but also granted us
unlooked-for emoluments. We know not how to show our thankfulness.
Ever hereafter will we remain the loyal subjects of Satsuma.
"II. If, peradventure, any man of Riu Kiu, forgetful of this greathearted
deed, ever in times to come, plans a revolt against you, yea, if it were our
Chieftain himself who should be drawn to join revolt, yet we nevertheless
obedient to the commands of our Great Lord, will never be false to our Oath
by abetting a rebel, be he lord or churl.
"III. A writing of this oath [i.e., a copy] we each and all of us will keep
[so] that our sons may know forever and observe what we have vowed and
therein may never fail."

"THE ORDINANCE OF SHIMAZU IEHISA [PRINCE OF

SATSUMA]"

"Art. 1. No merchandise shall be imported from China without leave

first obtained of the Prince of Satsuma.
"Art. 2. No emoluments shall be given to any member of any family,
however illustrious, on account of distinguished origin alone, but only to
those capable of public service.
"Art. 3. No emoluments of office shall be given to a mistress of the
Chieftain.
"Art. 4. No kind of private servitude is allowed.
"Art. 5. The number of shrines or temples to be erected shall not be
excessive.
"Art. 6. No merchants shall be allowed to engage in external trade to
or from Riu Kiu without a written permission from Satsuma.
"Art. 7. No inhabitant of Riu Kiu shall be sent to the mainlands as a
slave.
"Art. 8. All taxes or other imposts of a similar kind shall be levied
only in accordance with the rules and regulations laid down by the authority
from the mainland.
"Art. 9. It is prohibited [to the Chieftain] to entrust the conduct of
public affairs in the islands to any persons other than San-shi-kuan
(Council).
"Art. 10. No persons shall be compelled to buy or sell against his will.
"Art. 11. Quarrels and personal encounters are prohibited.
"Art. 12. Reports shall be made to the authorities in Kagoshima, the
castle-town of Satsuma, in case of any official making any claim exceeding
the amount of taxes and duties properly to be levied according to law upon
merchants and farmers or others.
"Art. 13. No merchant ship is allowed to go to any foreign country
from Riu Kiu.
"Art. 14. No measure of capacity [value] other than the Government
standard measure known as the Kioban is allowed to be used.
 "Art. 15. Gambling and all other vicious habits of a like nature are
prohibited.
"Strictly observe each one of the foregoing articles! Those who violate
the same shall be liable to severe punishment!"

Here again is a skillful use of that powerful device, the sense of moral
obligation. The first of the oaths is çssentially a duplication of the king's
review of past dependency, acknowledgment of default in the discharge of
earlier obligation, and recognition of Satsuma's generosity. The second oath,
however, was a harsh undertaking; in effect it called upon the lords of
Okinawa to promise that upon future demand they would give their
obedience and loyalty to the Daimyo of Satsuma rather than to their own
king. In the third oath they undertook to bind their posterity to these
commitments.
The fifteen articles were essentially concerned with establishing
Satsuma's economic controls. Shimazu placed first things first: Article 1
was intended to ensure Satsuma's monopoly of the profitable trade with
China. This was reinforced by Articles 6 and 13, which forbade all foreign
trade not approved by Satsuma.
A standard medium of exchange was established by Article 15. The
conduct of economic affairs and conditions of labor (taxation, servitude,
compulsory sales) are touched upon in Articles 4, 7, 8, 10, and 12. The
prohibition upon an excessive temple-building program may have been
designed to keep Okinawan assets in a more manageable form, as well as to
discourage the elaboration of religious organizations which were not held in
high trust. Temptation to exercise undue influence through bribes among
the administrative officers or within the king's bedchamber was to be
discouraged by Articles 2 and 3. The public peace and morality were given
their due in Articles 11 and 15, which prohibited quarrels and forbade
gambling and similar vicious habits.
By terms of Article 9 the king could delegate authority only to
members of the Sanshikan (the Council of State), but nothing was set forth
to define the position or the authority of the Satsuma representatives
through whom Shimazu proposed to make his will known to the Sanshikan
and the king.
Satsuma ostentatiously proclaimed that it undertook the 1609 punitive
expedition because of a fervent desire to punish the king and his councilors
for failure to show proper respect for the Tokugawa government and its
predecessors. But although the oaths required the king and his councilors to
admit to these faults, the articles to which they were forced to put their seals
made no mention of ceremonial obligations to the shogun's government.
Satsuma was more interested in commercial profit to be wrung from the
Okinawans than in costly flattery. Furthermore—as the years would make
clear—Shimazu intended to ensure recognition that the Ryukyu kingdom
was a dependency of Satsuma and only secondarily, through Shimazu, a
dependency of the Tokugawa government. It was to be treated as a private
income-bearing property, not as a part of the political fabric of Japan.
All was prepared for the formal signing of these unpleasant
documents. The king and his men were brought before the shrine in the
presence of the Shimazu clan officers. It was a bitter experience, for which
the king could see no alternative. One by one the signatures were set to the
papers and sealed. Suddenly tension increased, for one of the king's
principal councilors refused to take the prescribed oath or to put his seal to
such repugnant articles.
This was Jana Teido Oyakata, long the leader of pro-China factions at
Shuri and the officer who had urged upon the king the course of action
which had led to such disastrous consequences. He would not forswear
allegiance to his king nor accept the interpretation placed upon events by
the Japanese.
The Satsuma samurai had a simple solution. Jana was taken to one
side and beheaded. It was an untidy business, but there was no doubt left in
the minds of the Okinawans what the alternatives would be if any others
attempted to evade the facts of the situation in which they were placed.
Sadly the king returned to Shuri in the autumn of 1611, to a changed
government and a changed national life. Okinawa would never again know
independence or prosperity.
It is possible that at heart the Satsuma men admired Jana's bold and
fatal decision, for it was in the tradition of their own hotheaded, emotional
standards of conduct. Three of Sho Nei's most important officers of state
were held at Kagoshima as hostages until the king had resumed his place at
Shuri and his government and people had demonstrated acceptance of the
new conditions. These men were released in 1612. Two of them returned at
once to Okinawa; these were the lords of Ozato and of Katsuren, the latter
being concurrently the chief abbot of the great Enkaku-ji temple at Shuri.
The third hostage, Kunjan Anji, elected to stay at Kagoshima, assumed a
Japanese name, and in time joined Shimazu Yoshihisa when he was called
up to assist in the Tokugawa attack upon Osaka Castle (1615). His
motivation is not clear; perhaps he preferred the soldier's life to the placid
life of Okinawa; perhaps he felt disgraced by his share in the subjugation of
his people and could not bring himself to face them.
Sho Nei was embittered by memories of exile; subjugation had
impoverished the kingdom. Contemplating death, he felt that he had failed
to maintain the royal heritage. He was reluctant to enter the presence of his
ancestors and for this reason decreed that his body should not lie in the
royal tombs at Shuri, but in a hill-cave some miles away, near Urasoe, and
that a mask should be placed over his face in death.

SERVING TWO MASTERS: THE PROBLEMS

OF DUAL SUBORDINATION7
The king lived on for nine years after his return from exile; the kingdom
survived, in name, for 268 years.
It was fictitious independence. Shuri became the creature of Satsuma
in a bold arrangement designed by Shimazu to circumvent the strict
seclusion laws of the Edo government. In theory the Tokugawa shogunate
reserved all foreign trade for its own agents, based at the port of Nagasaki,
and limited this to Dutch ships and Chinese junks admitted under a most
strictly supervised licensing system. Using Okinawa for its purposes, the
Satsuma clan boldly flouted the ban on foreign intercourse through any
other port, and the Tokugawa were unable to check them.
This placed the Okinawans in a most difficult position. On the one
hand they feared reprisals which might be set in motion by Edo or by a
change in policy at Kagoshima. On the other hand the Chinese government
for many years had sought to regulate all Chinese trade with Japan and for
long periods had forbidden the Japanese to enter Chinese ports. What now
if Peking should close Ch'uang-chou to Okinawan trade?
Satsuma was determined that there should be no excuse for an
embargo on the trade from Naha. The Okinawans were ordered to conceal
their true relationship with Japan. Chinese were forbidden to settle in
Okinawa, and when Chinese embassies and merchants arrived from time to
time, all Japanese resident in Okinawa were required to withdraw from
Shuri and Naha, all Japanese objects which might attract attention were
concealed, and the Okinawans were ordered to feign ignorance of the
Japanese language. For the Okinawan traders and ambassadors to China a
special handbook was prepared which contained a variety of probable
questions and a list of answers which were designed to evade the issue and
conceal the nature of Ryukyuan subordination.
These pretensions and deceptions were practiced faithfully by the
Okinawans through two and a half centuries. They were a matter of form,
designed to save Chinese "face"; even the most casual European visitors at
Naha and traders writing from Chinese ports and from Nagasaki after 1610
recognized the true state of affairs concerning trade between China and
Japan through Naha, but they were puzzled by the arrangement permitting
tribute to be paid simultaneously to two neighboring states. The Okinawans
explained the anomalous situation by saying that Japan and China were the
parents, and that to each respect and deference were due.
The pressures and requirements of "dual subordination" affected the
character and the standards of the Okinawan people. Basic elements of race,
religious practice, and language formed natural ties with Japan, and the
mode of living in the Okinawan countryside was closer in pattern to the life
of the ordinary Japanese than it was to the life of the continental Chinese.
But life at Naha and Shuri continued strongly under the influence of both
China and Japan. Young men continued to be sent to Ch'uang-chou and
Peking for training, and Chinese ceremony governed at the court. The
Chinese classics studied at the Kume Village center provided the ideal
standards of conduct by which the educated elite in Okinawa sought to be
guided in its daily life.
Satsuma sought to provide a counterweight to Chinese influence at the
Shuri court (and incidently to provide itself with hostages) by requiring that
the heir apparent and a number of noble companions spend considerable
time at Kagoshima.
As a consequence of this strange life the Okinawans could develop no
fixed standards of their own. Each day the governing gentry had to weigh
words and actions carefully in every decision of importance, lest they come
into conflict with Satsuma or with China; the arts of compromise and
evasion were essential to survival. Courtesy and accommodation, hesitancy,
delay, and passive resistance were the weapons of the weak which they had
perforce to adopt. Acceptance of alien controls became a habit of mind, but
the characteristics of initiative, individualism, and self-assertion, which had
secured them independence and prosperity, began to fade. Satsuma
controlled foreign affairs, overseas trade, and many aspects of the internal
administration of the kingdom; it was left to the Okinawans to devise what
means they could to ckc out a living from the meager resources of the
countryside.
In 1611 the king's ministers quietly resumed office at Shuri. Jana's
advocacy of a pro-China policy had led them on to disaster, and his
execution served warning that Satsuma would tolerate no plots and
counterplots. Open rebellion was impossible; survival clearly depended
upon cooperation with the Japanese.
A liaison office known as the Ryukyu-kan was established at
Kagoshima for Okinawan representatives resident at the Satsuma
headquarters, but to cultivate appearances it was arranged for "tribute
missions" to proceed to Edo. These were scarcely less fictional than the
missions to Peking, for all relations between king and shogun were most
strictly supervised.
The importance of such missions must not be underestimated,
however, for they proved to be the most important agency through which
the governing elite on Okinawa fell under Japanese influence. Eighteen
embassies made their solemn way to Edo in the period 1611 to 1850.
Leading members of the Shuri government were made ambassadors, who
traveled with a large suite. Scholars and crafstmen, administrative officers
and merchants went overland to Edo through the Japanese countryside,
accompanied by an armed escort from Satsuma. They returned, as we shall
see, ladened with ideas as well as with material things of importance to the
Ryukyuan economy.
The immediate effect of the Keicho invasion was a sharp break with
the past; the Okinawans were cut off from the lively trade which had
provided the lifeblood of the island economy. Now they were thrown upon
their own resources. General principles of Confucian government
interpreted to them anew by the Japanese were perhaps of less importance
than the lessons required of them by the hard-driving men of Satsuma who
had taken over the administration during the king's exile. The islands of
Yoron, Kikai, Amami, and Erabu were lost, but the enforced Japanese
survey of the resources in the outer islands led to a strengthened
relationship with Kume, Miyako, and Yaeyama. Land measurements and
tax reforms meant a more efficient collection of revenues, although the
multiplication of administrative offices and agencies involved in this meant
increased total costs of government.
In its days of 15th- and 16th-century prosperity the Ryukyu kingdom
had become dependent upon a well-managed and far-flung maritime trade.
The court, the aristocracy, and the administrative hierarchy were supported
by the profits derived from this trade. Now, at the opening of the 17th
century, all was changed.
Independent trade with Southeast Asia came to an end. Satsuma took a
lion's share in the trade with China, made a remorseless demand for tax
tribute, and required the dispatch of embassies to Edo. For these reasons
domestic agriculture assumed paramount importance in Okinawa after
1610. Every village was hard pressed to produce enough foodstuffs and
textiles to meet the tax levy and to feed the townsmen of Shuri, Naha,
Kume, and Tomari. In order to keep the trade with China in motion,
Satsuma had to subsidize the tribute missions to Peking, and Kagoshima
merchants and samurai provided capital for the commercial ventures at
Ch'uang-chou. Living standards at Shuri and Naha steadily declined.
Twice in the course of two succeeding centuries a moderate degree of
prosperity was achieved, thanks to the careful direction of state policy, only
to have it twice wiped out by natural disasters. The small surpluses of one
year were quickly consumed by dearth in another; there could be no
significant accumulation of capital resources.
 PROTESTANT TRADERS AND CATHOLIC
PRIESTS IN 17TH-CENTURY OKINAWA
Okinawa lay in the sea lanes used by Western ships which approached
Japan. Portuguese came up through the Indies and Macao after 1542,
established outposts on the China coast, and entered Japan. The Spanish
came from Mexico and the Philippines about 1580; the Dutch established
themselves at Hirado, on Kyushu, in 1611 and soon thereafter established a
government on Formosa, which endured for more than thirty years. The
British opened a trading post at Hirado in 1613.
Japan's rulers had ample reason to dislike and mistrust the Spanish and
Portuguese missionaries, who were trouble-makers, but Tokugawa leyasu
was eager to encourage trade. He granted a liberal commercial charter to the
British and opened all harbors to British ships disabled by storm. By
extension through Satsuma, Naha came under these general provisions and
was used as a port of refuge and as a way station on the run between Japan,
the Philippines, and Siam. Hostile Dutch fleets operating in the seas further
south made the long trip to Europe unsafe for the small British vessels. For
some years the English voyagers had to content themselves with a carrying
trade between ports in East Asia. Already the politics of Europe were
penetrating and unsettling the Far East.
In a letter dated December 23, 1614, Richard Wickham, British
representative at Naha, reported to his chief at Hirado, Captain Richard
Cocks: "The people [of 'Liquea'] much resemble the Chinese, yet speak the
Japan tongue, although with difficulty to be understood of the Japans, they
wear [their] hair long bound up like the Chinese, with a bodkin thrust
through, but it is made up [on the] right side of their heads; they are a very
gentle and courteous people."8
While this letter was being written, Will Adams, the trusted British
friend of Tokugawa leyasu, was limping toward Naha port in the damaged
junk "Sea Adventure." With a mixed crew of European adventurers and
Japanese sailors, he had set out from Japan on November 28 for a voyage to
Siam. The ship proved unseaworthy. On December 22 a gale forced the
leaking craft inshore at Amami Oshima. Finding no suitable anchorage,
Adams took the "Sea Adventure" on down to Naha, putting in on December
27 for repairs.9
There were approximately 125 passengers and seamen aboard, a rough
lot, numbering among them men of British, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Japanese origin. Shuri gave them permission to land their stores and to
begin repair work. "We found marvellous great friendship," wrote Adams,
but after thirty days the Okinawan officials began to urge the strangers to
hasten their departure. Junks were expected to come in from Ch'uang-chou,
said the anxious Okinawans, and the Chinese would be angry if they found
rival traders at Naha; trade relations with China might be broken off.
In fact, Chinese junks were forbidden to call at Naha. It is probable
that the Okinawans were ordered to conceal the presence of Satsuma's
agents aboard the Okinawan vessels returning from the China coast. There
were other reasons too; the idle crew and passengers were bickering among
themselves, making demands upon the hot-tempered Will Adams, and
creating disturbances in the port. A mutinous quarrel broke out between a
score of armed men, led by a Japanese named Shobei, and about forty other
boisterous seamen. Shuri's chief magistrate was called down to mediate,
and by March 15 restored order. Ten days later Shobei treacherously killed
his principal opponent.
Despite this first clash between Europeans and Japanese on Okinawan
soil, the people of Naha and Shuri treated these uninvited guests with
courtesy. Adams was received most cordially; his close friendship with
Tokugawa leyasu was well known to Satsuma's agents at Naha and to the
king's officials, and he himself made a great effort to establish good
personal relations; for instance, his diary notes polite words and phrases
which he had transcribed for guidance. At the king's invitation he visited
Shuri to inspect the castle.
At Naha, Adams dickered for a cargo of grain and ambergris which
had been brought up from Miyako, and directed repairs on the "Sea
Adventure." It was slow work; the voyage to Siam was given up as an
unseasonable venture; and on May 22 Adams sailed for Kawachi in Japan,
carrying sweet-potato plants for Cocks' garden at Hirado and such cargo as
he had been able to buy at Naha. On June 10 the "Sea Adventure" made
port safely.
The record of British expenditures at Naha demonstrates the cheapness
of goods and the low value placed upon Okinawan currency. Wheat,
"Liquea wyne," a "greate Liquea cocke," and "Liquea trenchers" (possibly
lacquerware) were among the articles brought in from Naha by the foreign
merchants. Cocks' Diary notes that on June 2, 1615, his subordinate
Wickham took a gift of two pieces of Okinawan cloth and a "dish of
pottatos" to the feudal Lord of Bungo. On June 26 he recorded: "Bongo
Dono sent to me to have had ajar of Liquea wyne (or rack) for that the
Emperor hath sent to him to come to Miaco, and therefore he sought for
such matters to give in present to greate men for a novelitie."10
Some traffic in spices still took place by way of the Fukien trading
base. Adams notes on June 14, 1615, that "the new botswayn of the junck
brought me 2 Liquea brushes and a box of synamon of same place, the best
that ever I saw in my life, and Jno. Japan our jurebasso, brought me a
present of Liquea cloth one peece." Sometimes Adams suspected that his
agents at Naha sequestered valuable items which should have been
delivered to the English trading depot. He records a quarrel with a
subordinate named Damien Marines, who had bought up the local
Okinawan supply of ambergris, kept in a "chist" which Adams wanted to
inspect. Wickham, too, reports on supplies of this valuable commodity
which could be obtained in the Ryukyus. In other entries for 1615 and 1616
Cocks records the desertion of a Japanese employee in Okinawa, and a sum
set aside for investment in ambergris at Naha. He also notes that "thirteen
barkes laden with souldiers" had left port, ostensibly for Formosa, but he
was of the opinion that they were searching throughout the Ryukyu Islands
for refugees scattered after the fall of Osaka Castle, where Hideyoshi's heirs
and their adherents had been destroyed.11
Under date of July 28, 1618, Cocks notes that he had received letters
"from Antony the Negro" and two others then stationed at Naha, and in that
year Will Adams made his second visit to Okinawa en route to Indo-China.
The English company had no illusions concerning the source of basic
authority in the Ryukyus, for Cocks at Hirado was on most friendly terms
with "the King of Xaxma [Satsuma] whose vassall the King of Liqueas is.
..." William Eaton, stationed at Naha, reported to Cocks that he received
cordial assistance from the Okinawans because the Lord of Satsuma had
ordered them to be helpful to the British. Edmund Sayers, who was often at
Kagoshima, noted that "Soyemon Dono told me that the King of Shasma
did much esteem our English nation and would suffer us to trade into the
Liqueas or any other parts of his dominion."12
Six years after these notices of Okinawan friendliness and cooperation
were written, all foreigners were forbidden to enter the Ryukyus. Arrest,
torture, and execution awaited those who tried to make their way secretly
into the islands or through them into Japan. This did not reflect a change in
the character of the Okinawans, but a drastic change of policy in Japan,
extended and harshly enforced by Satsuma throughout the dependency.
The Okinawans suffered in consequence of events and conflicts of
interest in which they had no part. The Portuguese and Spanish missionaries
in Japan had become intolerable to the shogun's government; they had on
occasion openly preached disobedience to government decrees and sowed
mistrust and dissension between Christian converts and the general
populace, on the one hand urging their converts to attach their allegiance to
the authorities at Rome, and on the other encouraging them to desecrate and
sometimes destroy Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.
When the missionaries refused to give up preaching, some went inte
hiding, some departed openly aboard European ships only to make their
way back secretly into Japan, smuggling themselves aboard European
trading ships and Chinese junks. Tokugawa leyasu had been tolerant of the
Protestant English and Dutch traders, who were indifferent to religious
interests. After his death in 1616, however, his successors rigidly restricted
European traders to the island of Deshima at Nagasaki and instituted a harsh
repression of Christianity. Hidden missionaries were ferreted out, tortured,
and executed with great barbarity. Any Japanese known to have sheltered a
missionary in any way was subjected to ferocious punishments. Friends and
relatives suffered the most brutal treatment.
Persecution reached an extreme degree in the period 1617-36, and in
these years Europeans courting martyrdom deliberately began to make their
way secretly into the Ryukyus and so into Japan. It is recorded that in 1622
two Christian converts were discovered in Yaeyama and condemned to
death at the stake. In 1624 all foreign immigration was most stricdy
forbidden.
Two years later a Spanish Dominican named Juan de Rueda (or Juan
de los Angelos) was discovered in Japan, seized, condemned, and thrown
into the sea. It had been disclosed that after a residence in Japan from 1604
until 1619 he had openly departed for Manila. There he had prepared
Christian tracts in the Japanese language and with these had made his way
successfully through the Ryukyus and slipped into Japan again. It had to be
assumed that he received considerable help en route.
In 1631 the daimyo at Kagoshima issued a new prohibition against all
Christian activities; shortly thereafter he increased local organization in
Yaeyama and opened a special Yaeyama office at Kagoshima. In 1636 two
Dominicans, Miguel de Ozaraza, a Spaniard, and William Courtet, a
Frenchman, attempted to slip into Japan through Okinawa. Ozaraza was
imprisoned at Okinawa for a year, then taken through Kagoshima to
Nagasaki, where, with Courtet, he suffered torture and death.
Threats of another kind strengthened Satsuma's concern; in 1639 a
Western ship of unknown nationality put in briefly at Yaeyama and took
away a young girl, who was never heard of again. At this, Satsuma sent
down a new agent, known as the Yamato Bugyo (Japanese Commissioner),
who was to report directly and promptly to Kagoshima if new intrusions
took place on this most distant frontier.

WAR AND REBELLION IN CHINA AND ITS

EFFECT IN OKINAWA
Yonaguni Island now formed the most southerly outpost of Okinawan
interest and Japanese concern. Fifty miles away to the west, on a clear day,
the cliffs and peaks of northern Formosa he low on the horizon. In 1623 the
Spanish (based on Manila) had built forts and missions at Keelung and
Tamsui. The Dutch meanwhile moved in from a temporary base in the
Pescadores to the southwest Formosan coast, establishing the first
government on Formosa, building a strong military base, and developing an
orderly administration and a profitable trade.
In time the Dutch drove out all competitors; the Spanish were evicted
from the northern tip of the island in 1628; and the Japanese settlement at
Takasago on the west coast of Formosa faded away after the Tokugawa
seclusion edicts of 1634 closed Japan itself. It became a capital offense for
Japanese to leave Japan or to attempt re-entry from abroad.
Chinese emigrants were moving over to Formosa in growing numbers;
some were adventurers willing to leave the crowded villages of China's
coastal provinces for the open Formosan frontier, others were political
refugees from the mainland. Some willingly took up land under full Dutch
administration, but many preferred to settle nearby, clearing ground for
cultivation and enjoying the advantages of trade which were created by the
presence of the Europeans in and near Fort Zealandia and Anping.
The settlement of Formosa is not properly a part of the Ryukyu
narrative, but the conditions on the mainland of China which gave rise to
this movement to the sea frontiers south of Okinawa had a very direct
bearing on the economic welfare and security of the Ryukyu kingdom. War
on the continent generated trouble for the hapless Okinawans.
The Ming government was weakened by corruption in the provinces
and the incapacity of eunuch rule at Peking. Taxation grew intolerable as
the government tried to meet the demands of a luxurious court and to
support an increasing number of military undertakings. Attempts to expel
Hideyoshi's forces from Korea had been very costly. From the northeastern
borders came a new threat; the Manchus were organizing, soon to invade
China through the Great Wall.
China was hard pressed. In 1637 a squadron of five armed British
vessels put in at Canton and forced the Chinese there to accept cargoes.
This was a demonstration of the European concept of the right to trade
coming into head-on collision with the Chinese concept of China as the
Superior State granting or withholding the privilege to trade so persistently
sought by the Outer Barbarians.
The affairs and problems of a minor tributary state—Okinawa—were
of little importance to Peking under these circumstances, but by 1638, as we
have seen, the persistent Okinawans had managed to resume the old
biennial tribute-trade arrangement, which had been drastically reduced in
1611.
 Now a grave new problem beset the Okinawans. Peking fell to rebels
in 1644 A.D the last Ming emperor hanged himself in the palace. Manchu
forces entered the capital and established a new alien government, which
they styled the Ch'ing dynasty. Ming loyalists fled southward, maintaining
resistance here and there until 1662.
This turn of events posed a problem which Shuri solved with
pragmatic simplicity. As long as there were rival claimants to the Chinese
throne Shuri's envoys carried credentials which could be used with either
Ming or Ch'ing representatives.
In 1646 Shuri sent Uezu Uekata to Japan to report on the downfall of
the Ming government, and in the next year the death of the king (Sho Ken)
provided occasion for a new mission to China and a report to Shuri and
Satsuma on the organization of the new Ch'ing (Manchu) government.
Questions were raised in Japan concerning Okinawa's relations with Peking
under the changed circumstances, but the shogunate left it with Satsuma to
decide what adjustments, if any, need be made. The Ch'ing court records
preserve the answer: "In 1654 the eldest son of the King of Liu Ch'iu, Shang
Chih, handed in the patent and seal of the late Ming period, whereupon an
imperial [Ch'ing] command appointed him King of Chung-shan. This
country is in the great southeastern sea to the east of Fukien."13
During the years of rebellion in China the embassies were often
imperiled. Pirates attacked the tribute ships in 1665. In the melee a murder
was committed aboard ship and valuable articles were stolen. Satsuma held
the principal envoy and his deputy responsible, tried them, and sentenced
them to death. Seven years later an embassy was waylaid on the road from
the port to Peking, but after a fierce encounter the Okinawans got the best
of the situation. For this a member of the mission named Hirata Tentsu
earned a hero's place in Okinawan traditions.

For a time it was conceivable that Okinawa might become involved in

the course of the Manchu struggle to wrest Formosa from the heirs of
Cheng Ch'eng-k'ung (Koxinga), who had taken it from the Dutch.
Formosa formed one base for a triple revolt against the Manchus. An
Amoy Chinese named Cheng Chih-lung had become master of a great fleet
of junks trading and raiding along the China coast from Nagasaki in Japan
to Canton and Macao. For a time he sided with the Ming, but in 1628 he
went over to the Manchus and used his ships in their behalf to suppress
other piratical fleets in coastal waters. Taking advantage of the confusion
generated by war on the mainland, he began to assert himself with
considerable independence. At last the Manchus persuaded him to place
himself and two of his sons under the authority of a Manchu general in
Fukien. By a treacherous act he was made prisoner and with his sons and
aides was taken to Peking to be executed.
A third son remained independent of Manchu controls and for a
decade organized such devastating attacks all along the coast that the
Peking government was forced to order the evacuation of eighty-eight
coastal townships in Fukien and Kwangtung provinces. In 1662 he turned
upon the Dutch in Formosa, basing his forces in the Pescadores. The Dutch
surrendered and evacuated their considerable forces and their families to
Java. Cheng then declared himself King of Formosa, which he and his heirs
held as an independent territory until 1682.
Meanwhile two high-ranking Chinese who had deserted the Ming
cause to fight for the Manchus now deserted the Manchus and attempted to
carve out similar independent kingdoms for themselves. Wu San-kuei
revolted in 1673 and set himself up as King of Chien in Hunan Province;
Keng Ching-chung revolted in Chekiang in 1674 and in the course of the
struggle sought to establish cooperation with Cheng Ch'eng-k'ung in
Formosa.
It was reported at Shuri that the Manchu government might fall as a
consequence of these widespread rebellions. To learn the true state of
affairs, the Okinawans determined to send a special inspector or
commissioner to the continent, bearing letters addressed to Keng Ching-
chung as well as to the Manchu emperor. Takara Uekata embarked on this
delicate mission in 1676, but on November 9 in that year Keng surrendered
and went over to the Manchus once again.
Peking was so preoccupied with these affairs that nearly thirteen years
elapsed between the accession of Sho Tei to the throne at Shuri (1669) and
his ceremonial confirmation as king by the Chinese envoys, who came in
1682. This underscored, if nothing else were needed, the ephemeral quality
of any Chinese claims to sovereignty in the Ryukyu Islands.
The natives of Kume Village, near Naha, were faced with a peculiar
problem. They were of Chinese and not of Manchu descent. For 250 years
(i.e., from 1392) their prestige as representatives of great China and Chinese
culture had been sufficient to sustain them as a distinct group in Okinawa.
They retained the customs and dress of their ancestral homeland despite the
fact that intermarriage had virtually transformed the racial stock of the
village residents. Now came orders from the Manchus that all Chinese must
adopt the queue and make other signs of loyalty to the new dynasty. This
the Kume villagers refused to do. Henceforth they wore Okinawan dress
and adopted the distinctive Okinawan style of coiffure. From this time
forward, ties of cultural dependency upon China were steadily diminished.
Satsuma took no risks. The Okinawans were allowed to wrestle with
their own economic problems as best they could, but Kagoshima reserved
for itself all decisions relating to foreigners and foreign trade, nor did the
Japanese relax controls upon the king and council.
Under the authoritarian Tokugawa rule, relations between one feudal
territory and another within Japan proper were marked by a mean and
narrow provincialism. Within each feudal domain the exclusive governing
elite regarded the common people with uneasy suspicion. This state of
affairs was in part a heritage of centuries of civil war and anarchy and in
part a reaction to peasant uprisings bred of economic hardship, which were
occurring with disturbing frequency in many scattered fiefs. Under Japanese
influence the Shuri government, too, developed an elaborate system of
agents, known as metsuke, who served as informers and spies, present at all
times and everywhere among the common people. If we are to judge from
19th-century accounts written by foreign visitors, there was little effort to
conceal their identity and presence in the community. Although they were
feared, they were treated with scant respect. Satsuma required them, and
they had to be tolerated. No evidence can be found to suggest that the
Okinawans at any time contemplated an attempt to throw off Japanese
controls; nevertheless, in 1669 Satsuma saw to it that the Shuri
government's swordsmithy was abolished, putting an end to the
manufacture of swords for ceremonial use, and in 1699 forbade the import
of weapons of any kind. A new police inspectorate was created, and a new
Japanese garrison post was established in the eastern quarter of Naha.

SATSUMA AND THE OKINAWAN TRADE

WITH CHINA
We must retrace our steps briefly to review 17th-century relations with
Japan on a wider basis. Satsuma laid a heavy yoke on the Okinawans: this
was a form of colonial exploitation, which the "internal autonomy" did little
to disguise. A comparison of income suggests the overwhelming weight of
resources which Japan could bring to bear upon Okinawa if need be.
Satsuma's estimate of the total yearly revenues in Okinawa stood at
approximately 90,000 koku, of which the Shimazu clan required a tribute of
approximately 12,000 koku from the government and 8,000 from the king's
own estates and revenues. The Daimyo of Satsuma at this time enjoyed a
total revenue exceeding 700,000 koku per year, and the Tokugawa revenues
were calculated at something in excess of 3,000,000 koku.
"The Okinawans must be compared with the cormorants of the Nagara
River in Japan; they are made to catch fish which they are not permitted to
swallow." Thus the Okinawan scholar Iha Fuyu summed up Okinawa's
position in the China-Satsuma trade relationship after 1611. The annual
tribute levy paid to Satsuma represented but a small part of the income the
Shimazu clan derived from its new dependency. A Shimazu family
document dated January 14, 1635, notes that among the clan's major
resources was an item of 123,700 koku coming up from Ryukyu. This
suggests that more than 100,000 koku represented annual income from the
trade conducted through Naha in Okinawan ships.14 Conversely, it suggests
by what a staggering amount the revenues of the Ryukyu kingdom had
fallen off since the days of independence. On the basis of these figures, it
may be estimated roughly that instead of an income equivalent to more than
200,000 koku, the Okinawans now had less than 80,000 koku, plus a minor
and uncertain share of foreign-trading profit allowed to them to meet
expenses of each new commercial venture overseas.
Since the trade with China had been the prime object of the Keicho
conquest, Satsuma had lost no time in attempting to reestablish it. A
mission was dispatched to China as soon as Sho Nei resumed his residence
at Shuri (1611). Shimazu advanced funds to finance the venture.
It has been suggested that the Emperor of China may never have been
informed of the Japanese conquest of Ryukyu; by deliberately ignoring the
calamity which had befallen one of its most faithful tributaries the Chinese
government could evade responsibility for it. Ming officials took the lofty
position that the recent unpleasantness must have impoverished the
kingdom, and they therefore decreed that Ryukyu need send tribute only
once in every ten years. As we have seen, the Ming court itself was beset
with internal troubles at this time, and it may have been wary of the
changed relationship which now tied Shuri so closely to Japan.
The Chinese decision was not at all to Satsuma's liking; the miserable
Okinawan envoys were sent back to China in the following year. They were
rebuffed at Peking, the tribute was refused, and they were sent home. Sho
Nei's death in 1612 and Sho Ho's succession provided a legitimate excuse
for new attempts to increase trade at the end of the ten-year period decreed
by Peking. In 1623, investiture missions were exchanged. The Okinawans
pressed for the restoration of the old biennial tribute schedule; the Chinese
temporized, granting them leave to come up to Peking once in five years.
Thenceforth the tribute ships (shinko-sen) left Naha with fair regularity.
Some were lost in storms at sea; occasionally they were overtaken and
looted by pirates. During the Manchu invasion of China there was some
uncertainty, as we have seen, and again after 1800 the schedules were
affected by Shuri's concern with the Western ships then ranging among the
islands.
Satsuma did nothing to disturb the traditional protocol; two tribute
ships sailed together from Naha in the spring, passing over to the Fukien
coast in about seven days. There the entire ship's company remained at the
Ryukyu trading depot until the tenth month, when the envoy and his deputy,
with a party of eighteen in attendance and with a numerous train of Chinese
coolies and officials, proceeded overland to Peking. There they lodged in
the yamen of the Minister of Protocol. Sulphur, copper, tin, and fabrics
continued to form the token tribute as of old, although the Manchus ordered
Shuri to cease sending along trained horses. Imperial gifts for the King of
Ryukyu were received in exchange, together with money and goods
sufficient to reimburse the Okinawans for the expenses of the journey. Such
Chinese commodities had a very high sales value in Japan, to which they
passed ultimately through Kagoshima.
Unlike the tribute missions, the investiture missions were at once more
elaborate and much more costly for the Okinawans. Ships bearing the
Okinawan and Chinese envoys to and fro on these occasions were known as
kan-sen. Sometimes the Chinese investiture envoys stayed at Naha as long
as nine months, for they were not as ready to venture out on the open seas
as often or as fearlessly as the Okinawans were.
It was customary for the principal envoy and his deputy to travel on
different ships, for great uncertainty attended the voyages. In 1663, for
instance, it required nineteen days to cross over from Fukien to Naha,
whereas in 1683 the voyage was made in three days, a record time. The
ambassador on that occasion (Wang Chi) remained at Shuri for five months,
during which he was called upon to write many inscriptions and autographs
for the Okinawans, who admired his literary style and his fine calligraphy.
Upon his return to China he prepared two monographs, one having to do
with government and history in Ryukyu, the other and longer one a record
of Okinawan manners and customs.
The number of Chinese soldiers and servants and minor officials in the
ambassador's suite was rarely less than three hundred and at times
numbered eight hundred. Since the Shuri government had to bear the
expenses of the Chinese mission while it was in residence at Naha, the drain
on the treasury was heavy, and the king's officers had to depend upon
Satsuma for loans to meet the charge.
The trading ships allowed to accompany tribute ships were known as
sckko-sen, and it was upon these that Satsuma depended for its great profits
in this business. Since it was impossible to increase the frequency with
which tribute ships could be dispatched, Satsuma prompted the Okinawans
to obtain permission to increase the number of sekko-sen, and to send
trading ships along with the kan-sen of investiture missions as well.
Both the Satsuma clan government and the merchants of Kagoshima
invested capital in the China trade, entrusting it to Naha middlemen in order
to preserve the elaborate pretense required to satisfy Chinese sensibilities.
At Kagoshima, management of Ryukyuan affairs was largely entrusted to
the Ichiki family, and in 1631 one of the Ichiki, in disguise, went along with
the Okinawans to keep a close watch on the conduct of business at the
trading depot. His success as a "watchdog" for Satsuma's interests was
reflected in profits, so great that henceforth agents from Kagoshima
concealed themselves among the Okinawan sailors and merchants upon
each mission.
Occasionally ships engaged in this trade put in at Kume Island, which
lay in the sea lanes west of Naha. Sometimes they needed slight repair,
sometimes weather conditions dictated a pause en route. The Japanese soon
became aware that the Okinawan sailors were evading Satsuma's agents by
off-loading some of the trading goods at Kume to be smuggled later into
Okinawa. There were reprisals. In 1667 Shuri was forced to execute one
envoy for failure to conduct his mission properly, and a system of fire
signals was inaugurated in the islands to warn of the passage of ships, thus
rendering it difficult for them to make overlong or clandestine stops along
the way.

Footnote
* This stilted English version was the official Japanese translation presented foreign representatives

during the Sino-Japanese sovereignty dispute, 1871-82.

 CHAPTER FIVE
THE YEARS OF ISOLATION

1609-1797
A NEW ECONOMIC LIFE: AGRICULTURE
TAKES THE PLACE OF FOREIGN TRADE
By fortunate accident the sweet potato was introduced, in 1606, and by
1620 it was commonly grown everywhere in the islands.1 This hardy,
tuberous plant yielded a cheap but nourishing food for mankind and a
substantial fodder for livestock. A heady alcoholic drink could be distilled
from it. It could be stored easily. Above all it grew well throughout the
islands, even in soil too poor to produce other food crops or too badly
situated for irrigation.
Today the Okinawans keep alive the memory of Noguni Sokan, who
brought the sweet potato to Naha from China and in so doing substantially
altered the course of economic development in the islands. He was a minor
official stationed for a time at the Ryukyu trading depot on the Fukien coast.
To break the tedium of his assignment there he read Chinese texts on
botanical and agricultural subjects and experimented with various plants in
his own garden-patch at the trading station. It occurred to him that the sweet
potato, only recently brought to the Fukien coast, might be grown in
Okinawa and that if this could be done, it might serve to relieve or prevent
famine conditions which so often affected country villages in times of crop
failure.*
Upon his return to Okinawa, Noguni tried planting seedlings in several
places, and the results were promising. Gima Shinjo, an official of much
higher rank than he, took note of and encouraged Noguni's experiment.
Within fifteen years the sweet potato, known as To-imo (Chinese potato),
was being cultivated throughout Okinawa.
After Noguni Sokan had demonstrated its value in the Okinawan
economy, the humble sweet potato was taken to Japan. The diary of Richard
Cocks, the English trader at Hirado, has these entries:

"June 19, 1615: I took a garden this day and planted it with potatoes
brought from the Liquea [Ryukyu], a thing not yet planted in Japan.
"July 29, 1618: I set 500 small potato roots in a garden. Mr. Eaton sent
me them from Liquea. I must pay five shillings per annum for the garden."2

According to a History of Okinawa prepared by Ijichi Sadaka in 1878,

a Japanese named Ryuiemon carried the sweet potato from Ryukyu to
Yamakawa Village in Satsuma about 1665 or 1675. After his death in 1705
he was worshipped as the "Master of the Chinese Potato." From Satsuma,
sweet-potato cultivation spread throughout Japan.
Meanwhile, a stone altar was built near Noguni's grave in Okinawa in
1700 to honor the spirit of a man whose activities had proved of so great a
benefit to his fellows, and in 1937 the Okinawan government created a
handsome shrine in a public garden at Naha to recognize Noguni and his
patron Gima Shinjo.
 Gima's name is associated with the introduction of sugar-cane culture
as well. In 1623 an Okinawan envoy to China, named Pin Koku-yo,
returned with cane slips, which Gima caused to be planted experimentally.
The trial was a success and sugar production was soon established as a
basic agricultural industry, providing Okinawa with a luxury item in great
demand for the Satsuma trade and Japanese market. Sweet potatoes, by
contrast, were established as a basic foodstuff for the local population.
The introduction of these two major crops and their exploitation for
home consumption and for the export trade marked an abrupt shift in the
basic economy of the Ryukyu Islands from dependency on wide-ranging
free commerce to a niggardly share in the China trade and the production of
two crops with which to sustain life within the islands. The gentry at Shuri
lost much of their independence of action, but the peasants in the hinterland
became more important to the government and were stimulated to greater
production.

GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE UNDER

SATSUMA'S WATCHFUL EYE
During the first century of Satsuma's domination, the Okinawans evolved a
pattern of government and of social relations which was to persist with little
change until 1879. The adjustment of relations with Satsuma proceeded
smoothly, for the helpless Okinawans were by nature a mild and easygoing
people, relatively few in number and without armed forces or a will to fight.
Sho Nei's death in 1621 broke an important link with the past. His
successor, Sho Ho, could not merely assume office at the palace and then
announce the fact to Japan while awaiting recognition by the Chinese court.
Satsuma's approval now came first, enthronement followed, and only then
did a mission go off to Peking with Satsuma's blessing and a considerable
investment of Satsuma's funds in the cargoes shipped along for trade. Sho
Nei was the last king to play an important personal role in government until
the 1870's. The kings reigned thereafter through hereditary right and with
great prestige, but they were merely ceremonial chiefs of state.
The government's primary functions were reduced to the collection of
taxes in kind and supervision of the public peace. The Okinawans had little
to do with the conduct of foreign affairs. The nature of some of the offices
solemnly established and staffed at Shuri suggests that a secondary function
of government was to find ways and means to provide offices, titles, and
income for relatives of the royal family, for descendants of the anji, and for
the gentry. All government organization was held together by an elaborate
network of ceremonial relationships prescribed by Confucian standards. As
new economic problems rose within the country, or old economic activities
developed new importance, new offices were created to supervise them.
By the time Sho Ho reached the throne, Satsuma had returned to the
king his powers to organize offices and to administer punishments, though
always under the watchful eye of the Japanese resident commissioner.
Satsuma reserved the right to approve (or disapprove) appointments to the
prime minister's office and to the king's council (the Sanshikan), with whom
he shared responsibility.
We may use the English words chancellor or prime minister as an
approximate translation for the title Sessei. The office was reserved for
members of the royal house. Time soon demonstrated that the range of
talent in the Sho family was limited; gradually the office faded in
importance, though not in prestige, and the Sanshikan (Council of State)
emerged as the effective governing body.
Candidates for membership in the Council of State had to be of
acceptable lineage, they had to have passed the local literary examinations
successfully, and they had to be residents of Shuri. The literary
examinations were of course in the Chinese classical tradition, but much
less severe than the great examinations held at Peking. They had to be fitted
to local needs and local opportunities. The residence qualification reflected
the tradition that all aristocrats, descendents of the anji and of collateral
branches of the royal family, must live at Shuri. Occasionally exceptions
were made to this rule when talented men of the Kume scholars' village
were allowed to transfer their official residences to the castle town and so
become eligible for membership in the Sanshikan.
One organ of government was concerned with legal affairs; a High
Court, consisting of a chief judge, fifteen associates of different ranks, a
secretariat, and a clerical staff, took care of the ordinary judicial business,
and special judicial panels were appointed from time to time to consider
unusual cases.
Prime ministers and the Sanshikan were assisted by heads of
administrative departments, who were known as the Council of Fifteen
when acting together. These men advised on policy and recommended
nominations to the Sanshikan when vacancies occurred.
The countryside was divided into districts known as majiri, which in
the first instance roughly coincided with the old landed estates of the anji;
the majiri were grouped under the three ancient divisions corresponding to
the three principalities but now known as Shimojiri, Nakagami, and
Kunigami. Shuri sent its representatives to the majiri to supervise local
affairs, but at that level they dealt with local persons put forward by
communal village organizations.
Eligibility for office throughout the government down to the
majirilevel was usually determined by family status plus merit. Members of
the gentry who took the qualifying examinations and failed, or those whose
performance in office was deemed unsatisfactory, found themselves
transferred to offices lying far from the capital, and sometimes they were
reduced in rank. Their descendants gradually sank back into the local
population as petty village officials. Some became farmers.
The preëminence of Shuri families and the privileges and advantages
conferred automatically through residence at the king's capital, created a
tradition of prestige which has persisted into the 20th century, for wherever
Okinawans assemble for the first time, in Ryukyu, in Japan, or in overseas
communities, it is quickly but tactfully established if a man has been born in
Shuri, educated in Shuri, or has married a woman of Shuri, in that order of
precedence. Members of the royal family who were not rulers or sons of the
reigning king traditionally distinguished themselves by writing the character
for the surname Sho with two less strokes than the king and his sons were
accustomed to use. In the Chinese reading, therefore, Shang became
Hsiang. Members of the gentry who can trace a relationship with the royal
house of the Second Sho family usually, if not invariably, include a
character read cho in their personal names, such as Higa Shuncho, Kabira
Chosei, and so forth.
 Gradually the old feudal basis of administrative land divisions began
to break up under the pressure of economic need and a shifting, growing
population. The watch office in Hokuzan established in 1416 was at last
abolished in 1663. New majiri were created, and new offices came into
being at all levels of the government.
We do not know precisely how many people lived in the Ryukyu
Islands in these years; we shall not be far wrong if we assume that the
population did not exceed 200,000 of which perhaps 125,000 lived on
Okinawa. And of these it has been estimated that more than half lived in the
four towns of Shuri, Naha, Tomari, and Kume.*
Stimulating new social elements had to be absorbed into the
agricultural population in the 17th century. A substantial number of
Satsuma men who came down during, or just after, the Keicho invasion
decided to settle in Okinawa, took up lands granted to them perforce by the
Shuri government, and acquired wives from among the local gentry. These
Japanese newcomers shared in the limited privileges of private land
ownership, they enjoyed tax benefits, and in some instances they were
assigned shares in the revenues of whole villages located on their new
properties. Some of these early Japanese land-holdings are substantially
intact today and remain within the families which were established in the
early 17th century. Descendants of the Japanese immigrants have become
indistinguishable in dialect, living habits, and customs, for in each
generation there was intermarriage with Okinawan families. A tradition of
distinction is nevertheless maintained in the 20th century, displayed in
recollections of special position and privileges which had been enjoyed by
the Japanese squires so long ago.
 The social hierarchy may be summarized briefly as, first, the royalty
(the Sho family) ; second, the privileged classes (shizoku) ; and, third, the
common men (heimin).
The king stood supreme. Next came members of the royal household,
brothers and sons of the king. The royal consorts and mothers of princes
had to be chosen from among members of a few distinguished noble
houses, which were themselves related with the royal house through many
generations of intermarriage but were not of the same surname. It has been
noted heretofore that grandsons of the king were privileged to retain the Sho
family name. Beyond the third generation the king's descendants in
collateral branches assumed other princely names.
Among the preëminent noble houses were the O, Ba, and Mo families,
all cousins of the royal family in some degree. Next in the hereditary ranks
of the shizoku were the anji descended from territorial lords who had moved
into Shuri during and after the reign of Sho Shin. A lesser degree of nobility
bore the titles uekata or oyakata. These families were founded by men who
had earned permanent rank and distinction through meritorious service to
the state, or by men who were the younger sons of the hereditary anji and
royal princes.
Below the nobles stood a gentry class divided by a system of titles into
three principal grades, each with a junior and a senior rating. These were
the pechin, satonushi, and chikudun, descendants of the king's soldiers and
retainers, the soldiers and retainers of the anji, and scholars, priests, and
commoners who earned the gentry status through meritorious service.
Within these three ranks a man might rise or fall according to his ability and
deserts.
 At the downfall of the kingdom (in 1879) there were approximately
seventy-two families of noble or royal rank, and this may be taken as a
fairly reliable figure for the preceding two and a half centuries with which
we are here concerned.
Since the nobility and gentry numbered nearly one-third of the total
population—a high proportion—it might be supposed that there was one
drone for every pair of active workers in the islands, and that an oppressive
burden weighed upon a sullen and discontented common people. Such was
not the case, for thanks to the policies of Sho Jo-ken, Sai On, and other
enlightened leaders, the gentry were the artisans and craftsmen who
produced a large proportion of the artifacts required for daily living among
all classes, and after the middle of the 18th century an increasing number of
townsmen left Shuri and Naha for village and farm life.
 The masses (heimin) were the common farmers, the fishermen, and the
laborers, but in the Ryukyus even a farmer was sometimes given courtesy
titles in ordinary usage. A system of indenture permitted children to be sold
by impoverished parents. Itinerant players, pig-butchers, beggars, and
prostitutes were at the bottom of the social order.
No countrywide leadership or organization existed to give political
cohesion to the heimin; they were bound and guided by most conservative
traditions and concepts of duty. There was little movement to and fro
among the villages, and as a consequence strong differences of local dialect
developed and persisted through the centuries.
 There were no countrywide social organizations, no common schools,
and little by way of formal religion. Religion and religious organization
offered no common cause or leadership in the Ryukyus. As a precautionary
measure Shimazu proscribed and suppressed the evangelical Shin sect of
Buddhism, closed its temples, forbade all missionary activity, and dissolved
its priesthood in Satsuma and Ryukyu. Henceforth only the Zen and
Shingon sects were allowed to maintain organizations; they were of ancient
foundation at Shuri. The Shin sect, on the other hand, was of relatively
recent introduction; it had little property and scant prestige among the
gentry, but it did attempt to appeal to the illiterate common people, and
perhaps for this reason it was suspect. Satsuma had not forgotten that in the
16th century Shin priests, representing a powerful temporal organization at
Kyoto, had been employed to work against Shimazu's interests.
Relations between the classes seem never to have undergone serious
strain despite the barriers of privilege which separated aristocrat from
peasant.
The proportion of town-dwelling gentry was very high in relation to
the food-producing peasantry in the 17th century. This imbalance had not
been serious in the early days of independence, when the farmers produced
the basic food requirements, and the luxury trade in the hands of Shuri-
Naha men produced surpluses to sustain the gentry. After 1611 this surplus
earned in trade was drained off to meet the Satsuma tribute levies.

SHO JO-KEN, PRINCE AND PRIME

MINISTER
A prince named Gushikawa Choei led the Chuzan embassy to Edo in 1649,
meeting there leading Japanese statesmen and administrators. In 1654 he
became Sessei, and for twelve years thereafter strove to pattern his
administration on Japanese precedent. His successor continued and enlarged
these pro-Japanese policies.
Sho Jo-ken, Prince of Haneji, enjoyed high reputation as an essayist
and historian, and as such he was keenly sensitive to the position to which
the Ryukyu kingdom had been reduced. Since there was no possible
alternative—certainly the Chinese had displayed no interest in Okinawa's
fate—he wisely pursued a course of conciliation toward Japan.
Unfortunately, perhaps, the Tokugawa leaders whose policies these
princes chose to emulate were men who did not fully comprehend the
economic character of political and administrative problems. They were
first of all Confucian moralists, attempting to apply the inappropriate and
bookish precepts of ancient Chinese philosophers to social and economic
problems which called for imaginative and experimental contemporary
treatment. They were inventive of restrictions rather than of new methods
which would lead to increased production and better distribution of wealth.
Instead of freeing the economy to enable individual initiative and private
enterprise to have free play, social order and economic life alike were
subjected to rigid controls.
The Tokugawa government believed that everyone should find his
place and keep to it, and that a society well-regulated according to the
classics would of itself be free of problems. Consequently, the Japanese
leaders often addressed themselves to superficial issues of morals and
manners rather than to the fundamental problems of economic change and
population growth, which they did not clearly understand.
Okinawan leaders attempted to follow them; the blind were leading
the blind. The governing elite sought to freeze the established social order.
Restless individual energies were to be taken up in the pursuit of arts and
letters, in petty concern with genealogies, dress, and etiquette. These trivia
were all time-consuming and precluded any "dangerous thoughts" harmful
to the established order.
A proclamation "To Encourage Arts and Learning" was issued in
1667, and there was a steady flow of orders and edicts intended to "correct
and regúlate" society. The wellborn were encouraged to fritter away their
time in meeting the exacting requirements of ceremonial deportment and
dress; the common man was told to live frugally, work harder, produce
more goods, and observe the decencies of Confucian moral relationships
within the home and the community.
At Shuri there was a great concentration of interest on details of court
life and of the hierarchical order of things. By royal order, genealogies were
reexamined and corrected. Ceremonial rules were revised and made more
complicated, prescribing the days of attendance upon the court, the days
upon which summer clothes could be exchanged for winter costume, and
the smallest detail of costume itself. The forms and colors of dress were
minutely regulated anew for each class of society. The colors and folds of
the turban distinguished grades among officers and the quality and style of
hairpins gave public indication of a man's basic social status. It had been
long established that the higher nobles would wear gold and the lesser ones
silver hairpins. Now the system was refined; the second class of nobles
could wear silver hairpins bearing a golden flower, the gentry would wear
silver, and the common man was allowed brass.
It is significant, perhaps, that the common man was allowed to wear a
hairpin at all. The Okinawans never quite brought themselves to believe in
the existence of uncrossable social lines and often found occasion to make
exception to rules they laid down for themselves after Chinese or Japanese
precedents. The paternalistic government issued a multitude of rules to
guide the common man, for instance forbidding him to use an umbrella in
the hot sun (though he might use one in time of rain), or to use certain
patterns of cloth on his dress, or granting him the privilege of wearing
wooden clogs.
Peasants lived in utmost poverty, but at the same time there were no
extremes of wealth among the gentry. The Dutch scholar Kaempfer, at
Nagasaki from 1690 to 1692, wrote: "The inhabitants [of Ryukyu] which
are for the most part either husbandmen or fishermen, are a good-natured,
merry sort of people, leading an agreeable, contented life, diverting
themselves after their work is done, with a glass of rice beer, and playing
upon their musical instruments which they for this purpose carry out with
them into the flelds."3
Courtesy ruled all social relationships, and in Okinawa nearly every
third man counted himself a member of a privileged class with a formal and
polished code of manners by which to live. Another foreign observer (in the
19th century) noted that the rulers ruled "by the flick of a fan" rather than
by the blow of a sword or a stick. Basil Hall Chamberlain observed: "In
some most important respects the country really deserved the title bestowed
upon it by a Chinese Emperor in 1579, and still proudly inscribed on the
gate of its capital city, the title of 'The Land of Propriety.' There were no
lethal weapons in Luchu, no feudal factions, few if any crimes of violence. .
. . Confucius' ideal was carried out—a government purely civil, at once
absolute and patriarchal, resting not on any armed force, but on the theory
that subjects owe unqualified obedience to their rulers, the monarchy
surrounded by a large cultured class of men of birth, and the whole
supported by an industrious peasantry."4
Prime Minister Sho Jo-ken did not shrink from touching on the most
sensitive and conservative areas of community interest. How much he did
on his own initiative and how much was done at the direction of Satsuma's
agents we cannot tell, but he set about reducing the importance and
authority of the noro priestesses in the local communities throughout the
Ryukyus. In his essay on the noro system, Robert Stewart Spencer suggests
that the noro were the most conservative and antiforeign (i.e., anti-
Japanese) element in Okinawan society and that the educated men at court
took the rational Confucian scholar's attitude of skepticism toward all
religious forms and practices. A court which prided itself on Confucian
correctness and believed that human relations should in all things be guided
by the Confucian rule book may have encountered resistance among the
noro when attempts were made to apply Confucian theory to the practice of
government in the countryside. In the Japanese agent the noro met a rival,
and an unbelieving or skeptical rival at that. The noro certainly constituted
an influential hierarchy, which reached from the chief priestess at the king's
court to the meanest village in the most distant countryside and off-lying
island, and this Sho Jo-ken proposed to change.
 Without preliminary warning, it was announced in 1667 that the rank
of the chief priestess would henceforth be considerably reduced, placing her
at a level below that of the queen and the prime minister. The office of her
assistant, the priestess in charge of divination, was abolished. In 1674 it was
announced that the king would no longer make an annual progress to
worship at important shrines in Chinen and Tamagusuku and on Kudaka
Island; that he would content himself with "worship from afar" and would
merely dispatch a master of ceremonies to make offerings as his deputy.
This series of ceremonies had been held once in every two years from most
ancient times and was one of the most impressive events in the Ryukyuan
calendar, for upon these occasions the king customarily traveled with the
chief priestess, the highest officials of the court, and a host of attendants. In
1677 it was provided that the office of the chief priestess could be assumed
by the queen upon the death of her consort.
While diminishing the importance of the noro hierarchy, Sho Jo-ken
sought to enhance the importance of Confucian ritual. A Japanese from
Satsuma was brought into the palace to instruct the young King Sho Tei in
Confucian doctrine. When the handsome new Confucian temple had been
completed in Kume Village—a gift of the Chinese Emperor K'ang Hsi—the
king himself proceeded to worship there, attended by a concourse of nobles,
and it was decided that henceforth the king's son would offer incense before
the tablets of Confucius on the second day of each New Year.
Sho Jo-ken's effort to stiffen and formalize life among the gentry at
Shuri seems to have had little effect upon the life of the lively people of
Naha. They enjoyed tax immunities, and for reasons which are not clear, the
sumptuary laws and the regulations governing the size and nature of private
dwellings and other properties were not extended to the port city. As in Edo.
Osaka, and Nagoya, the great metropolitan centers in Japan proper, the
licensed quarters became centers of fashion, good food, the arts, and
entertainment. Women of the Tsuji and Naka-shima districts (set aside for
them in 1672) earned high reputations for wit and literary accomplishment.
As long as Okinawan men were free to travel in Japan and Japanese
mariners and merchants came to Naha there was a steady inflow of the
latest Japanese forms of popular entertainment. Nor did the Japanese remain
unaffected; there is considerable evidence that the distinctive Okinawan
dances and folk songs, the brightly designed textiles and the lacquerware
produced in the Southern Islands were all welcomed by the alert denizens of
the Japanese theater world and the craftsmen of Osaka and Edo.
The townsmen of Naha developed a pleasure-loving urban life which
was in strong contrast to the poverty and drabness of life in the villages.
Shuri, Naha, and the villages nearby were becoming crowded. Men
and women who had been brought in from the countryside for temporary
employment preferred not to return to the monotony of life in the farming
and fishing hamlets. The towns offered a more varied livelihood and greater
opportunities for craft skills. Residents in Shuri or Kume-mura were tax
free.
By 1653 serious overcrowding prompted the government to decree
that no one would be permitted to transfer his domicile nor bring his family
in to be registered at Shuri, Naha, Kume-mura, or Tomari. Sumptuary laws
were issued to discourage excessive expenditures by the townsmen, or
indulgence which the state councilors deemed to be excessive for common
people. The kinds and quantity of offerings which were allowable at funeral
ceremonies were prescribed by law, and there was an attempt to establish
limiting controls over open-market bartering transactions (1687).
The growth of towns meant an increased use of coinage. Under the
new Satsuma monopolies on overseas trade, however, supplies of Chinese
coins no longer came into circulation on Okinawa, but were diverted to
Kagoshima. The Okinawans could no longer cast great bronze bells or
dispatch large sums of copper cash as gifts for the shogun. To meet its
needs, the government undertook to recast old coins in lighter, smaller
units. The task was entrusted to the Toma family, and the products were
known as "dove's-eye coins" (hatome sen). As the years passed, these were
recast again and again, each time on a smaller scale, until at last they were
little more than round flakes of metal, carried on strings, each string
representing a certain standard weight and number.
The Okinawans struggled to adjust local economic life to the
limitations imposed upon it by Satsuma, but many of the problems were
unrecognized in their true dimensions by either Kagoshima or Shuri. The
government did little to expand production. Administrative organization
was conceived primarily as an agency through which to extract taxes in
kind from the farmer and the fisherman.
If the Shuri court economy was to maintain itself at the level of
expenditure to which the king, the princes, and the gentry had become
accustomed, taxation had to be increased and collected with increased
efficiency. Local production on Okinawa (with very little coming in from
Miyako and Yaeyama or from Kume Island) had to make up for the loss of
revenue from foreign trade.
 The village was the tax unit. Each village had an assigned quota to
provide through the district chief, who represented Shuri. Certain land areas
were set aside to support the licensed community priestess. Other lands
were held privately in the name of lords who lived at the capital. The
greater part of the cultivated land area was held as common property
divided among households throughout the community and assigned to them
for cultivation. These land allotments were changed periodically, though the
length of time that one household held a specific land area varied from
village to village. If a household was unable to produce its full share of the
village tax assessment, the other villagers made up the difference. Lack of
skill, shiftlessness, poverty of the soil, sickness in the household, or natural
calamity could affect the capacity of the individual household to produce its
share of the village allotment. The community as a whole accepted the
obligation to meet the shortcomings of individual members.
This system of accepted mutual obligations has left its stamp upon the
Okinawan character, for it fostered a deep sense of social obligation, of
group responsibility in maintaining the welfare of community members
who suffered economic hardship. It lies back of the phenomenal record of
relief work, and of financial assistance which Oki-nawan communities
overseas have remitted to their friends and relatives throughout the 20th
century. The peasant who could not enjoy exclusive ownership of land
could develop little pride in doing more than the minimum of work
necessary to meet his assessments. He could not hope to acquire land to
pass on to his heirs. He was rarely challenged to exert individual initiative
or imagination in his work. The system of community rather than individual
responsibility among peasants threw a larger burden of responsibility upon
the elite or gentry, whose lives centered at Naha and Shuri, but whose duties
took them on assignment into every village in the islands. This promoted a
strong sense of interdependence and cooperation among the gentry at Shuri,
the minor officials, and the village headmen in each district.

The Okinawan peasant was obliged and conditioned to work in the

community interest. From birth until death his tasks were allotted to him.
He developed no large sense of individual rights or "natural privileges." He
had few worldly goods; in a mild climate and a static agricultural society he
needed few; hard work benefited the community, not the individual.
The 17th-century administrators did not depend exclusively on
bookish maxims and Confucian morals in coping with economic problems.
Some practical measures were taken as well. The government established a
smithy in each district in 1667 with a view to improving agricultural tools,
and an improved cane-crushing apparatus was developed by Makiya Jissai
two years later. Satsuma approved the opening of new land areas for
clearance and cultivation. By this time the farmers had discovered that it
was more profitable to produce sugar for export than to cultivate sweet
potatoes and grains for domestic food supply. This meant in turn that the
reserves of storable food diminished. The government therefore issued
orders restricting the area which could be planted to sugar cane (a crop
which takes about eighteen months to reach maturity), setting a maximum
figure of 1,500 chobu or about 1,675 acres (modern measurement) in an
effort to return some lands to food production. The restrictive laws were not
at once complied with and had to be repeated five years later, in 1698.
A Tea Commissioner's Office had been established in 1676,
meanwhile, to supervise production, and Forest Administration officers
were sent into central and northern Okinawa. Saltworks, too, were being
developed at the Kotabaru seaside.
These developments all meant an increase in the total production of
foodstuffs and raw materials, but such gains were more than offset by
growth in population and by a series of natural disasters. There was of
course an annual loss through storm damage, to which the Okinawans had
become inured through the centuries. But a tremendous earthquake, tidal
wave, and typhoon struck the island of Tori-shima in 1664, which killed
hundreds of people, destroyed homes, and wrecked fishing craft. Famine
conditions in the next few years had to be relieved by emergency food
shipments out of Naha, which depleted normal stocks held there. There
were occasional severe earthquakes felt on Okinawa and Miyako with loss
in property, and in 1694 a great typhoon destroyed or heavily damaged the
sea walls, dykes, roads, and bridges in central Okinawa and along the coast.
The sweet-potato crop failed in 1706 and famine came. An earthquake
killed many people on Miyako, and more than three thousand persons died
in 1709 when famine again came in the wake of a great typhoon. The royal
palace was destroyed once again by fire in that disastrous year.
The Ryukyu Islands seemed to be engulfed in disaster.

SAI ON'S STATESMANSHIP: THE STRUGGLE

FOR ECONOMIC SURVIVAL
In 1711 the Crown Prince Sho Kei was seven years old. The time had come
for him to submit to the exacting discipline proper for a future king. When
the government looked about for a tutor, the choice fell upon Sai On, a
young man of twenty-seven years who had distinguished himself as chief
officer of that stronghold of Confucian training, Kume Village. His father, a
distinguished Kume scholar, had served several times as ambassador to
Peking. The son had spent some years on the Fukien coast as student-
interpreter in the trading depot.
Although this background meant that Sai On was steeped in Chinese
studies, it is noteworthy that while he was at Ch'uang-chou he is said to
have applied himself to the study of certain Chinese texts concerned with
economic problems and practical administration, such as the development
of irrigation and the management of cropland.
Sai On was called to duty at Shuri Castle in the centennial year of
Satsuma's domination. For nearly a decade Okinawa had suffered disastrous
fires, famines, earthquakes, and great storms, but no help came from China,
and Satsuma did not see fit to remit or reduce the tribute levies. The
Okinawans faced a struggle for economic survival; imaginative and firm
leadership was needed. Sententious Confucian maxims and state theory
were inadequate to meet the demands of a hungry people.
In China and Japan a Confucian scholar's great ambition was to stand
at the side of his ruler, giving advice; in practice it was often a thankless
task, for the ruler took credit when things went well, the advisor "assumed
responsibility" and lost his post (if not his head) when things went badly.
Sai On was destined to stand by the side of Sho Kei for more than forty
years.
The crown prince became king in his thirteenth year, and in the next
performed ceremonies admitting him to adult status. To mark the occasion
Sai On was raised in court rank and given a residence at Shuri. This made
him eligible for appointment to the state council, the San-shikan. He was
not a member of the royal family and hence could not be made prime
minister, but the duties of the council members were reassigned and he at
once became in effect the most important figure in the Ryukyu Islands. This
meant continuity of policy for a half century, a minimum of conflict at the
court itself, and of course great prestige for the minister to whom the king
in fact entrusted full management of the government.
Sai On was sent to Peking in 1716 to seek the writ of investiture. We
can imagine with what pride this descendant of Chinese immigrants went
from Shuri to the court of the Manchu emperors to represent his young
protégé. Ancestry, scholarly training, and experience meant that he was
aware of the extent and power of China. This suggests an interesting
contrast with the background, training, and predilection of his distinguished
predecessor, Sho Jo-ken, but whatever Sai On's pro-Chinese inclinations
may have been, upon his return to Okinawa he had to face the harsh
realities of subjection to Japan.
Under Sai On's direction the government entered upon a long period of
intensive and often experimental economic-development work. The
sententious Confucian edicts and the efforts at moral suasion were not given
up, but they were supplemented by constructive and practical action. Within
a few years the islands were producing more than ever before.
Sai On did not visit Japan, but he was in a position to open wide the
channels of communication with Edo and to bring strong Japanese influence
to bear upon many aspects of Okinawan life. How this came about may be
better-understood if we consider for a moment what was going on at the
shogun's court.
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi's death in 1709 brought to a close an era of
extravagant spending. The mad shogun's treasury was exhausted and the
government was close to bankruptcy. Reform was the order of the day. The
answer in Japan was stricter regulation of social life and heavier taxes for
the farmer. Nevertheless, some of the Confucian scholars at the shogun's
court were practical administrators as well as moralists. Their problems
were economic problems on a grand scale, and to these they sought to apply
Chinese Confucian state theories as they understood them. This may not
have been the most effective approach to the problems of production,
distribution, and consumption in 18th-century Japan, but administrative
reform was the central topic of discussion among the most prominent
officers of the land.
 Undoubtedly Sai On was aware of this. In 1710 a mission had gone to
Edo numbering 168 persons, the largest ever sent to the Japanese capital.
Four years later a mission of 138 men went up through Satsuma and Kyoto
to stay at the Shimazu mansion at Edo. The ambassadors and vice-
ambassadors on these occasions were princes of the Sho family, who
performed arduous ceremonial duties at the shogun's court while their aides
met with Japanese scholars, administrators, artists, and craftsmen. Edo was
at that time one of the world's largest cities, and held much to interest and
stimulate the visitors.
The princes Yonagusuku and Kin led the embassy of 1714, but the
most distinguished member was Sai On's elder contemporary Tei Junsoku, a
product of the Kume Village community and of the long tradition of
Chinese classical scholarship. He was known among his fellow countrymen
as the Sage of Nago. Given this superlative opportunity to meet with
Japanese leaders, Junsoku sought out scholars and statesmen, among them
Arai Hakuseki, the shogun's principal advisor; Ogyu Sorai, a utilitarian
moralist; and his outstanding pupil, Dazai Shundai.
They welcomed the Okinawan scholar, and there is evidence that the
exchange of ideas was fruitful and of interest to the Japanese. Arai
Hakuseki had earlier completed one essay on the Ryukyus and was now
stimulated to enlarge his studies, leading to the publication in 1719 of his
Nanto Shi (History of the Southern Islands). Dazai Shundai subsequently
published an essay in economic studies (Keizai Roku), in which he observed
that the feudal Lord of Tsushima (in the straits between Honshu and Korea)
traded profitably with Korea, and that the Lord of Matsumae traded
profitably in products from the great northern island of Hokkaido, but that
"Satsuma's incomparable wealth is due to its monopolistic sale of goods
imported from Ryukyu."
We may assume that Sai On's representatives discussed Shuri's
problems with these well-informed men, and that their attention was
directed to Japanese government precedents. Many 18th-century economic
policies in Okinawa appear to reflect theories and policies then being tried
by Edo. The ideal of the merit system and of bureaucratic organization
fostered group morality and laid great emphasis upon group responsibility,
but the individual faded into the committee or council of which he was a
member. Individualism in government office was discouraged; group action
became a fine art of compromise and adjustment among the members.
While this important mission drew Edo's attention to the Ryukyu
Islands, the shogun's government was stirred by an incident which revived
old fears that the Western powers would penetrate Japan through the
Southern Islands. On October 10, 1708, a fearless Italian missionary named
Giovanni Batista Sidotti, courting martyrdom, had been put ashore, quite
alone, on Yaku-shima, in the northern Ryukyus. In December, 1709, he
reached Edo under arrest. Arai Hakuseki interviewed him with a mixture of
scholarly curiosity and admiration, restrained by official necessity for stern
action. The interrogation formed the base for an essay entitled "Notes on the
Western World." Sidotti, under house arrest, was strictly forbidden to preach
or proselytize; nevertheless, in 1714 he baptized servants who had been
assigned to him. For this audacity he was subjected to most cruel
punishment, which he endured for a year before his death on December 15,
1715. His action could be interpreted by the Japanese as a demonstration of
European determination to penetrate Japan whatever the price might be.
 The Sidotti incident prompted the shogunate to order the barons of
Kyushu to destroy any European ship which might appear along the coast,
and to kill at once any Europeans found attempting to enter the islands as
Sidotti had done.
There was other cause for uneasiness. Chinese who reached Nagasaki
and Okinawans who returned to Shuri from China between the years 1708
and 1718 reported that Jesuit missionaries—foreign barbarians— were
traveling into every part of the Chinese empire, making maps. The great
Emperor K'ang Hsi had ordered them to do the work because they were the
most accomplished mathematicians at his Peking court, and the most
accurate cartographers, but the Japanese could not remain indifferent to the
fact that they were also priests of the hated Kirishitan religion, traveling to
the very borders of Korea and crossing over to the island of Formosa,
within sight of territory belonging to the Ryukyu king.
Under these circumstances the Japanese reacted strongly to the
presence of large embassies coming up from the vulnerable southern
islands. Edo ordered Satsuma to prepare a study of Ryukyuan history,
administration, the land system, official ranks and insignia, the clothing of
the common people, and other subjects which would help to give the
shogunate a better understanding of the Okinawans. Satsuma went further
than this; remembering, perhaps, the role which priests had played in
Hideyoshi's successful effort to circumscribe the Shimazu domains, orders
were now promulgated which forbade Okinawan priests and students to
travel beyond Satsuma's borders, as they had hitherto been free to do. Only
missions closely supervised by Shimazu agents thenceforth passed along
the highroads of Japan to the shogun's capital. This edict in effect narrowed
the area of contact between the Okinawans and the Japanese.
Although Sai On was strongly under Chinese influence, he was a
realist; his policies consistently attempted to strike a median, to preserve a
neutral position between Japan and China. This attitude was embodied in
the handbook Travelers' Advice (Ryokonin Kokoroe), a model for
evasiveness, artfully clothed in polite language, intended to guide
Okinawans in China in their efforts to conceal Shuri's true relationship with
Satsuma and Edo.
A story told of Sai On illustrates the narrow margin of surplus in the
Ryukyus as well as his capacity for firmness. A mission from Peking in
1719 objected to the fact that the Okinawans were unable to buy more than
one-fourth of the total goods which the Chinese envoys had brought along
with an eye to profit for themselves in private trade. Technically, of course,
they were not supposed to demean themselves in commerce, and their
reports to the throne would show a fine disdain for mercantile activity. The
visitors, lodged at Naha, threatened to riot. Sai On attempted to mediate the
dispute, and by collecting gold and silver hair ornaments from among the
women of Naha and Shuri, he was able to increase the purchasing funds,
but only by one-fifth. The Chinese grudgingly accepted this, but went away
disgruntled, carrying back to China more than one-half the goods which
they had expected to sell at Naha. It is said that one of the envoys, Hsu Pao-
kuang, thereafter bore a grudge against Sai On, though his relations with Tei
Junsoku remained on a friendly basis and produced a long-continued
correspondence between the two scholars.5
 Junsoku was then magistrate of Kume Village (Sai On's old post) and
in an unofficial sense was the "minister of education." At about this time he
caused to be reproduced, at his own expense, a volume of Chinese moral
maxims, which he presented to the Shogun Yoshimune through the Lord of
Satsuma. Yoshimune was impressed; Junsoku's friend Ogyu Sorai was
directed to prepare an annotated edition, which in turn was translated into
Japanese by Muro Kyuso, one of the shogun's chief advisors. It was
reprinted again and again with official patronage and distributed widely
throughout Japan, holding its place among Japanese textbooks for nearly
three hundred years. Okinawans are fond of boasting that Japan received
three great gifts from the Ryukyu Islands —sweet potatoes, sugar cane, and
these Six Courses in Morals.
For the greater part of his life Sai On's official career ran parallel with
that of Tokugawa Yoshimune, who ruled Japan from 1716 to 1751. Under
this shogun the Japanese enjoyed the most prosperous era known to them
throughout the long Tokugawa period. It may not be too much to say that
Sai On's success reflected in part the spirit of inquiry and experiment
fostered by Yoshimune. Foreign travel and the Christian religion were
proscribed as rigidly as ever, but Yoshimune was curious about the history
and scientific progress of the Western world. He eased the ban on Western
books and on Chinese works concerning Western science. It may be that
reports of scientific work being done then by the Jesuits at Peking reached
Edo through the Naha trade. There was some reflection in Okinawa of
Jesuit success in correcting the calendar and in revising the astronomical
and mathematical work of the Chinese. The "regulation of the seasons" was
of prime importance in Confucian ceremonials developed for an agricultural
people both in Japan and China. To this end, Yoshimune prided himself as
an amateur astronomer and in 1718 had an observatory built in the castle
grounds at Edo. Meanwhile, a band of hard-working Japanese (the
Rangakusha or "Dutch Scholars") undertook the arduous task of learning
Dutch and of translating scientific works from Dutch into Japanese. Their
work centered at Nagasaki, and the men of Satsuma nearby kept themselves
fairly well informed of it. The Dutch and their Japanese students were
concerned with medicine, optics, and the mechanic arts.
Thus the attenuated influence of Western scientific methods indirectly
filtered down into Ryukyu. Sai On ordered an Okinawan scholar aamed
Kohatsu Riko and his students to construct a telescope and observatory in
1739, and on the basis of observations in 1740 and 1741 he ordered certain
corrections to be made in the local methods of computing time. Okinawans
studied medicine at Kagoshima, and in 1742 six doctors were appointed in
attendance at Shuri Castle. Others were sent down to Miyako and Yaeyama
on three-year tours of duty, with orders to supervise the welfare of the local
people and to care for shipwrecked persons. This is not to say that Western
medicine was introduced to the Ryukyu Islands at this time, but the interest
in medical studies roused in Japan by the Rangakusha stimulated Okinawan
interest as well.
Promising youths continued to go to Peking for advanced study, but in
1729 the government canceled stipends hitherto granted to residents of
Kume Village. These had been available for 350 years; cancellation was
actually an economy measure, but it reflected, too, the diminishing prestige
of China
 Sai On governed through officers dispatched to thirty-five districts.
Each district was subdivided into villages and hamlets, which enjoyed
autonomous community organization. For the guidance of all, Sai On
prepared a Handbook for Administrative Officers (Yomui-kan), which
followed precedents set by Sho Jo-ken. It was couched in stilted Confucian
phrases, but these do not disguise concern with the need for a realistic
adjustment of Okinawan social Ufe to its economic resources.
Sai On attempted to rationalize the productive economy. He limited
the craft activities of the farmers, reserving them wherever possible to the
townsmen of Shuri, Naha, Tomari, and Kume. Thus the townsmen had
something which they could exchange for foodstuffs produced in the
countryside, and the farmers and fishermen had reason to carry supplies into
the urban center. Concurrently, younger sons of the gentry were encouraged
to leave Shuri and settle in other places as artisans, without loss of social
status. A mutual-aid fund was established in 1733 to benefit members of the
gentry who were in financial difficulty. Men who distinguished themselves
by aiding others were given public honors.
Broadly speaking, the government's acts and orders fell into three
general categories in this century. The first had to do with restraints and
punishments; the second established privileges and offices to support the
gentry; and the third concerned problems of economic development.
A short-lived edict attempted to suppress the manufacture of
intoxicating liquor. Officers were appointed to extend watch over the
people's morals. Orders were issued restricting expenditures for funerals
and the elaborate forms of ritual entertainment which were associated with
mourning and interment. A ban was placed on feasts for journeying friends.
The police administration was enlarged, and in 1752 Okinawa's criminal
laws were applied in Yaeyama. The criminal code was revised and its
provisions made known to the public through local governors and
magistrates.
Acts essentially favorable to the gentry shifted the income basis for the
higher lords. They had lived hitherto on income from hereditary lands;
annual revenues from their estates were subject to the uncertainties of crop
and climate. In 1723 the anji were granted a regular rice stipend from the
government treasury. They became pensioners of the king, and the revenue
from their lands directly entered the public stores. Sai On himself enjoyed a
stipend as nominal chief of Gushikawa district though he was in fact the
principal minister of state. In 1734 the tax imposed upon town-dwelling
artisans was abolished, benefiting the gentry who had been allowed and
encouraged to become artisans without suffering loss of rank. Outstanding
artists and craftsmen of every class were awarded titles bearing privileges
and stipends. Famed dancers, outstanding samisen-players, and the makers
of exceptionally fine combs were granted such government recognition. In
the king's name new privileges and honors were established for the aged
throughout the islands.
All this meant that administrative costs were rising, but it also meant
that a moderate prosperity had once again come to Okinawa. Sai Ons great
personal reputation rests upon the skill and vigor with which he attacked
basic problems of rising population, a heavy tribute schedule, and a chronic
poverty of resources.
Improved irrigation work and well-conceived conservation programs
were the central concern of the government. Noted projects were
undertaken along the Yoza River (1726) and the Haneji River (1734), where
afforestation and-soil conservation were linked with a program of river
dyking and the opening of new irrigation canals. The feasibility of digging a
canal across the neck of Motobu Peninsula and of removing the seat of
government northward to Nago were long debated. Sai On finally decided
against the proposals.
Okinawa needed timber for construction purposes and for fuel, but soil
and climate did not produce a natural growth rapid enough to replenish
depleted forest resources. Sai On made a thorough study of forest growth
and forest use and of methods of reforestation and forest control. Ultimately
his plans, policies, and observations—fruits of his long experience—were
embodied in a series of essays upon the subject. These have had durable
interest, and in 1952 were translated, published, and distributed abroad by
the Forestry Division of the United States Civil Administration in the
Ryukyu Islands. They form remarkable documents in forest-conservation
history. Here and there gnarled old pine trees arch the roads and line the
crests of mountain ridges in 20th-century Okinawa, thanks to Sai On's
policies. A grove planted at Sai On's direction on Tarama in distant Miyako
still serves as a model for new windbreaks established to protect the
precious topsoil.
Sai On forbade the construction of dugout canoes in order to conserve
trees of large girth. Farmers and fishermen were restrained in the
indiscriminate cutting of smaller trees needed as watershed cover on steep
slopes. Villagers were shown how to plant windbreaks along the shore and
on steep mountainsides to check the erosive action of high wind and
torrential rain. Housing lots and grave-sites were limited to ensure a
maximum use of arable land. Sandy flats lying between Naha and Tomari
were reclaimed for building-sites. Irrigation and drainage projects became a
major concern of government throughout the kingdom. Sai On's agricultural
extension plans, drawn up in 1734, reflect careful observation and
constructive long-range consideration.
Prudent planning thus brought about an increase in the total
production of wealth. To manage it, the government issued new coinage and
opened new public markets to promote local exchange of commodities. In
1729 there was an attempt to standardize weights and measures. Naha
harbor was dredged, and port officers were assigned to every important
landing place to supervise coastwise traffic between seaside villages. Metal-
casting techniques and smithies were improved to increase the efficiency of
common tools. Limekilns were established which used coral and shell to
produce building material. Agricultural inspectors assigned to each district
office encouraged the planting of tea and of banana-like plantains needed as
a source of textile fiber. The manufacture of ink-sticks, paper, and objects
made of paper, such as lanterns and umbrellas, became important.
There are reasons to believe that nearly half the population on
Okinawa was concentrated at Naha and Shuri. To meet some of the
problems of increased numbers and of unemployment, farmers were
forbidden to move into town, and new villages were created as lands were
opened to cultivation. Incomplete records for the 18th century suggest that
possibly one new settlement was recognized in each four years. Famine
years were anticipated; grain-storage warehouses were established under
government direction; and honors were awarded to the farmer who first
promoted a new method for planting and harvesting two crops of sweet
potatoes annually.
Sai On's authority was challenged only once during his long career.
The details are obscured by a cluster of legends. A party formed in
opposition to Sai On's policies, charging (whether they believed it or not)
that the chief minister was too "pro-Chinese." Heshikiya Chobin and
Tomoyose Anjo, the leaders, secretly drew up and delivered a statement of
accusations to the resident Satsuma agent in 1734. The affair came to light;
Heshikiya and fourteen others were seized and put to death.
A curious, romantic, and oddly incomplete story attaches to this
incident.
In the old days of the kingdom the retaining walls and foundations of
the castle rose vertically to a great height from the wooded enclosure below,
and at the crest of the wall stood one of the royal residential pavilions, set in
a garden area. Here dwelt one of the king's daughters. When Heshikiya was
condemned to death it was discovered that he and the princess were in love
—or at least that the princess was in love with Heshikiya. Despite this, the
sentence was carried out and the execution done at Owan Beach, which
could be seen at a distance from the castle heights. It was customary,
moreover, for a white flag to be run up at the execution ground as a signal
to the castle that the king's justice was being done. On the day that
Heshikiya and his fourteen companions were put to death the flag appeared
at the masthead above the treetops, and at that moment the princess in
despair cast herself down from the high parapet. Obviously this was not an
ordinary suicide, for when a search was made for the royal body, only one
leg could be found; nothing else. After that day in 1734 the garden pavilion
in the castle grounds was known as Kunra Gushiku (One-Leg Pavilion).
The unhappy princess was the daughter of Sho Kei, who had come to
the throne in 1716. His rule was nominal, for throughout this long period
the true source of authority lay with Sai On. The king died in 1751, and in
the next year his faithful minister retired from his post in the Council of
State. He remained an important figure until his death in his seventy-ninth
year (1761). Much of Sai On's success was rooted in the unshaken
confidence which marked his relations with the king. They had achieved in
full the Confucian ideal of Sage and Ruler, working together in complete
trust and harmony.
The state ministers who followed Sai On continued his policies for
some years, but there was a gradual decline in the fortunes of the kingdom.
Okinawa was never again to know the degree of prosperity and well-being
which marked the first half of the 18th century. No leader so vigorous and
imaginative as Sai On came to the scene; production of wealth fell off.
Toward the end of the century there was a marked increase in the number of
natural disasters suffered by the economy through fire, flood, storm, and
earthquake, but until these calamities began to disturb the kingdom, life for
the Shuri gentry (if not for the hard-working peasant) continued in the even
tenor established under Sai On's long administration. It is desirable here to
review briefly the mild achievements in the arts and crafts and
modifications in the social organization which so curiously set Okinawa
apart from either of its masters, China or Japan, during the second century
of "dual subordination."
 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN
THE 18TH CENTURY
We have seen that two centuries of enforced seclusion followed three
centuries of wide-ranging travel and trade. From a relatively high degree of
prosperity and well-being the Okinawans slowly sank to a level of general,
grueling poverty surrounded by physical evidence of the great days of
Chuzan. In a setting of massive castle walls and gates, mansions and
gardens, parks and lakes, shrines and temples, tree-lined racing parks and
roads, and fine stone bridges, the aristocrats and gentry of Shuri, Naha, and
Kume Village attempted to preserve the standards of ceremony and conduct
which tliey had known in the days of independence. But it was a losing
struggle. There were brief periods of moderate prosperity in the 17th and 18
th centuries when Nature was kind for a time and administrative skills
promoted efficient use of inadequate resources. There is abundant evidence,
however, that no matter how hard they tried, the Okinawans could not
overcome the problem of slow population growth within an area virtually
barren of natural resources, so long as they were forbidden by Japan to trade
freely overseas, and were forced to wear the tribute yoke which Satsuma
had contrived.
The Okinawans slowly and quite unconsciously blended cultural
elements and institutions drawn from China and Japan and from Southeast
Asia. There were few innovations, and a gradual simplification of
ceremonies and festivals which they could no longer afford to maintain.
We have three interesting accounts of Okinawan cultural life,
government, and history as seen through Chinese eyes in 1719, 1757, and
1801. These are the journals and reports of envoys sent from Peking to
convey writs of investiture to the kings at Shuri.
The first of these reports (by Hsu Pao-kuang) relates in great detail the
elaboration of ceremonies at the palace and at the mansion built and
maintained for the Chinese ambassadors' use.6 The second (Chou Huang's
Brief History of the Ryukyu Kingdom) is introduced with a simple map and
a review of the traditional history.7 It describes at length the tribute
relationship with China, the nature of the tribute, the ceremonies and edicts
concerning investiture. It then proceeds to a description of administration
and of the manners and customs of the people. Much of this appears to be a
record of things reported to the envoy but not observed by him, and he
ventures an opinion that the climate has had much to do with shaping
Okinawan characteristics and behavior. Chou Huang's sense of propriety is
disturbed by the discovery that Okinawans occasionally practice self-
destruction in the Japanese manner —by committing seppuku (hara-kiri) :
this marked the island people as barbarians; nevertheless, he found them
courteous and meticulous in the discharge of ceremonial obligations, a
subject most dear to the ceremonious Chinese official.
Chou's report touched on temples and temple services and other
remarkable buildings, places, and objects. Both architecture and literary
monuments he found to be inferior, of course, when judged by China's high
standards. The state ritual is described and there is a record of titles, ranks,
and offices among the ruling class. In discussing taxes and the tax-gathering
system Chou notes that in his opinion the Ryukyu kingdom was the poorest
of all countries surrounding China.
 A section on military affairs and modes of punishment records that the
Ryukyuan government imposed three types of capital punishment and five
of less severity. All of these were common in both China and Japan, and all
except banishment were cruel and extreme if judged by modern penal
standards. Chou noted the civil and social relationships among the
Okinawans and made a record of interesting local products. He concluded
his report with a catalogue of noteworthy people in Okinawan annals from
illustrious kings to notorious vagrants.
The third journal (published in 1803) was made by Li Tung-yen during
a sojourn on Okinawa from June 25 until November 28, 1801.8 The usual
record is made of traditional local history and of the investiture rites, notes
to be expected in the journal of an envoy sent abroad on a special mission.
Li gives an excellent account of the progress of an embassy through the
Chinese countryside and of the voyage to Naha, accompanied by certain
Okinawan princes who had been at Peking. His comments upon social and
economic conditions are of special interest.
There were seven chief families at Shuri, who married only among
themselves and with the royal family, and among these were Sai On's
descendents, a noteworthy concession to the Kume Village aristocracy of
Chinese scholars. Li noted that the Kume students were divided into two
groups—those who spoke Chinese and those who read Chinese. They began
their studies as small children; at the age of fifteen (after ten years of
training) they were received in audience at the palace. Their names were
entered upon a special register and they began a career of advancement
which could lead them through five grades to a place on the Council of
State (Sanshikan), wearing the purple turban and the gold pin of state
councilors.

While Li was on Okinawa five noble youths from Shuri took up

residence near the Chinese embassy quarters at Naha in order to learn as
much as they could through observation and conversation with the visitors.
Okinawan scholars cultivated friendships with the Chinese envoys in order
to discuss literary matters, but interpreters were needed and much of the
exchange took place through written communication. In other words, many
could read Chinese texts but few could speak properly in the Peking dialect.
Li and his associates were surprised at the style and classical knowledge
which the Okinawans could display.
 He discussed soldiers and punishments with one of his callers, who
observed: "This little country has no knowledge of soldiers. Our
punishments are only three. A murderer is put to death; one who wounds
another grievously is banished; for a lighter crime he is fined, and others are
exposed publicly in the hot sun according to their demerit. No one has been
executed among us for many years, but when a criminal is to be punished,
we usually give him a knife and he performs hara-kiri."9

Li thought that the absence of crime and the simplicity of punishment

betokened an approach to the ideal society set forth in the classics, where all
men knew their proper place and none violated the law.
 The Chinese visitor saw much of the countryside and wandered about
in the port city. He observed the poverty of the market place, wherein only
simple artifacts and foodstuffs were bartered; there was none of the noise
and variety of the great markets of China. Coins were scarce and of little
value.
In discussing this diary before the Royal Asiatic Society in China in
1869, S. Wells Williams noted that there was no mention whatsoever of
Japan's position or influence. We might infer that either the Okinawans
were inordinately skilled at deception or that the Chinese diarist was most
unperceptive. Since neither of these is probable, we must assume that
Chinese officials could not admit that the emperor's suzerain claims were
compromised by Satsuma's actions. Williams commends Li's objectivity
with these words: "No comparisons are made, and he tries to state without
disparagement the attainments of the Lewchewans, with whom he could
communicate only through interpreters, and whose kindness, curiosity and
eagerness to learn about China he often notices. There are no speculations
about the desirableness of occupying their group by the Emperor's forces,
and the advantages of having its trade center in China's ports; but rather a
tone of respect pervades the journal for a people so well and so
methodically governed, whom still he ranks as i-jin or barbarians."10
Although at Satsuma's bidding the Okinawans took such pains to
conceal the presence of Japanese agents, and under orders pretended to be
ignorant of the Japanese language, the evidence of Japan's cultural
penetration were everywhere. Attention has been drawn to sketches used to
illustrate Hsu Pao-kuang's report, in which the king wears a robe in the
Ming style for occasions of high ceremony, and to a late-17th-century
Ryukyuan portrait in which "the Prince wears a Liu Ch'iu hat, and his
attendants carry Japanese pikes as symbols of power, while a pair of
Japanese curtains sets off the picture. In short, the portrait gives an excellent
example of the synthesis of cultures in this small island kingdom under the
influence of two powerful neighbours."11
Once the adjustments had been made to the new order dictated by
Satsuma, the Okinawan gentry enjoyed a mild and pleasurable existence,
troubled briefly by a series of natural disasters at the end of the 17th
century, but resumed once more after Sai On's economic development
policies made themselves felt. The easygoing men of Shuri were rarely
disturbed by affairs of large importance. The Heshikiya incident suggests
that there were divisions and rivalries among the aristocrats, and some of
Sai On's edicts and admonitions hint of an undercurrent of discontent with
Satsuma's orders and rigorous tax requirements.
It is probable that the energetic, nervous and purposeful samurai from
Satsuma often became impatient with the easygoing island people. The art
of courteous but successful procrastination was highly developed among the
gentry who carried out Satsuma's orders. A foreigner writing of Okinawa in
the 19th century observed that if happiness consists of few wants and those
easily gratified, then the people of the Ryukyu Islands must indeed have
been happy in this era of seclusion.
The days of a gentleman were taken up in long conversations among
friends, frequent picnics in the countryside, and the leisurely composition
and exchange of poems in Japanese and Chinese styles. Weddings,
excursions to noted scenic spots and local shrines, ceremonies at the
Buddhist and Confucian temples, and town and village festivals in their
proper time filled the day-to-day round of the seasons.
The New Year opened with ceremonious worship of the ancestors on
the first, eighth, and fifteenth days of the month. A planting festival was
held at court to ensure a good grain harvest for the year, and in the second
week lanterns everywhere marked festivities carried on until well into the
night. On the sixteenth, ancestral tombs were visited and lanterns were
lighted before the burial chambers. On the twentieth the singing girls and
prostitutes of Naha enjoyed a special festival, visiting temples and shrines,
riding out on horseback, dancing in the open, and playing games peculiar to
their social class. The songs, the dances, and the games of Naha displayed
many elements imported through the centuries and adapted to the sense and
taste of the Okinawans.
Birthday celebrations were held in the first month of the year, with
special feasts and dancing to honor those who had reached thirteen, sixty-
one, seventy-three, eighty-five, and ninety-seven years. These reflect the
sexagenary cycle of years upon which Chinese calendar lore was based.
A festival of grain was held in the second month of the lunar calendar,
when men ceased work in the fields and women rested from household
chores. On the twentieth day of the month the household well or spring was
cleaned ceremoniously. The third month brought a traditional time of
picnicking and dancing on the beach, a period of purification, and visits to
the ancestral graves again. No one was permitted to cut wood or grass in
this month, and prayers were offered to the spirits of the forest to ensure
good growth in the woods and groves. Summer clothes could be donned
ceremoniously in the fourth month, and horse racing was popular on the
baba (racing grounds) under the great pine trees. As far as possible
everyone refrained from venturing out to sea, for this was a month in which
the great storms could be expected, and it was thought not wise to risk
provocation of the sea gods while the grain fields were heavy in the head.
The fifth day of the fifth month brought exciting tugs-of-war among village
teams, who used gigantic ropes woven especially for this occasion.
"Dragon-boat" racing took place, in the harbor waters and bays and upon
the lake at Shuri. The Harvest Festival came in the sixth month and again
there were competitions between villages and village teams. On the seventh
day of the seventh month everyone again took picnics into the countryside
to make pilgrimage to the family graves, and from the thirteenth to the
fifteenth night the Bon dances were held in honor of the dead.
Versifying parties and boating, moon-viewing excursions and picnics,
out-of-door plays and dances took place in the eighth and ninth months,
when the weather is at its finest. The first day of the tenth month was the
official day for winter clothing, and a festival marked the first planting of a
new rice crop, followed, in the last month of the year, by ceremonies
designed to ward off evil spirits. On the twenty-fourth day the hearth gods
took leave and a "godless" interlude continued until the fifth day of the New
Year following, when they were welcomed home again with ceremony.12
These were the major festivals in the annual cycle. No occasion for
singing and dancing together was neglected. Englebert Kaempfcr in 1690
noted that workmen carried their musical instruments into the field; Basil
Hall's companions observed the same thing in 1816; and the author saw
boatmen, policemen, and farmers carrying the samisen about in the off-
lying islands in 1952. Musicians were awarded high honors, and the office
of Chief Samisen Director was created at Shuri in 1710. Themes for the
pantomimic dance-dramas and the songs which accompanied them were
drawn from legend and history, treated with a bawdy humor or tinged with
melancholy, alternating between rollicking and lusty gaiety and the
haunting, sad themes of separation, or poverty, or thwarted love.
No gentleman or lady would venture far abroad without the services of
an attendant who carried a lacquered lunch-box. Food and drink were of
consequence and represented in variety a blend of Chinese and Japanese
tastes. The use of meats—pork and fowl—and rich sauces to appeal to the
tongue represented Chinese influence in the cuisine; lavish care in arranging
foods to appeal to the eye represented a distinctive Japanese touch. The
people of the Ryukyu Islands enjoyed liquors prepared from fermented
grains and distilled from the useful sweet potato or sugar cane. Excessive
drinking is still common, but quarrelsomeness and outrage seldom mar
conviviality.
It is noteworthy that songs, dances, and festival sports incorporated
many elements which came from overseas in the high days of Chuzan trade
in the Eastern Sea; boxing (karate) in which both hands and feet are used
had come from Indo-China or Siam; "dragon-boat" racing from South
China; the use of teeterboards from Korea; and wrestling from Japan.
Precedents for popular horse-racing and bull-baiting may be found in the
records of 12th- and 13th-century Japan.
The Okinawans had only a mild interest in religious forms and
virtually none at all in religious and philosophic speculation. The majority
were content to support the noro; they treated the spirits of the groves and
hills, sea and sky, wells and springs with suitable respect, but they did not
enquire deeply into these mysteries. They were much more exacting in their
treatment of the dead, and in respectful display of concern for the welfare of
departed parents. Every family felt compelled to spend as much as it
possibly could on the family tombs, which were in a sense the focal point of
the social unit. Here the influence of Chinese ancestor-worship and rites of
interment was most strong. Okinawan tombs for the upper classes were the
most prominent man-made feature of the landscape. They were of two
forms, a simple rectangular structure (the earlier) and a curvilinear and
domed construction said by some to resemble a turtle's back and by others
to represent the womb from which all men must come. Family resources
were often exhausted in maintaining an elaborate burial place, usually
constructed of coral blocks cemented over with a calceous stucco. In the
space before the tomb the family gathered for its feasts and picnics at
appropriate times of the year, and when death came to a member of the
family he was coffined in a seated position and interred with appropriate
ceremony. When next the tomb was opened, his bones were removed,
washed, and reinterred in a ceramic pot, which was shelved within the
tomb. Thus many generations could be brought together within one
chamber. The majority of peasant folk could not afford the luxury of a
handsome tomb; interment in the common earth sufficed, but here, too, the
family of the dead foregathered on festival occasions.
 Scholars in government gave little encouragement to indigenous
religious practices, but were prompt to support Confucian rites and
ceremonies. The Five Annual Festivals of the Japanese court were adopted
by Sho Jo-ken, and most particular attention was devoted to the perfection
of rituals appropriate for use before the tombs of kings and princes.
Other rites and practices on a less exalted level had crept in
meanwhile. Some Chinese Taoist ceremonies were absorbed into the strict
Confucian rule; paper prayers were burned at temples and shrines and in
special repositories built at suitable spots along the open way. Fortunetellers
known as yuta began to rival the noto priestesses in the eyes of townsmen,
and by 1698 a Taoist "Lord of the Earth" had been enshrined in Omine
Village. The yuta encouraged gross superstition, drawn from the folklore of
the Chinese masses. As they became popular first among Naha townsmen,
it is possible that the cult practices were introduced by uneducated sailors
passing to and fro from the China coast. The yuta were not members of an
institutional organization, as were the novo, and had no wide support either
at the court or in the countryside. In time the government began to frown on
their activities, forbidding them to advertise themselves as intermediaries
between the dead and the living or to act as exorcists with power to drive
out evi) spirits. In 1736 they were forbidden to represent themselves as
healers of the sick.
Buddhism did not flourish. It is true that the royal house continued to
provide modest patronage for the principal temples, but there was no wide
base in popular support. The larger foundations held title to land which
yielded income; the smaller ones scraped along as best they could, thankful
for small private donations. There was a gradual decline of public interest,
and restrictive measures imposed upon the Buddhist clergy after 1611
steadily diminished their prestige until at last the priests were looked upon
with something akin to contempt.
In the early days—say from the 12th to the 14th centuries—Buddhist
missionaries had played an outstanding part in the transformation of
scattered island communities into an organized and literate state. From the
14th to the 17th centuries the temple foundations and organizations had
served as centers of learning and of the arts and crafts, when the fine
buildings and pageantry of Buddhist ritual had adorned the Shuri court.
Now, in the latter days of the kingdom, the Buddhist hierarchy and the
temples had become a burden.
The two mystical sects represented on Okinawa—contemplative Zen
and esoteric Shingon—were ill-suited to the temperament of the un-
speculative Okinawans. Doctrines of the evangelical Shin sect had a wider,
warmer popular appeal, but this sect Satsuma rigidly suppressed. Shimazu
decrees which forbade priests and students from Okinawa to travel beyond
Satsuma's borders accelerated the decline of interest in Buddhism.
The Confucian scholars who formed and controlled the administration
were by training antagonistic to Buddhism. In matters of belief, the
Confucian scholar was a sceptic, concerned more with present problems of
man's relationship to man than with speculation and concern for future lives
and afterworlds. In matters of organization and politics the Confucian
scholars in Okinawa had before them the histories of Buddhist domination
in China and Japan in earlier centuries and the record of frequent discord
between the Church as a temporal power in conflict with the State. When
the temples on Okinawa ceased to be centers of study and of patronage for
the arts and crafts, they ceased to be important.
Architects, stonemasons, and sculptors in wood were employed
principally in reconstruction of buildings which had been destroyed by fire
or storm. There was little new construction of major importance in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Craft skills were brought to their highest development in
ceramics, textiles, and lacquerwork created for daily use.
In 1617 three Korean potters reached Okinawa from Satsuma,
commissioned to introduce new ceramic techniques. These were members
of a community of Korean craftsmen who had been taken to Satsuma by the
Shimazu forces during Hideyoshi's invasions of the peninsula. In time two
of these potters returned to Satsuma, but one of them settled permanently at
Tsuboya, near Naha, and thenceforth considered himself a subject of the
King of Ryukyu. The Okinawans proved apt pupils; soon the wares of
Tsuboya's kilns were an important element in the local economy and a craft
product of high merit and interest.
The building crafts were stimulated by need to replace structures
damaged or destroyed during the brief, bitter conflict in 1611. A great fire
swept the Nami-no-ue Shrine at Naha in 1633 and a series of disastrous
fires razed the king's palace in 1660, 1690, and 1709. Some construction
was undertaken for the Buddhist temple foundations; the Benten-do, a
pavilion which had housed the Korean edition of Buddhist texts at Enkaku-
ji, was rebuilt at the king's command in 1621, but the priceless volumes
themselves had been taken away as booty by the Japanese. A small but
architecturally interesting temple known as the Torin-ji was constructed in
Ishigaki Village in Yaeyama and another, the Shoun-ji, was built at Hirara
in Miyako. These were projected as part of the general development of
cultural institutions in the outer islands, and, of all the significant Buddhist
architectural and sculptural monuments in Ryukyu, these alone survived
World War II.
A new Confucian temple was constructed at Kume Village to
accommodate scholars and professors of Chinese. This splendid building,
begun in 1671, required four years to complete. It was a gift made to the
Okinawans by the young Emperor of China, K'ang Hsi.
A new glazing and firing technique for the manufacture of roof tiles
was introduced from Japan at about this time. The government henceforth
used tiles on its buildings in an effort to reduce fire hazards. Multicolored
glazes were applied to the tiles of the royal palace at Shuri; common red
tiles were used elsewhere and were shipped as far as Miyako and Yaeyama
to cover the granaries and storehouses maintained there in Shuri's interest.
 Okinawan craftsmen were hard pressed for adequate building
materials. The forests produced no fine building timber; the moist climate
and fierce seasonal storms required special techniques in the use of wood
and the dressing of stone to take the place of wood wherever it could be
made to do so. We have noted that massive castles were an essential
expression of the period of the Three Principalities (14th and 15th
centuries) and that much fine stonework was produced in the development
of the palaces, residences, temples, walls, and gates at Shuri during the
reign of Sho Shin in the 16th century. Now in the 17th and 18th centuries
Okinawan masons were set to building superb stone bridges.
Just why the Okinawans became so enamored of bridges remains a
mystery: there are few streams worthy to be called rivers and the roads were
footpaths. But the finest stone-working skills were lavished on wide
causeways and crossings having relatively little importance in the
countryside economy. It is also interesting that so much bridge-building
should take place in Okinawa at a time when the Japanese government was
discouraging the construction of bridges in Japan proper as a matter of
internal defense policy. In Okinawa a great body of ceremony and folklore
centered about the bridges; offerings were made to propitiate the river
spirits before a bridge was thrown across and after the work was completed.
Monuments were erected beside these bridges to commemorate
construction, and local tales abound which tell of superhuman forces aiding
or interfering with the engineers and masons, and of sacrifices required to
placate disturbed river-spirits.
There is little reason to doubt that the officers of state who ordered
bridges to be built in Okinawa were influenced by the splendid bridges of
Fukien Province. Many prominent Okinawans were familiar with the
magnificent stone structures for which the Ch'uang-chou area of Fukien was
famed throughout China. Some structures dated from the Mongol period.
One—built about A.D. 1200 near the mooring basin for junks trading into
"Zayton" or Ch'uang-chou from all parts of the East—was 1,500 feet long,
constructed of huge blocks of stone magnificently laid. The majority were
built in the Ming period, and the tradition established in Fukien was carried
over into Okinawa on a modest scale. The Japanese declared the fine
bridges of Okinawa to be "monuments of national importance," which were
preserved until 1945.13
Other crafts began to develop special characteristics which display the
taste and ingenuity of Okinawan patrons. The introduction of Chinese
techniques for inlaying mother-of-pearl is attributed to the year 1641, and
thereafter local lacquer-makers perfected methods in which their successors
have remained preeminent. Weavers learned of a Chinese method for
producing raised figures in fine fabrics. A man named Taketomi Uekata
who traveled with the tribute mission of 1664 is credited with the
introduction of an extraordinary number of new or improved techniques,
ranging from methods of gilding and lacquer-making to improved methods
of sugar manufacture.
Painting and sculpture were not neglected but show little creative
distinction. The intellectual and artistic life of gentry and commoner alike
found its happiest expression in poetry, drama, and music. Dance forms
introduced centuries earlier from Southeast Asia and China were blended
with the indigenous folk dances inherited from the unrecorded past. Men
and women in all classes aspired to proficiency in dancing. No community
gathering was neglected as an opportunity for singing, dancing, and
storytelling. Farmers and fishermen in the meanest villages delighted to
dance on the beach or in any appropriate open spot in the fields—and still
do. Poems in the local dialect celebrate the special beauties or noteworthy
features of the local district.

It is striking that almost without exception foreigners who visited

Okinawa before 1850 made special note of the Okinawan mildness and
kindliness of character and of a general love and aptitude for singing and
dancing. Richard Cocks, in 1614, had noted that "they are a very gentle and
courteous people." Englebert Kaempfer noted a universal love of music.
The highest dignitaries of the court were accomplished dancers; three
high-ranking officers were invited to dance before the Shogun Iemitsu at
Edo in 1629.
Men and women of all classes in Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama
distinguished themselves in the composition of brief allusive verses known
as waka, so highly prized in the literary traditions of Japan. These were
written in the Japanese phonetic hiragana or cursive syllabary, which lent
itself easily to spontaneous expression and imposed no difficulties in
recording local dialect. The verse form was governed by strict rules of
composition limiting the number of syllables.
Some of the most noted poets were women. A story of romance and
pathos attaches to the name of Onna Nabe, a beautiful girl of the
countryside and of common origin, whose delicate poems became well
known in Naha and at the court. Upon the occasion of a royal progress
through the countryside into northern Okinawa, Onna Nabe was notified
that she must entertain the king. At once she replied:

Nami nu kwim tumari Waves, be still !

Kaji nu kwim tumari And quiet, Wind!
Shu-i tin ga nashi The king from Shuri comes—
Miun chi ugama. And we must pay him reverence.14

This slight verse is known and quoted throughout 20th-century

Okinawa. Perhaps nostalgia for a happier past under the Okinawan kings is
reinforced by a romantic tale that Onna Nabe fell hopelessly in love with
the king during their brief sojourn together. When he returned to Shuri, the
country poet cast herself from a cliff near the beautiful field of Manzanmo,
where monuments today commemorate the verse, the romance, and its
tragic ending.
If we except the poems recorded in the kana script, we may say that
the cultural history of Okinawa reflects little creative literary and
philosophic activity. The mastery of classical Chinese was a burdensome
chore. Sons of the gentry learned to read and write in the Japanese phonetic
syllabary before they took up their studies with the Kume Village tutors.
Students who had been sent abroad for years of study at Peking and minor
officials stationed for long periods at the Ryukyu trading depot in Fukien
became proficient in Chinese, but its use in Okinawa was stilted and
artificial. Books introduced from China had limited use and circulation.
Throughout the 17th century there was a gradual increase in the
numbers of students and pilgrims who went up to Japan, where publication
flourished for a mass reader-audience in the great cities. Literary works
brought back into Okinawa circulated fairly widely in manuscript or in
book form, but there was no publishing done in the Ryukyu Islands.
Interest in Okinawan history and culture was stimulated by
comparison with the institutions and history of Japan. Taichu's study of the
indigenous Shinto practices of the Ryukyu Islands, prepared in 1604, was
published at Kyoto in 1648. A compilation of Okinawan history (the
Chuzan Seikan) was undertaken in 1650 by Prime Minister Sho Jo-ken, who
prepared it in the Japanese language rather than in literary Chinese.
Knowing of Sho Jo-ken's active policy of reconciliation with Japan, we may
suspect that this first attempt to produce a formal history of the kingdom
was used to strengthen (if not to fabricate) evidence and traditions of
ancient close ties with Japan, for here the Tametomo tradition is set forth
with abundant detail for the first time.
In 1697 the annals of the royal court (Rekidai Hoan) were edited once
again. Traditional stories of Miyako were compiled in 1705, and a
dictionary of the old Ryukyuan language (the Konko-ken Shu) was prepared
in 1711.

STUDENTS ABROAD AND RIOTS AT SHURI

Toward the end of the 18th century, two avenues of training led into
government office. Kume Village youths of outstanding promise and
capacity for Chinese studies periodically stood for two rigorous
examinations leading to scholarships at Peking. Four senior and four junior
awards were made. The winners normally expected to spend three years
abroad pursuing a formal curriculum designed by the Chinese for scholars
from tributary states. They were expected to master political philosophy,
literature, and medicine or the Chinese almanac, a study concerned with the
regulation of human affairs according to the seasons. In exceptional cases
individual students were allowed to stay at Peking for as long as eight years.
Upon their return to Okinawa these Kume Village youths became
government officials or teachers with marked preferment in appointments at
certain levels of administration.
The second avenue of approach to government office was open
principally to youths from Shuri, sons of princes, nobles, and leading
gentry, who were selected to study at Kagoshima at Satsuma's suggestion.
The Shimazu family welcomed highborn Okinawan envoys and students
and gave them opportunities to see the extent, resources, and strength of the
Shimazu principality. Thus, for instance, the young Crown Prince Sho Tetsu
and his companions were invited to tour southern Kyushu in 1756.
 In 1795 a boy of twelve years named Sho On became king. The
question of tutors and of the royal education came again to the fore, and the
problems of educational policy for the country at large were widely
discussed. Sho On himself appears to have demonstrated most unusual
promise; a note of something more than the conventional praise of a king
creeps into accounts written of him by his subjects, and Chinese envoys
who observed him in his seventeenth year commented on his fine features,
his dignity, and his learning. It is apparent that Sho On had a zest for
scholarship, and it is therefore not surprising that the time seemed ripe for
major changes in the educational system.
The motivation is obscure, but the total effect was to broaden the basis
of training for high offices in government, to extend the area of candidacy
and choice, and to enlarge the pro-Chinese party (if it can be called such) in
the government.
Elementary schools were established in the several wards of Shuri for
the children of the gentry and an academy was founded within the palace
grounds. Over the principal gate a large tablet was hung for all to read as
they entered, and upon this tablet the young king himself inscribedKaiho
Yoshu ("Cultivate Men of Ability in the Sea Country").
It was then announced that the number of students sent abroad would
be increased and that henceforth young men from Shuri would be eligible to
compete for nomination to the Peking scholarships, thus breaking the Kume
Village monopoly. This monopoly the Kume Village community had
cherished through four centuries. It was not given up without protest, but
the order stood. Thereafter the academy at Shuri enjoyed precedence. It is
probable that the five noble youths who took up residence near the Chinese
embassy headquarters in 1801 were the first Shuri candidates preparing to
go to China.
The Kume Village demonstrations were a mild disturbance of the
peace and offered no threat whatsoever to the government. Their very
mildness illustrates the frailty of this microcosmic society, so delicately
balanced in population versus meager resources and limited opportunity,
and so precariously placed on political frontiers. The balance of moral
obligation felt toward China versus political and economic obligation to
Satsuma had been neatly maintained through two centuries, but it could be
preserved only under conditions of extreme isolation.
That isolation came to an end in 1797.

THE WESTERN BARBARIANS REAPPEAR: A

SECOND TURNING POINT
If we are to believe that extraordinary adventurer Count Mauritius de
Benyowsky, the first fleeting shadow of modern Europe and the stirring
West touched the Ryukyus in 1771. He has a strange story to tell in his
Memoirs.
According to Benyowsky, he and his companions fled from a Russian
prison in Kamchatka. They sailed southward, determined to make their way
back to Europe boldly flying the "flag of the Republic of Poland" whenever
they encountered Western ships. He described his ship as a corvette, with
nearly one hundred persons aboard. It was named the "St. Peter and St.
Paul." On Monday, August 15, 1771 (according to his unreliable
chronology), the unsound craft and makeshift crew drew inshore and cast
anchor at "the island of Usmay Ligon, one of Lequeio." If there is any basis
in fact, we may assume that it may have been an island in the Oshima group
in the northern Ryukyus.
They were received with reserve and suspicion, generated locally, we
must presume, by Satsuma's harsh attitude toward intruding foreigners. But
thanks to the natural warmth of Okinawan friendliness, this barrier soon
was overcome and cordial relations quickly established. The unmarried girls
of the island village were most accommodating, and a bride from the
leading family, together with seven attendant maidens, was offered to
Benyowsky. When it was discovered that the visitors were Christians, the
natives revealed that they possessed the relics of one "Ignatio Salis,
Missionary to the Indies, of the Society of Jesus, and of the Portuguese
nation" who had reached "Usmay Ligon" on May 24, 1749, with three
fugitive companions. One of these spoke a little "bad Portuguese," claimed
to be a native of Tonkin, educated in Siam; he made himself known to
Benyowsky. Salis had died about 1754 and his tomb was disclosed nearby.
Okinawans who were secret Christian converts revealed themselves to the
European voyagers. Benyowsky in turn caused a valuable crucifix to be
brought ashore from the ship and paraded piously in the village street. (He
had stolen it from a church in Kamchatka.)
Overnight, a great warmth of feeling and mutual admiration sprang up,
and by Friday, August 19—the day on which they were to sail again—
Benyowsky and his companions had agreed to return as soon as possible
"with a society of virtuous, good and just men, to dwell upon this island and
to adopt the manners, usages and laws of the inhabitants." To make this
sure, a compact or contract was drawn up, one copy in Latin and one "in the
language of Lequio." In it the Okinawans made certain promises:

"And we, the chiefs and people, call to witness that God who created
the heavens and the earth, that we will, at any time hereafter, receive our
friend Mauritius, with all those who shall be his friends; that we will share
with them our lands, and will assist them in all their labours, until their
establishments shall be equal to our own; and, in the meantime, his friends
who remain with us, shall be considered as the children of our families, and
treated as brothers.
signed: Mauritius, in the name of the company of Europeans.
Nicholas, for the chiefs and people of Usmay, and the Lequio
Islands."15
"A prodigious number of islanders followed me" (says Benyowsky)
"who by their cries and tears, exhibited an affecting spectacle of goodness
of heart and tenderness of disposition. . .
What adventure in the Ryukyus this may reflect and what elements of
truth it may record we cannot say. It affords a strange link with the politics
of eastern Europe in that day, and with the presence of Russia along North
Pacific shores. Benyowsky did not return to colonize the Ryukyus, but
ended his fantastic career in Madagascar, shot there by the French, in 1786,
while under contract to provide slaves to a firm in Baltimore, Maryland.
In the Age of Encyclopedists, the armchair philosophers of London
and Paris, Philadelphia and Boston let their imaginations play freely over
the world, and demanded to know more and more of the obscure corners of
the globe. Men of action undertook to satisfy this dynamic curiosity. Daines
Barrington, in the preface to his extraordinary Miscellanies (London, 1781),
suggested that "the coast of Corea, the northern part of Japan, and
Lieuchieux Islands should be expfored." Captain King (who took charge of
Cook's last expedition in Hawaii) noted that "navigation of the sea between
Japan and China afforded the largest field for discovery."
Captain Vancouver was of like opinion. But more than "armchair
philosopher's curiosity" lay behind this. Late-18th-century European
conflicts were reflected along the China coast and in East Asian waters.
Russia was in Alaska and the Aleutians and was pressing down upon China
from the continental north. Russian treaties with China were renewed or
supplemented in 1768 and 1792, but without important trade provisions.
The Dutch were entrenched in the Indies and maintained their monopoly
upon Western commerce with Japan through Nagasaki. In 1795 they too
sent an embassy to Peking to seek a commercial treaty, but were rudely
dismissed, without satisfaction, although they submitted to the formalities
required of all "tributary states."
In the 1790's the Industrial Revolution was sharpening the rivalries of
all the western European trading nations. Great Britain searched for
overseas markets and new sources of raw materials to satisfy the factories
of England and to fill her ships. London was eager to break through into the
Pacific, probing the coasts of China for admission to trade with Ch'ien
Lung's vast empire, and seeking to breach the Dutch monopoly in Japan.
In 1793 Earl Macartney's embassy from the King of England to the
Emperor of China traveled in state and was received with honor, but the
haughty Chinese took care to advertise the British mission as an embassy
bearing tribute from the country of England to the imperial court.
Macartney failed to win a treaty or agreement admitting Britain to the
commerce which he sought, but his detailed reports drew fresh attention to
the possibility of vast markets in China and roused the keenest interest in
Europe and America. Withdrawing from Peking, the large company
traveled overland to Canton, as the emperor's guests, attracting wide
attention all along the way.

"While thus delayed [en route to Canton] the boats were overtaken by
two genteel young men who were curious to see the Embassador, and
followed him from Han-choo-foo. They were honoured themselves with the
same office from the King of the Lequese islands. Their dress was a very
fine sort of shawl, manufactured in their own country, dyed of a beautiful
brown colour, and lined with the fur of squirrels; the fashion was nearly
Chinese. They wore turbans, one of yellow, the other purple, silk, neatly
folded round their heads. They had neither linen nor cotton in any part of
their dress that could be perceived.
"These young men were well-looking, tho of a dark complexion, well-
bred, conversable and communicative. They had just arrived at Han-choo-
foo in their way to Peking, where their chief sends delegates regularly every
two years, charged to offer a tribute, and pay homage from their master, to
the Emperor. They landed at the port of Emouy, in the province of Fo-chen,
which alone was open to those strangers. They understood Chinese; but had
also a proper language of their own. They said, that no European vessel had,
to their recollection, ever touched at any of their islands; but that, should
they come, they would be well received; that there was no prohibition
against any foreign intercourse; that they had a fine harbour capable of
admitting the largest vessels, at a little distance from their capital, which
was considerable in extent and population; that they raised a coarse kind of
tea, but far inferior to that of the Chinese; and had many mines of copper
and iron, but none of gold or silver had been discovered.
"From the geographical position of those islands, they should, if
dependent, naturally belong to the Chinese or the Japanese. The latter were
indifferent about them, but the former first sent an embassy to them to
explore their strength and situation, and afterwards an expedition against
them, which reduced them to a tributary state. Upon the decease of the
prince, his successor receives a sort of investiture or confirmation from the
Emperor of China."16

The author (Sir George Staunton, Secretary of Embassy) was quick to

note the official rank of the young Okinawans, the quality and character of
the textiles of their dress, the possible extent of a market opportunity at the
Okinawan capital, its port facilities, and, lastly, the political situation. This
confused him, and he may have "corrected" his notes before committing
them to text (how else could he explain the presence of tribute bearers in
China?), but it is more probable that the young envoys were taking pains to
conceal Okinawa's true relationship with Satsuma.
Staunton's record of this brief encounter between envoys of the King
of England and the King of Ryukyu was published in 1797. In that year, in
May, two British ships bearing one hundred and fifteen men entered
Okinawan waters. H.M.S. "Providence" (four hundred tons and bearing
sixteen guns) and its tender (a schooner of eighty tons) were en route to
survey the northern coasts of Asia, searching meanwhile for the lost
explorer La Perouse.
 As they entered the treacherous waters surrounding Miyako, the
"Providence" suddenly foundered on a hidden reef. Captain William Robert
Broughton took off all his men in the tender and the longboats. Anchoring
inshore nearby, the ship's company spent a few days attempting to salvage
what they could from the disintegrating "Providence." Broughton records in
careful detail "the singular humanity of the natives of Typinsan to us, in our
distressed situation."
Officers sent ashore to establish relations with villages nearby "were
received in a most friendly manner, and the boats returned full of water. In
the afternoon they sent in canoes a much larger quantity, with some wood
and large packages of canary seed [sesame seed?], and also some poultry
and pigs, without asking anything in return, or seeming to expect it. They
strongly expressed a desire for us to proceed to the eastern village, where
they could more conveniently supply our wants.... After breakfast, on the
following day, we paid a visit to our humane friends, who received us with
the greatest civility, in a large and convenient house well adapted to the
country; the floors were well matted, and everything relating to the furniture
extremely neat. . . ."17
Some of the ship's officers and men had been sent in longboats to
another island nearby to search for salvageable materials cast up on the
beach and to recover what they could from the wreck offshore. There, after
a time, Broughton joined them. "Before our arrival at the island, the
inhabitants had brought them [the salvage party] water and potatoes, and in
many other instances, during their absence, did they receive the same kind
attentions. These good people were fully acquainted with our misfortune,
and naturally conceived our greatest wants were the articles of life which,
such as they possessed, they parted with in a most friendly manner. ... In the
morning of the 23 rd [of May] we received from our friends the remainder
of their presents, which amounted in all to 50 bags of wheat, 20 of rice, and
3 of sweet potatoes; each bag containing 1 cwt; also one bullock of 3 cwt;
six large hogs, and plenty of poultry. Indeed, whatever we asked for they
immediately sent us; but our small vessel would not admit of anything
more, and what was most acceptable, they gave at last all their jars full of
water, containing five gallons each, at least as many as we could store upon
deck."18
Broughton and his men were grateful, and all who could do so
contributed some "trifling present"—a drawing of the ship, a telescope, and
so forth—to a collection of gifts to be made over to the elders of the
community on behalf of the ship's company. After refreshment at the
principal house in the village the people crowded to the shore to take leave
of their unexpected British guests. To their great delight Broughton turned
over to them, fully equipped, the longboat. "They received her with great
joy, and directly took possession. Thus did we part most amicably with
these humane, civilized people, not unaffected by the favours we had
received from them in our distressed situation."19
With these emergency supplies, cheerfully given and gratefully
received, the crowded schooner left the islands and the wreck on May 26
and made its way to Macao on the South China coast. There the captain
arranged to transfer the majority of his companions to other British ships,
retaining only thirty-five young men to continue with him on his
exploratory voyage in the tender.
 Six weeks later Broughton visited the Ryukyus again, putting in at
Naha aboard the schooner on July 9. Seeking an excuse to go ashore and
become better acquainted with the government and people of these islands,
the officers represented themselves to be in need of supplies, but the
Okinawans, well aware that they had just come over from the China coast,
thought it strange that they needed to be supplied again so soon. "Early in
the morning our friends sent us a bullock, hogs, fowls, and potatoes, with
abundance of wood and water, and strongly urging our departure. ... In the
forenoon a junk arrived from Typinsan; and a Japanese junk sailed out of
the harbour, and proceeded on her voyage towards Niphon. . . ."20
Broughton and his companions left Naha on July 12. In proper time
full reports were made to the Admiralty at London and to the public.
Textile manufacturers, trading corporations, and the owners of ships
were eager for word of new markets; the government, at their prompting,
was concerned with the protection of British interests in every quarter of the
globe. Broughton spoke with a wide experience, for his voyages had taken
him to the northwest coast of North America as well as to the crowded ports
China and South Asia. The Okinawan adventure had unique quality, for
nowhere else had he encountered quite the same degree of open hospitality.
In passing he notes Sir George Staunton's references to Ryukyu and quotes
from Gaubil's account of of the Chinese embassy to the islands in 1719. His
own account, he said, "will also prove how vessels in distress may really
benefit by the humanity and liberality of these islanders, who confer
favours, as far as I can judge, without expecting any return for so doing. In
every other respect, except for allowing us to land, they were obliging, civil
and attentive, bringing off vegetables, and some of their spirits called sakki,
and at all times behaving with a degree of politeness, which rendered their
company very pleasing. They were also open and unreserved in their
manners. We had only to lament our ignorance of their language, which
prevented our acquiring any knowledge of their government. . . . The port
[of Naha] is convenient for commerce, and seems to be the center of trade
between Japan and the Southern Islands. They also trade to China and
Formosa."21
The Admiralty was impressed. It was proposed to undertake an
exploration of the Ryukyu Islands and to survey the currents, reefs, and
shoals throughout the archipelago. The China markets were the great target,
but British ships would have to move in these waters, if only to counter
growing Russian and American activity along the coasts of Asia.
But before plans could be matured and expeditions put in motion,
British naval resources were concentrated for the Napoleonic wars in
Europe and then drawn into the quarrels with the young American republic.
British ships-of-the-line did not return to Okinawan waters until 1816.

Footnotes

* The plant is of Central or South American origin; the name batata may have come from Haiti.

Spaniards took the potato to Europe between 1492 and 1500; it was known in England by 1560; and

about 1570 it was taken on to the Philippines by the Spanish. They are said to have forbidden its

export from Luzon, but traders took it to the China coast, where Noguni first observed it about 1600.

* Census estimates for Okinawa in the years 1875-90 (before significant economic change under

modern Japanese management) provide a rate of increase which forms the basis of this estimate. S.
Wells Williams visited Naha in 1837 and hazarded a guess at "less than 200,000"; Captain Basil

Hall's staff in 1816 could not agree on an estimate. Extensive studies of Japan's population place

estimates at a fairly constant total (about thirty millions) for the 18th and early 19th centuries, under

conditions which were somewhat analogous to those on the Ryukyu Islands.

 PART THREE
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
 CHAPTER SIX
THE BARRIER ISLANDS

1797-1853
WESTERN RIVALS IN EASTERN WATERS
To understand 19th-century Okinawan relations with Japan and with the
Western powers we must consider events which intensified Japan's fear of
conquest through the Southern Islands.
From four centers, four great Western powers sent agents into the
Ryukyu Islands during the first half of the 19th century. They sought to
penetrate Japan, by diplomacy if possible, by force if need be. No other
highly organized nation of the world had succeeded in maintaining such
close seclusion. Each of the powers—Russia, Great Britain, France, and the
United States—had expanding economic, political, and military interests in
the Far East which seemed to demand that Japan must be opened to the
West and made to declare itself on one side or another in the conflict of
Western power interests.
The waters about Japan became a focal point upon which converged
Russian interests moving down from the north, British and French interests
moving up by sea from southern Asia, and American interests coming from
the east.
 The Japanese were aware of growing pressure well before the turn of
the century. Through the narrow door at Nagasaki they had learned of
revolutionary change in the American colonies of the English king, the
overthrow of the old monarchy in France, and the onset of Napoleon's wars.
The Dutch did all they could to stimulate Japan's fears of other Western
powers, Holland's commercial rivals. Of a Russian threat Edo had direct
experience.
The czar's agents—explorers and colonists—had moved across Siberia
to Pacific shores and Kamchatka, reaching the sea by 1639. Fifty years later
they had established a common border with the Chinese empire. By 1711
they were in the northern Kuriles, and for a hundred years thereafter they
attempted again and again to enter Japan's ports. Japanese settlers in
Sakhalin, Ezo (Hokkaido), and the southern Kuriles often came into conflict
with the Russians. By 1796 a Russian settlement was made on the island of
Urup, almost within sight of territories under the feudal Lord of Matsumae.
The shogun's government in desperation tried to strengthen its defenses
along the northern frontier. At last, in 1804, a representative of the Russian-
American (Trading) Company—a great colonizing enterprise—reached
Nagasaki with Russian naval units, to demand that Japan be opened to
Russian trade. They were refused, and in retaliation the Russians raided
Japan's outposts on Sakhalin, the Kuriles, and Ezo. It was evident that
Akihiro, the Lord of Matsumae, could not secure his fief from attack; he
was removed, and the central government at Edo established a direct
administration, determined to close the northern borders.
This Russian pressure upon Japan was only part of a much larger
pattern of Russian expansion. From Kamchatka the Russians pushed on
across the Aleutians and Alaska, and down the coasts of Canada. The
founders of the Russian-American Company planned an empire which
would embrace the North Pacific. By 1812 they had established a fort near
the Spanish mission of San Francisco on the California coast, and five years
later another Russian fort appeared on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian
Islands.
From the south came a threat from Britain—the development of a vast
colonial empire based on maritime strength and command of the seas from
strategic points in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia.
The British were eager to preclude Russian occupation of Pacific bases and
the control of North Pacific waters.
From the east (by way of Cape Horn) a new power was moving
swiftly into Far Eastern waters, heightening commercial rivalries all along
the western Pacific frontier. In 1797 the first American ship to visit Japan—
the "Eliza"—put in at Nagasaki under charter to deliver a cargo for the
Dutch merchants stationed there. Holland was losing its preeminent position
as a trading nation. War with England, Prussian intervention, French
invasion, and the confusion of the Napoleonic era isolated Holland from its
Far Eastern stations, and American ships were chartered to carry goods to
and from Japan. This drew Yankee attention to the potential of Japanese
trade. But the Edo government had to be persuaded—or forced—to
abandon its seclusion policies.
For six years the annual Dutch shipments to Nagasaki were made in
American vessels willing to fly the Dutch flag while cruising in Japanese
waters. In 1800 the alarmed Japanese refused to trade with an American
brig which put in at Nagasaki demanding direct exchange under the U.S.
flag. Pressure was increasing. There were thirty-four American vessels
trading at Canton on the China coast in 1801. Yankee merchants would not
long be content in this fashion to leave Japanese trade in the hands of weak
Dutch monopolists.
For fifty years the Tokugawa government resisted stoutly.

THE RYUKYUS ON JAPAN'S DEFENSE

PERIMETER
Japanese leaders at Edo knew that what had happened on the northern
frontier could very well happen in the south; merchants backed by the
navies of the West would soon be demanding open ports and the right to
trade. The Lord of Satsuma would be subjected to a far greater pressure
than the Lord of Matsumae had known.
Shuri's relations with Satsuma at this time were conditioned by
mounting economic and political crises within Japan itself. The Tokugawa
government did not fully grasp the significance of economic change which
made early feudal institutions obsolete. Many daimyo were profoundly
dissatisfied with Edo's seclusion policies. The country was seething with
discontent. In Sir George Sansom's words, "Every force but conservatism
was pressing from within closed doors: so that when a summons came from
without they were flung wide open, and all these imprisoned energies were
released."
From the Japanese point of view the Ryukyu kingdom formed an outer
barrier, a line of first defense before these "closed doors." From the Western
point of view Okinawa was a threshhold; if the West could gain a foothold
on Okinawa, the penetration of Japan might follow with much greater ease.
Broughton's encouraging report of 1798 was supported by all subsequent
reports until 1853, when, from an Okinawan base, Perry at last broke in
upon the Japanese.
Edo, the shogun's capital, lay about midway between the Kurile
Islands to the north and the Ryukyu Islands to the south. These outposts
took on new significance. In 1786 a party of Japanese was sent to explore
the northern frontier, and maps of the Ryukyu Islands, drafted by Taka-hara
Pechin, were sent up to Edo through Satsuma in 1797. Prominent men were
deeply concerned with Japan's position and vulnerability; the scholar
Hayashi Shihei came from northern Japan, where the menace of Russian
encroachment was most keenly felt. During three visits to Nagasaki he
learned of European pressures coming along the trading routes from the
south. He was convinced that Japan must become better informed of the
territories adjacent to it on the west and south. In 1786 —the year in which
a Russian man-of-war coasted along the main islands of Japan—he
published A Study of Three Countries (San Koku Tsuran Tosetsu), in which
he discussed Ezo, Korea, and the Ryukyu kingdom.1 In 1789 Matsudaira
Sadanobu, the regent at Edo, called Hayashi in for an interview, during
which Shihei emphasized his concern for the coastal defenses of Japan, and
on this subject he later published Military Talks Concerning the Coastal
Provinces (Kaikoku Heidan).
Pressed from within to look to its defenses, and pressed from without
by barbarians who demanded trade, the Tokugawa government was torn
with indecision. Circumstances required that it leave problems of the
Ryukyu frontier to the judgment of Satsuma. But at Kagoshima, too, there
was unsettling indecision. Some leaders felt that the islands should be
closed tightly and put in a state of garrisoned defense against all Western
demands and attempts to enter. Others advocated opening a trading depot
for the Western powers on Okinawa, analogous to the depot maintained at
Naha for the China trade. This they believed might satisfy the Western
powers and keep them at arm's length, while at the same time Satsuma,
circumventing Edo, would be enriched by a monopoly on commerce with
the European nations.
The debates at Kagoshima and at Edo were long drawn out; Western
merchant ships and men-of-war began to visit the islands with increasing
frequency. Naval diplomats, traders, and missionaries began to conceive
and write of opportunities at Naha. None clearly understood the ambiguous
state of "dual subordination" into which Okinawa had fallen. Gradually it
came to be thought that Okinawa offered prime opportunity to bring
pressure to bear upon the shogun's government. Missionaries dreamed of
introducing Christian tracts to Japan through Naha and Kagoshima. Naval
diplomats proposed to use the islands for rendezvous, supply, and repair
while cruising in Chinese and Japanese waters. Merchants planned to trade
into Japan through the Japanese agency at Naha.
In this unenviable position the impoverished Okinawans were caught
between the pressures of the West and the resistance of Japan.

YEARS OF ECONOMIC DISASTER

Hardship crowded the opening years of the 19th century on Okinawa. The
local economy was shattered by a series of storms, tidal waves, and long
droughts. The people of Yaeyama had had a foretaste of this: a submarine
earthquake shook the island, the seas withdrew, and then swept inland in an
enormous tidal wave, destroying most of the principal town of Ishigaki and
taking a dreadful toll of lives. Between 1800 and 1854 all the islands
suffered again and again. Epidemic disease and repeated famines weakened
the kingdom. By the time Commodore Perry reached Naha in mid-century
the Ryukyuan people had reached a common state of economic and political
exhaustion.
If we remember that the total population may not have exceeded
150,000 persons and certainly did not surpass 200,000, the following bald
figures—a partial record—suggests the dire impoverishment of the islands
through these calamitous years:

1802-03: Epidemics took 425 lives, including those of the young King
Sho On and his infant son and successor, Sho Sei.
1824-25: Two typhoons and famine, during which 3,355 persons died.
1826: A typhoon took 30 lives, destroyed more than 100 fishing craft
and ships and thousands of dwellings on Okinawa. More than 2,200 persons
died of starvation.
1832: Storms destroyed nearly 100 craft and more than 3,000 houses.
There was widespread famine and some deaths.
1835: A drought, typhoon, and epidemic disease took more than 600
lives on Yaeyama.
1839: A great drought and dearth of food.
1842: An earthquake caused widespread damage on Miyako, followed
by epidemic disease.
 1844: A terrible typhoon swept Miyako, destroying more than 2,000
houses and damaging crops.
1847: Miyako was again swept by fierce storms in midwinter.
1850: A long drought brought the islands to the verge of famine.
1852: A typhoon, a tidal wave, famine, and a typhus epidemic
scourged Miyako, leaving more than 3,000 dead.
1853: An epidemic (probably of cholera) swept Yaeyama, killing more
than 1,800 persons.
1854: Drought and typhoons on Okinawa, and an epidemic on Miyako
which took more than 600 lives.

Western accounts written in the early 19th century note how often the
Okinawans describe themselves as an impoverished people, too poor to
meet the demands for supply and trade which the foreign visitors put upon
them. The Europeans tended to interpret this as a form of deception,
practiced at Japan's insistence in order to maintain seclusion. The facts of
the case were precisely as the Okinawans represented them. Custom
decreed that they should furnish foodstuffs to shipwrecked persons and
supplies to others who came in search of them. But custom also decreed that
no payment should be taken for such supplies. The succor of shipwrecked
persons was accepted as a moral obligation among these seafaring people.
As for offering provisions gratis to those who demanded them, this too was
in part based in a code of moral obligation to meet the needs of strangers
received as guests in the country, and in part it was a means of
circumventing Japan's fiercely enforced decrees forbidding unauthorized
trade with foreign peoples.
 Famine deaths and epidemic sickness undermined the productive
strength of the farming communities. Costs of repair and rebuilding after
disastrous storms consumed material reserves. Loss of small craft affected
villages engaged in fishing and in coastal transport. The government at
Shuri became increasingly dependent upon loans from Kagoshima to
finance its formal relations with China. Shuri pressed the country villages
too hard. By mid-century the exhaustion of the local economy and of the
local spirit of faithful subordination to the Shuri government was reflected
in incidents of protest; unrest here and there grew into riotous action.
Each natural disaster added to the burden on Shuri's modest budget.
The government tried to economize in the administration and to
stimulate production. The magistrates attempted to enforce stricter
supervision of the forests after 1806. Water conservation tanks were built
here and there. Sugar-extraction machinery was improved somewhat. The
hardy sotetsu palm was planted everywhere so that its unpalatable but
nutritious seeds would be available in times of need. A competitive exhibit
of farmers' products is said to have been organized as early as 1814 in order
to encourage greater production throughout the countryside.
In 1819 Shuri decided to reduce the stipends which had been paid
hitherto in the elite community of Kume Village, from which were drawn
the clerks who managed trade with Satsuma and China, the routine
operations of government, and the education of the gentry. Now at last they
began to feel the pinch; they were asked to eat less well and to pay over
more to the government in taxes. In 1821 a government order canceled
certain types of debts; in this dangerous and trouble-making policy the
Okinawans followed administrative policies of Matsudaira Sadanobu, late
regent at Edo.
Against this somber background of uncertainty, hardship, and
confusion the development of an educational policy for Okinawa stands out
in bright relief. The National Academy (Kokuoaku), founded in 1798, was
given appropriate buildings on the castle grounds at Shuri in 1800 and
1801. Elementary schools for the gentry were established in the
administrative quarters of Shuri and Naha and new official positions were
created to manage them. A new "Hall of Learning" was established at Naha
by a private donor, Owan Pechin, in 1824, and in 1837 a Confucian shrine
was established on the grounds of the National Academy. Schools were
opened in Yaeyama (1844) and in Miyako (1846) and new textbooks in
Confucian moral studies were issued on Okinawa.
The troubles of the court and the administration in these decades were
intensified by an illness of the king, Sho Ko, whose behavior became
strange, unbalanced, and unpredictable. The Council of State was forced to
act; an embassy submitted the government's proposals to Satsuma; and in
1827, with Satsuma's approval, Sho Ko was forced to abdicate and to retire
into the countryside.
This was only the second abdication in Ryukyu's long history, and
such an unusual change in the royal household brought one more burden
upon the government treasury. A mission had to be sent to Peking to
announce the change and to ask for a writ of investiture for Sho Ko's
successor. Accession rituals were costly and Chinese envoys had to be
entertained. A second royal household had to be maintained in the
countryside in a manner befitting the prestige and dignities of an abdicated
king.

Mystery surrounds the name of Sho Ko and the circumstances of his

retirement. A "Testament" attributed to him reads now as a veiled criticism
of his times, a protest against the role which he and his people were forced
to play by Satsuma: "Darkness prevails; nobody awakens, while the bell
will soon announce the arrival of dawn. It is hard to rule when both the ruler
and the people are hard pressed, and are robbed by those among them
whose storehouses are filled with spoils. Any blame will I take on myself.
Only relieve the people of their privations; quench their thirst by opening
the fountain. After all, men live but once."2
Could it be that Sho Ko was indeed rational, but that he toyed with the
idea of breaking away from Satsuma and opening his tiny kingdom to
unrestricted intercourse with foreign nations?
His abdication contributed to the public uneasiness, already great in
the face of natural calamities and the threat of foreign invasion. It was not
possible to keep the former king from the public eye; he is said to have
wandered erratically about on the public roads, in a strange dress, and to
have insisted on sending produce from his private gardens up to the public
markets in Shuri.
The royal castle and the person of the king had become the most
enduring symbols of Ryukyuan nationhood. They were the outward and
visible symbol of national self-esteem and self-respect. The royal house
gave Okinawa an identity vis-à-vis Japan and China and the Western world.
The fate of the gentry and common people alike was bound up in the king's
relations with these external forces. Okinawa's ties with China were
founded on the king's formal relationship with the court at Peking, and it
had been in the king's name that the country was committed to Satsuma in
1611. It was felt that so long as the court could prevent Western envoys
from penetrating to the king's presence at Shuri, the dangers of
entanglement or of binding commitments to them might be avoided.
In the eyes of the common man the king's ministers of state derived
their authority from him; hence the necessity to remove a king from office
implied a weakness in, or question of, delegated authority. Moreover the
king's behavior—in theory at least—was expected to fulfill at all times the
highest traditional standards of all that was considered right and proper. The
abdication challenged fundamental beliefs and standards, and threatened the
pattern of subordinate relationships with Satsuma and Edo.

SATSUMA EXPLOITS OKINAWA TO EVADE

THE SECLUSION EDICTS
Satsuma clan leaders felt no love for the Edo government and little loyalty
to the Tokugawa family. They were irked by the Tokugawa monopoly on
foreign trade through Nagasaki, maintained in the name of "national
security." There is evidence that the Okinawan trading depot in China was
Satsuma's source for large-scale smuggling into Japan. Satsuma maintained
about fifteen junks in the Ryukyu trade, each making two round trips to
Naha per year. This was an accepted and well-known arrangement; but
Shimazu desired to improve on this by attracting Chinese trade directly to
Satsuma ports. To this end Chinese language schools and information
centers were opened at several small anchorages along the coasts of
southern Kyushu. These would provide interpreters and translators, who
could compete with the established facilities available to Chinese and Dutch
traders under Tokugawa auspices. In 1802 certain articles of European
origin were uncovered in a shipment of Satsuma goods at Kyoto. The
Kagoshima authorities were called upon to explain the matter, but Edo
could do little to check or punish the powerful Satsuma men. At the turn of
the century Shimazu Shigehide was in close and friendly association with
officers of the Dutch trading station on Deshima. His extravagance had
brought him under heavy obligation to Osaka merchants and moneylenders,
to whom he pledged the revenues of his Ryukyuan trade in return for a
credit of five million koban. At about the same time he reached a secret
agreement with the Dutchman Hemmij, chief of the Deshima trading depot,
in which it was proposed to send secretly one foreign ship each year to
Satsuma in direct contravention of the exclusion edicts. Disclosure might
have led to a Tokugawa war upon Satsuma had Shigehide not been the
shogun's father-in-law. It meant, however, that Satsuma's interest in direct
foreign trade was checked for a time.3
 The illegal use of Okinawa as a trading base through which Satsuma
accumulated wealth sharpened Edo's sense of vulnerability on the southern
frontier. Tokugawa policies were self-defeating, a form of economic
strangulation; within a few decades a coalition of Western clans led by
Satsuma were to bring about the downfall of the shogunate, and the
revolution was to be financed very largely through Satsuma's profits from
the Okinawan trade.
Satsuma began to exploit control of the Ryukyu kingdom for political
purposes, using the relationship to enhance Shimazu prestige at the imperial
court. Shimazu Nariakira's sister was the shogun's wife, which gave him
access to the highest social circles at the Edo court, although, as a tozama
daimyo, he was barred from high administrative office. Now he coveted
high rank at the imperial court as well. As nationalism revived and anti-
Tokugawa royalist sentiment increased, old Kyoto titles granted directly by
the emperor regained importance which they had lost hundreds of years
before.
The successful invasion of Okinawa in 1609 had won for Iehisa the
junior third grade of imperial court rank and the nominal office of
Chunagon. These were not hereditary, however, and so his descendant
Nariakira determined to regain them if he could by manipulating his control
of the Ryukyu kingdom.
The shogun claimed to receive tribute from the King of Korea, but
only Shimazu among all the daimyo could claim to receive tribute from a
foreign state. No opportunity was missed to stress this point. Although the
Okinawans at home were ordered to go to any length to conceal their true
relationship with Japan, whenever Shuri's envoys traveled in Japan—
overland from Kagoshima to Kyoto and Edo— there was a great display of
Okinawan costume, language, and manners. Satsuma encouraged the
publication and wide distribution of woodblock prints illustrating these
diplomatic processions, and every effort was made to underscore the
"foreignness" of the Okinawans. In other words, while the Okinawans had
been trying for so long to adopt Japanese ways and to conform to Japanese
wishes, Satsuma's policy was dedicated to emphasizing differences.
Satsuma's efforts to exploit the vassalage of the Ryukyu king met with
limited success: in 1836 Shuri was directed again to enforce the edicts
banning use of the Japanese language or Japanese artifacts in the presence
of foreigners, and forbidding any revelation of the true state of Okinawa's
dependency upon Satsuma. In 1841 and 1842 the King of Ryukyu was
required to sign a petition to the Lord of Satsuma, ostensibly his own but
actually prepared at Kagoshima, which represented to Shimazu that Shuri
might experience difficulties if precedents were not obeyed and the Lord of
Satsuma did not receive promotions at the imperial court; Shimazu was
advanced to ranks unusual for military men, but failed at that time to reach
the exalted place for which the clan intrigued.*
All of this left the Okinawans in a state of confused uncertainty, for
they were required by Satsuma to take great risks vis-à-vis the shogun's
policies. At home they were to deny subordination; in Japan the
subordination was ostentatiously emphasized. It is small wonder that
foreigners who visited Okinawa were perplexed by the air of mystery which
lay over Shuri's relations with Japan, nor is it surprising that Western
observers felt that the Okinawans—otherwise so friendly and refreshingly
direct—were guilty of duplicity and vacillation, and were wanting in the
power of initiative or decision in official undertakings.
On their part the Okinawans were shaken by fear and uncertainty
when the Western ships began to call at Naha. Shuri had no firm precedents
to govern its behavior. As we shall see, Satsuma's official attitudes veered
with changing policies at Kagoshima, sometimes encouraging foreign
intercourse for the sake of trade, sometimes frowning on it, and always
meting out heavy punishments to those who violated orders. The Europeans
who came were unacquainted with the rituals and procedures traditionally
associated with the reception and dispatch of embassies and trading
missions, and this led to many crises within Shuri Castle walls.

CHINA'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE

WESTERN BARBARIANS
Peking could give no guidance to Shuri, for the Chinese were baffled by
Europeans who insisted that they had a right to trade in China and that the
Chinese government had an obligation to throw open the country to foreign
commerce. Hitherto, successful alien invaders of China—the Mongols and
the Manchus—had come overland into China and after military conquest
had accepted Chinese civilization and adapted themselves to it. All other
barbarians were admitted on sufferance as tributary peoples. The idea of
sovereign equality among nations was incomprehensible to the Chinese. If
the rude red-haired barbarians so eagerly desired to trade, let them conform
to age-old custom; there seemed to be no reason to alter the tribute and
trading regulations.
 Shuri was well aware of China's attitude. Lord Macartney's embassy
from the British sovereign to the Chinese emperor in 1793 had been
proclaimed a tribute mission by the Chinese court. It had been refused
trading privileges on the representation that "China had everything it
needed within its own borders." A Dutch trading mission had been treated
rudely and turned away empty-handed in 1795, even though the merchants
were willing to perform the humiliating k'o-t'ou. A Russian envoy refused
to perform this act of submission in 1806 and was not allowed to approach
Peking. Lord Amherst's embassy in 1816 was dismissed abruptly and turned
away without an audience. At last China and Great Britain came to blows;
the issue was to be resolved by force.
The Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-42 had repercussions in Okinawa, as
we shall sec. It underscored Shuri's dilemma for it demonstrated beyond
question that Western nations were prepared to use force to gain their ends.
Obviously, if Shuri opened Okinawa to foreign intercourse it risked
reprisals from both China and Japan; if it refused to accede to Western
demands, it might suffer attack and occupation.

BRITISH VISITORS: CAPTAIN HALL'S

MOMENTOUS VOYAGE AND NAPOLEON'S
INTEREST IN THE RYUKYUS
Typhoons and droughts, epidemics and famines, and even perhaps the
abdication of a king were as nothing compared to the dread threat of foreign
intrusion. Here indeed the Okinawans were caught between hammer and
anvil, between Japan's fierce determination to exclude the foreigner and the
foreigner's persistent search for an opportunity to penetrate Japan.
From an economic point of view the unheralded and irregular visits
made by foreign ships were costly incidents, hard to be borne by the
Okinawan economy. Nothing of equal value was received in return for
provisions or for the entertainment offered by this ever-courteous people.
Shuri had to meet the costs of increased personnel in all ranks in order to
look after the needs of (and to keep close watch upon) the foreign vistors.
Missions had to be sent to and fro between Shuri and Kagoshima to report
on each intrusion and to explain policy in meeting importunate foreign
demands. There was lurking fear that either China or Japan would cut off
trade with Okinawa, which would mean starvation, and dread that these
foreign visits might provoke Satsuma or Edo to invade and garrison the
islands in the name of national defense.
Against these dour considerations must be set the Okinawan's innate
curiosity and his fundamental friendliness. This conflict between duty and
inclination is reflected again and again in the observations and diary records
preserved from the hands of Western visitors.
European and American ships put in more than thirty times in fifty
years. Some came singly, some came in squadrons. Merchantmen and men-
of-war, driven in by storm, were wrecked or damaged on the reefs and rocks
of the archipelago; some came to Naha Harbor with clearly-formulated
plans for trade. Official reports, diaries, and published travel accounts
brought Okinawa to the attention of the Western world when early-19th-
century "armchair travelers" welcomed each new account with gusto, when
private commercial interests were eager to explore every potential market
and source of raw materials with which to feed an expanding industrial
complex in the Western world. Christian revivalism swept Britain and
America in the early decades and found expression in fervent missionary
interest in all "heathen" people. Politics, commercial rivalry, and military
conflict among the European powers prompted governments to encourage
exploration and to watch with keen interest the reports brought back from
hitherto unknown lands.
It is not possible now to identify all Western ships reported to have
reached the Ryukyu Islands in these years, nor is it certain that all arrivals
were recorded in the annals of the kingdom or in the logbooks and diaries of
the Western voyagers.
Characterizations of the Okinawans vary in detail, but they are
virtually unanimous in noting contradictory aspects within Okinawan life.
The visitor was invariably struck by the absence of arms or incidents of
violence, by the unfailing courtesy and friendliness of all classes, by the
intelligence of the gentry, and by the absence of thievery among die
common people. These were on the credit side. On the debit side they noted
the apparent duplicity of officials in all matters touching upon Okinawa's
true relationship with Japan, and they were irked by the system of restraint
and close watch under which they were forced to spend their days and
nights ashore. They were troubled by the Okinawans' inexplicable
insistence that under no circumstance must the local people or the
government accept payment for goods and services rendered on behalf of
foreign visitors.
in their notes the early Western visitors were virtually unanimous in
praising the friendly courtesy, which stood in such contrast to the rude
receptions usually experienced on the nearby coasts of China, Korea, and
Japan. Nevertheless, the foreigners often grew impatient with Okinawan
insistence upon elaborate formality in the conduct of business, and with the
presence of "spies."
They were of course as ignorant of Okinawan ceremonial standards as
the Okinawans, their hosts, were ignorant of good form and custom
governing international intercourse in the Western world. Extreme formality
at Naha and Shuri reflected centuries of Okinawan experience with Chinese
precedent. In Okinawan eyes ceremonial niceties were the mark of a
cultured man.
As for the irritating "spies," these were actually attendants of two
sorts. Some were assigned to accompany the visitors because the
Okinawans believed that envoys and gentlemen of rank expected to have
subordinates always at their side, ready for instant service; it was simple
courtesy to provide them. Moreover, in centuries of experience the
Okinawans had observed that foreign visitors in China and Japan invariably
had a close guard assigned to accompany them through the countryside
wherever they went, ostensibly to protect them from the uncultured but
curious common people.
The second category of unwanted attendants were indeed the real
spies, the prying, common agents (metsuke) who served the Japanese
representatives stationed at Naha. The metsuke were held in low regard, but
they were feared. If by chance they were not present, the Okinawans
showed an eager interest in all that could be learned of the Western world,
and there was a ready exchange of information and of gifts; under the eyes
of the metsuke, gifts proffered by foreign visitors were rejected and
conversation became stiff, cautious, and noncommittal. Since few
Europeans penetrated the mystery of hidden Japanese authority, few
grasped the significance of the ambivalent Okinawan behavior. The
presence of Satsuma's agents was felt but never clearly understood.
On the whole, the early Western diarists—diplomats, naval officers,
merchants—were sensitive to the qualities of the Okinawans with whom
they met. They noted sometimes with an air of surprise that they had
encountered a people who were "almost civilized" though they were not
Christians. Even the missionaries sometimes grudgingly admitted an
appreciation of good manners and warm friendliness.
Western ships touched at Naha in 1803, 1804, and 1811, but not until
1816 did the British Admiralty act on the plans inspired by Broughton's
report. His Majesty's ships the "Alceste" and the "Lyra" were in the Yellow
Sea waiting for Lord Amherst to withdraw his embassy from Peking. To use
the time profitably it was decided to survey the west coast of Korea and the
Ryukyu archipelago.
On September 15, these ships were searching for a suitable anchorage
near the northern end of the main island (Okinawa). Several canoes came
off to hover about the "Lyra." "No people we have yet met with have been
so friendly, for the moment they came alongside, one handed ajar of water
up to us, and another a basket of boiled sweet potatoes, without asking or
seeming to wish for any recompense. Their manners were gentle and
respectful. . . . Another canoe went near the Alceste, and a rope being
thrown to them, they tied a fish to it and then paddled away. All this seemed
to promise well, and was particularly grateful after the cold repulsive
manners of the Coreans."4
 The English visitors were not disappointed. By the time they left the
island on Sunday, October 27, they had established friendships of a quality
and character which may have no parallel in the annals of 19th-century
voyaging. From the captains (Sir Murray Maxwell and Basil Hall) to the
last seaman in the ranks there was a sense of universal appreciation that this
was a unique experience.
Captain Hall, of the "Lyra," comments upon the individual charactcr of
the Okinawans who became friendly companions during the autumn
sojourn. The narrative of Dr. John M'Leod, surgeon on the "Alceste,"
supplements Hall's account with wide-ranging remarks upon the character
of the countryside, the habits and customs observed during long rambles in
the wooded hills and fields near Naha. He notes the innate dignity and
cultivated manners displayed by the ranking men of Okinawa. Americans
who have become acquainted with the ravaged island since 1945 find it
difficult to credit M'Leod's description of the landscape:

"[They] seemed to enjoy robust health, for we observed no diseased

objects, nor beggars of any description, among them. . . .
"Cultivation is added to the most enchanting beauties of nature. From
a commanding height. .. the view is, in all directions, picturesque and
delightful. ... To the south is the city of Napafoo [Naha] . . . and in the
intermediate space appear numerous hamlets scattered about on the banks
of the rivers, which meander in the valley beneath; the eye being, in every
direction, charged by the varied hues of the luxuriant foliage around their
habitations. Turning to the east, the houses of Kint-ching [Shuri], the capital
city, built in their peculiar style, are observed, opening from among the
lofty trees which surround and shade them, rising one above another in a
gentle ascent to the summit of a hill, which is crowned by the king's palace;
the intervening grounds between Napafoo and Kint-ching, a distance of
some miles, being ornamented by a continuation of villas and country
houses. To the north, as far as the eye can reach, the higher land is covered
with extensive forests.5

"This island can also boast its rivers and secure harbors; and last,
though not least, a worthy, a friendly, and a happy race of people.
"Many of these islanders displayed a spirit of intelligence and genius,
which seemed the more extraordinary, considering the confined circle in
which they live; such confinement being almost universally found to be
productive of narrowness of mind. Our friends here were an exception to
the general rule.—Maddera [i.e., Maedera] Cosyong, one of our most
constant and intimate friends, acquired such proficiency in the English
language, in the course of a few weeks as to make himself tolerably
understood.
"He was gay or serious, as occasion required, but was always
respectable; and of Maddera it might be truly said, that he was a gentleman,
not formed upon this model, or according to that rule, but 'stamped as such
by the sovereign hand of Nature.'
"They all seemed to be gifted with a sort of politeness which had the
fairest claim to be natural; for there was nothing constrained—nothing stiff
or studied in it.
"Captain Maxwell having one day invited a party to dine with him, the
health of the King of Lewchew was drank in a bumper:—one of them
immediately addressing himself with much warmth and feeling to the
interpreter, desired him to state how much they felt gratified by such a
compliment; that they would take care to tell it to every body when they
went on shore; and proposed, at the same time, a bumper to the king of the
Engelees. A Chinese mandarin, under the like circumstances, would, most
probably, have chin-chinned (that is, clenched his fists) as usual; he would
have snivelled and grinned the established number of times, and bowed his
head in slavish submission to the bare mention of his tyrant's name; but it
would never have occurred to him to have given, in his turn, the health of
the sovereign of England.
"This superiority of manner brought to our recollection the
boorishness of the Chinese near the Pei-ho. Certain mandarins, who were
not of sufficient button [rank] to be entertained in the company of the
embassador, were invited to dine with the officers; and some of them, after
gnawing the leg of a fowl, would without any ceremony thrust the remains
of it into any other dish near them. . . ."6

M'Leod notes Okinawan readiness to observe British ways and to

accommodate themselves to British custom when aboard the "Alceste" or
the "Lyra"; he was impressed by the development of good relations between
ordinary seamen and Okinawan laborers engaged to assist in the ship's
repair. "That proud and haughty feeling of national superiority, so strongly
existing among the common class of British seamen, which induces them to
hold all foreigners cheap, and to treat them with contempt; often calling
them outlandish lubbers in their own country, was, at this island, completely
subdued and tamed, by the gentle manners and kind behaviour of the most
pacific people upon earth. Although completely intermixed, and often
working together, both on shore and on board, not a single quarrel or
complaint took place on either side, during the whole of our stay; on the
contrary, the natives were always seen in cheerful association around the
sailors' mess tables, and each succeeding day added to friendship and
cordiality."7
Both M'Leod and Hall also observed that throughout the long sojourn
at Naha not one theft was reported. The British visitors were aware that the
Okinawans lived perpetually under an unnatural restraint:

"Notwithstanding it was an infringement of their established rules for

strangers to land upon their coasts [writes M'Leod], yet they granted in this
respect every possible indulgence, and conceded the point as far as they
could; for their dispositions seemed evidently at war with the unsocial law.
When any of the officers wandered into the country beyond the bounds
prescribed, they were never rudely repulsed, as in China or Morocco, but
mildly entreated to return, as a favour to those in attendance, lest they
should incur blame; and, as this appeal was powerful, it was never
disregarded."8

"We never saw any punishment inflicted atLoo-choo [writes Hall]; a

tap with a fan, or an angry look, was the severest chastisement ever resorted
to, as far as we could discover. In giving orders, the chiefs were mild
though firm, and the people always obeyed with cheerfulness. There
seemed to be great respect and confidence on the one hand, and much
consideration and kind feeling on the other. In this particular, more than any
other that fell under our notice, Loo-choo differs from China, for in the
latter country we saw none of this generous and friendly understanding
between the upper and lower classes."9

One morning, riding in the countryside, Captain Sir Murray Maxwell

fell from his horse. He fractured and dislocated the forefinger of one hand, a
painful but not serious injury. When the Okinawans insisted that the best
physician amongst them should treat the finger, the British officers decided
to let them do so. Under Dr. M'Leod's watchful eye, they were given an
opportunity to demonstrate what they knew of medicine. This reflects the
high esteem and mutual confidence which had sprung up in a few brief
weeks.
Several of the crew suffering minor illnesses were lodged in a pavilion
ashore. Many people of Naha and Shuri paid daily calls, and with solicitous
concern brought to the patients small offerings of eggs, fruit, and cakes.
One young seaman had been mortally ill when the ships arrived. Upon his
death a great concourse of Okinawans, many of them dressed in mourning
clothes of black and white, attended the funeral and asked permission to
erect a monument. An English-language inscription was traced in India ink
upon a stone, which they then cut and placed at the grave. It bore these
words:

"Here lies buried,

Aged Twenty-One Years, William Hares, Seaman,
Of His Britannic Majesty's ship Alceste
Died Oct. 15, 1816.
 This Monument was erected
By the King
And Inhabitants
Of this most hospitable Island"

The conduct of the Okinawans upon this melancholy occasion made a

lasting impression upon the British officers and men in all ranks. To commit
a fellow countryman to a lonely grave in foreign soil was not an unusual
experience but always a poignant one; not infrequently the last Christian
rites had to be administered in the presence of hostile, overcurious, or
suspicious people. The courteous sympathy of the Okinawans was recorded
with profound appreciation. There was a romantic element about it which
caught the imagination of all who later read of it, for the story is retold
many, many times by Victorian writers.
Another incident, however, was destined to have more profound
consequences for the Okinawans themselves. Writing from Dingle, County
Kerry, Ireland, on February 9, 1843, Lieutenant Herbert J, Clifford, Royal
Navy (ret.), launched a public appeal for funds for a "Loo Choo Mission."
After recounting the incidents and hospitality which British mariners had
enjoyed in Okinawa, he had this to say: "One Sabbath day, while we
remained amongst them, I was asked by the attendant chiefs who had been
dismissed from the Alceste, while Divine Service was going on—What are
they doing aboard the big ship that we are sent away?' I replied, 'They are
chinchinning Joss (worshipping God) —just as you do.' My conscience has
smitten me ever since for this reply, but I knew not the Lord at this time and
sinned ignorantly."10
 The Okinawans, as we shall see, were destined to pay a heavy price
for Clifford's sense of sin and his belated remorse.
Before parting from their friends at Naha, the British staged a great
celebration with much pageantry, feasting, and fireworks in honor of the
King and Royal Family of Ryukyu, and the foreigners in turn were feted by
the Okinawans. As the visit drew to a close, a deputation of high officials
waited on the boatswain of the "Alceste" with a proposal that he should
leave his wife behind; she had been the only foreign woman ever seen in
Okinawa, they said, and had attracted much attention. It was assumed that
this proposal came from the king's household, from which a lady of high
rank had come upon occasion to meet and inspect the strange-looking
Western woman. It was a flattering offer, politely declined.
The ships prepared to weigh anchor. A concourse of Okinawans,
dressed in their best robes, performed services at a seaside temple to invoke
the gods "to protect the Englelees, to avert every danger, and restore them in
safety to their native land!" Tears were shed during a lingering farewell, and
M'Leod noted that "this happy island . . . will be long remembered by all the
officers and men of the Alceste and Lyra; for the kindness and hospitality of
its inhabitants have fixed upon every mind a deep and lasting impression of
gratitude and esteem."
M'Leod closes his book with a poem in twenty-five stanzas, entitled
"The Farewell," an awkward expression of deeply felt but strangely mixed
emotion. These professional mariners had been reared in the Western
European Christian tradition that heathens were to be pitied and patronized
and, if possible, brought to conversion. Here they had discovered a people
who were governed by a code of high refinement in personal relations,
whose manners were polished, and whose agreeable conduct and candor
with strangers compelled not only admiration but friendship on a basis
approaching social equality.
"The following Lines, written by Mr. Gillard, on leaving our
hospitable friends at Grand Lew Chew, speak not only his own, but the
general, feeling on that occasion.

"While friendship thus was shown to all

Congenial minds attached a few;
And Memory oft will pleased recall
The names of 'Madd'ra' and 'Ge-roo

"Farewell, dear Isle!—on thee may ne'er

The breath of civil discord blow!
Far from your shores be every fear,
And far—oh! far—the invading foe!"11

Captain Hall describes the leave-taking:

"I took this opportunity of giving each of the chiefs some trinket, as a
farewell present, and they in return gave me their pipes, fans and knives, as
memorials, accompanied by many friendly expressions. Mutual assurances
then passed between us, of long being remembered, and the natives rose to
take their last leave of us. Ookooma, who, as well as the others, was much
agitated, endeavoured to say something, but his heart was full, and he could
not utter a word. The rest did not attempt to speak; and before they reached
their boats, they were all in tears. . . .
"While we were heaving up the anchor, the natives assembled, not
only in canoes round the ships, but in vast crowds along the neighbouring
heights; and as we sailed away for ever from their interesting island, they all
stood up, and continued waving their fans and handkerchiefs till they could
not longer be distinguished."12

On the homeward voyage the "Lyra" put in briefly at St. Helena,

where the principal officers were presented to the exiled Napoleon. The
"Alceste" had been lost, Lord Amherst's mission at Peking was a failure,
and there had been other adventures and misadventures to mark this
ambassadorial tour around the world, but it was to the curiously mild and
happy experience on Okinawa that the conversation turned. When Napoleon
was told that there existed a kingdom in which no arms were found and (as
the visitors believed) the art of war was unknown, a society governed by a
code of polite manners and good behavior among all classes, the general
who had set Europe aflame refused to believe that such a kingdom and such
a people could exist. Hall felt that he was fortunate in having something of
exceptional conversational interest, and Napoleon "devoured information"
about the Ryukyu kingdom and the Okinawan people:

"Several circumstances... respecting the Loo-Choo people surprised

even him a good deal; and I had the satisfaction of seeing him more than
once completely perplexed, and unable to account for the phenomena which
I related. Nothing struck him so much as their having no arms. 'Point
d'armes!' he exclaimed; . . . 'Mais, sans armes, comment se bat-on?'
"I could only reply, that as far as we had been able to discover, they
had never had any war, but remained in a state of internal and external
peace. 'No wars!' cried he, with a scornful and incredulous expression, as if
the existence of any people under the sun without wars was a monstrous
anomaly."

Napoleon enquired closely into the economics, religion, customs,

habitations, and dress of the people, and pressed questions concerning
agriculture on Okinawa: "He appeared considerably amused by the
pertinacity with which they kept their women out of our sight; but
repeatedly expressed himself much pleased with Captain Maxwell's
moderation and good sense, in forebearing to urge any point upon the
natives which was disagreeable to them, or contrary to the laws of their
country."13
Two principal records, from which we have already quoted, were later
issued; Captain Basil Hall, commanding officer of the "Lyra," published an
Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great
Loo-Choo Island, and John M'Leod, M.D., surgeon aboard the "Alceste,"
published a Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Alceste to China, Corea, and the
Island of Lewchew with an Account of her Shipivreck. Both accounts went
into several handsomely illustrated editions. Hall wrote with a fine touch,
sensitive to the qualities of this experience. For many years thereafter he
traveled over the world and published extensively, but no experience
touched him quite as this one had. He drew a picture of idyllic peace, of a
happy people, of an exquisite landscape, and of a quality of human
relationships which altogether appealed to the romantic spirit of the early
19th century. For three decades his book was accepted as a standard work,
for it combined accurate and painstaking investigation with a warmly felt
appreciation of the high character and quality of the Okinawan people.
Anyone who proposed to visit the islands thereafter turned to his volume for
information.
This had an odd consequence. The romantic picture of life at Shuri and
Naha in 1816 created expectations which were not fulfilled when naval
diplomats and missionaries of France, England, and the United States began
to frequent Okinawan waters. Political and economic conditions within the
island had changed considerably; the Japanese had developed and stiffened
policies toward Okinawa, and the island people themselves had become
further impoverished through a continuing series of natural disasters. There
was a sense of disillusionment on both sides. The Okinawans in time
became tired of demands made upon their hospitality by foreign ships, not
all of which were commanded by men of the high quality of Sir Murray
Maxwell and Captain Hall. On the other hand, when receptions were not so
cordial the disappointed foreigners tended to heap blame on Hall and his
colleagues for "misrepresentation." But, on the whole, navy men and
merchant seamen usually came away with a happy impression; the
missionaries, however, were aggrieved. Hall's glowing account had stirred
them to highest expectation of an easy evangelical conquest, a harvest of
souls easily gathered. When in fact the Okinawans said "No thank you" the
evangelists were offended. Their notes, commentaries, and letters to the
press reflected a sense of injury and resentment, toward Captain Hall, who
had so badly "misled" them, and toward the Okinawans, who compounded
refusal's injury by being, on the whole, polite about it.

MISSIONARIES, MERCHANTS, AND NAVAL

DIPLOMATS: THE ANGLO-CHINESE WARS
Meanwhile, on November 19, 1819, the brig "Brothers," flying the British
flag, dropped anchor at Naha to take on supplies and to seek permission to
trade. The ship's company were astonished at the "tolerable" English spoken
by some of the Okinawans, and inspected with great interest the notebooks
and drawings which were brought aboard as proud records of the "Alceste"
and "Lyra" visit. William Upton Eddis subsequently published notes on the
incident:

"When they took leave, they requested me on no account to go on

shore, as it would occasion much trouble. I smiled and said, I would go with
them the next day .We shook hands, bowed, &c, and I remained in
astonishment at their kind, polite and unexpectedly European manners.
They possessed much curiosity, but not for a moment intrusive. When
anyone wished to examine anything, his looks were as expressive as any
words could be, and touched nothing until permission was first gained. I
could not help wishing some of my late Russian friends present to see their
manners.
"As it appeared fruitless and nearly impossible to trade, I sailed on the
Saturday morning, after a stay of only 44 hours, in which short time it was
scarcely practicable to acquire any other knowledge further than sufficient
to excite surprise and admiration at these worthy, hospitable, and indeed
partly polished people. They appeared by nature to possess the virtues,
without the vices of what we called civilized life. I did not observe the
appearance of any offensive weapons whatever. They very readily partook
of anything offered, wine, &c; of noyeau they highly approved, and I have
no doubt, the good interpreter will recollect the name."14

Eddis gave the interpreter a copy of Broughton's engraved "Panoramic

View of Napachan," which delighted the Okinawans. He offered them a
copy of the New Testament in a Chinese translation; this they could read
fluently, but they refused it, saying that acceptance meant death. They
pretended not to be able to read Japanese and would accept no other books.
For the next quarter-century British policy toward the Ryukyus was
one of moderate interest in trading possibilities. The record was marred by
one incident—in 1824—which bred difficulties.
A British ship dropped anchor at Tokara-jima, the small island lying
between Amami Oshima and Kyushu, used by the Okinawans as a point of
transshipment for goods en route to Kagoshima. British sailors seized and
killed cattle and took what supplies they wanted wherever they found them.
Angry villagers tried to drive them off, and in the melee several persons
were killed on each side. This was reported to Edo at once, whereupon the
Japanese government in 1825 issued a new expulsion decree, which was
expected to apply in the Ryukyus:

"As to the mode of proceeding on the arrival of foreign vessels, many

proclamations have formerly been issued, and one was expressly issued in
1806 with respect to Russian ships. Also several years ago an English
vessel committed outrages at Nagasaki [the 'Phaeton,' in 1808], and in later
years the English have visited the various ports in boats, demanding fire-
wood, water and provisions. In the past year they landed forcibly, and
seized rice and grain in the junks and cattle on the islands. The continuation
of such insolent proceedings, as also the intention of introducing the
Christian religion having come to our knowledge, it is impossible to look on
with indifference. Not only England, but also the Southern Barbarians and
Western Countries are of the Christian religion which is prohibited among
us. Therefore, if in future foreign vessels should come near any port
whatsoever, the local inhabitants shall conjointly drive them away; but
should they go away (peaceably) it is not necessary to pursue them. Should
any foreigners land anywhere, they must be arrested or killed, and if the
ship approaches the shore it must be destroyed."15

This surly rejection of all foreign intercourse had little effect in the
Ryukyus. Tokara was within Satsuma's domains; this was a clash between
the Japanese and the Western world which they were determined to exclude,
but it took place uncomfortably close to Okinawa.
In 1827 H.M.S. "Blossom" put in twice at Naha. In a narrative
published later the commanding officer, Captain Beechey, devoted a chapter
to the Ryukyus, noting the solicitous care with which the "humane
Loochuans" attended the needs of the sick among his ship's company:
"These good people had been put to much trouble and anxiety on account of
the strangers, and had so ingratiated themselves with them, that as the
moment approached, the desire for their departure was proportionately
lessened, and when the day arrived, they testified their regret in a warm but
manly manner, shook Captain Beechy and all the officers heartily by the
hand and each gave some little token of regard, which they begged the
officers to keep in remembrance of them. As they moved from the
anchorage, the inhabitants assembled on the housetops as before, upon the
tombs, on the forts, and on every place that would afford them a view of
their operations, some waving umbrellas and others fans."16
While at sea they had encountered an English whaler, the "Tuscan":

"The master of the 'Tuscan' informed me [writes Beechey] that the

preceeding year his ship's company had been so severely afflicted with
disease, that he found it necessary to put into Loochoo, where he was well
received, and his people treated with the greatest kindness. He was supplied
with fresh meat and vegetables daily, without being allowed to make any
other payment than that of a chart of the world, which was the only thing
the natives would accept.
"The salute which the Alceste and Lyra had fired on the 25 th of
October [1816] was well remembered by these people, and they had an idea
that it was an annual ceremony performed in commemoration of something
connected with the King of England. On the return of this day, during the
Tuscan's visit, they concluded that the ship would observe the same
ceremony, and looked forward with much anxiety and delight to the event,
that the Master of the whaler was obliged to rub up his four patereroes, and
go through the salute without any intermission, as the Loochooans counted
the guns as they were fired."17
 In August, 1832, the British ship "Lord Amherst" cruised northward
along the China coast and crossed over to Naha, exploring commercial
prospects in the China Sea and probing Japan's outer line of defense. These
were official interests, represented principally in the person of M.H.H.
Lindsay, of the Honorable East India Company in China, and Captain Rees,
commander and surveyor in the Royal Navy. Lindsay was conversant with
the Chinese language, but as an assistant interpreter and surgeon, the "Lord
Amherst" carried a medical missionary, the Reverend Dr. Karl Friederich
Augustus Gutzlaff.
This was an interesting and significant combination of military,
commercial, and religious enterprise; the governments of England, France,
and the United States each in turn tried to promote one or another of these
interests on Okinawa as a means to a greater end, the penetration of Japan.
Lindsay's report to the British Parliament illustrates a civilized and
tolerant approach: "The principal object which I had in visiting Loo-choo
was to make the experiment whether the inhabitants might not willingly
engage in commercial intercourse. The description given in Captain Hall's
voyage of the hospitality and amiable manners of these people has excited a
lively interest concerning them. I therefore could not avoid feeling that it
was incumbent upon us to bear in mind that what little connexion has
hitherto subsisted between our countrymen and its inhabitants has been
marked by the purest benevolence on their part. No British ship has ever
touched here without experiencing their hospitality. Their motives for this
conduct might appear doubtful, did it only apply to the King's ships which
touched at Loo-choo in 1816 and 1827, but exactly similar hospitality and
kind feeling was exhibited to our countrymen in distress, when His
Majesty's ship Providence was wrecked here in 1797. I determined to
deliver a short statement expressive of our wishes, but if it was objected to
comply with them, not to press it in any way which might prove
disagreeable, or tend to lessen those friendly sentiments which were
established by the kind and judicious conduct of Captain Maxwell towards
them. I therefore drew up the following paper, to be presented to the chiefs
with whom we might first communicate; and if the proposal made was
favorably received, it would then be fitting time to write a petition to the
King, and accompany it with suitable presents."18
Lindsay's paper for the "chiefs" stated briefly the nature of this voyage
of commercial exploration, reviewed the history of Ryukyu-British
relations, and expressed British appreciation for the hospitality which had
invariably been found on Okinawa's shores. It then continued: "These
friendly sentiments subsisting between us, we have now come here wishing
to establish commercial intercourse, whereby mutual advantages may arise
to both parties, and the revenues of your country would be increased, whilst
it would contribute towards the prosperity of the people in general. We
therefore request the great mandarins to consult together on the subject, and
report it to the highest authorities."
Lindsay in due course delivered this, and while waiting for the reply
he and his associates (including Gutzlaff) spent some time ashore in
pleasant social intercourse with a number of Okinawan officials: "However
prominent urbanity and gendeness of disposition may be among the Loo-
chooans, it could not blind us, though strongly prepossessed in their favour,
to the utter indifference to truth, which they manifest on all occasions.
Truth, indeed, appears barely to be considered in the light of a virtue among
them, if we may judge from the careless manner in which they saw
themselves convicted of the most flagrant self-con-tradiction in the space of
a few minutes."
Gutzlaff's narrative makes clear that these contradictions had to do
generally with Okinawa's foreign relations, and most particularly with her
relations with Japan.
On August 26 Lindsay received a reply, which quoted back to him the
text of his request, omitting all his complimentary references to the
Okinawan people, and concluded: "Upon examination, it appears that the
wish entertained by your honourable kingdom to establish trade with our
mean nation originated in sentiments of cordial friendship, for which we are
highly grateful; but our mean country is a mere jungle and by no means
extensive; the land is sterile, so that there is scarcely any produce; neither is
any gold or silver found in it. Thus we possess nothing to offer in exchange
for your cloth, camlets, and calicoes. Moreover, our mean kingdom has
never had any law for the regulation of trade with foreign nations. Though
this is a trifling concern, yet we can by no means change our laws, which
are very strict; therefore it is truly difficult to repon to the King. . . . We
conclude, we beseech Hoo Hea-me Tajin [Lindsay] to examine thoroughly
these reasons, as before assigned, which prevent our trading. This is the
reply."19
Lindsay conceded the position and gave up further effort to open trade,
thanking the government meanwhile for its courtesies. He noted with
interest that the local scholars were attempting to build up a dictionary of
English terms, begun during Hall's visit and continued with the help of
Beechey's men and of Captain Stavers of the ship "Partridge," which had
visited Naha in February, 1832.
The Rev. Dr. Gutzlaff lacked Lindsay's delicacy of feeling; he was a
zealot unshakably confident that, in any conflict of interests anywhere,
Christians, by definition, were right, heathens were by definition wrong.
With the first notation in his journal concerning Okinawa he sets the tone of
subsequent Protestant missionary activity for twenty years:

"Some of the mandarins immediately invited us on shore. They spoke

the mandarin dialect fluently, and showed us every attention, but objected
strongly to our going farther than the jetty. . . . We . . . however, went up to
the temple [nearby] without taking any notice of their objections.
"They showed us a card, left by Captain Stevens [Stavers] of the
Partridge, who had been here in February. We saw also the commencement
of an English and Loo-choo dictionary, written in their own and the Chinese
character. In their behaviour, they are friendly and polite, though very
inquisitive about the China men we had on board. But when they saw our
wish to walk, they were highly displeased. . . . We could perceive a certain
distrust, and an extreme reserve about them, which seemed to us
unaccountable. . . ."20

In Gutzlaff's account, too, we find an early example of attempts to

discredit or belittle the highly favorable reports on Okinawa which had
reached the public through Broughton, Hall, Maxwell, M'Leod, Eddis, and
Beechey. The mariners all had reason to be grateful for the hospitality of the
Okinawans; the missionaries, by contrast, expected— indeed, demanded—
that the Okinawans show gratitude for opportunities to abandon heathen
religions and the superstitious ways of their ancestors.
But even Gutzlaff softened a bit:

"We were conducted, by several mandarins, to the temples which [in

1816] had been converted into a hospital by the humane Loochoo-ans.
Though not so picturesque as the description would lead us to suppose, it is
indeed a beautiful place. . . .
"Anjah, so often mentioned by Captain Beechy, was introduced to us
today. He spoke some phrases in Chinese, but soon recollected a few
sentences of English which he repeated very formally. He likewise was very
reserved at first; but soon forgot the restrictions laid upon him, and uttered
his feelings in unrestrained, and often striking remarks. They were generally
so complimentary, and so excessive in their professions of friendship, that
we were at a loss how to answer all their polite observations. ... I distributed
today, some books among them, which they received very gladly. I
perceived no reluctance to receive freely what was offered freely; but could
plainly see that the principal mandarins by no means wished the people to
take them. . . .
"We received [August 24] the first provisions consisting of fruits and
other vegetables. The Loochooans have so graceful a manner in making
their presents, that the value is quite enhanced by it. . . .
"We found in the Lin-hae Temple a great number of mandarins,
anxiously awaiting us where they had prepared a very palatable collation.
They showed more good sense in their conversation today than ever we had
observed in China. By their questions respecting the trade which several
European nations carried on at Canton, they discovered [i.e., disclosed]
much geographical knowledge. They were able to converse upon politics
with great volubility, and gave us to understand that they preferred the
friendship of China to that of England because the former was nearer. We
do not doubt that they have received strict orders from China to keep
strangers aloof, and to treat them with distance and reserve, yet they are too
good natured to confess it. Though they frequently alluded to their
intercourse with China, at Fuh-chow, where Anjah had seen us this year, yet
they disclaimed all intercourse with Japan, and said that the three junks
from Satsuma which lay in the harbor [at Naha] had been driven hither by
stress of weather. . . ."21

Gutzlaff and his companions were eager to gather information

concerning Japan; he therefore took his doctor's kit down to the harbor.
Despite opposition strongly expressed by the unhappy Okinawan officials,
he insisted upon treating several Japanese sailors who suffered a venereal
disease, distributing missionary tracts the while.

"We could never discover the reason of their objections to our

distributing books among the people; but we overcame their scruples by
giving them freely to all the officers as well as to the people, and after
receiving them, they generally came to pay us their thanks. Whenever we
gave anything else privately, they would gladly accept it, though they have
taken books in preference; but everything openly offered them, was always
declined. For the least thing which we gave them, they offered something in
return, but their giving and receiving was all by stealth. . . .
 "We tried today to go into the village, and notwithstanding their
extreme anxiety to prevent us, succeeded. We entered a house, or rather a
temple, around which the tablets of their ancestors were very neatly
arranged. We afterwards scrambled over the splendid mausoleums, which
were built in magnificent Chinese style. . . . We concluded that they are as
profuse in their offerings to the manes of their forefathers, as the Chinese
are. I am anxious to know how they will regard the treatise on the
immortality of the soul, which I gave them.
"The promise which they yesterday made of sending us the provisions
today, they kept punctually. They were liberal also in their gifts. We, on our
part, had sent to his majesty the King, or rather the Chee-foo of the islands,
a variety of presents, and among them three bibles, which were very well
received. O, that the glorious Gospel may enter the hearts of these amiable
people, and form them for heaven!"

After a well-served dinner Gutzlaff noted:

"We admired the good order and propriety exhibited in the feast,
among a great crowd of spectators. Good manners seem to be natural to the
Loochooans.
"After dinner we took a long walk among the hills and groves of this
delightful island. We saw several women working very hard in the field;
and the peasantry appeared to be poorly clad and in poor condition; yet they
were as polite as the most accomplished mandarins... .
"We took an affectionate leave of our kind hosts. In reviewing our
intercourse with them, I think that their politeness and kindness are very
praiseworthy. They are, however, by no means those simple and innocent
beings which we might at first suppose them to be. Upon inquiry we found
that they had among them the same severe punishments as at Corea; that
they possessed arms likewise but are averse to use them. The Chinese tael
and cash is current among them, but very scarce. The manufactures are few
and neat; their houses and clothes are always kept clean. They are certainly
a diminutive race, and everything which they possess or build seems
proportionately small. While the Japanese regard them with utmost
contempt as an effeminate race, we will freely acknowledge that they are
the most friendly and hospitable people, which we have met during all our
voyage."22

Adversity in mission work on the China coast did not sweeten

Gutzlaff. He visited Okinawa for the second time, in 1837, aboard the
British warship "Raleigh," which was bound for the Bonin Islands to claim
them for the British crown. At Naha, Gutzlaff transshipped to the American
ship "Morrison," which lay in the harbor. This was a merchantman en route
to Japan in a vain effort to return five Japanese castaways who had been for
some time at Canton.
Aboard the "Morrison" were the missionary-doctor Peter Parker and
the missionary-interpreter Samuel Wells Williams. Both left records of
adventures ashore while waiting for the "Raleigh" to come in. The doctor
tried forcibly to demonstrate smallpox vaccination. With the interpreter
Gutzlaff he pushed into private houses and into temples and shrines with
callous indifference to public and private feeling.
 The Okinawans were alarmed by this rendezvous in the harbor. Here
was no chance accident of adverse winds or shipwreck bringing foreigners
to their shores. The "Raleigh" proposed to seize Ogasawara, territory which
the Japanese for centuries had believed to be their own; the "Morrison" was
attempting to breach the seclusion laws. The two had met, according to
plan, at Okinawa. The presence of the two ships was made known at once to
Satsuma and Edo.
Williams, Gutzlaff, and Parker, all of whom knew some Chinese,
showed unquenchable curiosity about the town of Naha and its suburbs,
brushing aside all requests that they stay close to the quay and the
waterfront. The Okinawans mistrusted the rude visitors and resented such
intrusion. Their attitude annoyed the missionaries.
"To my knowledge [wrote Gutzlaff] no foreign trader committed ever
any violence here; yet the natives, always dreaming of conquest, can
scarcely imagine that a ship should come to these remote regions without
entertaining hopes of subjugating the islands." He likened the country
women to ponies, "with whom they seemed to rank on a par. We had at this
time better opportunity for observation than our predecessors. The general
aspect of things renders the impressions which remained from my last visit
less favourable; the Loo Chooans do not improve upon nearer inspection.
Several circumstances conspire to keep the great mass of the people in a
state of poverty. . . ."23
By this time Parker, Williams, and Gutzlaff had discovered the role
which Satsuma played in Okinawan affairs, and had recognized the heavy
economic disabilities under which the people struggled to satisfy Satsuma's
tax and tribute requirements. They had discovered the strength of Okinawan
ties with Japan, denied by the Okinawans but no longer possible to conceal.
This knowledge suggested the possibility that Japan could be penetrated for
God through Okinawa. Converts made among the Okinawans and tracts left
there could be expected (they thought) to reach the Japanese through
Kagoshima. A grand scheme of doctrinal infiltration now took shape;
missionary policy toward the Ryukyus dated from this "Morrison" visit and
was maintained with great persistence until Perry opened Japan to direct
intercourse.
Both Parker and Gutzlaff gave medical aid freely to persons suffering
from diseases of the skin and spent hours explaining Western pharmacology
to doctors sent down from Shuri to interview them. "Being recognized by
several Loo Choo chiefs with whom I had become acquainted at my
previous visit, they heartily welcomed me, and made many inquiries about
my former companions. They repeatedly asked how many vessels may still
be coming, and evidently were tired of supplying them with provisions. At
the fort on the entrance they had stationed seven soldiers with clubs, in
order to give something like a military appearance to their harbour. For the
provisions furnished to H.M. Ship Raleigh they obstinately refused
receiving any compensation, lest it might have the appearance of bartering
or trading with foreigners."24
The British were not satisfied with China's desire to regulate and
control foreign trade, nor with Japan's desire to exclude it. Traffic in opium
—a trade with which Gutzlaff and other pious men did not hesitate to
associate themselves—became a prime issue at Canton in 1839, and late in
that year the first Anglo-Chinese War began.
 British naval vessels gathered along the China coast, making the
Chusaii Islands the point of rendezvous. On August 14 the transport "Indian
Oak," with some seventy persons aboard, was thrown up on the northern
shores of Okinawa in a heavy storm.
Two Indian seamen managed to get a line ashore, and soon the entire
ship's company was safely on the beach. "We were met by the islanders and
greeted with great kindness and hospitality. . . . Here they presented us with
hot tea, and rice made up in balls. I only regret my inability to do justice to
those kind-hearted people. Greater kindness and hospitality could not be
shown by any nation than was shown to us by them."25
The narrator (J.J.B. Bowman, British agent for transports) spoke
Malay; two of the ship's carpenters, Chinese from Malaya, spoke an
"indifferent Malay" with Bowman and sufficient Fukien dialect to make
themselves understood among some of the Okinawans. Thus awkwardly the
castaways began a sojourn of six weeks on Okinawa. Soon, however: "We
found one Lewchew gentleman of some rank, and a very intelligent man,
that spoke and understood a few words of English, which he said he learned
from Captain Beechy of H.M.S. Blossom that had touched at the islands
about fourteen years before on a visit."26
Having surveyed the wreck and taken measure of the problem, the
Okinawans promised to send the strangers to Singapore or Canton on an
Okinawan vessel, but requested the forlorn group to stay meanwhile within
a village near the beach while all hands set about helping with the salvage
work.
 "Nothing can exceed the honesty of these good and kind-hearted
people; greater temptation could not be offered to any men; articles of gold,
silver, clothing, wines, beer and spirit strewed in every direction [from the
point of shipwreck] but not one even touched or missing; the greatest
anxiety and every means used to render our situation comfortable.
"[We continue] to experience the same kind treatment from these
excellent and polite people. As yet have not seen any arms among them;
from eighty to one hundred men with ten to twenty canoes assisting our
people in saving articles from wreck. . . 27

A house and barracks were built to accommodate the officers and men,
and it was determined to build a small craft, using salvaged material plus
such other supplies as the Okinawans could provide. With this it was
proposed to cross over to the Chusan archipelago, where units of the British
fleet were known to be.
Bowman's diary continued: "The kindness and attention of these good
people to all our little wants exceeds everything; every convenience, even a
bathing house, is attached to our dwelling."
Suddenly this friendly scene was thrown into utmost confusion. On
August 30—two weeks after the disaster—the spokesmen for the
Okinawans sounded an alarm; a great party of armed Japanese had appeared
nearby. It was necessary to call in all the shipwrecked men to confine them
close within the barracks. A small craft which had been salvaged from the
"Indian Oak" now hastily put out to sea, pursued for some distance by a
canoe filled with hostile Japanese.
 On shore, meanwhile, Okinawans begged the English officers and men
to hide their arms, and to make no show of resistance, but to leave matters
of parley with them. These, they said, were men from Tokara, and were
wicked and dangerous. We now know that they were a Japanese garrison
force dispatched from Tokara by the Satsuma officers. All were in a
uniform battle-dress, heavily armed with two swords, matchlocks, and bows
and arrows.
It was obvious that the Europeans had been cast up on the reefs against
their will and that they were not demanding trade; on the contrary, they
were eager to get away from the island. On this point the Okinawan leaders
seem to have made a convincing case with the Japanese, who withdrew to
camp at a distance, making no further effort to intervene direcdy in the
salvage operation.
Working together, the Okinawans and the crew of the "Indian Oak" in
time constructed a rude craft or junk, which they dubbed the "Lew-chew."
The British were amused to learn that Chinese at Naha had assured the
Okinawans that British forces on die China coast had been roundly beaten
by the imperial Chinese army and navy.
On September 16 two British ships hove into sight searching for the
"Indian Oak." They were the brig "Cruizer" and H.M.S. "Nim-rod," under
Captain Barlow's command. They had picked up the small boat which had
escaped a fortnight earlier. Barlow wished to repay the Okinawans for the
labor and materials which were going into the makeshift craft, the
"Lewchew," and to requite them in some way for the provisions and shelter
which had been so freely made available:
 "The Lewchewans positively refused payment, stating all they
expected or wished was, that in the event of any of their vessels calling at
our ports, or meeting with a similar fate, they might be treated kindly and
returned to their country.
"[We] received up to the last moment the same kindness and attention
we have ever experienced from the first moment of our landing from the
wreck."

As they prepared to depart on September 27 the British officers felt

that some gesture of thanks must be made. Accordingly the narrator
"accompanied lieut. Williams and the young gentlemen on shore, with the
presents from her majesty queen Victoria to his majesty the king of
Lewchew, presented by Captain Barlow, viz: a picture of a female reclining
on a couch, twelve copies of the Saturday and Penny magazines, a
telescope, and one small looking glass."28
This gift list reads rather like the inventory of a junior officer's cabin
aboard the "Nimrod," but these trivial gifts served their purpose as tokens of
respect for hospitality pleasantly given and gladly received.
In his report to the Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle for 1841
(London), Bowman concluded: "Indeed, how much is there which might be
copied by civilized nations in the behaviour of the uncivilized people of the
Loo Choo islands." And in writing some years later to the founder of the
Loo Choo Naval Mission he observed: "I shall ever consider that a heavy
debt of gratitude is due by me, and all those who were, by the wreck of the
Transport 'Indian Oak,' thrown upon their bounty."29
 The entire incident—and Shuri's position in the matter—was carefully
reported to the shogun's government at Edo by the special envoy, Hamahiga
Pechin.
During 1842 and 1843 several other British ships touched at Okinawa.
Captain Sir Edward Belcher, in H.M.S. "Samarang," spent twentyone days
ashore in Yaeyama and Miyako, charting reefs and shoal waters and making
observations needed by the Admirálty in London. He quite accurately
assessed the administrative arrangements which bound the outer islands to
Shuri. He noted no arms whatsoever among the people and decided that
government rested on moral suasion rather than on force. He found the
island people living for the most part in utter poverty and in squalor.
He employed local men in the survey work: "Sometimes our coolies
and attendants amounted to fifty or more, and being repeatedly changed as
we moved from village to village or to other islands, it may be computed
that our property passed through the hands of hundreds. Not a solitary case
of dishonesty or what could be called theft occurred. ... In every instance,
when parts of our instruments were accidently missing, the utmost grief and
uneasiness was exhibited until everything was recovered. These exhibitions
of feeling lead one naturally to the conclusion that they are an eminently
moral people. Quarrels were not witnessed, and the humble and modest
kowtow of the . . . Lewchewans was in universal use among the highest
classes. . . ."30
Britain's victory in China resulted in the Treaty of Nanking, signed
August 29, 1842. By its terms five Chinese ports were opened to foreign
trade and residence; Britain acquired Hongkong as a crown colony; and
Christian missionaries were granted permission to operate anywhere within
one day's journey of an open port. A supplementary treaty in 1843 provided
for further trade regulations and promised "most favoured nation"
treatment, which is to say, China promised to extend to the British any
privileges which she might thereafter extend to any other foreign nation.
This opened the way for other powers to seek trading privileges and
concessions along the China coast: soon the United States, France,
Belgium, Sweden, and Norway had similar treaties, and there were new
Chinese treaties with Russia.
All this was made known to the Okinawans at Fukien, though not
without some inaccuracy. They were alarmed, and so were the Japanese. If
China hereafter made formal claim to the Ryukyu Islands, based on the
tributary subordination, the terms of these treaties might be construed to
apply at Naha. It was becoming evident that the old arrangement of "dual
subordination" would soon be challenged, and the old pretenses of
suzerainty would have to be given up, either by China or by Japan.

FRENCH PRESSURE AT SHURI AND

SATSUMA'S REACTION31
In March, 1844, the French warship "Alcmene" put in at Naha, demanding
trading privileges, which Shuri steadfastly refused to grant. The French told
the Okinawans that the British were planning to invade Japan and would
seize Okinawa as a base of attack. They proposed therefore that the Ryukyu
kingdom should place itself under French protection. This too the
Okinawans refused to consider.
 To Shuri's great consternation, however, the French warship insisted
on putting ashore a Catholic missionary, named Forcade, and his Chinese
assistant, Augustine Ho. These men, the French said, would remain on
Okinawa for language study; they would be needed as interpreters when a
large French naval force returned to press for formal agreements between
the Emperor of France and the Ryukyu kingdom.
The unwelcome strangers were lodged in the Ameku Seigen-ji, a small
Buddhist temple used as a hostel for foreign visitors since 1816. Close
watch was set on all their movements. Priests and military threats —here
was the dread combination again, on Okinawan soil in direct violation of
Edo's expulsion decrees.
Edo was well informed of events on the China coast—the British
demands, the war, and the concessions wrung from China by the Treaty of
Nanking. With an eye to their own interests, Dutch monopolists at Nagasaki
warned Japan that both Britain and France were planning to establish bases
on Okinawa. These events in 1844 seemed to bear out the story.
There were two schools of thought at Edo. One advocated a moderate
policy and possibly some conciliatory enlargement of foreign commerce.
The other advocated stern rejection of any further overtures from the
Western powers, and for a time these latter views prevailed.
Soon after Hamahiga Pechin reported to Edo on the "Indian Oak"
affair, an envoy reached Japan from the King of Holland to advise the
shogun that it would be in Japan's interest to relax the seclusion laws
voluntarily, before the other European powers took matters into their own
hands. Months of debate and conflict at Edo produced a reply which said in
part: "When the time came for determining with what countries [Japanese]
communication should be permitted, intercourse was limited to Korea and
Luchu, and trade to your Excellencies' country [Holland] and China. Aside
from these countries, all communication was strictly disallowed. . . .
Henceforth pray cease correspondence."32
This was not an end to the matter. Satsuma saw here a new
opportunity. Plans were matured at Kagoshima which would enable Japan
to keep persistent foreigners at a distance by granting them a trading base at
Naha not unlike the restricted trading station occupied by the Dutch at
Nagasaki. If this were done, Satsuma would enjoy the fruits of a monopoly
on trade between Naha and Kagoshima which the Edo government had
declared legitimate.
Meanwhile, the missionary Forcade and his Chinese aide made no
progress whatever at Naha. They reported that Okinawans were a happy
people who were quite ready to make friends, but they themselves—the
missionaries—were restricted, spied upon, and made uncomfortable in a
thousand ways. They became aware of Satsuma's role in this, and of
Japanese agents keeping watch on the Okinawans.
The French government had learned nothing from history. It would
have been impossible for them to select agents less suited to their needs and
to their interests in Okinawa as a steppingstone into Japan. The association
of missionary effort with diplomacy and military pressure revived and
heightened the issues to which the Japanese government had reacted so
violently in the past. Added to this was the blundering use of a Chinese
interpreter, who was discovered to be an uncultured refugee, a "rice
Christian," once the inmate of a Chinese jail. He could gain no hearing
among the educated officials at Shuri and Naha.
 On May 2, 1846, the French warship "Sabine" dropped anchor at
Naha. To the dismay of the Okinawans, a second priest, named Leturdu,
was put ashore. The "Sabine's" commanding officer, Captain Guerin, made
an official call upon the chief magistrate of Shuri. In the course of this
interview he announced casually that he intended to move his ship to Unten
Harbor on the Motobu Peninsula. There he was to rendezvous with Admiral
Cecilie and the warships "Cléopâtre" and "Victorieuse."
This move was made on June 7 over Shuri's strong objections.
Satsuma's agents and the Okinawan authorities wanted to keep the
foreigners under closest surveillance, which was difficult to do at such a
distance. On June 8 Admiral Cecilie received the local magistrate from the
Hokuzan district aboard the "Cléopâtre" at Unten. Ten days later the
admiral went ashore at Kami-Unten Village with great fanfare of drums and
trumpets to meet the king's representatives and to open formal but
unsuccessful negotiations for a treaty.
The French were rude and arrogant. If the move to Unten was
designed to make it more difficult for the Okinawans to negotiate and to
limit opportunities for conference and concert of policy among the highest
officials at Shuri, then it was a success. If it was designed to intimidate the
Okinawan representatives and shorten the discussions leading to a treaty
satisfactory to the French, then it failed. Certainly in Okinawan eyes the
insistence upon the remote and shabby fishing village of Unten as a site for
official negotiations was incredibly ridiculous.
While all these things were taking place on Okinawa, a series of
conferences were held at Kagoshima and at Edo. Shimazu Nariakira
(known also as Saihin) was then heir presumptive to the headship of the
Satsuma clan. He was interested in developing foreign relations, for he had
much more than trade in view.
Saihin was sensitive to the changes which were overtaking Japan's
international position and was convinced that seclusion policies soon would
have to be changed drastically. In the French proposal to open trade with the
Ryukyu kingdom he saw a larger opportunity. He was prepared to put up a
large sum—from ten to twenty thousand gold ryo—to capitalize a trading
venture with the foreigners. An important party of stubborn conservatives at
Kagoshima rejected his views and proposals; nevertheless, he took his plans
to the highest officers at Edo.33 Here again he found divided opinion and
serious opposition in the most important departments of government. But
some prominent men approved—most notable among them Lord Abe
Masahiro, Chief of the Great Council of State, who had been recalled to
office by news of the French action in Okinawa. At last the shogun
summoned the Lord of Satsuma and his heir, Saihin, and in secret
conference on May 27, 1846, indirectly sanctioned a trading agreement with
the French. He did this by leaving decisions in Saihin's hands, with an
admonition that the matter must be concealed from the other feudal lords
and that it was to be worked out in a manner which would cause no future
trouble for Edo.
Saihin now attempted to exploit the government's policy in a peculiar
and devious way. While he publicly declared himself in support of the
exclusion policies, and advocated strong coastal defences, he expanded
trading operations at the Ryukyu depot in Fukien, with a view gradually to
transfer operations to Naha and thence, perhaps, to a port within his own
domains in Kyushu. He projected the development of a monopoly on
heavy-arms manufacture within his fief. By rousing the fears of the country,
the demand for arms would increase steadily. By using Naha as an
intermediary base, he expected to profit from the import of weapons. He
shrewdly decided that Edo would be unable to resist French or British
demands on distant Okinawa if they were backed by force and that
concessions acceptable to the foreigners there—especially freedom to trade
—might satisfy the Western powers and divert their attention from the ports
of Japan proper.
While these long-drawn-out negotiations were concluded favorably at
Edo, the Shuri government, unaware of them, delivered a note to Admiral
Cecilie on July 5, 1846, stating that the King of Ryukyu must decline the
offer of a treaty with the King of the French. On July 17 the French
squadron left Unten for Japan, taking with them the missionary Forcade, but
hinting darkly that French warships would come again to make known the
French king's reaction to Shuri's unsatisfactory answer.34
Another missionary, Mathieu Adnet, had meanwhile joined Leturdu at
Naha in a study of the Okinawan language. They did not prosper. They
made no converts, but in 1847 a young Japanese named Iwajiri Eisuke
arrived from Kagoshima, sent down by the Satsuma authorities to study
French. It was represented to the missionaries that this man was from
Tokara Island, the midway trading station. Saihin hoped to have his own
well-trained interpreter ready when his plans could be put in motion. This
was not to be; young Iwajiri died in 1848 at Naha, and on July 1, in the
same year, Mathieu Adnet also died, leaving a discouraged Leturdu and
Augustine Ho alone at the mission station. On August 27 a French ship put
in, took the two men aboard, and sailed away.
 THE MISSIONARY BETTELHEIM APPEARS
IN OKINAWA
On May 1, 1846 (the day before the French warship "Sabine" arrived), the
British ship "Starling" came in, bringing a missionary named Bernard Jean
Bettelheim, his wife, two infants, a spinster "infant-teacher," and a Chinese
assistant. The hospitality which the Okinawans had shown to British naval
officers and seamen for half a century was now to be repaid in strange coin.
Herbert John Clifford's "Mission to the Loo Choos" was about to
begin. The brash and thoughtless young lieutenant of 1816, who lightly
talked of "chinchinning Joss," had been swept up and transformed in the
zealous missionary movement which so deeply agitated England and the
United States in the 1830's and 40's. The memory of the incident in Naha
Harbor had preyed heavily upon him. This was his repentent gesture.
He had organized the "Loo-choo Naval Mission" and had become its
Honorable Secretary. His Grace the Duke of Manchester, Commander of the
Royal Navy, became a patron; vice-patrons were admirals; the trustees and
committeemen were captains, commanders, and lieutenants. There were
branches in Ireland and Scotland, and a special plea for support went to
naval personnel and merchant seamen who had at one time or another
visited the Ryukyu Islands. It was in this a remarkable organization.
Clifford's publications on behalf of the mission were issued under the title
The Claims of Loochoo on British Liberality, and Britain's obligation to
repay the Okinawans in some measure formed a constant theme in his
appeals for funds: "I am not aware that any return has ever been made to the
Loochoo people for all their hospitality and kindness to two of her
Majesty's ships, and therefore I feel that a debt of gratitude is still due, and
would now urge on the British Christian public, that as we have reaped their
carnal things, we should repay them in spiritual things by sending them,
even at this late hour, after a lapse of a quarter of a century, the Word of
Life, in return for all their more than Samaritan benevolence to our
people."35
Clifford's appeals brought a remarkable response; a substantial fund
was raised, and a search was made for suitable men to go into the field. It
was planned to send an ordained minister with a medical assistant, but
competition for qualified men was keen and candidates were few. The
missionary societies of the Established Church and of such dissenting
congregations as Clifford approved were unwilling or unable to extend their
activities to a new field, where, he feared, "the iron fangs of Popery, or the
more smooth, cat-like talons of Puseyism [will] fasten their deadly grasp on
my long loved Loochoo."
The choice fell upon Dr. Bettelheim. To understand the events of the
next eight years at Naha and the formulation of British and American
policy, we must review his remarkable earlier career in Europe, which
throws light upon his behavior in Okinawa. We must rely upon his own
statements, for what they are worth, in sketching his life before he became a
convert to Christianity and reached England.36
Bettleheim was born into a noted Jewish family of Pressburg,
Hungary, in 1811. His early studies were designed to prepare him to become
a'rabbi. It is said that he could read and write Hebrew, German, and French
before he was ten years of age, but for reasons undisclosed he left home in
his twelfth year and began to teach, pursuing his studies meanwhile at five
different higher schools. In September, 1836, he took a degree in medicine
at Padua, Italy. If we are to credit his biographers, he filed no less than
forty-seven "scientific dissertations" with the Imperial Court Library at
Vienna within the next three years, for an average of better than one
dissertation completed per month.
While engaged in such prolific writing, he traveled from practice to
practice, from Padua to Trieste to Unsine, then back to Trieste, to Naples,
Sicily, and Greece. In 1840 we find him "chief surgeon" on an Egyptian
man-of-war, then shortly thereafter "head surgeon" of a regiment in the
town of Magnesia, in Turkey. There he fell in with British missionaries,
who gave him "an Italian Bible, a Popish prayer-book and a German
Gospel," and with these he began the study of Christianity. This led to his
conversion and baptism by a British chaplain at Smyrna. Meanwhile he
found time to dispute with local rabbis, summing up his theological
arguments in a controversial pamphlet which he published in French.
At this point he resigned his post, wrangled over salary settlements at
Constantinople for some months, and at last reached London. He was fired
with determination to be "authorized" by the Established Church of England
to preach to the Jews of the Mediterranean area. From this time forth he
kept voluminous diaries.
At London he was further inspired by an opportunity to stay in
lodgings frequented by well-known missionaries, including Dr. Peter Parker
and Karl Friederich August Gutzlaff (who had been together on Okinawa in
1837), by David Livingstone and others. He spent some months in a huge
controversy with the bishops of the Church of England. According to
Bettelheim, these narrow men demanded that he spend at least three years
in study at Oxford or Cambridge; they refused to accept his parade of
European degrees and they objected to the ordination of one so recently
converted from the Jewish faith.
In disgust he left the Church of England and attached himself to an
independent home-mission chapel in London. About this time he became a
naturalized British subject and married the only daughter of a wealthy
thread manufacturer. Ten months later a child was born, whose name,
Victoria Rose, embodied that of the queen and of the infant's godfather, Sir
George Rose, president of the London Jews' Society, an association of
converts from the Jewish faith.
"After much research of scripture" and a quarrel with his sponsors,
Bettelheim resigned his pastorate with the independent-church group and
rejoined the Church of England. According to Bettelheim, he was now
appointed agent or missionary of the London Jews' Society, which promised
to send him to the Middle East. According to the society's records,
however: "Dr. Bettelheim made two applications for work under our
Society, but was never appointed on the official staff. His only connection
with the Society was as a probationary missionary, and after a short term his
connection with our Society was severed."37 His departure from this
association was abrupt, but he counted it a blessing in disguise, for about
this time he was asked by the Loochoo Naval Mission to accept
appointment as its medical missionary to Naha.
Lieutenant Clifford (who lived in Ireland) appears to have known little
of Bettelheim personally, but wrote that he had "testimonials perhaps
unsurpassed by any missionary who has gone forth from this land to the
heathen." Bettelheim later asserted that he had been promised ordination by
the Church Missionary Society after one year's field service, but this never
took place.
In proper naval style, Lieutenant Clifford issued a body of
"Instructions Given for the Guidance of Dr. Bettelheim" in the name of the
Loochoo Mission Committee. Having heard, perhaps, that Dr. Bettelheim
was an unusually forthright individual, Clifford stressed restraint:

"The Committee would suggest that great caution on your part will be
necessary . . . from the peculiarly suspicious character of the authorities
regarding strangers of every description. . . . The Committee have great
confidence in your prudence and talent, that you will blend 'the
harmlessness of the Dove with the wisdom of the Serpent' . . . that you may
be enabled to meet the stratagems of some of the most wily diplomatists in
the world.
"Should you be permitted to take up your abode among the friendly
Loochooans, the Committee will not attempt to dictate your mode of
operation, as to securing the esteem of the people and the authorities. . . .
"Again, the Committee beg to urge the practice of the 'sauviter in
modo with the 'fortiter in re in all your dealings with the kind and
hospitable inhabitants of Loochoo. . . ."
"It must be remembered that Loochoo is not one of the free Ports open
to British commerce."38

With these instructions in hand, the family of three sailed from

Portsmouth on September 9, 1845. After one month at sea, a son was born
to them and named Bernard James Gutzlaff Bettelheim. Gutzláff had by this
time become important on the China coast, succeeding Robert Morrison as
secretary-interpreter to the British legation in China, and acting as an aide
to the Superintendent of Trade under the Anglo-Chinese Treaty provisions.
The Bettelheims reached Hongkong in January, 1846. The next four
months were spent studying the Chinese language and cultivating
friendships among British missionaries and prominent officials. At last
passage across to Naha was arranged aboard the ship "Starling" of British
registry but owned by a New York merchant named Henry Fessenden.
From Bettelheim's correspondence it appears that he expected to be
given a princely welcome, although both he and his wife gave some thought
to stratagems which might be used to get them ashore if the Okinawans
showed reluctance to receive them. On the eve of departure from the China
coast, April 13, 1846, Bettelheim addressed Clifford a letter in which he
asked for more funds, and Clifford in turn soon found that the mission was
costing just double the sum which he had anticipated would be required.
There are four sets of records which must be reconciled in order to
approach the true story of Bettelheim's activities in Okinawa. There are his
own voluminous diaries and letters, there are his reports to the mission (and
the summaries and interpretation developed from them by Lieutenant
Clifford), and there are the journals, letters, and official papers prepared by
men who observed Bettelheim in Okinawa. There are, finally, the records
and letters of Okinawan officials who had to grapple with the Bettelheim
problem.
Bettelheim's reports to Clifford dated September 29 cover the first four
months of residence on Okinawa. In these he praised God for having
smoothed the way, assuring Lieutenant Clifford and his patrons that they
enjoyed great prospects. "... Instead of mountains we had only to level hills
to effect our reception here; we had thought to pass at least one month
under the naked roof of the sky, and behold we were well-housed, even the
first night of our arrival here; at present we are even comfortably lodged
here; opportunities of evangelizing the country are not wanting, the
authorities do us no harm, and the people wish us well. . . ."39
As the "Starling" anchored, a well-dressed, dignified port officer came
off to greet the captain and to enquire of his needs. For a moment
Bettelheim believed that perhaps the King of Ryukyu himself had come out
to welcome him. Captain McCheyne, the ship's master, had made an
estimate of his passenger, and was most reluctant to put the missionary
family ashore over official protest. Miss James, the "infant-teacher,"
decided at the last moment that it would be wiser to return to the China
coast aboard the "Starling."
Bettelheim circumvented Captain McCheyne and deceived the
Okinawans by a simple ruse. Small Okinawan craft had put alongside late
in the afternoon. When the boatmen came aboard to bring supplies, to rest,
and to look about, the doctor bribed members of the "Starling's" crew to
take them below decks and ply them with drink. While they were
entertained in this fashion, other members of the ship's company helped
Bettelheim get his immense baggage and his family over the side into the
Okinawan boats. When all was ready, the tipsy, happy Okinawans were put
over the side and persuaded to row in to the harbor quay. They landed late
in the evening, too late to be sent back to the "Starling." Taking pity on Mrs.
Bettelheim and the children, the Naha officials offered to let them stay
overnight in a temple nearby, the ancient Gokoku-ji, which stood on the
Nami-no-ue headland overlooking the harbor. The baggage—including a
kitchen stove—was removed to shelter there. The priests tactfully moved
out for the night, to give Mrs. Bettelheim privacy.
But when they returned next morning, the missionary and his family
flatly refused to leave, nor could the officials from the Naha magistrate's
office dislodge them. While the argument was prolonged, the "Starling"
weighed anchor and sailed away, leaving port just as the French warship
"Sabine" came in to put the second French priest, Leturdu, ashore.
The Bettelheims did not surrender Gokoku-ji for seven years. To
prevent the rightful occupants from returning each day to worship, the
clever doctor accused them of "coming to look at his wife," and thought it a
good joke when the priests took him seriously and gave up attempts to
repossess their property. He boarded up the sanctuary and threw out "the
heathen furniture of idolatry." Although the Shuri government protested
many times that this was "a place of prayer for the whole country,"
Bettleheim counted it an early triumph of Christianity to be able to deny it
to public use.
In due time the missionary attempted to strengthen his position. He
prepared an address to the government, offering to practice medicine and to
teach English, geography, and astronomy. Shuri replied that the Okinawans
were satisfied with Chinese medical practices, that the people were too
stupid to learn or to require English, and that they were sufficiently familiar
with geography and astronomy to take care of their own needs. When
Bettelheim asked for instruction in Chinese, this was allowed. Tutors were
assigned with the understanding that the Chinese classics were to be the
texts. Again and again he attempted to use his tutors in translating Christian
tracts and the Gospels into Chinese. This they refused to do, or were
withdrawn at once when his activities became known to the government.
The two French priests meanwhile lived under surveillance in strict
seclusion on the outskirts of Naha. They too were allowed to study Chinese,
and Forcade (who later became an archbishop) is said to have compiled a
dictionary list of more than ten thousand Okinawan words. These men
behaved themselves with patient restraint and made no overt attempts to
win converts to Christianity.
Not so with Bettelheim. At first the little family was treated with
courtesy, but as the months dragged on his extravagant and rude behavior
first perplexed and then angered the Okinawans. Official attempts to curb
him merely provoked blustering, alarming threats. Foreign visitors soon
found the doctor and the government officers "living in a state of
undisguised hostility."
The growing family was a costly burden for the government. (Lucy
Lewchew Bettelheim was born on Okinawa.) Shuri thought it necessary to
detail nearly one hundred men to keep watch upon the intruders. A guard
station was erected near Gokoku-ji, and men were assigned to accompany
Bettelheim at all times when he moved about between Naha and Shuri and
in the nearby countryside. Guards and tutors were changed if the magistrate
felt that they were becoming too lax or lenient in their surveillance.
The problem of food, too, was a serious one. The populace was
forbidden to sell directly to the foreigners, and under the watchful eye of the
metsuke in the market place the common people usually deserted their stalls
when either of the Bettelheims showed interest in their wares. To meet this
difficulty the missionaries simply took what they wanted, estimated a value,
and threw down whatever they considered to be a fair price. During a time
of near-famine in the country the doctor once seized a load of sweet
potatoes being carried through an alleyway near his residence. He was
driven off by an aroused crowd. In the first few months the innate courtesy
of the people and their curiosity gave him some encouragement. They
gathered to watch him, and individuals dared to make friendly overtures,
but this gradually gave way to tolerant indifference.
He tells with relish in his letters that he made a practice of literally
breaking into houses in which he wanted to preach God's word. He records
that upon one occasion children were called in from the streets at his
approach and the house gates closed, whereupon he simply broke through
the outer fence, beat a hole in the mat walls of the house, and forced his
way in. "I was little moved with the cries of the women or the frightened
screams of the children, but seated myself in the first room I could get
access to and began to preach."40
He reported to the home mission that on occasion he made his way to
Shuri to stand just outside the closed palace gates and shout his sermons in
a loud voice, hoping that someone within would take heed. Sometimes he
pushed his way into public town meetings, causing them to break up in
confusion and despair while he harangued the scattering crowd.
He overreached himself in such zealous pursuit of souls. On January 6,
1850, he was thrown out of a private house. Six or eight guards handled him
roughly and he was stoned. He lay in the streets (he claims) for more than
two hours before Mrs. Bettelheim found him and put him to bed. Though he
suffered from bruises and shock, he relished this hint of possible
martyrdom.
 He had brought with him a multigraph machine and a stock of ink and
paper. With Mrs. Bettelheim's help he prepared tracts, broadsheets, and
religious pictures, which he scattered in the streets. These the authorities
collected and returned to him, but when they observed that he simply used
them again as soon as possible, they were gathered up and handed over to
the magistrate, thus gradually exhausting his resources.
His extravagant behavior could not fail to attract large crowds
whenever he took up his position in the public way. He was ordered to
cease these harangues, but he openly defied authority and dared preach civil
disobedience, urging the people to refuse service to the government. In an
excess of zeal, on Sundays he sometimes attempted to knock burdens from
the backs of workmen passing through the streets and in other ways sought
to interfere with public business "on the Lord's day."
The doctor kept two vicious dogs, and he wore large spectacles which
gave him a grotesque appearance in Okinawan eyes. These two features
were caricatured in a popular term In Gan-cho (Bespectacled Dog-doctor),
which passed into local usage as a term of abusive imprecation.
Bettelheim was more than a little mad; his erratic behavior may have
preserved his life. The Japanese crucified missionaries and converts,
including women and children; the Chinese often resorted to terrifying and
deadly mob violence; but the Okinawans set on Bettelheim with sticks and
stones only once in the eight long years they had to endure his presence. It
is possible that superstitious fear of the mentally deranged restrained them,
but it is more likely that the presence of French, British, and American
naval forces in nearby waters had something to do with this. Bettelheim did
not hesitate to suggest that these military forces would retaliate upon the
kingdom if he were molested.

Bettelheim had studied some Chinese on the way out to Okinawa. For
the first five years at Naha he studied the phonetic katakana and then
attempted to learn to write in the local dialect, making what he professed to
be a "translation" of the scriptures.41 He reported to his sponsors in England
that he had mastered the Okinawan dialect. This is doubtful, but
nevertheless he preached for hours at a time in the open streets and market
place, convinced that the Okinawans heard him with understanding. How
much theological argument actually took place and how much of what he
reported was merely a record of his fantasies must remain an open question.
He says that he discussed the problems of heretical beliefs in the Christian
church and the fine points of interpretation in Old Testament history. To
provide a setting for his own theological views and skills in argument he
records remarkable questions which (he says) were addressed to him by the
Okinawans, a notably unspeculative people. One example will suffice: "If in
a spiritual way we eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, what kind of a
mouth has the soul?"42
In reports sucri as this he was playing to the British public which
financed his activities rather than reporting on the verities of evangelical
work on Okinawa, much as his close friend Gutzlaff was doing in his stories
of singular travels along the China coast.
It is difficult to imagine what the Okinawans thought of such spiritual
nutriment, if indeed Bettelheim's harangues made any sense to them at all.
When his audience failed to respond properly, he berated them as liars,
deceitful people, full of cunning and the devil's wiles. His ego could not
tolerate opposition. Each new difficulty was interpreted as a "testing by the
Lord"; each rebuff was a manifestation of the devil at work, spurring him on
to new tirades against the Shuri government and explosive annoyance with
the common people.
Bettelheim made one avowed convert in seven years. The story of this
unhappy man is obscure. When his profession of Christian faith became
known, he was arrested and confined. Bettelheim managed secretly to visit
the wretched man. This too came to the knowledge of the officials, who
forthwith had the prisoner transported to a spot far from Naha. It was
reported then that he had died of the rigors of imprisonment. Bettelheim
claims that he was beaten to death and was therefore a martyr.
The doctor's letters were accepted in good faith by Lieutenant Clifford
and the officers of the Naval Mission. Funds were forwarded regularly to be
deposited to the Bettelheim account in Hongkong. A "corresponding
committee" in support of the Loochoo Mission was formed on the China
coast, and every opportunity was seized upon to ship supplies to Naha.
Most of these things were gifts. It became customary for officers and men
aboard ships visiting at Naha to make up donations for these isolated,
dedicated evangelists.
Among the ships touching briefly at Naha during these years were
merchant vessels ladened with tea, textiles, or opium for the China trade,
and naval vessels on Far Eastern patrol. Mariners were always glad to
discover Caucasians in residence ashore, and the records attest to great
generosity. Ship's carpenters made furniture for them; they were given
shoes and soap, food and wine. One Welsh seaman volunteered to make
trousers for the little James Gutzlaff Bettelheim, another gave Mrs.
Bettelheim an accordion with which to sing hymns in the market place. The
captain of H.M.S. "Sphynx" ordered a flagstaff to be erected in the
Bettelheim's dooryard on the high bluff overlooking Naha Harbor.
Remittances of cash and supplies from Hongkong and Canton were
irregular, but while life was monotonous, the Bettelheims suffered no great
privation. Occasionally the Okinawan trading ships carried mail and
packages between Naha and the Fukien coast. This was a courteous gesture
and concession made by the Okinawan officials, but the doctor wrote of it
as a service due him.
 BETTELHEIM CREATES A PROBLEM FOR
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
The missionary professed to love the people and to hate the government of
Ryukyu. In every difficulty he saw official machination. On one occasion,
not finding six hundred dollars which he had secreted at the Gokoku-ji, he
instantly sent off a letter to Shuri, angrily charging that a theft had been
arranged in an effort to embarrass him. In such ways every personal
frustration was translated into new expressions of animosity and brought
new threats against the Okinawans.
Whenever foreign ships appeared, Bettelheim pushed forward
immediately, vigorously playing the self-assumed role of principal
interpreter and translator. European visitors took him at his face value upon
first acquaintance, delighted to find a Caucasian resident in the islands
through whom they could address the government. The Okinawans soon
resigned themselves to this, but they did not hesitate, many times, to call
upon Bettelheim to translate and to transmit petitions fervently begging
visiting captains to remove the troublesome doctor and his family.
Foreigners who received such petitions through Bettelheim's own hands
thought this somewhat strange, but the missionary showed no
embarrassment.
Frustration prompted the doctor to think of other ways in which he
could assert himself importantly. He developed the idea that he was in a key
position to force Japan to open its doors, but he persuaded himself that the
British government did not appreciate his true worth. He tried repeatedly to
bring about an exercise of British pressure upon the Ryukyu kingdom in
satisfaction of his personal demands. "I thought it not only allowable, but
even my duty, to threaten that I would bring the matter before the English
Government." Every foreigner who visited Naha heard his views. His long
letters to the press stirred up sympathies along the China coast and in
England, and these in time were translated into pressure upon the British
Foreign Office to "do something" to improve the position of British subjects
so grossly abused as the Bettelheims represented themselves to be at
Naha.43
The damage he was doing could be concealed from the Loo Choo
Mission officers at London, but some of the missionaries and officials on
the China coast began to feel uneasy and to question his qualifications to
represent the Christian faith and British interests.
Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane visited Naha in October, 1846, scarcely
four months after Bettelheim had reached the island and at the time when
the energetic but not always truthful doctor was reporting to London high
prospects of success. Cochrane accused Bettelheim of masquerading as a
British official. He recommended that the missionary's naturalization papers
be canceled.
Bettelheim's presence had of course been reported to Satsuma. After
three years of annoyance, Shuri turned to the Chinese (whether on its own
initiative or at Satsuma's direction is not clear) with the request that the
imperial authorities in Fukien take up the matter with the British at Canton
and Hongkong. This they did, pointing out that the Nanking Treaty opened
only five ports to missionary activity and that such activity had to be
restricted to an area within one day's journey of the harbors. When he
learned of this, Lieutenant Clifford's sense of naval discipline surpassed his
missionary ardor: "We therefore trust in the Lord to overcome this difficulty
also, as we cannot expect any infringement, ever so trifling, to be made in a
treaty made by Britain, even though it be for the furtherance of the Gospel."
By 1849 the "Bettelheim problem" ceased to be a local affair and
began to assume an international character of some concern. British
authorities, with growing uneasiness, sensed that an untoward incident at
Naha might affect larger plans for bringing pressure to bear upon Japan. In
February an occasion was found to send H.M.S. "Mariner" to Naha to look
into the causes of friction and complaint. Upon landing, March 8, the
commanding officer (Captain Matheson) and the vice-consul (Robertson)
were invited by Naha's chief magistrate to dine at the official reception hall
to work out preliminary arrangements for a conference with the regent.
Bettelheim had boarded the ship in harbor before the Naha officials could
present themselves, and now, on shore, he persuaded the visitors to leave
the official reception hall and remove to his own home at the temple on the
hill. This they did. It was an uncalled-for rudeness, which made it necessary
for the magistrate to have his feast carried to the Bettelheims' own house.
On the next day the regent was entertained aboard the "Mariner." After the
usual exchange of courtesies and presents, the regent presented a petition,
begging the British captain to remove Bettelheim. Bettelheim,
unembarrassed, translated this document and interpreted during the
conference which followed. Matheson offered passage to the doctor, who
refused to leave. The Okinawans insisted. Matheson informed them that
they had not proved Bettelheim guilty of illegal acts and that he was
therefore without power to intervene. Shuri then placed in Matheson's hands
a formal petition addressed to the British government, which complained of
Bettelheim's presence and requested his removal. Bettelheim countered by
preparing his own petition to the British Parliament, asking it to direct that
British ships be sent to Naha regularly to "protect" him.44
In the subsequent long-drawn-out exchange, the "Bettelheim problem"
was raised to the highest Cabinet levels at London. British officials on the
China coast and in London showed evident distaste for Bettelheim as a
person (Hongkong's governor, Bonham, was cautious, fearing that if the
doctor were given an inch of official support he would take a mile of
advantage), but Matheson and the vice-consul saw in this issue an
opportunity to pry open the Ryukyu Islands for trade and further to increase
pressure upon Japan. The formal letter from the Okinawan officials
addressed to the British government seemed to offer an entering wedge; the
Okinawans might accept a plan to establish a neutral trading ground at
Naha.
There was an element of international competition in this; in 1848
Commander Glynn, of the U.S.S. "Preble," had put in at Naha, en route to
Japan in an unsuccessful attempt to open Japanese ports to American
commerce.45 Bettelheim had represented himself convincingly as an
authority on conditions within the kingdom, and he was consulted at length.
Into Commander Glynn's ears poured his complaints against the Okinawan
government and people, painting them as cunning and full of all duplicity.
His views colored Glynn's official report to the Navy Department at
Washington. Shuri, as usual, begged Glynn to remove Bettelheim aboard
the "Preble." This he declined to do, observing that Bettelheim was a British
subject.
 On May 22, 1849, the British yacht "Nancy Dawson" put in,
commanded by a Captain Shedden. Bettelheim prepared a letter to Shuri on
his own behalf, which he then persuaded the captain and his wife to present
to the Okinawans as if they were arguing the doctor's case.
Meanwhile Bonham, Britain's principal officer on the China coast, had
referred the "Bettelheim problem" and the question of possible trade at
Naha to Gutzlaff, godfather to the Bettelheim son and by now Chinese
Secretary in the Superintendency of Trade. Gutzlaff advised support for
Bettelheim and was favorably disposed toward Robertson's proposal. The
matter was referred to London. There the Foreign Office decided to explore
this byroad into Japan. A letter was drafted to the Okinawan government
(August, 1849) from the government of Her Majesty Queen Victoria,
outlining the advantages of trade and recommending Bettelheim to the
authorities at Shuri.
This missive, couched in condescending terms suitable for a backward
people, was sent out to Bonham, who entrusted it to Britain's senior naval
officer at Hongkong for delivery at Naha, with directions that he was to
show Bettelheim such personal attentions as might "raise him in the
estimation of the Loochoo authorities."46 This was precisely what
Bettelheim most desired. At the same time Bonham, shrewdly estimating
Bettelheim's character, tried to limit the obligations which British warships
might have to assume on the doctor's behalf.
The Okinawans replied to Queen Victoria's minister on December 28,
1849, citing their refusal to trade with the French (in 1846) and pleading
quite truthfully that they were poor and had no surpluses to offer as a basis
of trade with Britain. As for Bettelheim, Shuri cited the severity of Japanese
laws prohibiting intercourse with other countries, and again begged the
British government to remove the unwanted missionaries.
In reporting on this, Bonham noted that Bettelheim was in no personal
danger beyond that which he might provoke through his own indiscretions,
that he had had no success as a missionary, and that he knew nothing about
trade or the possibilities of trade in the islands. Lord Palmerston at London
took the position that Bettelheim was entitled to protection by his
government, and in July, 1850, requested the Admiralty at London to have a
ship look in now and then at Naha.
In October, 1850, H.M.S. "Reynard" dropped anchor there. Captain
Cracroft and the Bishop of Victoria (Hongkong) spent a week with
Bettelheim, seeing Okinawa through the doctor's eyes, but with some
reservations:

"The regent of this miniature kingdom gave us a public entertainment,

and before our departure received a return of British hospitality on board
the ship. Everything was done to secure a better position for the missionary.
But the same system of passive resistance and baffling his attempts to hold
intercourse with the natives was resumed. A cordon of native police was
drawn around his dwelling. His domestic servants were appointed by the
Government and changed every ten days. Fixed rations of food were served
to him and his family. His bodily safety was insured, but all intercourse
with the people was effectually stopped.47
"The principal island is supposed to contain 50,000 people, of whom
20,000 belong to Napa and the same number to Shudi, the capital. . . . The
people are sunk in the greatest poverty, and appear to have nothing beyond
the simplest necessities of life. If to have few wants, and those easily
satisfied, constitute riches, the Loochooans may be considered a contented,
cheerful people. During my excursions as I viewed their merry
countenances and listened to their lighthearted voices, I could not help
reflecting on the universal law of compensation by which a wise and
merciful Providence tempers the lots and equalizes the conditions of
mankind. . . .
"Both Protestant and Catholic missionaries give an estimate of the
moral state of the people greatly at variance with the impressions gathered
during the brief stay of Captain Basil Hall. Lying, fraud and petty theft
prevail among them."48

Bishop Smith and Captain Cracroft were asked to carry away a new
petition addressed to the British government by Shuri. When in due course
it came to Lord Palmerston's attention, he was incensed; London's letter of
1849 should have settled the matter; the queen's government had
recommended a British subject to this petty Okinawan principality, and that
should have been the end of it. Another letter was prepared for Shuri, and in
it the British Lion growled ever so slightly. Palmerston threatened "less
friendly visits" by British warships if Bettelheim did not forthwith receive
better treatment.
This letter, like its predecessor, was delivered by warship from
Hongkong, but by this time, too, Bonham in charge there was disturbed and
cautious; there was evidence that Bettelheim was bursting with self-
importance as he found himself to be the cause of so much official
correspondence with London, and of movements by the British fleet in
China waters. Mistrusting Bettelheim's services as interpreter-translator of
official documents concerning himself, Bonham now dispatched T.T.
Meadows to Shuri to make certain that London's communications were
reaching the Okinawan government in unaltered form. "Meadows report
was hostile to Bettelheim. It described him as imprudent and dictatorial, and
warned that he would undoubtedly obtain 'a virtual dictatorship in the
principality' unless the Foreign Office were particularly cautious as to the
manner in which it supported him."49
About this time there was a change of government at London;
Palmerston was succeeded by Granville, who continued to recommend
better treatment for Bettelheim. On the China coast, however, official
attitudes stiffened. There was a new Superintendent of Trade (Bow-ring),
who rebuked Bettelheim for trying to use Her Majesty's fleet and
government in a missionary crusade.
Bettelheim was not to be discouraged. His letters and reports began to
indicate that in isolation he had become a little overripe and more than a
little careless of the truth. Although Palmerston had left office, the
missionary in a letter of fulsome praise, virtually proposed to Palmerston
the conquest of Japan—if only the British government and people would
recognize the importance of his (Bettelheim's) position.
This was dated September 19, 1852. Across the world, near
Washington, ships were being readied for an American expedition to Japan,
which was to have profound effect upon the Okinawan government and
people. In a sense, Bettelheim had indirectly set the framework in which
Commodore Perry approached Japan through Okinawa, for Perry drew
upon Commander Glynn's recent report in shaping policy, and what Glynn
knew of Okinawa was Bettelheim's interpretation.
On November 24, 1852, the American squadron weighed anchor at
Norfolk, Virginia, outbound for Naha and for Japan.
Meanwhile, an incident took place in Okinawan waters which
threatened to involve the little kingdom in a quarrel with China on the one
hand and with the British and American governments on the other. In
showing their traditional hospitality to stranded mariners, the Okinawan
officials on Miyako had unwittingly given aid to pirates.
The ship "Robert Browne," under Captain Lesley Bryson, had sailed
from Amoy on March 21, 1852, carrying 410 indentured coolies to the
California gold fields. As they neared Miyako the Chinese mutinied,
overpowered the crew, and took the ship in toward the beach. Hundreds of
coolies swarmed shore, taking some of the crew with them. Questioned by
local Okinawan officials, the ringleaders declared that the ship had been
damaged and hence forced to put in at Miyako for repair.
Suddenly the men ashore saw the "Robert Browne" hoist sail and
disappear swiftly toward the China coast and Amoy. Members of the crew
who were still aboard had by a stratagem overcome the mutineers left to
guard them, and had repossessed the ship.
For two weeks the Okinawans had to feed and shelter hundreds of
unruly Chinese. Then suddenly three warships appeared. The U.S.S.
"Saratoga" and the British warships "Riley" and "Contest" came to anchor,
landed forces, and seized as many of the mutineers as they could find.
Scores, however, fled into the countryside. There they concealed
themselves until the warships weighed anchor for China with only seventy
prisoners aboard.
The incident had at once been reported to Shuri, which in turn notified
Chinese officials on the Fukien coast. The Okinawans were ordered to
detain the culprits and to send them back to China. In the words of the
Chinese official report to Peking: "The prince of the said country [Ryukyu]
as the tyranny of the English barbarians was extraordinary, greatly feared
that if they were not delivered up immediately the barbarian ships would
return, make an exhaustive search, and give rise to trouble."50
At last, on November i, 1853, two ships put out from Miyako with 280
of the Chinese aboard. The burden on impoverished Miyako had been very
great, and the Shuri government lived in dread of intervention by the
Western barbarians.
It was against this background, at the height of Shuri's uneasiness and
fear of foreign reprisals, that Commodore Perry made his first descent upon
the Ryukyu Islands.

Footnote
* After the Tokugawa had been overthrown, the clan was well rewarded, numbering in the Shimazu

family alone two princes, one count, and eight barons in the imperial court hierarchy.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MOUSE AND THE EAGLE:
PERRY IN OKINAWA

1853-1854
AMERICAN PRESSURE ON JAPAN:
COMMODORE PERRY'S PLANS FOR
OKINAWA
Perry's official Narrative oj the Expedition of an American Squadron to the
China Seas and Japan was prepared under his close supervision by an
admiring friend, the Reverend Francis L. Hawks. The commodore was the
most noted and perhaps the most accomplished officer in the United States
naval service in his day. He had been born during George Washington's first
administration, matured during the exciting years of the second war with
England (in which his elder brother became a great naval hero), and
distinguished himself in the Mexican Wars. He had much to do with policy
guiding the United States Navy in transition from sail to steam, which is to
say that he was acutely aware of the technological revolution overtaking
mankind, of which he himself was destined to be a most remarkable agent
in the Far East.
He was a statesman of high measure in the sense that he explored the
meaning of technological change and economic expansion in terms of
fundamental, long-range national policies and the continuing military needs
of the United States. He foresaw, accurately, that Britain and Russia would
become rivals to American interests and influence in the northern Pacific
and Far East and, with this in view, shaped his policies in forcing Japan to
come to terms.
Perry was humorless, immensely vain, and a hard disciplinarian, but
his pomposity and his qualities of command well fitted him for the difficult
task to which he was assigned—a diplomatic assault upon Japan, backed by
a powerful military striking force.
The Narrative cannot be taken altogether at its face value. The
Reverend Dr. Hawks was not a member of the expedition. At numerous
points the Narrative glosses over discrepancies between Perry's official
orders and his actions. The ultimate success of the expedition was so great
that the questionable details were completely overshadowed. Hawks was
not discouraged if he sought to present all Perry's actions in the best
possible light, and Perry saw to it that it had the widest possible circulation
among members of Congress and the administration.*
Perry supposed that he had under firm control all diaries, journals,
logbooks, and other reports compiled by members of the expedition, who
had been ordered to submit all written materials to the commodore.
Ostensibly this was to ensure that all relevant data would be incorporated in
the official Narrative. In studying the first American occupation of
Okinawa, that voluminous document must be supplemented by reference to
official correspondence which passed between the commodore and
Washington, to the candid, uncensored, and sometimes critical journals of
S. Wells Williams, Chief Interpreter; Acting Master Edward Yorke
McCauley; Bayard Taylor, journalist; J.W. Spalding, clerk aboard the
"Mississippi"; and to Okinawan sources. These did not pass through the
commodore's hands.

Hawks asserts that the expedition was proposed by Perry himself and
that the commodore conceived the idea of a direct approach to the shogun's
capital, avoiding Nagasaki and the Dutch intermediaries. Such was not the
case. American shipping had entered the northern Pacific and Asiatic waters
at the turn of the 19th century; it has been estimated that by 1846 nearly a
thousand American vessels were in Far Eastern waters, and of these two-
thirds were whalers, operating in the rough seas near Japan, exposed often
to the dangers of storm and shipwreck along Japan's rocky coasts.
Commercial interests at Canton and Shanghai joined with the merchants
and mariners of New England in pressing Congress and the administration
to "do something" about Japan. Washington had long shared with London,
Paris, and St. Petersburg the belief that Japan must be opened, through
negotiation if possible, by force if necessary, in order, first, to ensure the
security of whaling ships and, secondly, to penetrate markets hitherto
reserved to the Dutch.
In 1835 Edmund Roberts was commissioned to deliver a presidential
letter to the Emperor of Japan, with orders which directed him to "enter
some other port nearer to the seat of government" than Nagasaki. He died at
Canton before this could be attempted. The voyage of the "Morrison" in
1837 had been a private attempt, and the unarmed vessel (with Gutzlaff and
Williams aboard) was driven out of Kagoshima Bay by the Satsuma
clansmen.
 Bills appropriating funds to enable the president to establish
commercial relations with China were before Congress in 1843;
Washington was ready to take advantage of British success in the Anglo-
Chinese wars, and it was certain that commerce would be extended to
Japan. In 1846 a congressman from New York (Pratt) recommended that the
government make a "vigorous effort" to open Japan.
Official Washington had reacted strongly to the affront which
Commodore Biddle suffered in Japan in 1845, and in this incident we must
find one source for Perry's subsequent hard policy toward the Okinawans.
Biddle was trying to open official conversations aboard ship in Edo Bay,
and in transferring from one craft to another he was rudely struck and thrust
back by a common Japanese soldier. Since he lacked authority to make a
show of force on this occasion, the Americans withdrew. The story that a
Japanese commoner could strike a high American officer with impunity
spread like wildfire throughout Japan and was carried down to Okinawa.
Commander Glynn's report had this to say: "On my way to
Nangasacki in the Preble, I touched at Napa Keang in the Loo-Choo
Islands. There foreigners are allowed to mingle with the natives, because
there are no means to prevent it. I found a Christian missionary
[Bettelheim] there, and from him I learned that very exaggerated reports
had reachcd the islands of the chastisement which had been inflicted upon
an American officer who had visited Yedo Bay in a 'big' ship, and it was the
impression of my informant that we were encountering a want of
accommodation [in Okinawa] on the part of the local officers, in
consequence of the flag we wore. The indignation excited by this
information imparted a character of brusqueness to my intercourse with the
authorities at Nangasacki that I have not regretted since, under the belief
that it had the effect to create in Japan another feeling towards our
country."1
Glynn had lingered at Naha for three days in April, 1849. He had been
successful in securing the release of the shipwrecked Americans so long
held in confinement in Japan and had undertaken a long voyage thereafter.
His return to the United States aroused wide interest and editorial comment.
On January 3, 1851, the New York Herald said: "On her way to Japan the
Preble touched at the Loo-Choo islands, a kingdom in themselves, yet
dependencies of Japan. For gentle dignity of manners, superior
advancement in the arts and general intelligence, the inhabitants of this
group are by far the most interesting unenlightened nation in the Pacific
Ocean."2
At that moment the American ship "Sarah Boyd," outbound from
Mazatlan, Mexico, to Shanghai, was approaching the coasts of southern
Okinawa. At a point some four miles off the Mabuni beaches, the ship
hove-to, a whaleboat was lowered over the side, and three Japanese wearing
Western clothing bade cordial farewell to the ship's master and made for
shore. These were Nakahama Manjiro—known widely in the United States
as John Mung—and two companions seeking to slip into the Ryukyu
Islands and on through Satsuma to their home in Tosa. Exactly ten years
earlier (in January, 1841) Nakahama and three other fishermen had been
driven out to sea in a violent storm, rescued by an American vessel, the
"John Howland," and taken to Hawaii. Nakahama went on to
Massachusetts, where he received a welcome home and a fair education.
Now he and two friends were making their way back to Japan, determined
to return to their families and to report on their marvelous adventure. They
knew well that they might be seized and executed for violating the grim
seclusion edicts.
On the third day of the Japanese New Year, after a night in hiding near
the beach, they made their way to a farmhouse. The Okinawan farmers,
astonished by the strange appearance of the three adventurers, called in
local officials, who in turn took them on to be interrogated by higher
officers and by Satsuma's agents at Naha. Their story was heard with
interest, and their books, instruments, and other gear were examined with
great care.
For seven months they were detained on Okinawa under surveillance,
subjected to constant questioning, but always treated with respectful and
friendly consideration. Word of their arrival had gone at once to Satsuma,
and at last they were summoned to Kagoshima to the presence of Shimazu
Nariakira. With his recommendation they were then sent on to Nagasaki
and ultimately reached the shogun's capital. There Nakahama became a
chief source of information concerning the United States, its political
organization, and its strength and policies, insofar as he understood them.
Meanwhile the merchants of New York and New England were
determined to solve the "Japan problem" and to penetrate Japanese markets.
An influential businessman (Aaron H. Palmer, of New York) brought
pressure to bear in Congress and an expedition was proposed. Commodore
John H. Aulick, USN, was selected to head the mission as naval-diplomatist
in his capacity as Commander in Chief of the East India Squadron.
Problems rose which made it inadvisable for him to take charge. The Navy
Department, with the concurrence of the Department of State, then selected
Perry.
Perry showed reluctance to accept the assignment; he felt it was not
sufficiently important and preferred to be assigned to the Mediterranean
Fleet command. Both the Navy and State departments flattered and cozened
the commodore, increased the title and area of his authority, permitted him
to lay down many of the terms of his orders, and assured him that
everything would be done in a manner commensurate with his personal
rank and dignity.
Perry's orders became effective in March, 1852. At once he began
thoroughly to prepare himself and his staff for the task, reading all that he
could find concerning Japan (scarcely half a hundred books) and reviewing
all official and unofficial dispatches in the archives. Of these Commander
Glynn's was the latest; in it the harshness of Japanese policies toward
shipwrecked merchant-seamen and toward high-rank-ing officers of the
navy were points sure to catch the commodore's eye. So too was Glynn's
description of treatment accorded Christian missionaries, as represented to
him by Bettelheim. It was to this official report that Perry turned in
contemplating policy to be adopted toward the Ryukyus and toward Japan.
That policy was one of coercion, calculated to ensure that a suitable
reputation for unshakable firmness of decision and action should precede
the expedition into Japan. Perry believed that the United States government
and the U.S. Navy must never again be exposed to indignities such as
Commodore Biddle had endured. As for the Okinawans, Dr. Bettelheim
(apparently speaking from years of experience) had reported that they were
a mean and pusillanimous people, cunning and deceitful. Perry took the
missionary's word for it at its face value; he would not be misled as the
British Captain Basil Hall had been. The Okinawans were in need of stern,
corrective guidance. Poems and tearful friendships would not enter into his
arrangements.
Perry warmed to his assignment during the long voyage to the China
coast and during the two years he was engaged upon the expedition. His
reflections upon the possible consequences of American expansion into the
Pacific and his projection of policies which he felt must be pursued in the
national interest might now be called "Perry's Grand Design." He proposed
that the United States should occupy the Bonin Islands in order to secure a
communications base on the sea lanes from California to China and Japan.
Japan should be brought into communication with the Western world under
American patronage and guidance. The Ryukyu Islands should be placed
under "surveillance" and Naha port opened to the commerce of all nations;
Formosa should be placed under a joint Chinese-American administration
in which "residual sovereignty" rested with the Chinese but effective
authority and economic development with the United States. He proposed a
technological aid program for Southeast Asia and the adjacent island areas;
improved agriculture and local manufacture would expand or improve
markets for American wares. He felt Great Britain to be a serious rival but
foresaw a frontal clash with Russia in the northern Pacific.
Perry's final orders were based upon a communication made from the
Acting Secretary of State (C.M. Conrad) to the Secretary of the Navy (J. P.
Kennedy), dated November 5, 1852. The first concern was to secure from
the Japanese government a substantial agreement to render aid to
shipwrecked or distressed mariners; the second was to arrange a basis for
commerce, if possible. No force was to be used to gain these concessions,
but Japan was to understand that any further outrages committed upon
stranded Americans would bring reprisals. Perry was given powers to
negotiate treaties with other sovereignties if opportunity arose.
This document forms the basis for the first American occupation of the
Ryukyu Islands. I have introduced italics to note passages which become of
special interest as the narrative proceeds:

"Every nation has undoubtedly the right to determine for itself the
extent to which it will hold intercourse with other nations [wrote Conrad].
The same law of nations, however, which protects a nation in the exercise
of this right imposes upon her certain duties which she cannot justly
disregard. Among these duties none is more imperative than that which
requires her to succor and relieve those persons who are cast by the perils of
the ocean upon her shores.3

"The objects sought by this government are

"1. To effect some permanent arrangement for the protection of American
seamen and property wrecked on these islands, or driven into their ports by
stress of weather.
"2. The permission to American vessels to enter one or more of their ports
in order to obtain supplies of provisions, water, fuel, &c., or, in case of
disasters, to refit so as to enable them to prosecute their voyage.
"It is very desirable to have permission to establish a depot for coal, if
not on one of the principal islands, at least on some small, uninhabited one,
of which, it is said, there are several in their vicinity.
"3. The permission to our vessels to enter one or more of their ports for the
purpose of disposing of their cargoes by sale or barter.
"It is manifest, from past experience, that arguments or persuasion
addressed to this people, unless they be seconded by some imposing
manifestation of power, will be utterly unavailing.
"You will, therefore, be pleased to direct the commander of the
squadron to proceed, with his whole force, to such point on the coast of
Japan as he may deem most advisable, and there endeavor to open a
communication with the government, and, if possible, to see the emperor in
person, and deliver to him the letter of introduction from the President with
which he is charged. . . .4

"If, after having exhausted every argument and every means of

persuasion, the commodore should fail to obtain from the government any
relaxation of their system of exclusion, or even any assurance of humane
treatment of our shipwrecked seamen, he will then change his tone, and
inform them in the most unequivocal terms that it is the determination of
this government to insist, that hereafter all citizens or vessels of the United
States ... be treated with humanity; and that if any acts of cruelty should
hereafter be practised upon citizens of this country, whether by the
government or by the inhabitants of Japan, they will be severely chastised. .
..
"It is impossible by any instructions, however minute, to provide for
every contingency that may arise. . . . For this reason ... it is proper that the
commodore should be invested with large discretionary powers, and should
feel assured that any departure from usage, or any error of judgement he
may commit will be viewed with indulgence.
"If the squadron should be able, without interfering with the main
object for which it is sent, to explore the coasts of Japan, and of the adjacent
continent and islands, such an exploration would not only add to our stock
of geographical knowledge, but might be the means of extending our
commercial relations and of securing ports of refuge and supply for our
whaling ships in those remote seas. With this in view, he will be provided
with powers authorizing him to negotiate treaties of amity and navigation
with any and all established and independent sovereignties in those
regions."5

On December 14, 1852, Perry posted a letter from Madeira to the

Secretary of the Navy, outlining his proposed course of action. He saw that
he would need a base near Japan from which to work:
"... It will be desirable in the beginning, and indeed necessary, that the
squadron should establish places of rendezvous at one or two of the islands
south of Japan, having a good harbor, and possessing facilities for obtaining
water and supplies, and by kindness and gentle treatment conciliate the
inhabitants so as to bring about their friendly intercourse.
"The islands called the Lew Chew group are said to be dependencies
of Japan, as conquered by that power centuries ago, but their actual
sovereignty is disputed by the government of China.
"These islands come within the jurisdiction of the prince of Satsuma. .
. . He exercises his rights more from the influence of the fear of the simple
islanders than from any power to coerce their obedience; disarmed, as they
long have been, from motives of policy, they have no means, even if they
had the inclination, to rebel against the grinding oppression of their rulers.
"Now, it strikes me, that the occupation of the principal ports of those
islands for the accommodation of our ships of war, and for the safe resort of
merchant vessels, of whatever nation, would be a measure not only justified
by the strictest rules of moral law, but by what is also to be considered by
the laws of stern necessity; and the argument may be further strengthened
by the certain consequences of the amelioration of the conditions of the
natives, although the vices attendant upon civilization may be entailed upon
them."6

This letter establishes clearly that Perry had a fair knowledge of the
relationship existing between the Ryukyus and Japan. He proposes an
occupation of the islands, and finds moral justification to support "stern
necessity."
Washington's response, prepared by Edward Everett, Secretary of
State, was prompt and pointed:

"The President agrees with you in thinking that you are most likely to
succeed in this object in the Lew-Chew islands. They are, from their
position, well adapted to the purpose; and the friendly and peaceful
character of the natives encourages the hope that your visit will be
welcomed by them.
"In establishing yourself at one or two convenient points in those
islands, with the consent oj the natives, you will yourself pursue the most
friendly and conciliatory course, and enjoin the same conduct on all under
your command. Take no supplies from them except by fair purchase, for a
satisfactory consideration. Forbid, and at all hazards prevent, plunder and
acts of violence on the part of your men toward these simple and unwarlike
people, for such they are described to be. Let them from the first see that
your comino among them is a benefit, and not an evil to them. Make no use
of force, except in the last resort for defence if attacked, and for self-
preservation"* 7

Perry traveled to the China coast on the U.S.S. "Mississippi," but the
"Susquehanna" was to be his flagship. It had been at Hongkong and had
gone on to Shanghai when Perry reached the Macao roadstead on April 6.
The Bettelheims at Naha were unaware of this movement of ships, nor
did the Shuri officials tell them of word which had come over to Naha that a
foreign fire-vessel was in China waters, en route to Japan. On April 9
Bettelheim noted in his diary that he had been asked most urgently to
prepare an explanation of the principle of steam power applied to shipping.
How did a steamship work? With Mrs. Bettelheim's help and with reference
to his small library, the missionary prepared an illustrated text, which he
sent up to Shuri on April 13.8
On May 23, 1853, four American vessels—the "Susquehanna," the
"Mississippi," the "Supply," and the "Caprice"—left the China coast for
Naha. On May 25 all hands were assembled to hear a reading of General
Orders 11 and 12; these related to discipline to be observed aboard ship
while at Naha, and enjoined upon all the strict necessity to cultivate most
friendly relations with the people. The expedition would not "resort to force
but from the sternest necessity."
 Near Naha anchorage these ships were joined by the U.S.S.
"Saratoga," out of Hongkong, bringing a chief interpreter-translator to assist
the commodore. This was S. Wells Williams, a lay-missionary who had
been twenty years on the China coast as managing editor of the Mission
Press for the American Board of Foreign Missions. He did not profess to
know either the Okinawan dialects or Japanese, but. he was a distinguished
scholar of the Chinese language, fully competent to supervise diplomatic
correspondence in that language. His knowledge of the Ryukyu kingdom
was extensive; he had carefully studied the Chinese records of Okinawa's
position in the Chinese tributary system; he had visited Naha aboard the
"Morrison" in 1837 and had published an important account of that
experience. As editor of the Chinese Repository at Canton he had seen
masses of Bettelheim's correspondence and had published some of the
missionary's letters in 1850.

PERRY'S FIRST VISIT, MAY AND JUNE, 1853

As the squadron moved into Naha anchorage on May 26 the British flag
was observed rising to the top of a staff on the Nami-no-ue bluff, at the
temple-residence of Dr. Bettelheim.
Perry's first act was one of calculated brusqueness. Okinawan officials
put out from Naha quay to pay their compliments, discover the purpose of
this visit, and arrange to supply the squadron's wants. Williams had not yet
come aboard the flagship; the officials' formal cards were therefore
examined by one of the commodore's Chinese messboys, and the surprised
Okinawans were abruptly told to leave the ship because they were of too
low rank to be received—or so Perry thought. He had determined at once to
take a "hard" line of approach.
"Scarcely had [the Naha officials] gone before Dr. Bettelheim came on
board in a native boat; and such were the relations in which he stood to the
islanders that he hailed the arrival of the squadron with delight, and
manifested no little excitement of manner. He was conducted to the
Commodore's cabin, where he remained for two or three hours; ... in the
course of the interview it appeared . . . that a year and a half had elapsed
since any foreign vessel had been at Napha, and that he was almost beside
himself with joy. Grog and biscuit were given to his boatmen, and in their
exhilaration, when they started for the shore, they contrived to carry the
missionary some three miles up the coast."9
On the morning of May 27 a small boat was sent to bring the
missionary out to breakfast with the commodore, the chaplain, and the chief
interpreter, Williams. It was decided to override all objections the
Okinawan government or people might offer to thorough exploration of the
island and the establishment of a supply base on shore.
Bettelheim's diary implies that at his first interview he had proposed to
the commodore that the squadron should promote mission interests in
Japan, and that Perry instantly and firmly rejected the suggestion. The
missionary accepted this, glad enough that the Japanese were soon to feel
the heavy pressure which the squadron could bring to bear upon the
government he had grown so to dislike. "I offered to serve him as a son
serves a father . . . and to obey him strictly, even when my humble opinion
differed from his in all matters pertaining to the propriety and success of the
Expedition."10
 On the same morning the magistrate of Naha sent off gifts customarily
offered to ships just in—goats, a bullock, fowls, eggs, and vegetables —
usually so welcome aboard ships which had been long at sea. These were
rejected at once, and the baffled Okinawans were told to remove their
tokens of goodwill from the ship.
On the next day Dr. Williams and Lieutenant Contee went ashore,
joined Bettelheim, and went to call on the magistrate, who received them
politely but let it be known that he was greatly chagrined by the manner in
which his goodwill gifts had been rejected. The lieutenant, a gentleman, did
his best to cover up for the commodore, explaining that American custom
forbade the acceptance of such gifts aboard naval vessels and that it was
embarrassing to have to reject them. He could not foresee that soon enough
the commodore would be demanding gifts. The explanation was accepted
for what it was worth at the time, and the most amiable relations were
established.
Bettelheim knew Williams by reputation and was delighted to know
that the editor was with the squadron, but the first meeting left him with a
sense that Williams was cold and distant. After this interview with the
magistrate of Naha, Bettelheim decided that Williams was not competent to
act as official interpreter-translator. He noted in his diary: "May 28. Had a
quite sleepless night, the mistakes of yesterday's interpretership giving me
no rest till I resolved to write to the Commodore on the subject...."
At the Naha interview, it was arranged for the regent of the kingdom to
call upon the commodore, by inference establishing Perry as the superior
officer.
 On the morning of the reception, writes Williams: "At ten o'clock the
Commodore sent a boat for me and my [Chinese] teacher, but on reaching
the flagship I was surprised to receive a letter from his hands, written by
Bettelheim, couched in the strangest style of entreaty and advice respecting
the conduct of the expected visit of the Regent to the flagship, and
concluding with the hope that the natives would not come near the ship,
which I myself more than thought would be the upshot of it, for no
promises could be given by the persons I saw yesterday. It was about the
oddest melange I ever read from Bettelheim, whom the Commodore had
sent for and who ere long reached the ship. He soon was all in motion, and
it was about concluded that if the Regent came off Commodore Perry
should not see him. . . .
"The Commodore, after reflection, concluded to receive them in his
cabin, and though I had for a little while been swayed by what Bettelheim
had said, I was not sorry that he [Perry] saw them, for the party came at his
invitation to see him, and why not receive them?"11
"One of the most striking features in the visitors was their general
imperturbable gravity [records the Narrative]. It was indeed plain that they
had intense curiosity not unminglcd with considerable alarm, but they were
careful to preserve the most dignified demeanor. They were conducted to
the captain's cabin and thence shown over the ship. They observed
everything with great gravity, but when they reached the ponderous engines
their assumed indifference was fairly overcome, and it was evident that they
were conscious of having encountered in it something very far beyond their
comprehension. They were much quicker of perception, however, than the
Chinese, as well as more agreeable in features and much more neat and tidy
in apparel.
"Up to this time they had not seen the Commodore. He had remained
secluded in solitary dignity, in his own cabin. It was not meet that he should
be made too common in the eyes of the vulgar."12
The "vulgar" in this instance was the aged regent of the kingdom, with
his principal aides, being escorted about the flagship by Perry's captains.
When at last they were admitted to the commodore's presence, he received
them graciously enough and presided over an elaborate dinner.
While at table Perry announced that he would call at the royal palace
at Shuri on Monday, June 6. "He further added that he should expect such a
reception as became his rank and position as commander of the squadron
and diplomatic representative of the United States in those regions." This
caused great consternation; every argument was adduced and spun out to
persuade Perry to abandon this plan. The king was a mere boy, whose
accession had not yet been confirmed by China, and the queen dowager was
ill. On these grounds the regent begged the commodore to confine his visit
ashore to the official reception hall for ambassadors at Naha or, failing that,
to be satisfied with an entertainment at the regent's mansion at Shuri. It was
made unmistakably clear that he was neither expected nor welcome at the
royal palace on June 6, and that unrestricted visits ashore were not
allowable under the laws and customs of the land.
Perry was adamant. He had conveniently forgotten the president's
directive that he was to establish himself ashore "with the consent of the
natives," but he had, perhaps unwisely, chosen a point of etiquette as his
weapon in this battle of wills.
 Williams describes the conclusion of this painful confrontation, the
first of a series: "The party left after a visit of about two hours; a few of
them seemed to enjoy it, but such a melancholy set of faces, fixed, grave
and sad, as if going to an execution, was hardly ever before seen on board
the 'Susquehanna.'
"Bettelheim talked a good deal, and his way of making signs and
motioning with his face was very much disliked and wrongly interpreted. I
hardly know what to think of the man, for he whisks about in his opinion
like a weathercock, and after the Regent had gone said it was the best thing
which could have been done, to see the Commodore, though his letter of
four pages was to urge the contrary."13
Once the Okinawan officials had taken leave, Perry immediately gave
orders permitting the squadron's personnel to go ashore and to go anywhere
they pleased, provided they took care to maintain friendly relations with the
inhabitants at all times. A well-armed party of four officers, four enlisted
men, and four Chinese coolies set out overland to explore the interior and
east coast of the island, brushing aside all objections offered to this by the
unarmed Okinawan officials ordered to follow them.
 Not unexpectedly, the official Narrative minimizes the evidence that
Perry's policy in Okinawa was throughout based on coercion. Spalding and
Williams (and, to a less degree, McCauley) reflect this in their journals, at
times with indignation. Bettelheim reveled in it; at last he saw the
Okinawan authorities forced to accept him, and to see him in close
association with the powerful commodore.
But by May 29 he began to feel that his services on behalf of the
squadron were not being sufficiently rewarded. From his diary we can infer
that he let this be known when he was given a few cigars by some of the
officers. On the next day the purser from the "Susquehanna" came off with
an expression of the commodore's appreciation and with directions that the
Bettelheims should be rewarded either with provisions or with money, as
the doctor preferred. To this he responded that it was entirely up to the
commodore. Twenty-four hours later the purser sent ashore a large and
diverse gift, including barrels of pork and beef, bread, and flour, sacks of
rice, a box of candles, and ten gallons of whiskey.
Bettelheim kept the candles and the whiskey, but immediately sent the
other gifts back to the ship. He complained that he lacked proper storage
facilities, that he wanted calico, soap, lamp chimneys, shoes, and butter.
Furthermore, he felt that it was awkward to receive gifts of provisions from
the ship while he was at the same time pressing the reluctant Okinawans to
furnish large quantities of fresh supplies for the squadron.
On May 30 Perry sent two officers ashore to acquire a house. Williams
accompanied them. Bettelheim conducted the party through the outskirts of
Naha to Tomari, the settlement at the juncture of the shore road and the
highway to Shuri. Coming to the large "town hall" or assembly place, they
found it locked. One of the party went over the wall and succeeded in
breaking open the gates from within. The Americans and Bettelheim took
possession. Soon officials came to protest that this was a schoolroom,
which indeed it was. According to the Narrative, the principal officer to
whom they addressed themselves "promptly declared that it would be
utterly impossible for the Americans to occupy a house on shore.... He was
then asked if two or three of the Americans might not sleep in the house for
that night, and replied that no American must sleep in a house on shore.
Upon being pressed further, he seemed to become somewhat impatient, and
rising from his seat, he crossed over to where the officers sat, and
dispensing with the aid of an interpreter (through whom all communications
had thus far been made) to the surprise of our gentlemen, said: 'Gentlemen,
Doo Choo man very small, American man not very small. I have read of
America in books of Washington—very good man, very good. Doo Choo
good friend American. Doo Choo man give American all provision he
wants. American no can have house on shore.'"14
The officers continued to insist, but after conferring for some hours
with his superiors, the Okinawan (named Ichirazichi) returned and, "with a
polite bow and marked emphasis, he replied 'you cannot.'" Thus caught
between the commodore and the Okinawan government, the visitors chose
to risk the wrath of the Okinawans, and simply stayed at the Tomari public
hall for the night.
Williams was disturbed: "It was a struggle between weakness and
right, and power and wrong, for a more high handed piece of aggression has
not been committed by anyone. I was ashamed at having been a party to
such a procedure, and pitied these poor defenseless islanders who could
only say no. . . .
"I was glad to get into the fresh air and terminate my first night in Lew
Chew, the unwilling agent, in so doing, of violence and wrong."15
The commodore sent off a sick officer and a servant to replace the men
who had so forthrightly established squatter's rights at the Tomari town hall.
The Okinawans made no further attempt to dislodge the unwanted intruders;
on the contrary, they showed great concern for the comfort of the invalid
who had come ashore, bringing him gifts of fruits and vegetables. This
solicitude again demonstrated the conflict between personal inclination to
cultivate friendly relations with foreigners, on the one hand, and the
pressure of duty to obey the government's instructions (inspired by
Satsuma) on the other.
 "It is surprising [wrote Williams] what a degree of quiet resistance an
organized government like this can offer to violence without any overt act
of violence, without giving any excuse for wrong by doing the like
themselves. They feel their weakness and have no intention probably of
resisting by force; but the complete sway they have over the common
people enables them to wield what power they have to the best
advantage."16
The ships had been in port less than one week and Perry had not yet
been ashore when, on June 2, he wrote to the Secretary of the Navy:

"This beautiful island is a dependency of Japan, and is governed by the

same laws; the people are industrious and inoffensive, and I have already
made considerable progress in calming their fears and conciliating their
friendship; and, as I propose to make this a port of rendezvous for the
squadron, it may be hoped that, in the course of time, the whole population
of this island may become quite friendly.
"I am only waiting here to establish a good understanding with these
people before my visit to Japan, that information of our friendly
demonstration towards the Lewchewans may precede us, and assure the
Japanese that we have no hostile intentions."17

On that day the "Caprice" left to transport mail and laundry to

Shanghai. Said Williams: "The letter-bag takes Bettelheim's first letters sent
off for eleven months, besides $800 sent over to put in the bank there to his
credit—his 'own sweat and blood' he says. He says that he has not been able
to come to any explicit understanding with the rulers or people as to the
price of provisions he consumes; they bring food and he lays down money,
and no accounts are drawn out. He eats what they bring, they take away
what he lays down."18 The Loo Choo Mission at London was hard-pressed
to meet its budget, as Williams well knew. We are not told from whence
came Bettelheim's surplus cash, but we know that he provided souvenirs
and other services for officers and men whenever ships put in at Naha.
Perry pushed ahead with plans to make a great progress to the royal
palace. The Okinawans tried every argument to alter his decision. A letter
was sent off to the commodore inviting him to be the regent's guest at a
banquet in Naha; when the hour came, no commodore appeared. Officials
were then sent out to the ship to carry some of the special dishes to him
there. They were treated with utmost rudeness: no seats were offered to
them when they came aboard; the commodore declared that he had received
only a verbal invitation and had therefore sent back only a verbal reply,
though Williams later found the written invitation aboard ship, and
suspected that someone had failed—perhaps deliberately—to deliver it or to
explain its significance. On Saturday, June 4, the regent himself made a
second trip to the flagship to present a formal written petition asking Perry
to give up his projected visit to the royal palace.
"Captain Buchanan offered them some drink so strong that they could
not take it; for all I know [wrote Williams] it was clear brandy. He showed
in every action his unwilling consent to have them remain long, and this
was increased by Bettelheim's appearing, who, it seems, had been invited
off by the Regent to facilitate intercourse.
"Dr. Bettelheim wrote a letter to the Commodore in his usual singular
fashion (calling him 'father,' and desirous to obey his orders, and talking of
'glorious mission,' and the flagship a 'throne' and Perry an 'autocrat' whose
glance should be law to the natives) yet finding fault with everything which
has been done, chiefly, as far as we can learn, because he was not consulted.
Yet when he read Adams' reply in Perry's cabin yesterday he called it
'excellent' and approved of it all. The man does not seem to know his own
mind for a day, but evidently wishes to be consulted about everything and
have his advice followed. He is not at all backward in sending or begging
for things, while he, Jewlike, puts his money in the bank. However, this
must be added, that he cannot spend much money here for his family, even
if he wished, for he is not allowed to buy at will, and this sum may be the
surplus from his salary."19
"Owing to the fresh breeze, Captain Buchanan sent the Regent ashore
in a cutter, and was glad to be rid of him. Bettelheim had a long talk with
Perry; he is becoming more than ever disliked by everybody, and took an
unlucky step in coming aboard today when he was unwished."20
Bettelheim had proposed that he should go to Japan with the squadron:
"June 4. . . . Commodore also ordered me during his absence in Japan to
bring to paper whatever I knew by hearing or otherwise of the history of
Loochoo, which I of course unhesitatingly promised. I had incidentally the
most decisive information of my not accompanying the Squadron to
Japan."21
Meanwhile, Williams had an opportunity to examine the regent's latest
petition, which was in effect a clear declaration that Perry was neither
welcome nor expected at the palace. The communication said in part: "Now
it is plain to all that the capital and towns of this little country are quite
different from the provincial capitals of China; here there is only a palace
for the king, and no halls, official residences, markets or shops; and, up to
this time, no envoy from a foreign country has ever entered into the Palace.
In February, of last year, an English general came here, bearing a public
letter, and was strenuous to enter the palace, there to deliver it; the high
officers repeatedly requested that it might be given them elsewhere, but he
refused, and forced himself into the palace. At that time, from the young
prince and the Queen Dowager down to the lowest officers and people, all
were alarmed and fearful, hardly keeping soul and body together; and the
queen dowager has been dangerously sick even to this day. . . . All the
officers in the country are really troubled and grieved on this account and . .
. they urgently beg of your excellency . . . that you will take the case of the
queen dowager and her severe indisposition into your favorable
consideration, and cease from going into the palace to return thanks. If you
deem it necessary to make this compliment, please go to the residence of
the prince, there to make your respects in person. . ."22
Monday, June 6, was a sparkling day. Nature was prepared to smile on
Perry's progress to the palace, though the Okinawans frowned. "It was a
matter of policy to make a show of it," says the Narrative, "hence some
extra pains were taken to offer an imposing spectacle."
The captain of the "Susquehanna," in full-dress uniform, led off,,
flanked by the two interpreters, Williams and Bettelheim. Behind them
were drawn two fieldpieces, each surmounted by an American flag. The
band from the "Mississippi" came next, followed by a company of marines
in full dress.
Then came the commodore, in the most imposing uniform he could
arrange, seated in a sedan chair, which had been knocked together for the
occasion by the ship's carpenter, and decked out with paint and curtains of
red and blue material. Four Chinese coolies carried it, with four trotting
alongside as auxiliary bearers. Two marine bodyguards, a pageboy, and a
Chinese valet or steward marched beside the palanquin as Perry's personal
attendants.
Following Perry at a respectful distance came a company of marines
and a Chinese servant bearing presents for the royal household, each bearer
accompanied by a guard. Then followed the officers of the expedition, their
personal servants attending them, the band from the "Susquehanna," and at
last, a company of marines forming a rear guard. Some two hundred men
took part.
Crowds gathered to watch this glittering procession wind along the
highroad with bands playing, through Tomari, up the pine-clad hills, and
into the stone-walled town of Shuri. The regent and the highest officers of
state met the commodore at the great outer gates and begged him to honor
them by stopping at the regent's mansion for refreshments. Williams at once
suspected a maneuver designed to draw the commodore away from his
prime objective. The regent's gesture was ignored. The column marched
firmly on to the very gates of the palace.
They were closed.
It was hardly to be expected that the fieldpieces would be used to blast
a way into the royal residence, but the Okinawans had no assurance that
Perry would stop short of this, so as he waited in his grand sedan chair,
messengers were sent around to the inner courts and the gates were at last
opened. The Americans marched in, to the tune of "Hail Columbia!"
 Technically, Perry had won his point and entered the royal palace, but
it was an empty gesture. No signs of entertainment of any sort were in
evidence. There was no king, no queen dowager, and not a vestige of
preparation.
Places were hastily arranged in one of the palace chambers. The
commodore and his officers took positions along one side, the regent and
his principal officers faced them across the room. The presents for the royal
household were placed on the floor between. These had been brought along
as a matter of form, though Perry himself believed (incorrectly) that the
dowager queen was a mythical person, a mere excuse to put him off. It may
have been hard for him to concede that the Okinawans had in fact won their
point; they had indicated that the regent was the highest personage in the
state to whom he could address himself, and they held to the issue
successfully.

The regent and his men moved exactly half way across the audience
hall and bowed stiffly. "The Commodore and all the officers rose and
bowed in return; but without precisely understanding what the homage of
the Lew Chewans particularly meant; they were determined, however, not
to be outdone in the outward symbols of civility."23
After some delay, cups of weak tea and "twists of very tough
gingerbread" were produced from within the palace. The regent was invited
to take dinner aboard the flagship. According to Williams: "The
Lcwchewans seemed to have nothing to say, but rather to endure our
presence, and Perry did not intend to introduce any topic." At last, after
painful silences, the regent renewed the invitation for Perry to dine at his
mansion nearby. It was accepted, with relief, for as the humorless Narrative
records "the interview was becoming rather uninteresting, and it was quite
plain that the magnates of Lew Chew were, for some cause or other, not
quite at their ease."
The foreigners withdrew from the palace grounds. Perhaps Bettelheim
was the only member of the company to draw complete satisfaction from
the incident, for he had at last been admitted to the palace. He was wearing
borrowed American plumage, to be sure, and had been allowed to enter
only because the well-armed commodore would have it so, but he had had
his hour of triumph. The officers with him must have sensed his elation, for
he had written and talked much of his persistent efforts to penetrate the
royal house, only to be driven away from Shuri as a public nuisance.
Perry went on foot from the castle gates to the regent's mansion
nearby, where an elaborate feast had been waiting during the painful hour at
the palace. According to the Narrative, this was a congenial interlude,
during which it was discovered that the regent's interpreter had spent three
years at Peking, perfecting his knowledge of Chinese. This was the
language in which he conversed with Williams, who in turn interpreted for
Perry. Soon it was disclosed that he knew a little English as well and that a
number of high officers present had read in Japanese texts of the geography
and history of the United States and of George Washington.
The Narrative endows the whole day at Shuri with an air of success,
and notes that at the end of the eighth course the commodore rose to
propose a toast to the prince, the queen dowager, and the people of the
Ryukyus, saying: " Prosperity to the Lew Chewans, and may they and the
Americans always be friends." According to Williams, this was done only
after the regent himself had taken the lead in proposing a toast to the United
States and the American guests.
"Novel as was this bill of fare [says Hawks], the gentlemen of the
expedition endeavoured with true courtesy, to do honor to the repast, and at
the end of the twelfth course respectfully took leave, though they were
assured there were twelve more to come. The number of courses indicated
the desire to do our countrymen a double share of honor, inasmuch as
twelve is the prescribed number for a royal entertainment."24
That, at least, was what the commodore had been assured in flattering
terms by Bettelheim. The Williams, McCauley, and Spalding reports show
that this had been a lugubrious affair; Williams and Spalding were indignant
that the commodore, bored with the proceedings, had simply left the feast
honoring him before it was fully served: "There was no lighting up of faces
of the old men [writes Williams], and they were evidently wishing us away,
tho' a good many of the younger people were amused. . . . After two hours
we left, the four chiefs accompanying Perry to the door, and then hastening
back with joyful steps as tho' relieved."25
 Perry had gained access to the empty palace, and his men were
wandering about wherever they willed. The problems of the coal station and
of commercial transactions remained unsettled.
There had been military drills on every ship and on shore each day
after the squadron came in. On the day following the Shuri Castle visit, a
full-dress review of auxiliary craft was held in the harbor. "Seventeen boats,
fully equipped and armed, and five of them carrying twelve and twenty-four
pounders" were paraded for the Okinawans to see. Against this display,
Perry's officers pressed the Naha officials for an agreement which would
govern commercial transactions and provide for the payment for supplies
sent off to the ships. They yielded the point, breaking with age-old tradition
that ships in need should be serviced without charge. They had no choice.
Once having come to this point, the Americans found the Okinawans to be
shrewd bargainers and quick to raise prices. It was no longer necessary to
try to entrust all the provisioning arrangements to Bettelheim. Said
Spalding: "When other mediums than himself were adopted for the
procurement of eatables &c, we generally found that we succeeded better."
June 8 brought a minor crisis in Bettelheim's relations with the
commodore. Perry had ordered construction of an enclosure within which a
number of cattle and sheep could graze. His men selected the grounds
around the "upper temple" which the Bettelheims had preempted for their
use on Nami-no-ue headland. The doctor objected:

"The Commodore took this quite unfair of me, telling me I had

premises spacious enough without the upper temple, and that he saw no
reason why to allow me to occupy so much ground. He moreover thought,
as I knew he only wished to civilize this nation, I should rather have been
glad to see a new breed [of cattle] introduced, etc. I contended the cattle
could be reared quite as well and much better in another place, and that we
used the upper temple as belonging to our establishment these seven years;
that in time of bad weather this was the only place where my wife and
children can take a walk ... and finally, that we have there a flagstaff planted
. . . and I could thus not give up so easily possession of a ground thus
constituted.
"Commodore Perry told me rather angrily, he did not like it. . . ."26

The American establishment on shore now included buildings

commandeered for barracks, for a photographer's laboratory, and for a sick
bay. Although the Okinawans no longer tried to evict the Bettel-heims from
the Gokoku-ji, they had not given up claims to the ancient temple. They
objected to having its precincts used as a cattle stable. Bettleheim continues:
"On our back way, Ichirazichi came to say, the door of the upper temple
would be required to be kept open, as they had therein gods which they
wished to worship. (It is near seven years that no sort of worship whatever
was carried on in either the lower or the upper temple.) The Commodore
said they had gods enough to worship in other places. . . ."27
On June 9 two ships from the squadron left Naha for the Bonin
Islands, which Perry proposed to survey and to claim, if possible, for the
United States.

THE AMERICAN BASE ON OKINAWA: JULY,

1853-JULY, 1854
When Perry returned to Naha on June 23 it was discovered that the regent
had resigned, been deposed, or committed suicide. This caused general
uneasiness among the American officers who assumed that the old man's
failure to prevent intrusion upon the palace was the cause of his disgrace.
Perry preferred to assume—and perhaps correctly—that the government
saw the need of a more vigorous hand in control at a time of unparalleled
crisis for the kingdom.
"The report that Shang Ta-mun has ripped himself up is gaining
ground [wrote Williams], and excites no little displeasure among some as
one of the sad results of our course; but I have grave doubts about it. . . .
"Dr. Bettelheim came aboard after his service was over in the
Plymouth, and made himself somewhat dubious by the way he spoke of the
succession to the Regency, and the fate of the old one. This same Dr.
Bettelheim contrives to heap a deal of ill-will and contempt up against
himself by his conduct."28
Hawks notes that Bettelheim was pleased to learn that his old
antagonist had lost authority: "Dr. Bettelheim (who did not seem to feel any
pity for the degraded dignitary) stated that he would probably be banished,
with his family, to one of the smaller islands."29
It was now Perry's turn to give a formal dinner aboard the flagship for
the new regent. There was a heavy rain-squall, the guests were very late in
making their appearance, so late that Perry sent Williams and Bettelheim off
toward shore to discover the cause for the delay. "We met them all aboard
the two cutters and had our row in the rain for nothing; Bettelheim was
cross, too, because the Regent was ahead of him, and halloed to the boats in
vain, making me wish I was out of his company."30
 The new regent proved to be a younger man, less poised than the old
prince, his predecessor. The dinner was a colorful occasion, for the regent
wore a magnificent purple robe, his principal aides wore robes of yellow or
pearl white with crimson turbans, richly worked Chinese silk girdles, and
massive ornamental golden pins in their hair. Inferior attendants wore blue
and yellow.
The Narrative notes that the guests "showed but a very sorry
appreciation of the virtue of temperance . . . thus almost equalling
Christendom in genteel dissipation." Perry ordered the band's soloists to
play; perhaps for the first time Okinawans heard the music of the flageolet,
clarinet, oboe, and cornet.
There were many courses, washed down with French and German
wines, Madeira and sherry, Scotch and American whiskeys, Holland gin,
and maraschino. On this occasion the guests of honor made no move to
leave the ship before formalities were at an end and the last of the many
wines were sampled.
Said Williams:

"While dining, many sorts of spirits were drunk, and Bettelheim

evidently acted as if under their influence, getting up and sitting down,
talking and gesticulating in a strange way. . . .
"I tried to ascertain from the interpreter whether the old Regent was in
Shuri, but had no chance; Bettelheim thought he was imprisoned or
banished, and increased the dislike of some to him by the smirk with which
he told of the poor man's fate—a fate which I think is doubtful. I don't much
wonder at his [Bettelheim's] feelings, however, living here for so many
years and deprived of common comforts through this man's [the Regent's]
means, it is not surprising he should wish a change of rulers.
"The party of Lewchewans left at sunset, but he remained to try to
settle accounts with the purser or caterers, and nearly got a discharge from
the ship by accusing the officers of cheating him. It is strange to hear the
dislike felt against him by the squadron, yet I can explain it mostly without
deeming him to be a scoundrel as others do. . . ."31

On June 26 Bettelheim preached aboard the "Plymouth"; he was

advised to keep it short, "which induced me the more warmly to pray and
preach to them," and with relish he chose the text "Thou hast prepared a
table before me in the presence of mine enemies."
The harbor was filled with activity on July 2. Soon after noon the
commodore left Naha, turning northward with two steamers and two
sloops-of-war to make his first attempt to penetrate Japan. "All seemed very
well satisfied to get away from Lew Chew [says the Narrative], The
picturesque interests of the island were, for the time being, thoroughly
exhausted, and the dull realities of life began to weigh heavily on the
visitors."
Perry's approach to Japan had been reported through Satsuma, as he
expected it to be. He did not know, however, that Nakahama Manjiro (John
Mung of Fairhaven, Massachusetts) was being used as a consultant at Edo.
It is doubtful if Nakahama would have survived if he had attempted to land
in Japan itself directly from a foreign ship. The friendly reception in
Okinawa had given him six months in which to tell a story which intrigued
the Lord of Satsuma, gave him protection, and preserved him in the services
of the shogunate. He was not allowed to meet with the American visitors
(extreme Exclusionists thought he knew too much English and was too
liberal in his views), but he served as consultant on many issues.32
President Fillmore's letter was delivered at Uraga on July 14, with a
statement that Commodore Perry would return in due course to receive the
emperor's reply.
On July 25 the ships returned to Naha. Perry's relative success in Japan
and his impatience to proceed to the China coast appear to have toughened
his attitude. "The Commodore had no time to spare, as his present visit was
intended to be very short, and he was not disposed to be put off for a
moment by the usual temporizing policy of the slow-moving Lew Chewans,
so he demanded at once an interview with the regent; the demand was
immediately granted, and a day appointed for the meeting."
Somewhere along the way the commodore had forgotten the
president's instructions to act only with the consent of the natives, and
remembered rather the "broad discretionary powers." His aides were given
instructions to prepare the regent for his terms:

"Establish rate and pay for rent of house for one year. State that I wish
a suitable and convenient building for the storage of coal, say to hold six
hundred tons. If they have no such building, I desire to employ native
workmen to erect one ... or if the Lew Chewan government prefers, it can
be done under the inspection of the mayor, at government expense, and I
will agree to pay an annual rent for it. Either one or the other agreement
must be made.
 "Speak about the spies, and say that if they continue to follow the
officers about, it may lead to serious consequences, and perhaps to
bloodshed, which I should deplore, as I wish to continue on the most
friendly terms with the authorities. That should any disturbance ensue, it
will be the fault of the Lew Chewans, who have no right to set spies upon
American citizens who may be pursuing their own lawful business. ...
"It will be wise therefore, for the Lew Chewans to abrogate those laws
and customs which are not suited to the present age, and which they have
no power to enforce, and by a persistence in which they will surely involve
themselves in trouble.
"Let the mayor clearly understand that this port is to be one of
rendezvous, probably for years, and that the authorities had better come to
an understanding at once.33

A formal communication was then addressed to the regent, stating

these demands in firm language:

"It is repugnant to the American character to submit to such a course

of inhospitable discourtesy, and though the citizens of the United States,
when abroad, are always regardful of, and obedient to, the laws of the
countries in which they may happen to be, provided they are founded upon
international courtesy, yet they can never admit of the propriety or justice of
those of Lew Chew, which bear so injuriously upon the rights and comforts
of strangers resorting to the island in the most friendly and peaceful
intentions.
 "With the highest consideration,

M. C. PERRY

Commander-in-Chief of the United States Naval Forces,

in the East India, China, and Japan Seas."34

The formal meeting at which the regent's answers were to be presented

took place at Naha on July 28. The imperious commodore brushed aside
preliminary amenities and directed the regent to proceed with business. The
regent indicated that the formal reply would be ready during the course of
the dinner, which proceeded stiffly. At the eighth course, the official
document, bearing the great seal of Ryukyu, was handed to the regent, who
handed it to Perry. Dr. Williams was ordered to read it at once.
"It commenced [says the Narrative] by affirming the small size and
poverty of the island, stating that Dr. Bettelheim's residence among them
had given them much trouble, and that if we should erect a building for coal
their difficulties would be greatly increased. Besides, they said, the temple
which they had appropriated to our use was thereby rendered useless to
them, and their priests were prevented from performing their worship in it.
The productions of the island were few, as they derived all of their teas,
silks, cloths and many other articles from Japan and China. With regard to
the shops and markets, that was a matter that depended upon the people
themselves, and if they chose to keep their shops closed, the regent could
not interfere. He declared, moreover, that the persons who had followed us
whenever we had gone ashore were not spies, but officers appointed to act
as guides, and to prevent us from being annoyed by the people. Since we
had not found them to be of service, and objected to them, they would be
directed not to follow us in future."
This reply was not what the commodore expected. It was instantly
returned to the hands of the regent, as something unacceptable. Perry then
repeated his demands, upon which, says the Narrative, "the Regent
attempted to come forward and again present the reply; but the Commodore
rose and prepared to leave, declaring that if he did not receive satisfactory
answers to all his demands by noon the next day, he would land two
hundred men, march to Shuri, and take possession of the palace there, and
would hold it till the matter was settled. With this declaration he left ... the
regent attending him to the gateway. . . .35
The threat to occupy Shuri forced the Okinawans to capitulate. They
conceded all points.
The official Narrative comments here that "the Commodore was not to
be balked of his purpose by any of the shams and devices of Lew Chew
policy, and went straight to the end proposed, without allowing himself to
be diverted from a broad, honest course of fair dealing." Some of the
members of his staff, however, privately took a different view of these
proceedings.
Williams gave vent to his indignation in the pages of his private
journal:

"It was a struggle between weakness and might, and the islanders must
go to the wall; it was as well-planned on their part as possible, and they
were doubdess disappointed in the result."36
"We stopped at Dr. Bettelheim's to bid him goodbye, and found others
there on a similar errand, more as a mark of respect than goodwill. While
his wife has grown in the good opinion of the squadron, he has contrived to
get the suspicion or active dislike of almost everybody. His intrusion into
the interview last Thursday [July 28] was little pleasing to the principal
actors, and tends to mix us up with him in the minds of the native
authorities. His proceedings have been so anomalous that I am really unable
to say what and how much good he is doing, though I hope he will come
out bright at the last, and his work stand the fire. The counsel and opinion
of a fellow-laborer would do him service and enable his patrons to form a
better judgement."37

On August 1 the commodore sailed from Naha once again, leaving a

small staff to supervise the coaling depot and to maintain and cultivate the
"cordial relations" which he fondly believed himself to have established
among the Okinawans.
The Narrative relates that, upon leaving Okinawa this time, Perry
began to reflect upon the consequences of his visits, and found them good.
Traditional resistance to foreign intercourse was weakening. The blessings
of civilization were beginning to be felt.
Unknown to Perry (as we shall see in the next chapter) certain
decisions had been made at Kagoshima; Shimazu had conceived a policy
which would exploit this Western eagerness to penetrate Japan, while taking
advantage of Tokugawa weakness at Edo. To the degree that it deemed safe,
Kagoshima had prudently relaxed pressure upon Shuri; the Okinawans now
had less reason to fear reprisals by Satsuma.
Perry meanwhile was maturing plans which he felt appropriate and
necessary to his success in Japan. He had found that the Okinawans were
easily coerced, and he feared that British, Russian, or French naval
diplomatists prowling Far Eastern waters might seize the Ryukyus. He
therefore argued that the United States should forestall such a possibility.
His views were set forth in letters to Washington dated December 24, 1853,
and January 25, 1854:

"Considering that I am acting very much upon my own responsibility,

I should desire to be instructed as to policy, which I do not hesitate to
recommend, of continuing the influence which I have already acquired over
the authorities and people of the beautiful island of Lew-Chew. . . .
"The department [of the navy] will be surprised to learn that this royal
dependency of Japan ... is in such a state of political vassalage and
thralldom, that it would be a merit to extend over it the vivifying influence
and protection of a government like our own.
 "It is self-evident that the course of coming events will ere long make
it necessary for the United States to extend its territorial jurisdiction beyond
the limits of the western continent, and I assume the responsibility of urging
the expediency of establishing a foothold in this quarter of the globe, as a
measure of positive necessity to the sustainment of our maritime rights in
the east.
"I shall continue to maintain the influence over the authorities and
people of Lew-Chew which I now command, but it is important that I
should have instructions to act promptly, for it is not impossible that some
other power, less scrupulous, may slip in and seize upon the advantages
which should justly belong to us. . . ."38
 "... It is my intention, should the Japanese government refuse to
negotiate [a treaty] or to assign a port of resort for our merchant and
whaling ships, to take under surveillance of the American flag, upon the
ground of reclamation for insults and injuries committed upon American
citizens, this island of Great Lew-Chew, a dependency of the empire, to be
held under such restraint, until the decision of my government shall be
known, whether to avow or disavow my acts. Until such action is had, the
responsibility will rest solely upon me, and I shall assume it as a measure of
political precaution, for it is certain that if I do not take preliminary steps
before leaving this port [Naha] for Yedo, for adopting such course, the
39
Russians or French, or probably the English, will anticipate the design."*

The Secretary of the Navy promptly rejected the proposals: "Your

suggestion about holding one of the Lew-Chew Islands ... is more
embarrassing. The subject has been laid before the President, who, while he
appreciates highly the patriotic motive which prompts the suggestion, is
disinclined, without the authority of the Congress, to take and retain
possession of an island in that distant country, particularly unless more
urgent and potent reasons demanded it than now exist. If, in future,
resistance should be offered and threatened, it would also be rather
mortifying to surrender the island, if once seized, and rather inconvenient
and expensive to maintain a force there to retain it. Indulging in the hope
that the contingency may not arise to occasion any resort to the expedient
suggested ... it is considered sounder policy not to seize the island as
40
suggested in your dispatch."*
 The full squadron did not gather again at Naha until January 24, 1854.
Eight ships rode at anchor, waiting for the "Saratoga" to join them. Perry
was impatient to get on to Edo Bay.
A pre-emptory notice informed the regent that the commodore
intended to call at the palace once more, that he wanted suitable horses and
sedan chairs made ready for the "courtesy call," and that he expected a
proper reception.
The regent at once demurred, saying that the Ryukyu government
preferred to receive and entertain the commodore elsewhere. Perry was
angered by this "crooked policy" and evasive behavior and, on February ι,
sent a company of marines to Shuri to the palace gates "for exercise." On
February 3 he again had himself carried up to the palace with considerable
display. The precedents set in June, 1853, were followed closely; he was not
received by the young king nor by the queen dowager. Having made the
gesture, the commodore and his military aides withdrew from the palace to
the regent's mansion for a dinner.
Perry took this occasion to make several new demands upon the
Ryukyu government. He wanted a number of Okinawan or Japanese coins
to send to the government mint at Washington. The regent declared that he
was unable to comply with the request, for Ryukyu had no coinage of its
own, and the few coins in the island were in possession of the Japanese
residents. Perry was admant; he believed the Okinawans were attempting to
deceive him, for had not Bettelheim declared that money was in use?
Leaving about fifty dollars' worth of American coins at Shuri, Perry
declared with great firmness that he expected to be supplied with an
equivalent value in Okinawan or Japanese coins before he left the island.
 On the eve of his departure for Japan a number of gifts were sent off
from the squadron for the regent, the royal household, and the government.
Concurrently, the Shuri government sent off to the ships a gift of Okinawan
products. But with it came a communication from the regent, who regretted
that it was still true that Okinawa produced no significant coins, that trade
in Okinawa was on a barter basis, that the gold and silver used in making
hairpins used by the gentry was imported metal, and that the coins which
Bettelheim had reported were in fact held and used only by the Japanese.
The American coins which had been left at Shuri were returned to the
commodore.
Perry was enraged. He immediately ordered all the Okinawan gifts
sent ashore and sent word to the regent warning him that the coins must be
ready when he returned from Japan. Williams made this comment: "The
Commodore ... on hearing the paper read, ordered all the presents back into
the boat, and gave them his own communication to take to the Regent, with
the coins he had given him at the Palace. In doing so I think Perry acted like
a disappointed child, and was piqued at being unable to effect the exchange
of coins he had set his heart on. He bids me tell them that he asks only for
what is reasonable, and that the exchange of national coins is a sign of
friendship; these islanders are known and allowed to have no mint of their
own, but a breach of amity is made to depend upon their furnishing the
coins of another land, which they deny to have or be able to get. I think this
matter was carried much too far, and, as I will tell no lie for Perry or anyone
else, I never told them he asked only what is reasonable. ... If the coins
desired were Lewchewan, the case would be materially altered; as it is I
think Perry is in the wrong in pressing the exchange to such a degree."41
 Before leaving Naha for Japan on his epochal second trip, Perry issued
a proclamation saying that until he had secured what he wanted at Edo he
would hold the Ryukyu Islands under "limited authority" and that he would
therefore assign "two master's mates and about fifteen men to look after the
United States Government property and other interests during his absence."
Soon after the American squadron steamed northward, three Russian
warships came in—a steamer (the "Vostock"), a frigate (the "Pallas"), and a
24-gun corvette. Perry's men promptly warned the intruders that Okinawa
"had been taken under American protection" by the commodore. Vice
Admiral Putyatin merely smiled, and sent his men ashore. For ten days the
Russians drilled at Tomari, explored Naha, and listened skeptically to Bette
heim's denunciations of the amiable Okinawans.
Perry, at Edo Bay, was negotiating with stubborn determination. On
March 17 he demanded that five Japanese ports be opened to commerce and
navigation. Naha was named. The Japanese commissioners countered with
an assertion that "Lew Chew is a very distant country, and the opening of its
harbor cannot be discussed by us." The Emperor of Japan was alleged to
have very limited authority in the Ryukyu islands. This Perry interpreted as
a disclaimer of responsibility sufficiently clear to give the Ryukyu kingdom
the status of an independent sovereignty.
The negotiations at Kanagawa, near Yokohama, were concluded on
March 31, 1854. After suitable celebrations and a short cruise to Hakodate
in northern Japan, the American squadron returned to Naha, anchoring on
July 1.
 THE "LEW CHEW COMPACT" WITH THE
UNITED STATES
The two master's mates left on Okinawa with their small company had been
joined in May by the officers and crew of the "Lexington," Lieutenant
Glasson commanding. Relations between the Americans and the Okinawans
had not continued in that degree of harmony so confidently described to
Washington by the commodore. Some Okinawan children had taken to
stoning the Americans upon occasion and in early June, during a scuffle in
the market place, two Americans had been beaten up, and a third had been
done to death by an angry mob. Glasson took up these incidents with the
magistrate of Naha, and upon Perry's return the incidents were reviewed and
the case of death by violence was reopened.
The commodore's account in the Narrative does not agree in all details
with the case as set forth in Williams' private notes. Both the Okinawan
officers and the Americans agreed that the stoning was a minor "accident."
The Narrative states that one of the two seamen quarreled with a butcher in
the market, and that the butcher had beaten the American with a club. The
Naha magistrate asserted that the seaman had taken meat from the butcher
without paying for it and that when this was protested, the American had set
upon the Okinawan with a knife. Williams tells a third version; three
seamen—Scott, Smith, and Board—were on a tipsy spree in Naha. Scott
and Smith bought something, paying for it in coin. This illegal transaction
was witnessed by a petty officer of Naha, who promptly confiscated the
money. This angered the Americans, who sought to drive the Okinawan
officer away; he called his friends and in the scuffle Scott was knocked to
the ground and beaten severely. Smith made his way to his friends and
Board wandered off. Scott lay drunken and bleeding in the street until
Lieutenant Glasson found him and had him taken off to his quarters. "The
probability is [says the Narrative] that the general feeling aboard ships was
that the sailor got no more than his deserts." This incident was smoothed
over, however.
But after leaving his friends, Board had entered a house in town and
committed rape. The victim's screams brought a crowd, which chased Board
through the streets, pelting him with stones. He attempted to reach the
waterfront and the safety of a small boat, but at the quay's edge he was
felled by a stone (or stumbled) and plunged into the water. By the time he
could be pulled out he was dead.
"The Commodore, upon enquiry, soon became convinced that the
man's death, though unlawfully produced, was probably the result of his
own most gross outrage on a female, and, in such case, not undeserved; still
he felt that, for the security of others, both Europeans and Americans, who
might subsequently visit the island, it was important to impress upon the
authorities the necessity for the full investigation and proper punishment, by
the local authorities, of acts of violence committed upon strangers who
might visit them. He therefore made a peremptory demand upon the regent
or superintendent of affairs to cause a judicial trial to be instituted,
conformably to the laws of Lew Chew.
"This demand was at once complied with [continues the Narrative],
the court consisting of six superior judges, and the regent and first treasurer
giving their constant personal attendance during the entire proceedings."42
 Williams, the interpreter, attended some of the sessions; rough
methods were used to prod and prompt the memories of men who had been
in the crowd which pursued Board, but there was a genuine attempt to
discover the leaders. Williams was familiar with Chinese methods in these
circumstances—when any jailbird would do, produced as the guilty one, in
order to end quickly the responsibility and involvement of officials brought
under pressure by the "foreign devils"—and he recorded his reaction to
procedures in this Okinawan court: "Mean and simple as this Lewchewan
courthouse is, such men as are here convened, to do what they deem (or
feel) due to justice, raise one's opinion of the nation, and add new respect
for their institutions. And then, too, whatever may be the reality, either as to
the provocation offered by Board to this woman, or her disregard of his
offer or attempt, we certainly must place external morality at Napa greatly
beyond what it is in Simoda, and Lewchewan officers above Japanese for
decency and respect."43
Having settled upon certain men as the leaders in the incident, the
Okinawan officials brought the principal one to Perry aboard the flagship,
and there delivered him to the commodore. He was at once returned to the
custody of the local officials, under guarantee that the men would be
suitably punished. One was to be banished to Yaeyama for life; the others
were to be sent to Miyako under sentence for eight years.
While these proceedings were under way, Perry was also pressing
Shuri to settle satisfactorily the matter of the exchange of coins, once and
for all. As he conversed with the Okinawan officers on the flagship at the
close of the trial, "the Commodore also told them [wrote Williams] that he
wished a bell to hang at the top of the Monument at Washington, and I
really believe he thought more of the procurement of this bell than the
settlement of the case of murder and mob."44
Perry was anxious to be on his way home; this visit to Okinawa had
become an anticlimax. American interest in the Ryukyu Islands in effect
came to an end when the Treaty of Kanagawa was signed, opening Japan to
foreign intercourse. He had crossed the frontier islands successfully; signed
treaty copies were on their way to Washington. The base at Naha could be
abandoned, and to this end the commodore ordered that the coal supplies at
Tomari were to be taken aboard ship once more. Nevertheless, he cautioned
the Okinawans to hold the depot in readiness against possible need on
another day. Perhaps he felt that the presence of an American coal depot—
even though it was an empty one —would serve as a technical check upon
British, Russian, or French interests.
He had now only to tidy up his relations with the Shuri government
and the Okinawan people, and to prepare for his own return to Washington.
A number of points required consideration. He must be careful to arm
himself with proof that he had followed the president's orders and had
pursued a course of friendship and justice and had acted with the "consent
of the natives." The files at Washington contained his early statements
maintaining that Ryukyu was an autonomous principality. There was the
practical problem of reserving American interests at Naha against
unforeseeable emergencies in China or Japan, and there was the ever-
present threat of European intrusion.
A treaty with the Shuri government would provide for these things,
establishing a record in black and white that the Ryukyu kingdom and the
United States were in agreement and on friendly terms. It would create a
formal relationship which the other Western powers could not lightly brush
aside. It could be used as precedent for other treaties, if such were
demanded.
On July 8 Perry's representatives presented to the regent the rough
draft of a "Compact" which the commodore desired to have. A preamble
stated that the Okinawans were signing the compact voluntarily and as an
independent and sovereign people. To this the king's officers refused to put
their signatures, and instead brought forth a list of things which they desired
the United States government to guarantee. Williams points out that these
were a catalogue of the pressures to which they had been compelled to
submit during the period of American occupation. The Okinawans wanted
the text clearly to show that the document was drawn and signed under
compulsion.
Perry's men returned to the ship and consulted with the commodore. A
company of marines landed with orders to stay at the Ameku Temple at
Tomari, to which it was proposed to summon the regent if there were any
further difficulty about signing. On July 10 the officers appointed to
negotiate went ashore again "to hold another interview with the regent,
when they soon succeeded in arranging all the terms of the compact
satisfactorily to both parties and obtained from the regent a promise that a
bazaar should be opened on shore, on the succeeding Wednesday and
Thursday, for the officers of the ships. It was also arranged that the
Commodore would visit the regent at an appointed hour on the morrow. On
the next day, in the morning, the Commodore sent on shore a number of
presents for the regent, treasurer and other officers of the island, consisting
of revolvers, lorgnettes, a dressing case, and numerous valuable agricultural
implements. He was particularly careful to send a handsome present to the
poor woman who had been the subject of Board's outrage. At noon he
landed himself, and with a small escort of marines, visited the regent at the
town hall."45
Thus the official Narrative describes the evolution of the compact.
Spalding (who later became a rear admiral) presents a somewhat different
version, ending his account with an explosion of indignation. The "small
escort" mentioned by Perry consisted of one large howitzer from the
"Mississippi," one large howitzer from the "Powhatan" (each manned by
crewmen bearing cutlasses), two bands, and forty-eight marines in parade
dress. "Our government should pay a little attention to the fantastic tricks
which its commodorial gentry cut up in such countries as Loo Choo—'fixed
ammunition,' 'cutlasses' and 'ball-cartridges' taken ashore among a people
whose forts are disarmed; among whom not one offensive weapon was
noticed after months of intercourse; and whose nation in its present
condition, reversing the remark of Chatham, might be driven with a
crutch."46
At the Naha town hall on July n copies of the "Compact with Lew
Chew" were signed and exchanged. Spalding dubbed it the "Compact of the
Chicken with the Horse in the Stable—I won't tread on your toes if you
won't tread on mine."
The text follows:

"COMPACT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES

AND THE KINGDOM OF LEW CHEW,
SIGNED
 AT NAPHA, GREAT LEW CHEW, THE 11TH
DAY
OF JULY, 1854"

"Hereafter, whenever citizens of the United States come to Lew Chew, they
shall be treated with great courtesy and friendship. Whatever articles these
persons ask for, whether from the officers or people, which the country can
furnish, shall be sold to them; nor shall the authorities interpose any
prohibitory regulations to the people selling; and whatever either party may
wish to buy shall be exchanged at reasonable prices.
"Whenever any ships of the United States shall come into any harbor
in Lew Chew, they shall be supplied with wood and water at reasonable
prices; but if they wish to get other articles they shall be purchase-able only
at Napha.
"If ships of the United States are wrecked on Great Lew Chew, or on
islands under the jurisdiction of the royal government of Lew Chew, the
local authorities shall dispatch persons to assist in saving life and property,
and preserve what can be brought ashore till the ships of that nation come to
take away all that may have been saved; and the expenses incurred in
rescuing these unfortunate persons shall be refunded by the nation they
belong to.
"Whenever persons from ships of the United States come ashore in
Lew Chew they shall be at liberty to ramble where they please, without
hinderance, or having officials sent to follow them, or to spy what they do;
but if they violently go into houses, or trifle with women, or force people to
sell them things, or do other such like illegal acts, they shall be arrested by
the local officers but not maltreated, and shall be reported to the captain of
the ship to which they belong, for punishment by him.
"At Tumai [Tomari] is a burial ground for citizens of the United
States, where their graves and tombs shall not be molested.
"The government of Lew Chew shall appoint skilful pilots, who shall
be on the look-out for ships appearing off the island; and if one is seen
coming toward Napha, they shall go out in good boats beyond the reefs to
conduct her in to a secure anchorage; for which service the captain shall pay
the pilot five dollars, and the same for going out of the harbor beyond the
reefs.
"Whenever ships anchor at Napha the local authorities shall furnish
them with wood at the rate of three thousand six hundred copper cash per
thousand catties; and with water at the rate of six hundred copper cash (43
cents) for one thousand catties, or six barrels full, each containing thirty
American gallons.
"Signed in the English and Chinese languages, by Commodore
Matthew C. Perry, commander-in-chief of the United States naval forces in
the East India, China and Japan Seas, and special envoy to Japan, for the
United States; and by Sho Fu Fing, superintendent of affairs (Tsu-li-kwan)
in Lew Chew, and Ba Rio-si, treasurer of Lew Chew, at Shui, for the
government of Lew Chew; and copies exchanged this nth day of July, 1854,
or the reign Hien Fung, 4th year, 6th moon, 17th day, at the town hall of
Napha."47
Spalding's comment was that "as a mouse in the talons of the eagle, they
promised everything."

The commodore was entertained ashore for the last time. Gifts were
exchanged, and according to the Narrative, the principals in this small
diplomatic drama parted on a note of friendly goodwill. Perry had his way,
and the Okinawans had put the best face on it that they could.
As for the gifts which Perry made in the interests of his "technological
development program," Spalding noted that they included a cotton gin and
butter churn, neither of which was of any conceivable use on Okinawa. An
Okinawan was asked to guess what the churn might be; he concluded that it
must be a fan used to cool people working at the threshing machine near
which it stood. The "handsome present" for the outraged woman consisted
of several yards of cotton cloth. No one knows what became of the
lorgnettes; and the revolvers for the regent seemed curiously inappropriate
to the royal house of the Ryukyu kingdom.
In return for these Perry asked for stones to be placed in the fabric of
the Washington Monument, then under construction. Two were provided,
but one of them was not to his liking and was broken up aboard ship to be
used for scrubbing decks. A bell was sent down from Shuri to the ship, but
upon examination it was found to be imperfect and was rejected. In its stead
a second bell was sent out. This was the great Gokoku-ji bell which had
been cast for King Sho Taikyu in A.D. 1456. It had been hanging in
Bettelheim's temple-residence and the Okinawans were willing to part with
it. Bettelheim was delighted to assist in dismantling the Gokoku-ji; he
wrote: "I was greatly rejoiced . . . and loudly expressed the comfort I felt at
seeing a heathen temple breaking up now in real earnest. . . . So let thy
enemies perish, O Lord. Let their house be made desolate, and their
Bishoprick let another take.' "*
Williams wondered if Perry's plan to hang this bell at the top of the
Washington Monument meant that it would be used "to bring tired
statesmen together or to ring assembly for Fourth of July orations" and
noted that Perry was so delighted to have it that he seemed to forget the
irksome subject of the coins.

THE END OF THE BETTELHEIM AFFAIR

Many kindnesses had been showered on the Bettelheims by visiting ships—
the casks of wine left by the French admiral, the seven pairs of shoes left by
Commander Glynn, an accordion given to Mrs. Bettelheim to use in hymn-
singing, cakes and clothes for the children—and these months of the
American occupation brought them considerate attention. The children were
made much of, and Mrs. Bettelheim enjoyed many small courtesies, of
which she had been so long denied. In association with the Americans, the
family had been able to move about with unprecedented freedom, but
nothing could overcome the animosity with which the Okinawans regarded
them. It was transferred to their successors.
Mrs. Bettelheim and the three children sailed for Shanghai on
February 8, 1854, aboard the U.S.S. "Supply." Her husband was to join her
later on the China coast. A missionary named Ε. H. Moreton and his family
came in to replace the Bettelheims, arriving aboard the British ship
"Robena," carrying a cargo of coolies for American ports. Spalding
described Moreton as "a pleasant-voiced little preacher with a mild face and
cockney aspiration of the letter h. He had come with his wife and child from
England to dwell at Napa, as spiritual teacher to a people who are about as
well-prepared to receive Christianity as they were when his predecessor, six
years before, went among them."48 Williams noted that a great coolness at
once developed between Dr. Bettelheim and his unfortunate successor, and
that the squadron's officers and men tended to side with the Moretons.
On July io the government of Ryukyu addressed a final long petition
to Commodore Perry, beseeching him to take away both Bettelheim and the
Moretons:

FROM THE AUTHORITIES OF LEW CHEW

TO COMMODORE PERRY:

"A prepared statement. [We] earnestly beg your excellency's kind

consideration of some circumstances; and that, to show compassion on our
little country, you will take away back to their own land Bettelheim and
Moreton, who have remained here long. . . .
"In the years 1844 and 1846 some French officers came, and the
Englishman Bettelheim also brought hither his wife and children to reside,
and they all required something to be daily given them, to our continual
annoyance and trouble. Whenever an English or French ship came in, we
earnestly represented these circumstances to them, and besought them to
take these people away with them. The Frenchmen, knowing our distresses,
went away in the year 1848 to their own country, and have not hitherto
returned; but Bettelheim has loitered away years here and not gone, and
now, further, has brought Moreton with his family to take his place and Uve
here, greatly to the discomfort of the people, and distress and inconvenience
of the country.
"We have learned that your excellency has authority over all the East
Indian, China and Japan seas, and not a ship of any western country can go
from one of these seas to the other but you know and regulate its
movements. Wherefore we lay before you our sad condition in all its
particulars, humbly beseeching your kind regard upon it, and requesting
that, when your fine ships return, you will take both Bettelheim and
Moreton away with you. This will solace and raise us up from our low
condition, and oblige us in a way not easy to be expressed. We wish your
life may be prolonged to a thousand autumns, in the enjoyment of the
highest felicity."49

Perry yielded to this entreaty to the degree that he promised to speak

informally with the British authorities at Hongkong concerning the position
of the mission at Naha.

Officers and men alike felt a kindly interest in this lonely Christian
outpost, and the interest was enhanced by the circumstances of its origin
and support among naval personnel. They were not unmindful of
Bettelheim's personal services as commissary agent to themselves in 1853
and 1854. To record their appreciation they presented him with a metal cup,
suitably inscribed. As a gesture of goodwill toward the mission itself, a fund
of $275 was collected in individual contributions throughout the squadron.
On July 13 Williams and several others went ashore to present this as an
American gift to the British Loo Choo Naval Mission: "We found Dr.
Bettelheim just going afloat with a boatful of baggage, including chairs,
tables and many things which surprised us in one going where such articles
of furniture are plenty; and on reaching the house [Gokoku Temple] we saw
it was bare enough. Mr. Moreton merely remarked in reply to our
observations that he thought Dr. Bettelheim would have taken the house
too, if he could have done so. Something must be wrong about Bettelheim
to act in such strange ways, and when we heard how he had claimed half the
money given to the mission and had gone to Edgarton and some other
sailors to ask them to whom they supposed they had given their
subscriptions, his mercenary spirit was too plain."50
The doctor had enjoyed the prestige of association with the pompous
commodore and was capable of indulging in extremes of flattery. This
appears to have reached its highest public expression on the last Sunday at
Naha, upon an occasion recorded by Spalding: "The next Sunday on board,
a sermon, blasphemous in character, was preached by a missionary
[Bettelheim] in which the American commander was likened to another
Jesus Christ, and a parallel deliberately instituted between our Saviour's
mission on earth and Commodore Perry's mission to Japan. That
functionary [Perry] sat on the quarterdeck, meanwhile, listening to all this
without evincing, so far as one could perceive, the slightest displeasure."51
Bettelheim had a busy last week making ready to leave Naha. He had
done well financially; he had claimed half the squadron's gift to the mission,
he had managed to save and bank money presumably from his missionary
stipend, and it appears that as he left the islands the government returned to
him in lump sum all that he had "spent" since 1846. The coins left in the
market place had been gathered in by watchful officials. With this windfall
went bundles of pamphlets and tracts collected and stored over the years.
Perhaps the Shuri gentlemen found amused satisfaction in thus at last
fulfilling the laws forbidding commerce and the the distribution of Christian
propaganda. According to the Narrative: "Whatever satisfaction the
American departure may have afforded the Lew Chewans was doubtless
enhanced by the fact that the ships took away Dr. Bettelheim. . . . The
earnestness of application to the Commodore to take Dr. Bettelheim away
with him forcibly demonstrates the very little prospect there was of any
useful labors, on his part, among the natives. . . ."52
In this view Bettelheim's missionary colleagues in other ports were
ready to concur. The seamen's chaplain at Honolulu had called for an
impartial investigation of "most singular reports . . . respecting the manner
in which that mission is now conducted," and a doctor on the China coast
noted that "many of the ways and means employed to further Bettelheim's
cause seemed only to aggravate and hinder, and were often of such a nature
as to demean himself and lose respect for Christianity."53
On July 14 the commodore gave a state dinner aboard the flagship to
honor the regent and his principal officers. On the next day the "Lexington"
sailed for Hongkong. On July 17 the last American ships left the waters of
Okinawa, the "Powhatan" bearing Dr. Bettelheim and the "Mississippi"
carrying away the redoubtable Perry.
A Chinese returning to the Middle Kingdom aboard one of these ships
wrote that in their conduct the men of Okinawa "resemble those of the
golden age of high antiquity." This was the highest tribute he could pay. The
day closed an exciting chapter in Okinawan history; quiet des-ccnded for a
brief rime on Okinawa's hills and harbors. But the "golden age" did not
return.
In the name of the boy-king Sho Tai, the regent submitted a report to
the emperor at Peking. This was forwarded by the Fukien officials under
date of February 12, 1855. The text reflects Shuri's conformity to China's
style of treating with barbarians:

"... The Admiral [Perry] stated that on February 3rd he would conduct
his officers and soldiers to the palace for a personal interview with the Heir
Apparent and his Ministers for New Year's felicitations and other purposes.
The officials were repeatedly instructed to request that the meeting be
solemnized with the ministers at the T'a-pa (Naha) yanten, but the
barbarians would not agree.
"On the 3rd he did force his way into the palace at the head of his
troops. The barbarians paid their respects and led their troops away in
silence. . . .
"As to the said barbarians, the Moretons, they still wilfully loiter
about, and for the things of their daily use they employ a great deal of
extortion, exhausting the country and embittering the people. And even
worse, they insist we must accept Christianity, are a constant annoyance,
and there is no telling what kinds of calamities they will induce. Our
anxiety is so great we can hardly eat or sleep. Please tell the English chief to
send a ship for Moreton and his family and take them so that there may be
peace and quiet."54
 The Lew Chew Compact was submitted to the United States Senate,
which advised ratification on March 3, 1855; six days later the President of
the United States proclaimed it to be in effect, but other matters rising as a
consequence of Perry's success in Japan proved to be more important to
Washington than the price of six barrels of water at Naha and the cost of
wood sent off to foreign ships.

Footnotes
* Ten thousand sets of his three-volume official Narrative were printed for distribution to

appreciative congressmen; one thousand were printed for Perry, who gave five hundred to his

collaborator, Hawks. The cost to the American taxpayer was $360,000. In matters of personal vanity,

censorship, use of discretionary powers, attitudes toward the civil government at Washington, and

preparation of quasi-official reports, comparisons may be made between Perry's career and General

MacArthur's, bracketing an era in Japan's history. MacArthur's costly "narrative" was suppressed at

Tokyo before publication.

* The italics are mine.—G.H.K.

* The italics are Perry's.

* This exchange is not quoted in the Narrative edited by Hawks for Perry; there, on p. 324, the

following appears: "It was not proposed by the Commodore to take Lew Chew, or claim it as a

territory conquered by, and belonging to, the United States, nor to molest or interfere in any way with

the authorities or people of the island, or to use any force, except in self defence. In fact, there was

not likely to be any occasion for violence, as the Americans already possessed all necessary influence
in Lew Chew, which had been acquired by kindness and non-interference with the laws and customs

of the island."

* The stone from Okinawa is embedded in the monument wall on the 220th landing; the bell was

rejected by the Washington Monument Committee and was bequeathed by Perry to the Naval

Academy.
 CHAPTER EIGHT
JAPAN "PROTECTS" THE
OKINAWANS

1855-1878
OKINAWA, SATSUMA, AND THE EUROPEAN
POWERS: THE MAKISHI-ONGA AFFAIR
Okinawa and the Lew Chew Compact were quickly forgotten in the United
States. Perry's success was overshadowed by recurrent domestic political
crises leading on to civil war and harsh years of reconstruction in the
rebellious South.
Perry had demonstrated Japan's weakness to European powers, and the
importance of Japan's territorial waters was pointed up during the Crimean
War. Russia sought to push into the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles,
and Britain and France were determined to block Russian expansion into
the warm seas. They proposed to check Russian naval activity in the
northern Pacific halfway round the world and, if they could, to blockade the
Russian bases on Kamchatka. They needed neutral ports for shelter and
supply nearby.
Commodore Perry was followed at Edo Bay by Admiral Sir James
Stirling, who signed Britain's first treaty with Japan on October 14, 1854.
Vice Admiral Poutiatine signed the first Russo-Japanese treaty on February
7, 1855. And thereafter, one by one, the European powers established
formal relations with the Tokugawa government.
Treaty texts, revisions, and supplements attempted to prescribe the
rights and privileges of foreign nationals in Japan and to define the
boundaries within which Japan's sovereignty would be recognized
henceforth in international law. Sooner or later the problem of the Ryukyu
relationship would have to be defined and settled.
Great Britain made no effort to establish formal treaty relations with
the kingdom; Okinawa was not important to British commercial and
military interests after the ports and markets of Japan became accessible.
Occasionally a British ship dropped anchor at Naha, but there were no
significant commercial resources to be developed, and data for the
Admiralty's hydrographie charts could be obtained without reference to
Shuri. The Moretons quit the island in 1856, unable longer to bear a legacy
of public hostility and ostracism. The Loo Choo Mission was abandoned.
A treaty with Holland, dated 1859, had no significant consequence for
either the Netherlands government or the Ryukyu kingdom.
A French treaty negotiated in 1855 was never ratified by Paris, but it
was a minor landmark, for it became part of Satsuma's intrigue to increase
Shimazu's power in Japan vis-à-vis the Tokugawa government.
Shimazu Saihin (or Nariakira) dominated Satsuma clan affairs from
1851 until his sudden death in July, 1858. It will be recalled that as heir
apparent he had been consulted at Edo in 1846, when the French made their
first overtures through Okinawa, and that he had received the shogun's tacit
permission to come to some accommodation or trading arrangement with
the French. Having succeeded to the clan headship, he was now in a
position to act, alert to every move which Perry made to breach the
seclusion walls.
The Edo government had been weakened by the Kanagawa Treaty.
Throughout Japan subordinate daimyo were restive; there was no agreement
upon coastal-defense policies and the regulation of foreign intercourse.
Saihin was determined that Satsuma should have a large share of
foreign trade on terms favorable to the Shimazu clan. Between 1806 and
1859 Okinawan tribute ships had crossed to China at least forty-five times.
The profit to Kagoshima was immense. If the Chinese were free to enter
Japan's ports, or if Western vessels were at liberty to transport cargoes from
China directly to Japan proper, Satsuma stood to lose heavily. Early
discussions with the French had come to nothing, but Perry's actions at Edo
Bay and at Naha had required keen consideration. Inviting prospects of
trade had to be weighed against the military risks of foreign intervention.
A decade of entanglements with the French, the British, and the
Americans on Okinawa (1845-55) emboldened Nariakira. Nakahama
Manjiro's stories of the Western world intrigued him. Against bitter
opposition within the Satsuma clan itself—not least from his half-brother
Hisamitsu—he moved ahead, maturing plans for a monopolistic trade
relationship with France, through Okinawa.
Two months after Perry left Naha for the last time, Kagoshima sent a
memorandum to Shuri which concerned the treatment of foreigners. Shuri
responded with a document of its own stating Okinawan views, based upon
unique experience. Concurrently, a series of regulations, prompted by
experience with American bluejackets ashore, were issued to govern
Okinawan relations with any foreigners who might put into Naha thereafter.
Singing, dancing, and samisen playing were to be prohibited while foreign
ships were in port, and there was to be no private commerce at open trading
booths. In this fashion both morals and monopolies would be preserved.
Satsuma instituted a close inquiry into the religious life of the
Okinawan people. Although the American expeditionary force was under
most strict orders to demonstrate that the United States government
believed in the separation of Church and State and was not seeking to
promote the proscribed Christian religion, Satsuma's agents had become
aware that some members of the American force had violated orders and
had attempted privately to distribute Christian religious tracts among the
common people.
Apparently no Christian converts could be found, but in the course of
the inquiry some converts to the proscribed evangelical Shin sect of
Buddhism were ferreted out. In Shimazu's eyes these were almost as
dangerous, politically speaking, as the dread "Kirishitans" might be.
Fourteen Okinawans were seized and banished to Yaeyama.

In January, 1855, French ships came again to Naha. They desired to

revive the Catholic Mission and to obtain a treaty. In March a house was
built ashore for the new missionary, Father Furet, and his Chinese assistant.
By October negotiations for a treaty were well under way. On December 17
the French vice-admiral, Nicholas-François Guerin, exchanged validating
signatures with the regent.
This time the Okinawans had Satsuma's full consent to treat with
foreigners. Nariakira directed each move from behind the scenes. Okinawan
officials were gaining experience which could be of later value to Satsuma.
He rewarded Itarashiki Satonushi (the "Ichirazichi" of Perry's account) for
his skill in handling the unpredictable and stubborn strangers. It was
proposed to send Satsuma agents secretly to study the French language at
Naha.
By 1856 Nariakira's plans were well advanced; he was one of the most
influential men in Japan and one of the most wealthy daimyo. His revenues
from Okinawa alone at this period were estimated at the equivalent of
$900,000 annually. He enjoyed the confidence of many important feudal
lords throughout Japan and of the imperial court at Kyoto. His strongest
opponent, however, was his own half-brother Hisamitsu, the heir-
presumptive, and between the two there was a bitter enmity.
All went well with his plans for about eighteen months. In February,
1857, the French Mission at Ryukyu presented to young King Sho Tai an
artillery fieldpiece with all auxiliary equipment. It was in effect a sample of
the "trading goods" in which Shimazu Nariakira was most interested.
Itarashiki was ordered to become familiar with the use of this formidable
new weapon.
In June, Satsuma relaxed orders restricting "fraternization" between
the French visitors and the common people, maintaining only the strict
prohibition upon Christian missionary work. In August, a Satsuma
representative named Ichiki Shoemon came down from Kagoshima with
instructions to conclude a secret agreement with the French.
The problem of a trading agreement was first discussed with the two
Okinawan leaders Itarashiki and Onga. Ostensibly the commercial
agreement was to be an Okinawan affair, worked out between Shuri and the
French officers. The goods were to be delivered to Satsuma through Naha.
Details of this first conference were reported to Kagoshima in September. In
October, Ichiki and Onga widened the basis for negotiation by giving secret
instructions to the Shuri officials. These related to the classes of goods
which could be supplied to, and purchased from, the French.
Nariakira was meanwhile kept well informed of the negotiations for a
commercial treaty between the shogunate and the United States, then being
carried on by Townsend Harris at Shimoda. This treaty, he feared, would
strengthen the Tokugawa monopoly on foreign trade, and threatened his
carefully nurtured plans for trade with France through Okinawa. In
December he ordered three men on Okinawa (Owan, Ichiki, and Iwashita)
to study the English language, in anticipation of negotiations for a share of
American or British commerce. This arduous task they were expected to
undertake while dealing with the French.
In February, 1858, Ichiki and Itarashiki took up direct negotiations
with the French. For this purpose Ichiki represented himself to be a
Ryukyuan doctor from Tokara Island. Under the treaty of 1855 it was
agreed that certain students would go to France for study, that Ryukyu
would purchase a small war-vessel and certain arms from France, and that
regular commercial traffic would be established.
Extensive French records of this period in Okinawa come principally
from the hands of the missionary-priests, who worked closely with the
French government.1. Furet was forbidden by Shuri to preach publicly or to
proselytize, but he and his assistant were free to travel about and to study
the language. He was not a Bettelheim, but a man of superior intellectual
gifts and of a sympathetic, enquiring mind, whose papers reflect an
appreciation of Okinawan scholars and scholarly traditions. In letters dated
at Naha, June 1, 1858, he described the two academies in which Okinawan
leaders were being educated. At Shuri a basic curriculum in Japanese
studies prepared the Shuri gentry for lifetime work in the general
administration. At Naha (Kume Village) the curriculum was Chinese, still
devoted to the Chinese classics and dedicated to the preparation of men for
the "China service." (Of all the government's important administrators at
this time, only the magistrate for Naha was customarily appointed from
among the Kume scholars; all others were prepared at Shuri.) Between the
two institutions Furet discovered an intense rivalry; the Shuri men enjoyed
authority and relative economic well-being, whereas the men of Kume lived
in scholarly but happy indigence, confident in a sense of superior
cultivation in the classical Chinese tradition. Furet and his associates had
six teachers at Shuri and three at Naha. He found them letter-perfect in the
Chinese language, expert calligraphers, but weak in interpretation. They
seemed to have little genuine understanding of the intellectual content of
texts mastered through repetitious discipline of eye, hand, and memory.
It now briefly appeared that there would develop on Okinawa two
additional schools, the one dedicated to the study of English and the other to
French, with Okinawan students mingling with Japanese students sent down
from Satsuma but representing themselves to be from the northern Ryukyu
islands.
In April, 1858, Itarashiki was rewarded handsomely for his services in
negotiating with the American commodore and the French vice-admiral; he
was made nominal Chief of Makishi District and took thereafter the title
Makishi Pechin. In May, Ichiki and Onga went up to report at Kagoshima.
Plans were drawn for a new "foreign affairs" office, which was established
at Shuri in July, the month in which the American Townsend Harris brought
to successful conclusion long negotiations for a Treaty of Amity and
Commerce at Edo (July 29, 1858).
Shimazu Nariakira died suddenly on August 25, in his forty-ninth
year. His successor, Hisamitsu (later known as Saburo), immediately
reversed Satsuma's policies in Ryukyu. The boy King Sho Tai and his chief
ministers were required to renew the ancient oath of obedience to the
Shimazu overlords.2 The vindictive Hisamitsu was determined to destroy
every vestige of his half-brother's program, and with great cruelty
persecuted Nariakira's associates.
Within the month Ichiki hastened back to Naha with orders that all
commodities ordered from France must be delivered by the French within
six months, that is to say, by March, 1859. This was obviously impossible.
Ichiki himself did not appear to discuss the problem with the French
officers. (It was represented to them that he had been killed in a fall from
horseback, and a newly-made tomb was shown to the Frenchmen to support
the tale.) This demand for quick delivery was merely a shallow excuse to
lay on the French the onus of breaking the contract because they would be
unable to meet terms newly introduced into the negotiations. The agreement
was forthwith canceled, and the French mission sailed away from Naha.
Ichiki emerged from hiding, returned to Satsuma, and lived for many
years, but his Okinawan associates were not so fortunate. Satsuma's agents
collected documents relating to the French-Okinawan negotiations, an
official named Zakimi was found at Shuri ready to charge his fellow
countrymen with acts of treason against the king. The accused were arrested
in September, 1859. A number of prominent men were banished from
Okinawa. Onga died under the rigors of imprisonment and torture in March,
1860. In June, 1862, Makishi Pechin was summoned under close arrest to
Kagoshima to answer for his part in Nariakira's schemes. He set sail in July
under heavy guard, but when the ship was a few miles north of Motobu
Peninsula, the prisoner leaped overboard, choosing suicide rather than
further imprisonment and torture at the hands of the relentless Shimazu
Hisamitsu.
Satsuma's attitude toward foreign intercourse was stiffening on all
points. The slogan "Exalt the Emperor! Expel the Barbarians!" began to be
heard throughout Japan, and for the first time there were open cries of
"Down with the Tokugawa government!" These anti-Bakufu forces
extracted from the emperor at Kyoto a secret agreement to issue an order
expelling all foreigners from Japan no matter what the consequences; June
23, 1863, was fixed for this extreme defiance of the Western powers. Every
concession to foreigners or foreign intercourse was treasonable and all who
advocated compromise with the West were under deep suspicion. Shimazu
and his advisors felt peculiarly vulnerable in the Ryukyu dependency, used
so openly as a base for foreign military and commercial operations. The
Ryukyu treaties and negotiations with the French were exceptionally
embarrassing.
Two months after Makishi Pechin killed himself, one of Shimazu's
retainers killed a British subject named Richardson in an incident at
Namamugi, near Yokohama. Several others in the foreign party were
wounded. The British government demanded satisfaction at Edo and at
Kagoshima. The shogunate was evasive and the Satsuma clan defiant.
Seven British warships entered Kagoshima Bay in August, 1863, to demand
reparations. They were fired upon, but the British guns soon silenced
Satsuma's shore batteries and disclosed at once the ineffectiveness of
Japan's shore defenses. A number of Satsuma's ships and Okinawan junks
were sunk in the harbor.
This enlightening incident brought an extraordinary right-about-face at
Kagoshima. Hisamitsu's intense hostility toward the Western world was
transformed. This bombardment illustrated how little he knew of it.
Henceforth his admiration for the British navy knew no bounds. He became
a leader in advocating the opening of the country, promoted the
development of a Japanese naval force patterned after Britain's great navy,
and broke all precedent in 1866 by entertaining the British minister, Sir
Harry Parkes, at Kagoshima. From this period dates the marked
preeminence of Satsuma men in Japanese naval affairs.
 The persecution of Okinawan leaders in 18.58 and 1859 had been
fruitless, cruel, and wasteful. Shuri had few men with wide experience in
political negotiation and could spare none, for the small kingdom was
entering upon difficult and tragic years.
The Makishi-Onga affair, as it came to be called, split the Shuri court
leadership. A cleavage developed among the gentry; a "white" faction
advocated close cooperation with Japan, and a "black" faction urged
resistance to Satsuma's demands and a policy of increased reliance upon
China. It was impossible to maintain cool neutrality. Families were torn in
their loyalties. There were charges and countercharges of unprecedented
bitterness in Okinawan Ufe. Shuri forbade partisans to spread vicious
rumors or to post placards and broadsheets bearing attacks upon prominent
men. The government needed strong leaders. There were few to be found.
An officer named Ginowan Uekata returned from a mission to China
in March, 1859. In October he was given a high post and in May, 1862,
became a member of the Council of State and the effective chief
administrative officer. He ruled with unprecedented firmness, not hesitating
to condemn to death four men convicted of posting slanderous attacks upon
the government.
These were harsh measures for Okinawa.

CONFUSION AND HARDSHIP, 1861-72

Political retaliation by Satsuma upon Okinawa affected principally the
gentry at Shuri and Naha, but general conditions of economic hardship in
mid-century placed a growing burden on everyone. The necessity to
negotiate with foreigners on one hand and with Satsuma on the other
brought into play all the administrative talent Shuri could muster. Taxes
were laid on to the limit, for there had been no opportunity to accumulate a
margin of surplus in foodstuffs or trading goods upon which the
government could draw in meeting crisis needs. In 1855 there had been
riots on Tarama Island, and officers had to be dispatched to Kume Island to
curb unrest. Typhoons, epidemic sickness, and a long drought brought the
people of Miyako to a state of chronic starvation. Here conditions were
desperate. Material resources were exhausted; the normal formalities and
organization of social life began to distintegrate. The formal ties of
marriage, family, and village life and of administrative order began to mean
little in the presence of elemental privation. There was rebellious unrest.
Officers were sent into the Miyako countryside and nearby islands to
investigate and alleviate conditions wherever possible. The criminal laws
were read publicly as a warning to all, but taxes were lightened for families
which had many children.
As if these disasters were not enough, a tribute ship was lost, but the
envoy was rescued and returned to Naha aboard an American whaling ship.
In the midst of political turmoil a serious inflation shook the economy.
Four hundred years had passed since the first known Ryukyu coins were
issued, and the tiny "pigeon-eye" sen manufactured locally during the 17th
and 18 th centuries had acquired a value often per Japanese mon. They were
meaningless in the new era of potential foreign trade. To offset this, a mint
was established at Temposan in Kagoshima to manufacture coins for trading
purposes in Ryukyu. These were known as Ryukyu tsuho ("current treasure
of Ryukyu") and were valued at a hundred Japanese mon each at the time of
minting. This gave the new Ryukyu coin a value of one thousand of the
pigeon-eye sen, which by now had become absurdly small flakes of metal
which could be handled effectively only in strings bearing a hundred or
more.
Within a year the value of the new tsuho dropped fifty percent, but the
coins were welcomed into wide use. In March, 1863, a Price Control
Magistracy was set up, which restored the Ryukyu coin briefly, but again
the value declined. The economy was too disorganized to permit an easy
transition from barter to currency, and the government too inexperienced to
apply its fumbling policies with success.
A blight had fallen upon the leadership resources of Okinawa. The
younger men who had done remarkably well in meeting with the French,
the British, and the Americans before 1845 had been driven from the
government and silenced. Curiosity and readiness to learn Western
languages had meant death and torture, personal abuse and exile.
Hisamitsu's sudden and complete reversal of policy at Kagoshima did not,
bring a revival of interest in foreign affairs at Shuri. While determined
young men of the Satsuma clan—Okubo Toshi-michi, for instance—defied
the Tokugawa edicts and made their way abroad secretly to study the
Western world and its institutions, the elders at Shuri shrank from the
challenge, and their young contemporaries at Shuri and Naha were given
only the dry crumbs of Confucian literary training to prepare them for the
revolution which was stirring Asia. On Okinawa the traditional semiannual
examinations required exercise in the composition of classical poems in the
springtime and of brief formal essays in the autumn. Ryukyu fell far behind,
and the Okinawans were left unprepared for the final challenge to its
existence as a kingdom.

THE LAST ENTHRONEMENT AT SHURI AND

THE MEIJI
RESTORATION IN JAPAN
In 1864 Okinawan envoys went over to Peking to seek investiture for the
young King Sho Tai. Two years later Chinese ambassadors came to confirm
him in his dignities, unaware that they were the last to perform rites which
had continued in an unbroken tradition for five hundred years. In
November, 1866, they returned to China.3
In Japan, three months later (February 13, 1867), Crown Prince
Mutsuhito, fifteen years of age, succeeded his father at Kyoto as Emperor of
Japan. On October 3, representatives of some forty feudal lords met at
Kyoto to consider a memorial which had been submitted to the shogun at
Edo, advising him to relinquish his authority to the young emperor and his
councilors. Komatsu, representing Shimazu of Satsuma, was the first to
signify agreement.
This revolutionary declaration of policy came from a coalition of
feudal lords too powerful for the shogun to defy. His resignation was
submitted to the emperor on October 14. Formal acceptance on December
15 marked the end of Tokugawa military government, which had endured
for 267 years. From January, 1868, the reign-name was changed to Meiji,
meaning "Era of Enlightened Government."
Technically, die Tokugawa clan had surrendered control only of those
territories over which it exercised direct feudal rule. The new imperial
government now had to call on all the other lords individually to surrender
their domainal authority as the Tokugawa family had done. The four most
powerful clans in the country were Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, and Hizen.
Satsuma took the lead; in August, 1869, the Shimazu family yielded control
of Satsuma, Osumi Province, and part of Hyuga to the throne. Within the
next two years 272 daimyo followed Shimazu's example.
 To ease the problems of administrative transition, the imperial
government appointed many of the hereditary lords to be governors in their
old fiefs and allowed them a percentage of the fief revenues as salary. For a
time the old clan officers carried on as officers of the new central
government. Shimazu Hisamitsu (Saburo) was appointed "Governor of
Satsuma and Ryukyu."
In August, 1871, an imperial decree ordered the old feudal divisions
(han) to be replaced by a new system of prefectures (ken), within which
departmental subdivisions were established. Representatives of the central
government would take over many of the important posts within the new
prefectural administrations.
The old domains of the Shimazu family were split up. Hyuga became
a department of Miyazaki Prefecture; Satsuma and Osumi became
departments in the new prefecture of Kagoshima; but the Shimazu were still
powerful, and in Kagoshima Prefecture alone all offices in the
administration were reserved to Satsuma men.
In this division the northern islands of the Ryukyu chain, which had
once been part of the Ryukyu kingdom, but had been controlled directly by
Satsuma after 1609, were now attached to Osumi Department within
Kagoshima Prefecture.
What now to do about Ryukyu? Should the annual tribute exacted
from Shuri by Shimazu be sent up to the imperial government at Tokyo?
Should it be counted as tax due to the new Kagoshima prefectural
government? Should it be shared by Osumi Department, or should it go
exclusively to Satsuma? Should it be included in calculations of prorated
income for the Shimazu family? Above all else, what attitude toward the
Ryukyu kingdom would be adopted by Japan in international affairs?

UNDEFENDED OKINAWA: A FRONTIER

PROBLEM FOR JAPAN
The political crises which led to the restoration of imperial authority and to
Japan's emergence as a world power were brought about in large degree by
threat of foreign aggression and the Tokugawa administration's inability to
meet it satisfactorily. The new government, a coalition of strong anti-
Tokugawa factions and forces, was acutely sensitive to every pressure on
the frontiers. These were vaguely understood and ill-defined in 1853 when
Perry came to press his demands. It will be remembered that when he asked
for treaty right to trade at the port of Matsumae in Ezo (Hokkaido) and at
Naha on Okinawa, he was told that these outposts were too distant to be
considered and that the emperor exercised only limited authority there.
Perry had promptly concluded a separate compact with the Ryukyuan
government. This was a hint that if Japan did not define and assert her claim
in the off-lying islands, they would soon be lost and in the hands of
aggressive foreign powers.
We can better understand what is about to take place in Okinawa if we
draw an imaginary circle about the main islands of Japan, centered at
Tokyo, and note the critical boundary disputes which took place in the
twenty years following Perry's visit. Both the United States and Russia
played a significant part in them.
 To the north Japan had to block Russian encroachment in Sakhalin and
the Kuriles: Russian designs upon the rich, undeveloped island of Ezo had
become unmistakably clear. A treaty in 1855 stipulated territorial division
of the Kuriles, but left the problem of Sakhalin unresolved, and there
Russian and Japanese colonists were in open conflict. Missions to Russia in
1862 and 1866 were inconclusive. In 1870 the Japanese asked a former
Secretary of State of the United States (William Seward) to mediate. He had
recently completed the purchase of Russian Alaska for the United States
and now proposed to Japan that it purchase the island of Sakhalin. This
Tokyo tried to do, but the Russians did not complete the transaction. A final
settlement of the threatening northern boundary dispute was not achieved
until Admiral Enomoto Buyo signed a treaty at St. Petersburg on May 7,
1875. Tokyo secured clear title to the Kuriles in exchange for a release of all
Japanese claims in Sakhalin.
While the boundary quarrel with Russia was in progress at the north,
Japan was drawn into a triangular sovereignty dispute in the Bonin Islands,
which lay only five hundred miles southeast of the Japanese capital. It was
held that these islands had been granted in fief to Ogasawara Sadayori in
the late 16th century, but Japanese interest and settlement had been
intermittent. In June, 1827, Captain Beechey of H.M.S. "Blossom" had
surveyed the archipelago and posted a declaration of possession in the name
of the British crown, an inscribed copper plate nailed to a tree on an
uninhabited island. Two years later a group of settlers sponsored by the
British consul at Honolulu, but under the leadership of an American named
Nathaniel Savoury, appeared in the Bonin Islands. During the next twenty
years a mixed colony of British, American, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Italian,
French, and Spanish adventurers developed, with fluctuating fortune, on
these islands.
Perry surveyed the Bonins, bought land there for a coaling depot, and
declared his intention to claim that they were under the protection of the
United States. Savoury was ordered to run up the American flag. The
British at Hongkong protested, courteously but strongly, and Washington
repudiated Perry's unauthorized action. The Japanese were alarmed; the
shogunate sent officers over to the Bonins in 1864 to reassert Japan's
traditional claims, but the sovereignty question remained in dispute until
1875, when the United States and Great Britain agreed to abandon all
claims.
On the western segment of Japan's frontiers the government was
plunged into a bitter dispute with Korea. For five centuries the Korean court
had paid tribute to Peking, as the Okinawans did, and upon special
occasions had sent envoys and gifts to the court of Japan. The small island
of Tsushima, lying in the straits between the two countries, served as the
point of transshipment for trade and the gateway for diplomacy. The local
daimyo of Tsushima had enjoyed prosperity out of all proportion to the
natural resources or territorial extent of his domain. Immediately after the
Restoration of 1868 Japan sought to establish clear boundaries in these
waters and to give precise definition to political and economic relations
with Korea. The Koreans would have nothing to do with this new order of
things, accused the Japanese of betraying their Far Eastern heritage, and
charged them with subservience to the Western powers, with which Korea
wanted nothing to do. Korea's refusal to recognize the new government at
Tokyo was couched in offensive terms. This rancorous dispute prompted a
strong faction in Japan to demand war upon Korea, and the crisis was not
resolved until the essential points at issue were covered by the Treaty of
Kangwha, signed in February, 1876.
In the midst of all these crises, north, west, and east, there occurred an
incident far to the south, in Formosa, which brought to world attention the
exposed position of the Ryukyu Islands and the uncertain status of the
Okinawan kingdom.

THE FORMOSA INCIDENT: JAPAN'S

EXCUSE FOR STRONG ACTION4
In December, 1871, one of Shuri's tribute ships was blown off course and
wrecked on the wild coast of southern Formosa. Aborigines of the Botan
tribe fell upon the survivors, murdered fifty-four of them, and plundered the
wreck. Seven men escaped into the jungle and made their way to a nearby
Formosan Chinese border village.
In time news of the affair reached Shuri and was reported to
Kagoshima. From Kagoshima the story went up to Tokyo. Shrewd leaders
there saw in this incident several political advantages, which they were
quick to exploit. It is noteworthy that upon the consequences of this
accident in Formosa Japan erected and defended all subsequent claims to
full sovereignty in the Ryukyu Islands, but that from the moment Shuri's
report and petition for help reached Kagoshima, the Okinawans themselves
had virtually nothing whatever to do with the affair.
In September, 1872, the Japanese minister at Peking asked China to
punish the aborigines on Formosa. China disclaimed all responsibility for
law and order on the Formosan east coast or in mountainous regions, which
constitute two-thirds of the island.
In choosing to make a point of this, Tokyo had skillfully adopted an
issue in which the Western maritime powers were deeply interested, but
peculiarly frustrated. The wild, unmarked coasts of Formosa and the
undisciplined inhabitants had become a major threat to Western shipping in
Far Eastern waters. Loss of life and cargo increased each year. Peking was
unable to police the island and was indifferent to the problem. Chinese
government officials were sometimes accessories to the crimes committed
in Formosan waters. (For instance, local Chinese officers had ordered the
cold-blooded execution of 187 castaways on one occasion in 1842.)
Western governments would look with favor on any action designed to
improve conditions in Formosa—or so the Japanese believed.
At this point they engaged the services of an American who had an
unmatched knowledge of Formosa, of the Chinese officials there, and of the
attitudes and personalities of foreign representatives in China. This was
General Charles W. LeGendre. He had been for some years American
consul at Amoy, with Formosa under his consular jurisdiction. After years
of fruitless effort to persuade either the Chinese or the American
governments to take disciplinary action on the island, he had set out for
home. As he passed through Tokyo he was asked to confer with the
Japanese government on the Formosa problem. He forthwith resigned his
consular commission in the U. S. foreign service, dating his resignation at
Tokyo, December 19, 1872.
The first exchange of official views at Peking included references to
the Okinawan victims of the incident as "subjects of Japan," whose interests
the Japanese were entitled to defend. Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs
Soejima Taneomi went to Peking in early 1873 to negotiate on this and
other outstanding Sino-Japanese problems, thus raising the question to the
highest levels of diplomatic reference. He saw the confusion of China's
vacillating government and observed Peking's efforts to win foreign aid in
checking Japan's development as a neighboring modern state.
Soejima returned to Tokyo convinced that the time was ripe for a
military expedition into Korea, for China was too weak to offer important
opposition, and an overseas venture of this sort would serve as a safety
valve for discontent among the samurai within Japan.
The Japanese Council of State was split on the Korean issue; Soejima
sided with Saigo Takamori and other military men who wanted to bring
Korea to terms satisfactory to Japan and so consolidate Japan's position vis-
à-vis Russia and China on the peninsula. This "war party" was opposed by
the leading statesman Iwakura Tomomi, who had just returned from a tour
of America and Europe convinced that Japan's first need was order within
her domestic administration and strength in her economy. Moreover, he
feared that the Western powers might be drawn into a Korean conflict, to
Japan's disadvantage.
A bitter debate was held in the emperor's presence on October 14,
1873. A political crisis of the gravest import had developed. When the
decision went against the advocates of war in Korea, they resigned from the
State Council. Something had to be done now to concentrate and divert the
pent-up emotions of dissatisfied samurai who looked to Saigo for
leadership.
 The unsatisfied claims upon China for redress in the Formosa incident
served the purpose. A decision was taken to send an expeditionary force to
Formosa to punish the aborigines for the murder of Japan's Okinawan
"subjects."
It is significant that the diplomatic and military questions in this were
entrusted to two former samurai of Satsuma. Saigo Takamori's brother,
General Saigo Tsugumichi, was given direction of the military campaign,
and political management of the affair was entrusted to Okubo Toshimichi.
The Okinawans were not consulted. By tradition and training these Satsuma
men expected unquestioning acquiescence at Shuri in any program
involving them which Satsuma men might choose to dictate.
The Japanese soon discovered that European diplomats at Peking and
at Tokyo were not pleased by Soejima's successes at Peking, nor happy to
see the rapid increase in Japan's importance as an emergent power in Far
Eastern affairs. Settlement of the Formosa question and recognition of
claims to sovereignty in the Ryukyus now became an affair of honor with
the Japanese.
In early 1874 the Japanese government engaged three Americans to
assist in carrying through the proposed Formosa expedition. The first,
General LeGendre, was granted the temporary personal rank of a minister in
Japan's diplomatic service. Lieutenant James R. Wasson, lately of the U. S.
Army Corps of Engineers, was engaged and was given colonel's rank in the
Japanese Army. Lieutenant Commander Douglas Cassel of the United
States Navy was asked to join the organization with a commodore's rank in
Japan's new navy. This he did upon the recommendation of John Bingham,
American Minister at Tokyo. The U.S. Navy at Washington released Cassel
to inactive duty status, sent out hydrographie charts of Formosan waters,
and provided other data. A British and an American ship were engaged for
transport services.
Suddenly the Chinese at Peking changed their minds. They now
claimed full sovereignty throughout Formosa and claimed the Ryukyu
Islands as well. There is evidence that they were encouraged in this bold
right-about-face by the British minister at the Chinese court. The Russian
chargé d'affaires at Tokyo warned all Russians to abstain from participation,
for a diplomatic storm was brewing; faced with this new turn of affairs the
American minister (Bingham) reversed himself, withdrew his approval, and
ordered Americans and American ships to withdraw from the proposed
expedition.
The details of the Formosa expedition are not properly part of a
history of the Ryukyu Islands and can be summarized.
Foreign pressure upon the Japanese government was great, and at one
point Tokyo ordered the expeditionary forces to wait at Nagasaki until the
problem was clarified and all the dangers of foreign intervention were
assessed.
General Saigo, however, refused to accept such orders of the civil
government. He assumed full responsibility for his actions and ordered the
Japanese ships to sail. This was perhaps the first instance in modern times
in which the Japanese military high command openly defied the orders of
the civil administration. Since Japan won her point in this affair with China,
Saigo was deemed successful and was therefore forgiven, but he had set a
disastrous precedent for the commanding generals who followed him.
 The Chinese put up no serious resistance in the field. General Saigo's
forces landed on South Formosa, chastised the aborigines of the Botan tribe
to his satisfaction, and settled down to await the outcome of negotiations
between the Chinese and Japanese governments. The Chinese
commissioner on Formosa (Pan Wi) was represented to have full powers to
arrange a settlement with General Saigo, and in conferences on June 24 and
25 the two men reached an agreement. When the terms became known at
Peking, the Chinese government repudiated them and demanded that all
Japanese forces should be withdrawn from Formosa before a new
settlement could be negotiated. This reversal and rebuff angered the Tokyo
government and inflamed public opinion; a declaration of war against China
seemed imminent. Okubo hastened to Peking. September and October were
spent in rancorous debate, during which the foreign diplomats brought all
the pressure they could to bear upon Okubo. He held to his point, and at
last, on October 31, 1874, a brief, formal document was signed and sealed
at Peking to close the incident. By its terms China formally recognized the
propriety of Japan's action, promised to pay for the roads, bridges, and
buildings Japan had constructed on Formosa, and specified that consolation
money would be paid over to the Okinawan survivors of the 1871 massacre
and to the families of those who had lost their lives.5
The Japanese were not confident that China would fulfill its promises
in this; Thomas Wade, Britain's minister at Peking, was called upon to
provide a personal guaranty, in the form of a contract appended to the
formal agreement.
In this agreement the Okinawans were referred to four times, but only
as " subjects of Japan." Tokyo had succeeded in winning China's formal
recognition of paramount Japanese interest in the Ryukyus and to this Great
Britain's representative had set his signature.
Japan had now to persuade the king and government at Shuri to accept
all the consequences of this new relationship, arranged and proclaimed by
Tokyo without Okinawan consent.

TOKYO PROCLAIMS PARAMOUNT

RESPONSIBILITY FOR
THE RYUKYU KINGDOM
Okinawan leaders were told bluntly what they were expected to do. The
severity of Japan's attitude in the period 1872-79—from the time the
"Formosa incident" was adopted as an issue until the king's forced
abdication—may be understood against the background of much larger
events in Japan's national life. The need to close the southern frontier was
more clearly evident than ever before. The Ryukyu kingdom was too weak
to stand alone. China's weakness and the meddling interference by foreign
diplomats at Peking and Tokyo made it appear that if Japan did not assert
outright control in the Ryukyus, one of the European powers might
sometime take them, under cover of a treaty bargain or a reparations claim
made upon China.
The proud Japanese statesmen were determined not to yield positions
once taken in international diplomacy. It was a matter of national honor,
affecting the prestige of the emperor and his principal ministers.
For the prominent men of Satsuma who were concerned with the
Ryukyu problem it was intolerable that the insignificant Okinawans
continued to embarrass Tokyo from time to time while the imperial
government was endeavoring to win recognition of its claim to the Southern
Islands.
The adjustment of administrative relations between Shuri and Tokyo
had been a matter of concern from the moment Shimazu surrendered his
feudal privileges. We must go back a few years to take up the thread of this
story. In January, 1872, two prominent Japanese went down to Shuri to open
discussions. The chief of the mission was Nara-hara Kogoro, hanshi or
chief retainer managing affairs for the former daimyo Shimazu Saburo.
(Narahara is reputed to have been the samurai who had cut down the
Englishman Richardson at Namamugi in 1862, although another man of
less importance had been executed in his place.) Narahara's associate was
Ijichi Sadaka, member of the family traditionally charged with the
management of Shimazu's interests on Okinawa.
The two Japanese met with the Council of State at Shuri to discuss the
servicing of debts, the payment of principal on obligations to the Shimazu
family, and the disposition of the tribute hitherto sent to Kagoshima. It was
agreed that Shimazu would cancel the obligation (approximately fifty
thousand yen) if Shuri would use an equivalent sum for the relief of
destitute families among the Shuri gentry. This was a move certain to
generate a measure of goodwill for Tokyo at Shuri and to win support for
pro-Japanese policies.
A second series of discussions covered the problem of exploitation of
coal deposits known to exist on Yaeyama. Japan was determined to
industrialize as rapidly as possible; every corner of the empire was to be
explored in search of minerals. While the negotiations were in progress at
Shuri, a Japanese ship was surveying Yaeyama waters, using modern
methods, and plans were being made at Tokyo to develop all known coal
resources. The islands of the Oshima group were a third subject for
discussion. Sho Nei had surrendered full control to Satsuma in 1609, but
"residual sovereignty" rested with the Ryukyu kingdom by terms of the
agreement signed at Kagoshima under duress. Japan proposed to annex the
northern islands to Kagoshima Prefecture.
In February, Ijichi conferred with the regent concerning over-all
administrative policy in the new era. This was a most delicate problem, for
at Tokyo there was strong opposition to Satsuma's growing influence in the
Restoration government. It was well known that the Kagoshima prefectural
government was little more than the old han administration continuing in
power under a change of office names and titles. Finance Minister Inoue
Kaoru, of the Yamaguchi clan, was determined that the obligations of the
old Ryukyu kingdom should be transferred from Kagoshima to the central
government. The Okinawans found themselves pawns in a bureaucratic
conflict at Tokyo and drawn into the factional strife then pushing Japan to
the verge of civil war. Shuri was not being asked for advice or consent; it
was being told what to do, never sure which of the contending groups
would prove ultimately triumphant. Memories of the Makishi-Onga affair
haunted them. The impatient Satsuma samurai were pitted here against
hesitant, procrastinating Okinawans. Progress was slow.
In June a customs official and a secretarial staff from Tokyo reached
Naha to take up the problems of economic adjustment. These included the
determination of responsibility for the issue of Okinawan coinage, which
was being minted at Kagoshima. The central government was no longer
wilhng to have a separate coinage within a dependency of the empire nor to
risk a "customs leak" through Kagoshima.
While discussions were in progress, word reached Shuri of the
massacre of the fifty-four shipwrecked Ryukyuans on Formosa. A report
was forwarded through Kagoshima to Tokyo, and the Shuri government
was prompted to petition Tokyo for redress of wrongs and damage suffered.
The most important issue which Narahara and Ijichi had to raise with
the reluctant Okinawans touched on the relations of the Okinawan king to
the Japanese emperor. The imperial government "advised" King Sho Tai to
pay his respects to the emperor at Tokyo. The king's presence at the capital
would provide opportunities to review the whole range of Ryukyuan-
Japanese problems. Obviously, too, this would become a public
demonstration of Sho Tai's subordination to Mutsu-hito.
The Okinawan king declined to accept the advice. Instead, he sent
word to Tokyo that he was ill. His uncle Prince Ie, and the foremost
minister of state, Ginowan Uekata, made the journey on his behalf, bearing
gifts of the finest products of the Ryukyu Islands. The ambassadors were
received with many courtesies by the Japanese Foreign Office, and we have
descriptions of them "with Ainu Chiefs and other foreign envoys" attending
the opening of the first railway in Japan.
On October 14, 1872, the foreign minister summoned the Okinawans
to his presence. Without forewarning he read to them a brief imperial
decree: "We have here succeeded to the Imperial Throne of a line unbroken
for ages eternal, and now reign over all the land. Ryukyu, situated to the
south, has the same race, habits and language, and has always been loyal to
Satsuma. We appreciate this loyalty, here raise you to the peerage and
appoint you King of Ryukyu Han. You, Sho Tai, take responsibility in the
administration of the han, and assist us eternally."6
Prince Ie was taken by surprise. He could do nothing but accept the
emperor's decree with a formal expression of thanks.
To cover the bluntness of this declaration of control over Ryukyu, the
imperial court ordered a residence to be established in Tokyo for the King
of Ryukyu Han, provided him a grant of thirty thousand yen, and sent a
variety of presents to Shuri. Sho Tai found himself in much the same
position as the daimyo who had surrendered their han after 1868 and had
been confirmed as "governors" in their former feudal domains. Ryukyu was
no longer to consider itself an autonomous state (koku) but a dependent
feudal territory (han) holding authority from the emperor. Shuri was
directed to hand over to the Foreign Office all treaty correspondence with
other states and the original copies of compacts made with the United
States, Holland, and France. Henceforth Shuri's foreign relations would be
managed by Tokyo.
In November, Tokyo formally notified foreign governments that Japan
had assumed responsibility for the Ryukyu kingdom. The United States
minister (DeLong) immediately reminded Japan that Shuri had treaties with
foreign powers, and that such unilateral action by Tokyo might raise
difficult questions. He referred the problem to Washington and, while
waiting for instructions, began to collect all the information he could find
which might bear upon the status and history of the Ryukyu kingdom.
The Japanese Foreign Office meanwhile assured the United States and
other interested powers that Tokyo would assume full responsibility for all
obligations and rights affected by the treaties in question. This satisfied
everyone concerned but the Okinawans. Washington issued instructions to
DeLong on December 18, 1872, to accept the Japanese position.
Prince Ie's mission had been essentially of a diplomatic character. A
second mission of some thirty members was now sent to Tokyo under the
leadership of Yonabaru Oyakata to work out the practical details of this
changed relationship. It was agreed that the old rice tax would be canceled,
together with the tax laid on in lieu of sugar shipments to Satsuma. The
tribute traditionally sent up to Satsuma would hereafter go to Tokyo in the
form of the money equivalent for 8,500 koku of rice, based on average
Osaka Rice Exchange prices in the autumn months. This was in effect a
considerable tax relief for Okinawa.
On March 3, 1873, the envoys returned to Shuri. Three weeks later a
memorial was issued in the king's name which acknowledged the emperor's
gifts, the new title Han-O, and the court rank of First Class. The king
pointedly though politely indicated that these attentions had come upon him
as a complete surprise.
Japan, at this time seething with unrest, was moving toward civil war,
but was fearful of foreign intervention and the threat of war with China. The
samurai, pensioned off and forbidden to wear swords, were frustrated,
dissatisfied with the government, and irritated by the need to make a living
in open competition with common people. Japanese prisons were
overcrowded with political offenders; the government was preoccupied with
the Korean crisis, rebellions in Hizen and Saga, and assassination plots
directed against powerful ministers of state.
By contrast the Ryukyus had become a backwater of inactivity in the
years 1873 and 1874. A festival was held throughout the islands to celebrate
the fact that in all the prisons of Ryukyu not one prisoner was to be found.
Reporting on this, certain Tokyo journalists jeered at the Okinawans, saying
that they lacked spirit. It did not occur to them that the government at Shuri
may have taken this means to show that it was making no effort whatever to
prosecute Okinawans who refused to obey new regulations and orders
imposed upon Ryukyu by the Japanese. Many of Tokyo's requests,
instructions, and demands went unheeded.
Nevertheless, there were signs of change. The introduction of the solar
calendar of Western origin was of prime significance. From time
immemorial calendar-making had been a matter of state concern in China,
involving the emperor's supreme position as "Mediator between Heaven and
Earth" and "Regulator of the Seasons." To adopt the Chinese calendar and
the ceremonies associated with it had been taken to be evidence that a
barbarian people were becoming assimilated to Chinese culture. It came as
a disagreeable shock to the Peking bureaucrats to discover that the Ryukyu
kingdom had made this concession to Japan and to the West.
A doctor trained in modern (i.e., Western) medical techniques was
appointed to Jocal government service on Okinawa, and the "Okinawan
Dispensary" came into being. Portraits of the Japanese emperor and
empress were sent down to Shuri as an official gift, a delicate reminder of
the changed status of the king. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
opened an office at Naha to replace the old Satsuma agency.

SHURI CHALLENGES AND ANGERS THE

TOKYO GOVERNMENT
Making the issue of sovereignty in the Ryukyus a point of departure, Japan's
leaders took the nation to the brink of war with China. The quarrel in
Formosa had been intended as a divertissement for the restless samurai at
home, but the foreign powers were ranging themselves in support of
Peking.
In an atmosphere of grave crisis Home Minister Okubo Toshimichi
went to the Chinese capital in September, 1874, to bring about a settlement.
To his astonishment and chagrin (and to the delight of the Chinese), he
discovered that Okinawan tribute ships had proceeded as usual from Naha
to China, and that envoys from Shuri had performed the customary formal
acts of submission to the Chinese throne. A mission reached Peking while
he was there.7
The presence of Okinawan tribute envoys at the Chinese capital
obviously challenged the claims upon which Japan based its policies in the
Sino-Japanese controversy. The ink was scarcely dry upon the agreement
which Okubo had negotiated in settlement of the Formosa incident. Chinese
signatures had been secured for the document, and thereby China had, in
effect reliquished claims to the Ryukyus. Okubo was angered. Japan was
"losing face." He demanded that the envoys be brought before him. This
was refused.
Okubo left Peking late in November. On December 15 the Peking
Court Gazette published notice of the arrival of the Okinawan tribute
mission as if it were a routine matter. Japan's chargé d'affaires (Tei Einei)
demanded to see the envoys from Shuri, but, as in the earlier instance, this
was not arranged.
 In January, 1875, Okubo made a report to the Japanese emperor which
reviewed the Formosa incident and formally brought to an end the whole
affair. This contained only one passing reference to the Ryukyus, in a
statement that "the position of a subject han [Ryukyu] is for the first time
cleared up."
In an affair touching directly upon the imperial Japanese court it was
intolerable to Okubo that his official statements to the throne were being
contradicted by the actions of the Shuri court and by the presence of its
envoys at Peking. He now began to bring pressure to bear on Okinawa, and
Shuri began to pay heavily for its indiscretions.
The Okinawans were directed to break off all communications with
China forthwith and to close the Ryukyu trading depot on the China coast.
The regent and the councilors of state would thenceforth be appointed by
Tokyo on the recommendation of the Okinawan government. Official ranks
in the Ryukyu kingdom were to be reclassified and reduced in relative
importance; the king would continue to hold the rare first-class court rank at
Tokyo, but the regent's honors would correspond only to the fourth rank in
the Japanese hierarchy, and the councilors of state (members of the
Sanshikan) would hold rank equated only with the sixth rank. This was a
blow which damaged the prestige of Okinawan officers at Tokyo who
attempted to work with the Japanese; it affected their power to negotiate
and restricted official and social intercourse, limiting it to lower ranks in the
Japanese bureaucracy.
The gentry at Shuri resented deeply this Japanese intrusion upon
Okinawan affairs. Orders to break off relations with China precipitated a
crisis. Prince Ie and Gino wan Oyakata were held responsible for having
accepted the surprising imperial message of 1872 and were subjected to
abuse when the consequences began to be apparent. Many Okinawan
leaders advocated a formal appeal to China. Such a gesture in 1872 might
have had some effect; in 1875 it was too late: China had signed away her
rights, if any, as the suzerain state.
Tokyo summoned a mission from Okinawa to hear a formal statement
closing the Formosan affair and to receive the indemnity paid by China
under terms of the Peking agreement. The envoys could anticipate a
reprimand for allowing tribute ships and envoys to proceed to China after
1872.
The mission, numbering some fifty persons led by three officers of
state (Ikegusuku Oyakata, Yonabaru Oyakata, and Kochi Pechin), left Naha
on February 16 and took up residence at the Ryukyu mansion in Tokyo on
March 18. Ten days later they were received in audience by the emperor, to
whom they presented the customary tribute gifts.8
For political reasons of its own, the Japanese press publicized the
presence of these curiously dressed Okinawans in Tokyo. The authoritarian
government had recently instituted harshly repressive press laws in an effort
to control the restive samurai and to restrain political action directed against
itself. Newspapers and journals at the capital found in the Ryukyu problem
a new issue with which to harass and embarrass the administration. They
called into question the government's right to reprimand the Okinawans and
asked the government to produce a treaty or formal agreement by which
Shuri was bound to accept Tokyo's demands. The Hochi Shimbun advised
Japan to abandon the Ryukyus entirely.
 While smarting under such journalistic attacks, Okubo summoned the
envoys on March 31 to give them some indication of the demands which
Japan was about to make upon the Ryukyu kingdom. He urged them to
recognize that swift change had overtaken the international situation in the
Far East and that it was necessary to adapt ancient institutions to meet
modern crises. He pointed out that the internal administration of the Ryukyu
han must be brought into conformity with the administration of the new ken
or prefectures of Japan proper. He outlined five requirements:

1. The King of Ryukyu should visit Tokyo to give thanks to the

emperor for Japan's effort to protect the interests of Ryukyuans cast away
on Formosa.
2. Shuri should abandon the use of Chinese reign-names and should
substitute the Meiji era-name throughout the islands. Furthermore, Ryukyu
should adopt all Japanese national official festivals according to notification
from Tokyo. This would mean island-wide celebration of the emperor's
birthday, observance of the traditionally accepted Accession Day of the first
emperor, Jimmu, and adoption of the New Year celebration in conformity
with Western practices.
3. Shuri should adopt the criminal law codes of Japan developed in the
Justice Ministry at Tokyo, and should send three officials to Tokyo for
instruction.
4. The administrative organization at Shuri must be revised, and to this
end the Home Ministry would send down experts to develop a liaison with
Tokyo.
 5. Ten youths should be selected by Shuri for education at Tokyo in
order that they might come to understand the trend of the times in new
Japan.

Okubo dwelt at length on the outcome of the Formosan affair and

introduced the subject of the indemnity paid by China, assuring the envoys
that relief rice would be paid over to the shipwreck victims and their
families. To provide safer inter-island communications, he promised that a
steamship would be given to the Ryukyuan government. In order to protect
the people, a Japanese garrison force would henceforth be stationed in the
Ryukyu Islands.
Okubo had made a skillful approach to a difficult subject. The five
specific requirements presented no insuperable demands. The king's visit to
Tokyo would be carried out with courteous ceremony, but it would
demonstrate publicly the true state of affairs. A change in reign-name usage
and the adoption of Japanese and Western holidays might be resented by the
gentry in Okinawa, but it would work no hardship on the illiterate masses,
and would be a step toward standardization of practice in Japan proper and
the dependency. New criminal law codes and procedures would have far-
reaching effect, but the significance of this was blunted by the suggestion
that only three men were needed for training at Tokyo. The implication that
the Home Ministry at Tokyo would wait for Shuri to reorganize
administration of its own volition put a mild appearance on the fourth point.
There should be no objection to a program for the education of Okinawan
youths at Tokyo.
 By enlarging upon the prolonged negotiations with China, the risks
that Japan had taken on behalf of Ryukyu, the magnanimity of the gesture
granting relief rice and a steamship, Okubo plainly expected to play upon
the Okinawan's well-developed sense of propriety, obligation, and gratitude.
Even the announcement that a garrison force would be established in the
Ryukyus was represented as a Japanese sacrifice on behalf of the Okinawan
people.
Home Minister Okubo did not treat this conference as a negotiation; it
was a polite but forthright statement of orders from Tokyo to Shuri. He had
no reason to be pleased therefore when the envoys withdrew to their
headquarters for a week of deliberation.
On April 8 they were again received by Okubo, to whom they
expressed appreciation for Japan's interest. Going at once to the heart of the
matter, however, they represented to Okubo that since Ryukyu was a distant
and impoverished kingdom, it had never required a military force to defend
it. Thus far it had relied successfully upon friendly negotiations to maintain
good relations with other people. It had been successful even in dealing
with Western ships and had enjoyed peace for centuries. A military garrison
established now might attract the hostile attention and action of foreign
powers with which Ryukyu had no quarrel As for the gift of a steamship,
Ryukyu had no way in which to maintain or pay for it because of recent
great financial losses. In respect to the relief rice which Japan so generously
offered, the Shuri government had already long since taken care of the
distressed families.
Here Okubo, the proud Satsuma statesman, met with unexpected
firmness and frankness. His keen perception could not miss the implied
comparison of Okinawan success in treating peacefully with the Western
powers and Satsuma's spectacularly unsuccessful clash with the British in
1862. There was a touch of irony in the reference to Shuri's
impoverishment, for it had been Japan's action which cut off the normal
trade with China. Furthermore, under the well-known terms of the
settlement with China, Tokyo was under moral obligation to pay over to the
Okinawans a major share of the Chinese indemnity, the equivalent of
500,000 yen (approximately $550,000 in 1874).
Okubo once again reviewed the arguments, stressing Japan's
magnanimity, and ended sharply that a refusal to accept imperial gifts was
construed to be a grave affront. Nothing daunted, the envoys remained firm;
conferences with the Home Ministry officials on April 18 and 28, and again
on May 2 and 3, brought only a minor compromise; the envoys agreed that
Ryukyu would observe Japan's national holidays and would send law
enforcement officials and students to Tokyo.
While these conversations were in progress at Tokyo—if indeed it can
be called "progress"—four representatives of the Shuri government, led by
Kochi Oyakata (Sho Toku-ko), a member of the Sho family, reached
Foochow on April 8. They had been sent secretly to ask for China's help.
The Chinese legation at Tokyo was at once ordered to raise the question of
Ryukyu's status with the Tokyo government.
Okubo, patience exhausted, adopted a more coercive attitude. In a
meeting on May 8, he curtly stated that there could be no further argument.
A garrison force would be sent to Okinawa, drawn from the Sixth
(Kumamoto) Division; the steamship would be delivered to Naha; and
1,740 koku of rice would be distributed to the families affected by the
shipwreck of 1871.
Yonabaru Oyakata and his colleagues, having in mind the experience
of Prince Ie and of Gino wan Uekata, responded to this with the statement
that they could not accept these conditions without reference to the Shuri
government.

DIRECT INTERVENTION: THE MATSUDA

MISSIONS,1875 AND 1879
Okubo did not wait for Yonabaru to report to Shuri. The Japanese Council
of State published notification that the steamer "Taiyu-maru" was being
given to the Ryukyu government, that 1,620 koku of rice were being
provided for the families of fifty-four men killed by the Formosan
aborigines, and that ten koku of rice were being granted to each of the
twelve survivors, making a grand total of 1,740 koku. An unverifiable
rumor reached the foreign community in Japan that the Okinawan envoys
refused to accept the Chinese indemnity for "patriotic" reasons and were
offered the steam vessel instead.
Thus the Okinawans received only a small fraction of the indemnity
stipulated in the terms of the Chinese agreement. The " Taiyu-maru"
became nominally the property of the Okinawan government but in fact
remained in the hands of the Japanese.
Okubo became increasingly firm. He realized, however, that envoys
sent to Tokyo without full diplomatic powers could legitimately refuse to
commit the Shuri government. This had two disadvantages; long delays
were involved in communicating with Okinawa and (more importantly) the
recognition of envoys with full diplomatic powers, if they should be sent,
implied that Japan was continuing to deal with an autonomous or
independent government.
Okubo changed tactics. On June 12, Matsuda Michiyuki, Chief
Secretary of the Home Ministry, left Tokyo aboard the "Taiyu-maru" with a
suitable number of aides. This second-hand vessel was to be the gift of the
Japanese emperor to the King of Ryukyu, but was in fact destined to be
used principally in the transport of Japanese officials to and from the
Southern Islands.
The Matsuda mission reached Naha on July 10 and proceeded to Shuri
Castle four days later. Matsuda was not received by the king, who was said
to be ill, but by the king's personal representative, Prince Nakijin; by the
regent, Prince Ie; and by members of the Council of State.
Within these few days the Japanese had moved in a more practical
way. A detachment of the Kumamoto Division landed on Okinawa to
establish the Okinawa Garrison, and the Foreign Ministry office at Naha
was replaced by a branch office of the Home Ministry, responsible directly
to Okubo.
With this support Matsuda now revealed a much more comprehensive
program for change in Okinawa and made much more serious demands than
any hitherto presented to Okinawan envoys at Tokyo. The Japanese were
not satisfied with the mere letter of thanks which the Council of State and
regent had sent to Tokyo; the king himself must go up to the imperial court
to express Ryukyu's gratitude for Japan's benevolence. The local hierarchy
of court and government must be revised, with a new distribution of ranks
and offices among the Shuri gentry. The king would become a chokunin
official of the first rank, and he alone would receive direct imperial
appointment. Six officials only would enjoy soniti rank, appointed with the
emperor's approval, and selected from among men of the fourth to the
seventh court rank. Junior officials would be drawn from a classification
equated with Japanese court ranks eight to fifteen. Appropriate salaries
would be paid to these officials out of the local government treasury. This
was a severe downgrading of the importance of leading Okinawans within
their own country, and a rough intrusion upon the king's prerogatives.
After several days Prince Ie and the councilors called upon Matsuda to
ask that the king's visit to Tokyo be postponed until Sho Tai had recovered
his health. Only once before had a king left the country, in 1609, to become
a hostage in Satsuma; under existing circumstances the Okinawans were
most reluctant to agree that the king should go to Tokyo. They proposed
that Prince Nakijin should proceed to Tokyo as the king's personal
representative. Matsuda agreed, on condition that all other demands were
accepted promptly.
Public feeling ran high. This small society concentrated about Shuri
and Naha, rich in local traditions which set it apart from both China and
Japan, was beginning to break up under irresistible pressure. Comfortable
prerogatives were threatened, prerogatives which had been enjoyed for
centuries by the unarmed and unmilitary han-shi or Okinawan samurai and
by the subsidized academic and clerical gentry.
There were riots here and there. Crowds gathered before Matsuda's
headquarters. Shuri's officials were abused and interfered with as they
passed to and from the conferences. Negotiations were concluded with great
difficulty.
Matsuda left for Tokyo in September. Prince Nakijin, six students, and
two officials destined for legal training followed soon after. Whether by
accident or by design, these numbers were fewer than the figure specified
by Okubo in March. On November 22, Prince Nakijin presented to the
emperor the king's letter of appreciation for Japanese action on behalf of
Okinawa.
At Naha and Shuri orderly administration gave way to chaos. Officials
who had accepted the Japanese memorial of 1872 or had negotiated with the
Japanese since that time became objects of public attack and abuse.
Ginowan Oyakata was forced to resign all public office and to withdraw to
the countryside in bitterness and ill-health. On the eve of his death in 1876
he is said to have composed a verse which suggests the tumult of
conflicting advice and criticism which had driven him from the king's
service:

"There are all kinds of insects

Chirping in the fields—
Who can tell one from another?"

Kume Village became a center for anti-Japanese agitation. The

villagers of Chinese descent were imbued with traditional views of China as
the great "Middle Kingdom," to which all others—including Japan— must
look for universal leadership. They continued to believe that China was the
world's most powerful state, for Peking's defeats and humiliation after 1840
were represented in the Chinese view as magnanimous concessions to the
Western barbarians. The Kume Village scholars shared the Korean view that
Japan had betrayed its Asian heritage.
It was not unreasonable, too, that they should fear Chinese displeasure
in consequence of their submission to Japan. The Chinese govern-ment
even then was putting down a great Moslem rebellion in Eastern Turkestan.
Peking might decide to chastise the Ryukyu kingdom as well if it failed in
its tribute obligations.
The Tokyo press published widely a memorandum prepared by Ike-
gusuku Oyakata in which he attempted to explain the Okinawan position in
terms of moral obligation to China. The Okinawans, he said, were prepared
to accept Japanese demands and to cooperate with Tokyo upon certain
conditions. Tokyo should send an envoy to Peking to arrange for a Chinese
ambassador to visit Shuri bearing a memorial releasing the king and his
ministers from their formal obligations to the Chinese emperor and
directing Sho Tai to accept Japan's exclusive jurisdiction. The Japanese had
argued that no woman could serve two husbands at one time and that no
country could serve two overlords. Ikegusuku pointed out that "Japan is our
Father and China our Mother" and that many sovereigns in Europe received
a necessary confirmation of independent sovereignty from the hands of the
pope at Rome, who was himself a temporal sovereign. He cited Poland's
status under conjoint rule of Russia, Austria, and Prussia.9 Neither China
nor Japan could consider Ikegusuku's quixotic solution, but both were
aware that European powers might well begin again to fish in these troubled
waters.
The Japanese representatives who remained at Naha made little
progress in effecting Tokyo's orders after Matsuda's departure. The gentry
tried to return to the old patterns of life. Buffeted by storms of public
opinion, the Shuri officials were driven to serious indiscretions.
In the period 1875-78 the Okinawans were aware that the threat of
civil war was growing within Japan. Emboldened by this, members of
Ikegusuku's mission at Tokyo submitted no less than fourteen petitions to
the Tokyo government, asking for restoration of the old forms of dual
subordination. Concurrently they appealed to the foreign envoys of the
United States, France, the Netherlands, and China to act on their behalf.
The most serious indiscretion was the despatch of Kochi Oyakata and
Rin Sei-ko to China as secret envoys begging for Chinese support vis-à-vis
Japan. Peking blandly announced their arrival at the imperial capital,
describing this as a traditional mission come to offer condolences on the
death of the late Emperor Tung Chih. China had no genuine interest in the
political fortunes or welfare of the little dependency, which meant nothing
to them. Certainly it would take no serious risks on behalf of Okinawa, but
in the present incident Peking thought it saw an opportunity to play off
Japan against the Western powers and —as we shall see—spent ten years in
fruitless effort to involve them in a dispute concerning the Ryukyus.
While the Peking courtiers and bureaucrats debated, the Japanese
acted. A barracks was built to accommodate troops at Naha, where a half-
battalion was deemed enough to dominate the peaceable Okinawans. In
May, 1876, Kinashi Seiichiro was sent from Tokyo to act as resident-in-
charge of the Naha branch of the Home Ministry, with powers to control
travel overseas, direct the police, and control judicial affairs. Travel
regulations applicable in Japan proper were henceforth applicable
throughout the Ryukyu Islands. Anyone who desired to cross to China
would first apply for permission from the Foreign Office at Tokyo. There
applications were referred to the Home Ministry, and from the capital the
matter was referred to the branch at Naha for clearance and approval. When
a decision was made at Naha, notification went back to the Home Ministry
in Tokyo, across to the Foreign Ministry, and back again to the applicant at
Naha. The answer, after all of this, would almost certainly be "no." Such a
cumbrous bureaucratic device was expected effectually to curb Okinawan
interest in travel overseas. Anyone who crossed to China without valid
permits risked arrest and punishment.
As the months passed, some Okinawans found Japanese restrictions
insupportable. A score of residents from Kume Village slipped out of
Okinawa to exile, taking up residence at the old Ryukyu trading depot on
the Fukien coast. Others followed from time to time. The Ryukyu trading
headquarters and office at Kagoshima was destroyed mysteriously by fire.
Few Japanese were interested in the fate of the Ryukyu kingdom, but
the Okinawan problem continued to make an excellent political issue with
which to embarrass the Tokyo government, dominated by the Satsuma-
Choshu oligarchy. An influential political association known as the
Risshisha, led by Itagaki Taisuke, was demanding a broader basis for the
administration and called for the creation of an assembly, diet, or parliament
for Japan. In a memorial to the throne in June, 1877, these political
dissidents charged that the government was failing in its duties and cited the
situation in the Ryukyus as part of the evidence: "Loochoo constitutes a
Japanese hart. Our troops are garrisoned there, the post-office and a branch
of the Naimusho [Home Ministry] have been established there; but both the
King and the people of Loochoo are endeavouring to free themselves from
the authority of Japan. China is endeavouring to do the same with Loo-choo
as Russia has done with Saghalin. If China succeeds, our territory will
gradually decrease, and with it our power."10
Itagaki's group was considered the "liberal" party in Japanese political
life, and by comparative standards they were; here, however, was no
demand that the king and people of Ryukyu should be given freedom to
shape their own political destiny, but rather a complaint that the government
had not taken a bold enough stand vis-à-vis China.
The Ryukyu question lay dormant throughout most of 1877 and 1878.
This was a time of internal crises which challenged the very existence of the
Tokyo government. The Satsuma Rebellion was put down after eight
months of bitter and costly campaigning in Kyushu, where some forty
thousand men had risen against the central government. Okubo Toshimichi,
the Satsuma leader who had formulated and directed policy concerning
Ryukyu in his capacity as Home Minister, was assassinated in May, 1878.
Late in 1878 Tokyo discovered that the Chinese proposed to raise the
question of Ryukyuan sovereignty with General Ulysses S. Grant, former
President of the United States. He was to be in Peking on a world tour in the
early months of 1879, traveling as a private citizen, but with enormous
prestige. It was assumed that anyone who had wielded the powers of the
presidency must continue to have a decisive role as an "elder statesman."
Both Peking and Tokyo were aware that it might be difficult for Grant to
decline a request to act as arbiter in this Sino-Japanese dispute, that the
parties to the dispute would be under heavy pressure of public opinion to
submit to arbitration, and that a public statement by the former President of
the United States would sway international public opinion, to which the
Japanese leaders at the time were peculiarly sensitive.
Tokyo determined to remove the problem from the area of public
discussion by presenting the Chinese (and General Grant) with a fait
accompli; the Ryukyu problem must no longer be a "question."
The subject was debated in the Council of State at Tokyo. Admiral
Enomoto (who had so recently negotiated the northern boundary settlement
with the Russians) recommended formally that the Ryukyu han be
abolished and that Okinawa Ken (Prefecture) be created in its place. It did
not matter what the Okinawans might think of this; the Chinese and General
Grant would be faced with a knottier problem if they called upon Japan to
surrender an integral part of "home territory." And it would be doubly
difficult to intervene if there were no Ryukyu king and quasi-autonomous
government in being to serve as a rallying point for Okinawan discontent.
Enomoto's recommendation was adopted.
On December 28, 1878, the Japanese Council of State abruptly issued
a brief order to the officers of the Ryukyu han who were stationed in Tokyo:
"It is hereby notified that the notification as to the residence in Tokyo of the
representative officers of your han having been countermanded, you are
ordered to return to your han at once."11
The Ministry of Home Affairs was ordered to speed the return of the
Okinawan envoys. Their presence in Tokyo suggested that the Ryukyu
kingdom still enjoyed a quasi-autonomous status. Scarcely ten days later, on
Wednesday, January 8, 1879, the three principal commissioners from Shuri
embarked at Yokohama with their aides and servants. They were to transfer
at Kobe to a special ship ready to speed them to Naha. One Okinawan
commissioner was ordered to remain at the Iidabashi residence-office of the
Ryukyu han in Tokyo. The chief secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs
(Matsuda) left once again for Shuri with secret instructions.12
By this time Ito Hirobumi had replaced Okubo as Minister of Home
Affairs. The management of the Ryukyu difficulty was in the hands of
Japan's most able statesman; nevertheless, there was some public concern
when these government actions became known. In general, the Japanese
press supported any move which would clarify the ambiguous status of the
han within the framework of the empire. A decade had passed since the
Restoration. Elsewhere the boundaries were clearly defined; the 272 former
han had been thoroughly reorganized, and the rebellions in Saga, Hizen,
and Satsuma had been put down. The Ryukyu han alone remained to be
assimilated. There was an underlying uneasiness concerning China. No one
was quite sure how far a challenge to China might be pushed, how far
Peking would yield, nor what strength China might be able to bring into a
military contest with Japan. The Japanese were in no mood to permit the
"backward," poverty-stricken and unarmed Okinawans to jeopardize Japan's
overall policies and prestige.
Chief Secretary Matsuda reached Naha on January 24. His stay was
brief but to the point. The king's ministers were handed a résumé of Japan's
complaints concerning neglect and failure in local administration, and a list
of issues in which Shuri was at conflict with Tokyo. With pointed reference
to Kochi Oyakata's mission to Peking, Matsuda reminded Shuri in writing
that all travel overseas—whether to Tokyo or elsewhere—required advance
notification to the Ministry of Home Affairs and its approval.
This was a final survey of conditions on Okinawa while the
government at Tokyo prepared its orders for the dissolution of the han
government. Matsuda left Naha February 4, reported to Tokyo February 13,
conferred with government leaders, and on March 12 left Yokohama again.
This time he was accompanied by a very large staff of civil aides,
Second Police Superintendent Sonoda Yasutaka, and at least 160 policemen.
Simultaneously, a captain from the General Staff headquarters and a major
commanding half a battalion left Kagoshima. The Japanese mission reached
Naha on March 25. Its arrival at Okinawa spelled doom for the Chuzan
kingdom.
 PART FOUR
OKINAWA-KEN: FRONTIER
PROVINCE
 CHAPTER NINE
THE RYUKYU KINGDOM COMES
TO AN END

1879-1890
CRISIS AT SHURI: THE KING'S
ABDICATION, MARCH 27, 1879
Proceeding with full display of force to Shuri Castle on March 27, Matsuda
handed to Prince Nakijin a communication announcing Tokyo's decision to
abolish the han and end the monarchy. The principal points were four:

"1. The Ryukyu Han is abolished and Okinawa Ken is established.

"2. This action is taken as punishment for failure to obey Tokyo's
orders of May 29, 1875 and May 17, 1876.
"3. Prince Ie and Prince Nakijin will be granted the status of peers in
Japan, as an act of Imperial grace.
"4. The deposed King, Sho Tai, is immediately required to visit
Tokyo."1

Supplementary provisions related to the king's withdrawal from the ancient

castle and established procedures for the transfer of authority and public
business to Japanese officers.
 The castle gates were closed and put under heavy guard. The Kan-kei
Gate alone was used, and all Okinawans who entered or left the castle
grounds were searched until the transfer of important documents was
completed.
Shuri and Naha were swept with anxiety and tense foreboding. As he
delivered the official communication to Prince Nakijin, Chief Secretary
Matsuda caused a public proclamation to be made: "Because the Imperial
Decree issued in Meiji 8th year (1875) has not been complied with, the
Government was compelled to abolish the feudal clan. The former feudal
Lord, his family and kin will be accorded princely treatment, and the
persons of citizens, including samurai, their hereditary stipends, property
and business interests will be dealt with in a manner as close to traditional
customs as is possible. Any acts of maladministration, and exhorbitant taxes
and dues levied during the regime of the former clan government will
probably be righted upon careful consideration. Do not be misled by
irresponsible rumors. All are advised to pursue their respective occupations
with ease of mind."2
On March 3 Tokyo had prepared the way for transfer of administration
by appointing Kinashi Seiichiro of the Home Ministry to the post of Acting
Governor of Okinawa-ken. This was now made known. He decreed that the
new provincial government would operate temporarily in the ministry's
branch office at Nishimura, Naha.
At Tokyo a brief notice bearing the prime minister's signature read
simply: "It is hereby publicly notified that the Loochoo Han has been
abolished and Okinawa ken established in its place."
 A second notice (dated April 8) clarified the status of the northern
islands: "It is hereby notified that the islands Oshima, Kikaigashima,
Tokunoshima, Okiyerabushima and Yoronshima, under the jurisdiction of
the Kagoshima-ken will hereafter be called the Oshima-gori (Oshima
Department) and belong to the Province of Osumi."3 Tokyo expected to
complete all transfer formalities by mid-April.
The king's withdrawal from the palace took place on the evening of
March 30. This was a most poignant and dramatic moment. Great crowds
waited, tense and silent, as Sho Tai and his household passed from the
castle grounds through the Kokugaku-mon (Gate of National Learning) into
exile. This was the symbolic break with the past. For the first time in five
hundred years the palace ceased to be the seat of authority and the symbol
of nationhood.
It was immediately occupied by Japanese troops from the Kuma-moto
Garrison.
An imperial court chamberlain (Tomokoji) arrived aboard the "Meiji-
maru" at Naha, prepared to hand to the deposed king an expression of
imperial appreciation for the king's cooperation and to discuss the protocol
of Sho Tai's impending trip to Japan. Tomokoji was to accompany the royal
suite to Tokyo. The Japanese were surprised and chagrined to learn that the
former king was too ill to make the journey. His heir apparent, aged twelve
years, would go with Tomo-koji to Tokyo to pay his respects and to petition
that his father be permitted to defer the long-awaited courtesy call upon the
emperor.
Tokyo found further delay intolerable. General Grant's visit to China
was impending. It was imperative that the Ryukyu situation be under full
control. The former king's presence on Okinawa contributed an element of
uncertainty which must be removed. Suppose he became the center of an
anti-Japanese demonstration? Or worse, suppose he should be spirited to
China to appear before General Grant as a petitioner for support vis-à-vis
Japan?

On May 18 the "Tokai-maru" reached Naha with the first governor,

Nabeshima Naoakira, and his staff. Also aboard ship were an imperial court
physician and a major attached to the Imperial Household Ministry.
Ignoring Okinawan protests and petitions, Dr. Takashina certified that Sho
Tai was physically fit for the journey to Tokyo. Major Sagara was in a
position to underline the physician's decision.
On May 27 the last King of Ryukyu, now aged thirty-six years, set sail
for exile in Japan, accompanied by a suite of ninety-six courtiers. The sad
and reluctant group docked at Yokohama on June 8 and on the following
day proceeded to Tokyo by train.
 Two days later Sho Tai was presented to the young Emperor Mutsu-
hito. The deposed king was unpopular at the imperial court, his position
made delicate and difficult because he had obeyed the summons to Tokyo
with such manifest reluctance. The strength of the Restoration government
at this time rested in public acceptance of a doctrine of absolute and
unchallengeable imperial authority, and this authority Sho Tai had tried to
evade.
The Okinawans bowed to the inevitable, but not without a last gesture
designed to salve the former king's wounded pride. Presentation at court
was accompanied by a public explanation that Sho Tai had been ill for eight
years because of deep concern for the welfare of the Ryukyu kingdom, and
that he had sent messengers to China to explain Japan's actions and to seek
China's aid and advice. On May 20, the statement alleged, a reply had been
received to the effect that China was too busy with internal affairs to act on
behalf of Shuri, and that the Ryukyu kingdom henceforth must obey Japan's
orders. On the day following this message, the former king had determined
to proceed to Tokyo.
By phrasing the public explanation in these terms, Sho Tai's councilors
implied that the final decision to act had rested with the king, and that he in
turn had acted upon China's advice. The Japanese accepted this last feeble
gesture with which the Okinawan leaders sought to discharge an age-old
sense of moral obligation to China. Okinawa and the Okinawans had
escaped stronger coercive action after 1875 principally because neither
Tokyo nor Shuri had means to gauge China's true capacity to wage war, or
its diplomatic strength or weakness. Tokyo was under some restraint: would
China risk armed conflict on behalf of the Ryukyu kingdom?
 Years were to pass before all threat of war could be removed and the
sovereignty issue brought to an end.

THE RYUKYUS AGAIN BECOME AN

INTERNATIONAL ISSUE:
GENERAL GRANT'S MEDIATION
As the deposed king set sail from Naha on May 27 another ship was in
nearby waters, bearing General Grant from Shanghai to Tientsin, en route to
a series of meetings with the Chinese Viceroy Li Hung-chang and the
regent, Prince Kung. Grant was traveling as a private person, but Viceroy Li
was determined to use him, if possible, to embarrass Japan and to estrange
Washington and Tokyo. As soon as his distinguished guest arrived, Li made
a determined effort to reopen the Ryukyu sovereignty question, ostensibly
on behalf of Sho Tai.
To understand the American position we must go back for a decade to
pick up the thread of the Okinawan story as one of temporary international
significance.
After 1868, Japan endeavored to shift her traditional relations with
China, Korea, and the Ryukyu kingdom to a basis in binding and well-
defined Western legalistic forms. The Chinese did not understand (or chose
to ignore) the significance of the 1874 agreement in which they had
admitted Japan's right to act on Formosa in behalf of Sho Tai's subjects.
Western diplomatists and writers at the time failed to recognize that the
investiture rituals and other ceremonies associated with the tribute system
carried with them an implied moral obligation, strongly felt by the
Okinawans. From this Shuri sought to be released by a formal declaration
by the Chinese court, signifying that the ceremonial relationship had come
to an end. To the unaccustomed Western eye, much of this concern for form
seemed unnecessary if not indeed absurd.
In 1875 the American minister at Tokyo (John A. Bingham) reported
to Washington that the Ryukyu kingdom was appealing to Japan to return to
the traditional but anachronistic state of "dual subordination." In July the
State Department directed Bingham to prepare a review of the status of the
American "Lewchew Compact" negotiated by Perry, whereupon he repeated
Japan's assurances that all treaty obligations would be met by Tokyo.
When Japan refused to let the traditional tribute ships clear from Naha
for Fukien in 1876, the imperial Chinese treasurer at Foochow asked Shuri
for an explanation. The Okinawans undertook to describe their difficult
position to Peking, at the same time appealing to the American, French,
British, and Dutch envoys at Tokyo to intercede for them.
Washington directed Bingham to make no formal representation to the
Japanese government but to hold himself ready to assist in smoothing over
the problem if he were asked to use his good offices. Bingham believed the
Japanese to be in the wrong here, but the Department of State maintained
that so long as the 1854 compact provisions were observed, the United
States could not intrude in this affair. But the dispute continued, and in 1878
the American government for the third time directed its minister at Tokyo to
review and report on it.
The Chinese hopefully pressed efforts to raise the question to a level
of international discussion. Ho Ju-chang, the Chinese minister at Tokyo,
had been instructed to reopen the issue, but the Japanese government
refused flatly to discuss it. At Peking, Prince Kung made no better progress
in broaching the subject to the Japanese envoy, and in exasperation
exclaimed that the minister was no more than a "mere post office," without
information and without instructions.
Li Hung-chang and the Chinese Foreign Office considered four
proposals made to them by Ho Ju-chang in 1878:

1. China might send warships to compel Ryukyu to pay the biennial

tribute.
2. China might form an agreement with Ryukyu whereby Ryukyu
would start a war with Japan, in which China would then support Ryukyu.
3. China might take up the question with Tokyo through diplomatic
channels, with a view to arranging arbitration.
4. China might sell her claims to Ryukyu for a sum of money.4

Li Hung-chang conducted a long correspondence with Ho at Tokyo,

much of which came to the attention of other foreign envoys there— and to
the attention of the Japanese—because of a personal quarrel between the
Chinese minister and his principal assistant at the legation.
Ho advised Peking to consider threatening war if the Japanese did not
withdraw from the Ryukyu Islands. He predicted that if Tokyo were
successful in detaching Ryukyu from the Chinese tributary system, it would
not be long before Korea, too, would be removed from China's orbit and
dominated by Japan. He furthermore thought that the island-bred people of
Ryukyu would provide Tokyo with good conscript material for her growing
navy. He asserted that the United States would not allow Japan to hold
Okinawa because America's Far Eastern shipping had to pass through the
Ryukyu archipelago.
Li, at Peking, agreed that China should fight to assert her claims upon
the Ryukyus, but he knew very well that Peking was in no position to
become involved in a war with Japan unless it were made certain that the
Western powers would come to China's aid. According to Li, General Grant
indicated that he would mediate in the Ryukyu dispute provided China
would alter its laws governing Chinese migration to California.
The Okinawan prince Kochi Oyakata was still in China. The Chinese
discussed the possibility of using him to replace the deposed king, Sho Tai.
Japan's representatives at Tientsin demanded that the Okinawans be sent to
them. This the Chinese refused, and Viceroy Li gave orders that Kochi and
his associates were to be protected and given financial aid.
Viceroy Li hoped to invoke General Grant's interest and sympathetic
support, knowing that he would later meet with the Japanese emperor and
talk with the principal ministers of state at Tokyo. He planned to associate
Grant and the United States with China's claims, by inference if not by
technical fact. Li appears to have misunderstood, in some degree, the
position of a former president and to have attributed to him a greater
influence in political matters than he actually enjoyed.
The viceroy met Grant at Tientsin and there reviewed China's
arguments in the Ryukyu case. Grant promised to give the matter thought
and asked his staff to gather data for consideration. At Peking, Prince Kung,
in charge of foreign affairs, received Grant twice in settings of elaborate and
flattering entertainment. The general was assured that China was interested
neither in the internal problems of Ryukyu nor in the number of countries to
which the Okinawans might desire to send tribute, provided the traditional
investiture ceremonies continued to be observed. Peking wanted to see the
deposed king return to Shuri, the Japanese garrison withdrawn, and a
declaration that Japan abandoned claims of exclusive sovereignty in the
Ryukyu Islands.
Grant was not impressed by Prince Kung's protestation of Chinese
interest in the welfare of the Ryukyuans nor the claim to a right in
continuing tribute payments. As for the military implications, this seasoned
old warrior had formed an opinion that "a well-appointed body of ten
thousand Japanese troops could make their way through the length and
breadth of China, against all odds that could be brought to confront them."
He cautiously promised Prince Kung at Peking that he would inform
himself on the subject in dispute. At Tientsin, Viceroy Li resumed his
efforts to enlist Grant's sympathetic interest in China's claims. Li noted that
the islands were semi-independent and that China had never exercised
sovereignty, although she accepted tribute payments. He observed that the
king and people of the Ryukyus were not Chinese, although a few people of
Chinese descent played an important role in government and education
there. China had no officials stationed in the Ryukyus, levied no taxes, and
in the event of war neither received nor extended aid. Ryukyu had always
benefited through the special trading facilities on the China coast, and the
leading men of the kingdom sent their sons to Peking to study. Li assured
General Grant that the Ryukyuan people preferred to be associated with
China.
From this he turned to a discussion of the strategic importance of the
islands, noting that they lay as a screen off the China coast and in the
international shipping lanes. He predicted that if Japan were allowed to
remain in the Ryukyus, Formosa would some day be taken as well.
The general listened patiently and made no commitments.
On July 3, 1879, Grant reached Tokyo. Here he was strongly
impressed by the vigor and progressive character of Japanese leaders, who
had undertaken revolutionary modernization of an ancient country. He
recognized its internal political weaknesses, however, and feared that it
might suffer disastrously if drawn into war with China, for there was a
strong probability that the Western powers would intervene. An informal
occasion was arranged at Nikko on July 22 during which he could review
the Ryukyu problem with Home Minister Ito Hiro-bumi, War Minister
Saigo Tsugumichi, and the Japanese envoy to the United States, Yoshida
Kiyonari.
While these conversations were in progress the Chinese had formally
requested the United States to exercise its good offices. In a letter dated July
8, the Secretary of State at Washington accepted China's request upon
condition that the Japanese government likewise ask for American
mediation. Coming at the moment of General Grant's conversations, the
Chinese move may have been designed to force the Japanese to make a
similar request, but in view of Tokyo's official position that no question of
sovereignty existed, such a request could not be forthcoming.
The Japanese were prepared to discuss their problems with General
Grant as a friendly private individual, but they refused to permit it to be
raised to the level of official recognition. The former president was fully
aware of this fine distinction, but he foresaw war between China and Japan
if the issue were not settled by negotiation. He therefore chose to address
identical letters to Iwakura Tomomi (Japanese Prime Minister) and to
Prince Kung (Chief of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the
Imperial Council). He wrote in his private capacity as an American citizen
who had been entertained and honored in both countries.
The communication, dated August 18, 1879, recommended (a) that
China withdraw certain offensive correspondence which had been
addressed officially to the Japanese government on October 7, 1878; (b)
that China and Japan each appoint commissioners to appraise the problem
with a view to arranging impartial arbitration; and (c) that no foreign
countries or foreigners be allowed to become parties to the dispute itself, or
to be employed in any way in connection with the affair, except, perhaps, as
interpreters. Japan's friendliness toward China was mentioned. Grant
suggested that China would do well to follow Japan along the road to
modernization and independence of foreign controls.
There was no public official reaction to the letters at Tokyo.
The Chinese continued to explore ways and means through which they
could force Japan to admit the existence of the question. At Washington on
December 1, 1879, President Rutherford Hayes informed Congress that the
American government had indicated willingness to do what it could to
promote a peaceful solution of the Ryukyu dispute. Tokyo continued to
maintain silence, but the Japanese leaders were disturbed. China displayed
remarkable capacity to keep the sovereignty issue alive, and continued to
seek foreign support for Peking's claims. Inspired letters were published in
Europe and the United States offering highly colored versions of the
historical background to an uninformed public. China was represented
abroad as the magnanimous champion of Okinawan interests.
 Tokyo decided at last to explore the possibilities of direct negotiation,
suggested by General Grant, but while doing so continued to act publicly as
if the question were closed. On March 11, 1880, foreign governments were
notified that all claims against the former royal government of the Ryukyu
kingdom must be presented to the Japanese Ministry of Finance not later
than May 30, and that debts which had been contracted after 1843 would be
met with government bonds and money; earlier debts would not be
liquidated. Concurrently, the Japanese minister at Peking (Shishido Tamaki)
was quietly given full powers to work out an agreement with China. The
Chinese in turn led Tokyo to believe that Peking's representative (Prince
Kung) had similar full powers to represent his government in the
discussions.
These commissioners began negotiations on August 15, 1880. In the
course of the debate it was suggested that the archipelago should be
divided, that China should take Miyako and Yaeyama, that Japan should
withdraw to the Amami Islands at the north, and that Kochi Oyakata (Sho
Toku-ko) should be installed as king on Okinawa. The neutrality of
Okinawa would be guaranteed.
Shishido knew that influential Chinese statesmen were becoming
apprehensive of Russia on the northern borders and hoped to improve
relations with Japan by removing the irritating Ryukyu issue. What could
Japan ask as a quid pro quo? Tokyo was eager to secure a modification of
the Treaty of Tientsin, which excluded her from most-favored-nation
treatment in China. After two months of discussion the Chinese on October
21 presented draft proposals which were acceptable to Japan.
 A settlement was agreed upon—or so the Japanese thought—which
would give China undisputed possession of Miyako and Yaeyama, leaving
Japan in dominating control of Okinawa and the islands to the north, and
would grant Japan the trading privileges and concessions she so ardently
desired. Needless to say, the Okinawans were not consulted.
It was agreed to sign the documents on October 31.
A storm broke within the councils of the Chinese government; those
who feared Japan more than they did Russia protested angrily that the
concessions to Tokyo were unnecessarily great. Those advocated signature
who felt that Japan should be played off against Russia, and that Russia
represented a greater threat than Japan. Viceroy Li recommended a
compromise which would concede Japan's control throughout the Ryukyu
Islands, but would withhold the concessions to be made under the revision
of the Tientsin Treaty. This, of course, was simple recognition of the status
quo.
The Peking government repudiated its negotiating representatives in
this as they had repudiated the powers granted to their representatives on
Formosa in 1874. The Japanese minister at Peking sent repeated inquiries to
the Chinese Foreign Office, and at last on November 23 he accused the
Chinese government of bad faith. Delay followed delay. On December 20
an imperial Chinese decree explained that there had been insufficient
preparation on China's part and that Peking would not sign the new
convention.
Shishido was understandably indignant and on January 5, 1881,
notified the Chinese government that he considered the Ryukyu question
permanently closed. He left Peking on January 20, and it never again
became a matter for formal discussion between the two governments.
This did not put an end to the matter, however.
In the next year (1882) a memorial was addressed to the throne at
Peking (by Chang Pei-lun) advising preparation for war with Japan. This
was referred to Viceroy Li for comment: "I entirely agree with the views
expressed by Chang Pei-lun that we must prepare for war with Japan, and
therefore must develop our naval armaments so as to win. . . . Our best case
for causing a rupture with Japan is not over the Korean question, but in
regard to the Loochoo Islands. We have an indisputable right to these
islands, and every foreign Power will have to admit our claim, if we
demand the restoration of our rights over them. . . ."5
Li asked Washington to exercise its good offices in reopening the
Ryukyu issue with Japan, hoping again by this means to associate the
United States with China in bringing pressure upon Japan. The Department
of State was not interested: Li had reversed himself too many times. He was
advised to seek direct negotiations with Tokyo on the basis of the settlement
terms which had been set forth in the abortive convention of 1880. Peking
did not act and nothing was heard of the Ryukyu question for a decade.
The official Peking Gazette continued to publish occasional notices of
the Ryukyus as a "tributary state" until 1890. It was painful to admit
change; for example, after some fishermen had been driven ashore by storm
in Fukien the Gazette solemnly noted (November 3, 1889) that these
Okinawans had been shipwrecked while "sent on an official mission to
Foochow, but had brought no dispatches." After 1891, however, entries
concerning the Ryukyus began to appear in notices of "Foreign Affairs."
 In 1892, for the last time, Viceroy Li attempted to use the Ryukyu
sovereignty issue as a means to embarrass Japan when Peking and Tokyo
were engaged in a rancorous dispute concerning Korea. War came soon
after, and China's defeat in 1895 removed the Ryukyus from consideration
in Sino-Japanese relations for fifty years.

UNDER THE SHADOW OF WAR:

PROBLEMS OF POPULATION,
EDUCATION, AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Japan had denied Okinawa to the Chinese and had closed the southern
frontier. There was some slight gain in political prestige for the government,
for it had outmaneuvered Peking, but this was offset by the heightened
danger of war, and by the unsympathetic reaction generated among Western
diplomats at Tokyo and Peking. Annexation of the Ryukyus brought no
economic advantage to Japan. There were no strong sentimental or
traditional ties to prompt wide Japanese interest in the welfare of the
Okinawan people. On balance the islands were a liability.
Elsewhere in Japan—in all the other prefectures—a feverish "change
everything" spirit prevailed, but the government leaders at Tokyo correctly
assessed the conservatism of the older generation on Okinawa. The interests
of law, order, and garrison security in the Ryukyus came first in the new
prefecture. As long as there were prominent Okinawan exiles living in
China, supported by the Chinese government, Tokyo had to assume that
some danger of strong political reaction continued to exist on Okinawa.
Time alone would diminish the importance of pro-Chinese members among
the older leaders. They must be replaced by a new generation educated to be
obedient and pliant subjects of the emperor.
Thus, while the Tokyo government pushed forward a vigorous
modernizing program elsewhere in Japan, Okinawa drifted in the
backwaters of national policy for fifteen years. Contrasts between Okinawa
and the other prefectures were heightened rather than diminished. More
than forty years would pass before the Okinawans were represented in the
Diet at Tokyo on a basis of technical and legal equality with other Japanese
subjects.
The closing decades of the 19th century were filled with hardship.
A cholera epidemic swept the islands in 1879. Some 11,200 persons
fell ill and of these more than 6,400 died. The Shuri treasury was empty.
Okinawan leadership was paralyzed.
Ota Chofu describes the first tense weeks of the new era, when
Okinawan office holders (of whom his father was one) simply ceased to
perform their duties as clerks and managers in government affairs. The
Japanese police seized a large number of leaders, held them in jail,
subjected them to long persuasive lectures, and threatened them with
physical violence.
The Okinawan gentry were no longer masters in their own house. Key
posts were filled by Japanese from Tokyo. Hundreds of newcomers took
precedence over the old aristocracy, forming a new elite. The old pattern of
town-bred aristocracy at Naha and Shuri versus country-bred peasant was
now changed. Henceforth it was to be a pattern of Okinawans-by-birth
versus Japanese from other prefectures in the empire, the latter enjoying
greater privileges of income and preferential treatment in government and
commerce.
Tokyo's first problem was to make an exact record of the distribution
of human resources. Upon this inventory all other economic or
administrative planning must rest. No one knew precisely how many people
there were in the Ryukyus. The inquiry made by Satsuma's agents in the
early 17th century had formed the basis of all subsequent surveys. In the
confusion which attended the transfer of authority in 1879 many records
had been destroyed and many had been carried off to Tokyo and
Kagoshima.
The first modern Japanese estimates, made in 1875, had placed the
population figure at only 165,930, and of these 117,316 were believed to be
living on Okinawa itself. Again, more than half of this number lived in the
four interrelated towns of Shuri, Naha, Tomari, and Kume.
Each recheck in later years reflected greater accuracy of method in
gathering statistics. A census in 1879 indicated a total population of more
than 310,000 persons registered in 63,506 households. A recount raised the
population figure to 351,374 and the number of households to 74,189. This
census was considered fairly accurate for Naha and Shuri, where there was
a maximum organization for collecting data. Naha then had 6,000
households and 23,600 people, whereas Shuri had fewer but larger
households. As the years passed Naha grew steadily, but Shuri declined in
population and importance, for the Japanese immigrants tended to stay at
Naha, the administrative center, and Okinawans employed by the
government moved down to the new prefectural capital.
 In the old days all the outer islands had served Okinawa, and Okinawa
had served Shuri. The people of Shuri looked down upon other Okinawans
and the Okinawans looked down upon the inhabitants of the outer islands as
rustic and unsophisticated country cousins, who were not permitted to move
to Okinawa. Now this was changed. Japanese newcomers discriminated
equally against natives of Naha and Shuri, Miyako and Yaeyama, Kume and
Kerama. In terms of "colonial treatment" they were all "Okinawans."
On Okinawa itself the old distinctions of nobility and gentry were
soon blurred under the heavy pressure of this Japanese discrimination and
the leveling effects of poverty shared by all classes. At the time of the
transition from kingdom to prefecture there had been some 330,000
subjects. Among these, some 22,500 households (approximately 95,000
persons) represented the gentry enjoying privileges denied by custom to the
common people.
The old patterns of court life were shattered. Soon after the Japanese
garrison occupied the palace grounds, a visiting foreigner found the
principal buildings dilapidated, stripped of furniture and decoration, falling
to ruin at the mercy of winds and rains. Many Shuri mansions were
decaying. Hereditary pensions were reduced or canceled, and income from
private lands in the countryside dwindled. Servants were dismissed.
Members of aristocratic families sought employment in the village offices,
which the Japanese were enlarging or establishing for the first time. Many
drifted from Shuri and Naha to the outer islands to seek employment as
teachers or town clerks. Men who had a small sum in pension funds or
bonds to invest did so at promising village centers, and thus the foundations
were laid for the growth of towns of considerable local importance, many
miles from Shuri. Retainers who had served in Shuri households scattered
to the countryside to become farmers, fishermen, or craftsmen in the village
centers.
At Tokyo the former king and his family were treated with respect due
one of the lesser nobility and granted an income from the imperial
household coffers. Royal grandsons passed into the ranks of the anji or
nobles. There were on Okinawa at this time only six non-royal princely
families (oji-ke), each with an annual stipend ranging from three hundred to
four hundred koku of rice or its equivalent, and from this very limited
income each prince had to maintain a considerable establishment. This they
had been able to do when there were many other perquisites of rank and
office, but after 1879 the commuted stipends to which they were reduced
compelled them to give up the old ways of life at Shuri and to find gainful
employment as individuals. The Japanese government nominated two of the
six princely houses to the peerage, in time granting Prince Nakijin and
Prince Ie the titles and status of Japanese barons. By 1895 only these two
families—numbering about thirty-five members in all—attempted to
maintain the local social position and privileges of princes of the old
regime.
The anji-ke were the households of the descendents of princes and of
the medieval territorial lords. These numbered only thirty-six families in
1879. Each noble had enjoyed a modest hereditary stipend ranging from
forty to eighty koku of rice or its equivalent, paid from the royal treasury,
plus various emoluments and perquisites of offices to which they held
nominal title. These sums did not begin to meet the annual costs of a
household in the new era.
 The government of old Ryukyu had in fact been based in the effective
services of some seventy aristocratic families ranking below the princes and
the nobles, and it was from this stratum of the old hierarchy that the
Japanese drew the administrative officers for the new provincial
government. Shuri government stipends had ranged from forty to eighty
koku of rice. Senior members were classed as sojito-ke and were either
descendents of artji enjoying hereditary status or men from lower ranks
whose services were recognized and rewarded by promotion to the highest
possible grade open to them. If a member of this group were appointed
councilor of state, he was entitled to an income ranging from two hundred
to three hundred koku of rice for the period of service. Junior houses of the
administrative gentry were called wakijito-fee, and this classification
embraced distant descendents of nobles, men whose houses had held and
lost rank as sojito-ke, and men who were just beginning their careers in
government service.
One other class of dependents upon the king's treasury in 1879 were
called shimamochi, who were pensioners rewarded for meritorious services
by small grants which were continued through one or two generations only.
In April, 1879—at the height of Tokyo's exasperation with the
stubborn Okinawans—it was announced at Tokyo that with the exception of
the three favored families—Sho. Ie, and Nakijin—all the Okinawan nobles
and gentry would become commoners, dependent henceforth on their own
resources. The outcry and agitation at Naha and Shuri were enough to force
reconsideration; in December the order was rescinded, a commutation of
stipends and pensions was scheduled, and the budget for 1880 carried a
total appropriation of 189.134 yen, to be paid out semiannually. Grants were
to range from a maximum of two thousand yen to a minimum of two
hundred, and the pensioners were to include Buddhist and Shinto priests,
hitherto subsidized from the Shuri treasury. In all some 380 families were
affected.6
Following precedents established a decade earlier in Japan, the
government soon commuted the semiannual pensions into bonds, using the
1879 rates of exchange between rice and yen at Osaka. This meant that a
small number of men receiving pensions in the higher brackets had some
capital funds to invest in new business ventures. Superficially it looked as if
they were better off than they had been under the old regime, for they had
few responsibilities and virtually no personal expenditures on behalf of
official duties and ceremonies. In fact, however, inexperience, poor
management, and lack of opportunity quickly brought many pensioned
families to the verge of bankruptcy. A craft workshop was established at
Shuri to give them opportunities for work, and by 1885 this was subsidized
by as much as thirteen thousand yen.
This could be only a temporary relief measure. Under pressure of
increasing poverty the members of old aristocratic families began to take a
more liberal view toward residence elsewhere in the islands and toward
intermarriage with families not of their own rank and class in court society.
These were painful changes. The former king's conduct was admirable
throughout. Once the decision to abdicate had been forced upon him, he
accepted the obligations imposed by its terms and honored them faithfully.
In October, 1879, he addressed a message to the former councilors of state
on Okinawa directing them to cooperate with the Japanese from other
prefectures. Prominent Okinawans continued to slip away secretly to China
from time to time and to lend themselves hopefully to the schemes of Li
Hung-chang and hi s associates, but there is no indication that the deposed
king lent his name or the influence of his family to these rash undertakings.
In 1884 he was permitted to visit Okinawa for one hundred days, during
which the prefectural governor treated him with great honor and
consideration. In that year he was created a marquis (ko-shaku) in the new
peerage of Japan, but he continued to be kept under a polite restraint at
Tokyo, maintaining a degree of formality and some of the old court
practices of Shuri within his own household until his death in 1902. His
household finances were well managed, and his descendents have continued
to hold their place among the most prosperous men of Okinawan descent.

THE JAPANESE IN OKINAWA AFTER 1879

The extension of Japanese organization and influence to the old Ryukyu
kingdom set a pattern which was followed later in Formosa and Korea, but
in Okinawa the Japanese enjoyed certain special advantages; the mild and
instinctively friendly nature of the people provided one such advantage, the
community of basic language-forms and tradition another. Officials sent
from Tokyo to fill the principal administrative posts were often men of high
intelligence, well educated, and filled with a sense of responsibility. They
had entered public life at a time of revolutionary change and were eager to
achieve unification within the empire, so lately emerged from feudal
organization. Some, it is true, were arrogant products of the days before the
Restoration, when common people were expected to withdraw from the
path and grovel before lords and governors as they passed, but they were
representatives of a government which was struggling to transform itself
and to be recognized in the Western world on a basis of accepted equality in
law and in social institutions.
As the lower ranks of government and of commercial management on
Okinawa began to be filled, however, the newcomers began to be drawn
from less well-educated classes and from the ranks of unemployed and
restless men who had not fully adjusted to the new order in Japan proper.
For many years Kagoshima men dominated all private and public activities
on Okinawa. A high percentage were men who had failed to find permanent
employment after the abortive Satsuma Rebellion and now drifted into the
police force and lower administrative offices of Okinawa.
The new commercial field seemed promising. Okinawans were
entirely inexperienced in the mercantile and manufacturing world which
was developing so rapidly in Japan. Migrants from Kagoshima and Osaka
assumed a dominant position at Naha, living apart as a group identified as
"resident merchants," who cooperated among themselves to block the
development of competition by natives of Okinawa Prefecture. Ota Chofu,
who had long experience with these "resident merchants," asserts that an
Okinawan who sought to break through the monopolies established at Naha
or Osaka and Kobe was looked upon as "presumptuous" and suffered
discriminatory action and economic retaliation.
Japanese who visited Okinawa on business or in fulfillment of official
duties tended to carry back to other prefectures stories of the bizarre and
unfamiliar things which they had seen. The government asserted that
Okinawa Prefecture was an integral part of the Japanese empire, but to
unsophisticated Japanese eyes the strange ways and speech of the
Okinawans set them apart as rustic, second-class cousins within the
Japanese nation-family.
The easygoing people of the "Land of Propriety" felt that they were
being pushed and hurried into the modern mechanized age. However lofty
the purposes of the Japanese governors, their agents in the lower echelons
of administration were often insensitive and poorly educated policemen
ordered to enforce unwelcome rules and regulations. Their harshness and
the rude arrogance of the "resident merchants" generated ill will and
wounded Okinawan pride. The phrase "looking aside indifferently" summed
up the attitude which the helpless island people adopted when they came
into conflict with Japanese who had the upper hand in commerce and law
enforcement.
A minority group among the old and now powerless elite of Okinawa
recognized the trend of the times and advocated speedy accommodation to
the demands of reorganization. To strengthen this realistic appraisal of the
situation in which they found themselves, a number of influential men
formed an association known as the Kai-ka To, which proved to have a
moderating influence in a small society undergoing forced reorganization.
Okinawans sometimes wryly observed that Okinawa served as a
training ground for administrative talents applied elsewhere in Japan. (For
example, Matsuda Michiyuki became mayor of Tokyo, the empire's most
important city, after he had managed the abdication of the Okinawan king.)
The governorship changed hands no less than eight times in the first thirteen
years of provincial administration.
The first two governors (Nabeshima Naoakira, of Saga, and Uesugi
Shigenori, of Yonezawa) were members of ancient and distinguished feudal
families. Uesugi and his wife won the friendship and admiration of the
Okinawans through their liberal conduct and their encouragement of
students at Naha and in Tokyo. The lords of Yonezawa had been famed as
patrons of scholarship, and long after Uesugi left the governorship of
Okinawa he continued to make substantial gifts toward the support of
Okinawan students in Japan. His tenure of office was cut short, for Tokyo
frowned on the extent and vigor of his reform program at a time when the
sovereignty question was still at issue with China. The fourth governor
(Nishimura Sutezo) was concurrently Director of the Civil Engineering
Bureau in the Home Ministry at Tokyo. Under his guidance harbors and
roads were developed as a foundation for strengthening the total economy
of the islands, and new buildings sprang up to house the administration at
Naha. The sixth governor (retired Major-General Baron Fukuhara Minoru)
devoted himself wholeheartedly to the reconciliation of the Okinawan
people and the Japanese of other prefectures, maintaining to the end of his
life a cordial correspondence with the friends he found at Naha.
The eighth governor (Narahara Kogoro) was appointed in 1892. He
was to hold office at Naha for fifteen momentous years, bringing to an end
the "Do Nothing" era and inaugurating a period of active development, a
new chapter in the history of Okinawan affairs.

TOKYO'S POLICIES: THE "DO NOTHING"

ERA AND THE PUBLIC WELFARE
In 1880 the prefecture was subdivided anew for administrative purposes.
Shuri and Naha were given the status of cities; Okinawa Island continued to
be divided approximately as it had been in the period of the three 14th-
century principalities; and the islands of Iheya, Kume, Miyako, and
Yaeyama became districts, each with its dependent islets. The business of
local government was little changed.
A printing office was established—the first in Okinawa—to facilitate
government business, and by 1881 the governor's staff moved into new
buildings at Naha. A Cabinet order decreed that customary law would be
maintained in civil matters for the time being, but that in criminal affairs the
laws of Japan proper would apply uniformly in Okinawa Prefecture.
Provisions were made to transport convicts from Okinawa to Yaeyama,
where primitive living and working conditions in the countryside made this
a rigorous form of exile.
Miyako and Yaeyama presented peculiarly difficult problems, for there
was less traditional organization there upon which to base a new
administration, and conditions of extreme hardship prevailed. An
investigatìon in late 1881 disclosed a high disease and death rate and a
general condition of social disorder. The local people had not been able to
recover from the long series of disasters which had overtaken them in the
previous century. A continuing feud embittered relations between the
natives of Miyako and the victims of typhoon and famine who had been
removed to Miyako from the nearby island of Irabu.
To meet these special conditions the police superintendents in Miyako
and Yaeyama were charged concurrently with the management of civil
affairs, an arrangement which continued in force until 1893.
By 1891 the administrative organization was well established. Iheya
and Kume islands were brought under the control of Shimajiri district on
Okinawa; distant islets of the Daito group had been explored, declared
Japanese territory, and brought under the administration of Naha City. Local
and district courts were established under the Nagasaki Court of Appeals. In
1893 a system of village assemblies was created to advise on the local
budget and to reflect public opinion on matters of distinctly local interest.
This was the first step on the long road to equal representation in the
national government.
One thousand yen were granted by the imperial household to
inaugurate an Okinawan public health and welfare program in 1880. Such
patronage was intended to emphasize the importance which the government
attached to health problems, but the sum was inconsequential if measured
against the size of the task to be done. Public-health administration was
entrusted to the police, but few policemen in that day understood the most
elementary principles underlying a modern sanitation program.
Nevertheless, prefectural health records show a gradual over-all
improvement from 1879 until 1945.
Fifty-six doctors were granted permits to practice in support of the
program inaugurated in 1880. They had only the most rudimentary
knowledge of medicine, but with their assistance the police launched a
general vaccination campaign. An effort was made to clean up the streets,
alleyways, and residential areas of Naha and Shuri; it was forbidden to keep
swine or dogs within the town limits; public toilets were constructed in the
Tsuji quarters; and the excellent Japanese system of periodic city-wide
house cleaning ultimately came into effect. Regulations were issued to
govern the handling and distribution of foodstuffs and beverages. The
police were ordered to supervise the maintenance of community wells and
springs, and an inspection system was set up for the public bathhouses and
brothels.
In 1884 the primitive practices of the yuta were suppressed; they could
no longer offer to relieve pain and sickness by incantations and spells. A
prefectural hospital was opened in 1885, and a licensing system for
midwives was established, but midwifery training courses were not
instituted until 1890, when a second hospital (Wakasa Byoin) opened its
doors. It became possible about then to institute a standard examination for
all medical practitioners.
The organization of an Okinawan branch of the Red Cross Society
opened the way for appeals for help from overseas in times of emergency,
but taken all in all the public health and welfare measures instituted in the
"Do Nothing" period fell far short of the needs to be met in the prefecture.
Food shortages in 1885 weakened many people; epidemic sickness
followed in 1886. More than 5,000 persons contracted smallpox and 1,500
fell victim to cholera. Approximately 2,500 persons died.

ECONOMIC CHANGE UNDER THE NEW

DISPENSATION
Tokyo's "peace at any price" policy for the new prefecture is most clearly
demonstrated in the failure to bring about significant changes in economic
life until after the Sino-Japanese War. The government did little to improve
the tax basis for the administration and virtually nothing to advance the
development of private enterprise beneficial to the individual Okinawan.
 Okinawa had no potential wealth to exploit, and Tokyo did not have
surplus wealth to invest in a profitless regional economy. Ota Chofu makes
an interesting note on the contrast between Japanese policies toward
Hokkaido, at the north, and Okinawa at that time. Capital funds and
administrative talent were poured into the northern island, where the
scattered Ainu aborigines offered no political problem, and the mines, the
forests, and the fisheries yielded a rich return. The Ryukyus, in contrast, had
no material assets of value, and a large population divided and uncertain in
its political and cultural loyalties.
Little was done to develop overland transportation within the islands
until after the Sino-Japanese War. A road for wheeled vehicles was
constructed across Okinawa in 1885, but little more was accomplished in a
decade thereafter. Government and people alike continued to depend upon
coastwise transport by small craft and upon the unimproved storage and
transfer facilities at seaside villages and anchorages.
Okinawa's economic life henceforth depended upon shipping services
between Naha Harbor and the ports of Japan proper. The approach to Naha
anchorage was narrow, choked with silt, and obstructed by off-lying reefs.
Not more than fifty ocean-going vessels entered and left the port annually at
the time the kingdom came to an end. Clearly Naha was inadequate for use
as a naval base in time of war; hence the government at Tokyo was reluctant
to invest much in waterfront improvements. Adequate marine surveys of the
archipelago were not complete until 1888, and the establishment of a
regular meteorological reporting service was delayed until 1890.
The Okinawans were at the mercy of Japanese shipping interests. At
the time of the Formosa expedition (1874) the Japanese government had
given thirteen ships to Iwasaki Yataro, and with these he had developed the
powerful Mitsubishi Company, which held a virtual monopoly on Japan's
international shipping.
At the time of the king's abdication the Shuri government held
nominal title to one steam vessel, the "Taiyu-maru," which had been the
emperor's "gift" to the king, paid for by Chinese indemnity funds. Soon
after the prefecture was established, Tokyo directed that this vessel be
handed over to the Mitsubishi Company to operate between Osaka and
Naha, via the anchorage at Naze in Amami Oshima, but soon thereafter
(1882) Mitsubishi was ordered to transfer the "Taiyu-maru" to a new sea-
transport company which had been founded by an enterprising Kagoshima
resident.
The Okinawans themselves did not reenter shipping and gain a small
share in the most important economic link with Japan and the outside world
until 1887, when Marquis Sho's household founded a shipping line, which
continued in operation for about twenty-five years.
Capital investors at Kagoshima, Osaka, Kobe, and Tokyo were not
interested in Okinawa; the rapidly expanding economy of Japan proper
offered many attractions, the new prefecture offered none. The laggard
development of essential community services, poverty of resources and of
markets, and underlying political uncertainty all repelled private Japanese
investment.
There was virtually no local capital available at Naha. It has been
estimated that no more than two or three Okinawans held property valued at
more than twenty thousand yen in 1880. Those who possessed capital assets
valued at two thousand yen were considered wealthy. Private lands held in
the rural areas formed only a small percentage of the total area, for the ratio
of public land to private holdings was approximately 76 to 24. Only four or
five men owned as much as 12.5 acres (five cho), and a man who could
command as much as one hundred bags of land-rent rice per year was
considered an important landlord.7 There had been no accumulation of
private capital under the old regime, hence there was litde to sustain
economic life during the crisis of change.
Villagers who had from time immemorial farmed under a variety of
communal land holding arrangements continued to do so throughout the
"Do Nothing" era, but with ever-increasing hardship and difficulty. Hitherto
they had bartered foodstuffs for handicrafts, objects produced in Naha and
Shuri, Tomari, and Kume. Now the economy of the townsmen was shifting
to a money basis, standards of urban life were slowly rising, and cheap
goods of Japanese manufacture were entering the islands. The movement of
people from Naha and Shuri to the villages, taking with them urban
standards, added to the demands upon the country economy. Farm-dwellers
had to produce foodstuffs and textiles for their own needs and enough in
addition to pay for the new things which they now believed to be
necessities.
Members of the privileged gentry classes—some 95,000 of them—
were most severely hurt in this period of transition. They eked out a living
as traders or craftsmen on the smallest scale, borrowing very small sums as
temporary capital to carry them over in day-to-day operations. Those who
had lived hitherto in modest comfort by Okinawan standards were reduced
to the barest level of subsistence. Every member of the family had to work,
and family heirlooms were sold or bartered.
 The moai system of mutual-aid financing introduced among the
aristocrats by Sai On in 1713 continued to play an important part in
Okinawa until about 1907. Men who were comparatively well-off
contributed twenty or thirty koku of rice to the revolving fund upon which
their less fortunate colleagues could draw.
Gradually the dispossessed aristocrats adjusted themselves, found new
sources of income, and began to enter employment as minor clerks in the
expanding government offices or as employees of Japanese who were
opening new commercial establishments. The women went out to work in
the fields or took the initiative in setting up shopkeeping enterprises or
small roadside market stalls.
The agricultural pattern changed. Restrictions upon the area which
could be planted to sugar cane were lifted; the Japanese became interested
in sugar production and pushed it vigorously, for the profits were great in
the Osaka and Tokyo markets. Much rice-land was quickly converted to
cane field. Within twenty-five years the total sugar output rose from
11,500,000 kin to nearly 47,000,000 kin, but the Okinawans who produced
it enjoyed very little gain in this; they were at the mercy of the sugar
brokers at Kagoshima and Osaka.
 The government continued to collect taxes in kind until 1903—long
after the practice was abandoned in other prefectures. No private sales of
sugar were permitted until the government's assessment had been met
through deliveries to the warehouses. The village, not the individual,
remained the taxed unit, and the government saw to it that quantitative
payments in sugar remained high while monetary credit for it remained low.
An unnatural situation arose wherein energetic and ambitious
individuals who brought in good crops in one part of the island could not
dispose of their surplus products after taxes until all the villages had met the
government's requirements. This made close cooperation among the
villages necessary and indeed compulsory. This and the moai system of
mutual-aid financing were two strong incentives to full participation in
mutual-aid programs of all kinds.
Taxes in kind (sugar and textiles) were delivered to the government by
the village. The government in turn shipped the yield to Osaka, where
officers of the Ministry of Finance supervised its disposal in the public
market. Since sugar was the most important item (from Tokyo's point of
view), the prefectural government encouraged sugar planting. A loan fund
was set up to help the farmer avoid bankruptcy at the hands of the private
moneylenders; the Sugar Commission was created to check upon and
maintain acceptable standards of production.
The sudden expansion of sugar production to satisfy Japanese interests
meant a rapid reduction in the area planted to essential foodstuffs needed on
Okinawa. The farming community lost self-sufficiency even at a minimum
standard of living. Farm villagers as well as town residents became
dependent upon overseas shipping. The entire population was vulnerable to
chance market fluctuations at Osaka, where the price of sugar was
determined. In 1889 there was a short-lived attempt to found and develop a
small textile factory to be operated by a number of the disestablished and
impoverished aristocrats.
The so-called "resident merchants" from other prefectures were
indifferent to the dangerous insecurity of food supply which now developed
in the Ryukyu Islands. Between 1881 and 1903 an Agricultural Experiment
Station sponsored the introduction of new grains, fruits, and vegetables, but
no market existed in the farming villages for surpluses of bananas, papayas,
and citrus fruits, and the farmers themselves preferred to plant sugar, unable
to appreciate the danger of dependence upon a one-crop economy subject to
the vagaries of an overseas market.
Some government officials were troubled by the problem; an effort
was made to promote and control the production of the nutritious but
unpalatable seeds οf the cycad (sotetsu), which Okinawans traditionally
considered "famine food," and when drought and typhoon damage brought
the threat of starvation to many in 1885 and 1886, the government issued
orders requiring licenses for the collection, transport, and sale of the sotetsu
palm and its products. The palm grows wild on hillsides barren of all other
edible growth, and its handsome fronds had begun to be exported in
quantity to Europe by way of Osaka to be used for funeral wreaths. Other
forest-control regulations were instituted to govern operations of any kind
on public and private properties and to promote control of insect pests in the
fields and forests. Much of this effort was merely paper work, a statement
of government wishes rather than a record of achievement in fact.
Nevertheless, agricultural associations began to be formed with a view to
helping the government perfect and extend its controls.
The prefectural government's interests were concentrated on Okinawa,
although sugar plantations were opened on Miyako, Yaeyama, and Kume.
The coal mines of Iriomote on Yaeyama were handed over to the Mitsui
Company in 1885. Sho family interests attempted to develop copper mining
on Okinawa in 1887, but with no substantial result.
Poverty of resources and productive industry was reflected in the slow
development of wholesale and retail trade. Naha had no more than two or
three small retail merchant shops on permanent location in 1879. Most
barter took place in small temporary stalls in the market place or along the
streets. These, by tradition, were usually operated by women.
The newcomers from Japan soon established themselves in virtual
monopoly upon the supply of wholesale goods for the Okinawan market,
and the women of Naha and Shuri became the middlemen or agents
between Japanese importers and the keepers of stalls and small shops
throughout the islands. Kagoshima men led the way in developing modern
retail trading. In general the "resident merchants" dominated all external
trade. Marquis Sho's business managers alone were able to offer some
competition, which they did on a moderate scale by organizing a company
(the Maruichi Shoten) at Osaka through which Okinawan products could be
marketed in other prefectures. Ota Chofu notes that the "resident
merchants" group consisted principally of Kagoshima men who imported
grain and exported sugar and Osaka traders who handled general
merchandise and dry goods, and that long after the Okinawans succeeded in
making a place for themselves in overseas commerce, the Osaka-
Kagoshima division could be noticed in the orientation of Okinawan
economic life.
According to Ota (who was closely associated with Okinawan efforts
to achieve an equality of position in Japan's economic life), it required more
than three years to effect the transition from the old coinage of the Ryukyu
kingdom to a general acceptance and use of standard Japanese yen and sen.
Agents were appointed to appraise the worn coins brought into the market
places to be called in for re-minting. The conservative Okinawans were
reluctant to accept unfamiliar yen and sen, and for a time gave each other
supplementary notes promising to pay in the old bronze coins. This annoyed
the government, which declared such notes null and void and threatened to
punish anyone who attempted to use them.
The first bank established (in 1879) was set up by Kimbara Meizen, of
Shizuoka Prefecture, and was commissioned to act as the national treasury's
agency in Okinawa. When it closed its doors in 1887, its successor agency,
the One Hundred Forty-seventh Bank, of Kagoshima, continued and
expanded a moderate land-reclamation and irrigation program which had
been undertaken by its predecessor.
 A Japanese agent named Kawarada Moriharu had kept port records for
the year 1875 as an investigative measure. At that time imports and exports
were approximately balanced in value. A review of subsequent import-
export figures shows that throughout the "Do Nothing" era imports
exceeded exports in value. There was a great increase in the variety of
consumer goods in demand for the Okinawan market, and an over-all
increase in production figures. This must be taken to reflect a general rise in
living standards throughout Japan; though Okinawa Prefecture shared in
this advance, it lagged far behind other prefectures in the rate of advance.
The Okinawans themselves felt that until about 1907 the islands were used
as a dumping ground for inferior Japanese products which could not be sold
elsewhere. They had also to accept dependence upon an export-crop market
over which they had no control whatsoever.
This was a true "colonial period." The Okinawans took what they
could get and made the best of it, but the lion's share of profit and the power
to make economic policy for the prefecture did not rest with them. They had
no effective representation at the national capital, and few Japanese at
Tokyo felt much interest—economic, political, or humanitarian—in the
welfare of the Okinawans.
Newcomers from other prefectures mistook the extreme poverty of the
Okinawans as evidence of indifference and inferior capacity.

FOREIGNERS IN OKINAWA AFTER PERRY'S

VISIT
Perry's compact cleared the way for an easier foreign intercourse with
Okinawa, but the opening of Japan nearby reduced Naha's importance to the
vanishing point. Ships touched occasionally—some were in search of fresh
supplies, but usually curiosity alone prompted a short visit. H.M.S.
"Dwarf," Captain Bax commanding, put in on September 10, 1871, while
passing through the archipelago from South China to make a survey of
Siberian coasts. The officials were ready now to accept payment for
servicing the ship, and requests for permission to go ashore met with only
the slightest show of hesitation. Officers and men rambled about freely,
impressed by the civility of the people, the cleanliness of the town of Shuri,
and the beauty of the countryside: "The people appeared most polite,
everyone we met on the road bowing profoundly; they were curious to see
us, but were not at all rude like the Chinese are. ..."
Bax noted the cleanliness and parklike character of the old capital and
compared it favorably with Naha, which, he thought, much more closely
resembled a Chinese town in architecture and general untidiness. As they
took leave on the quay September 12 they were presented with a gift of
vegetables, fowls, and a pig, made to them in the king's name. In return for
this and in token of appreciation for Okinawan hospitality, Captain Bax sent
off a letter to the king at Shuri with a gift of "blankets, serge, pictures and
books." Shopkeepers at Naha, however, refused to trade, hiding themselves
whenever an Englishman in search of mementoes approached the
premises.8
In 1883 members of a scientific expedition aboard the British ship
"Marquesa" found the Japanese in full control. As they sat chatting over tea
at a police box near the waterfront, a gaunt Caucasian appeared, a veritable
apparition of a man, dressed in tattered clothes— sombrero, boots, and a
long tail-coat—who described himself as an American, one of two who had
lived for some time on Okinawa. He stayed only briefly with the visiting
scientists, but before he vanished, shuffling away in the alleys of Naha, they
surmised that he was an adventurer with a dubious past in the California
goldfields, an example of the human driftwood which was gathering all
along the coasts of Asia in those days.9
In July, 1873, the German schooner "R.J. Robertson," en route from
Foochow to Adelaide, was driven by storm upon the coral reefs of Miyako,
near the point upon which Captain Broughton's ship the "Providence" had
been wrecked in 1797. A British ship, the "Curlew," aided in the rescue of
the crew. For thirty-four days the men of the "Robertson" lived among the
people of Miyako, who provided what they could of traditional hospitality,
although the island was suffering severe privation in these years. This
generosity and the character of the local Okinawan officials deeply
impressed the stranded seamen. Reports on the incident appeared in the
European press in February, 1874. Germany at this time was actively
seeking territory in the Far East, and found in the incident an excuse to
dispatch a warship, the "Cyclop," to cruise in Okinawan waters in 1876.
Ostensibly it was there to return thanks for Okinawan hospitality. A large
monument was erected at Hirara in the kaiser's name, and honors with token
monetary rewards were distributed to the principal Okinawan officials.
Since Japan had assumed responsibility for foreign affairs in the Ryukyu
kingdom, the awards were made through Tokyo, with Japanese approval,
and with a reward or two to the appropriate Japanese officials, who had had
nothing whatever to do with dispensing Okinawan hospitality.10
 In 1887 an American ventured upon a reconnaissance of Okinawa as a
potential field for Christian missionary activity. Thirty years had elapsed
since Moreton and his family had abandoned the ill-starred British Loo
Choo Naval Mission, but the time was still not ripe. At last, in 1892, the
American Methodist Episcopal Mission at Nagasaki, the American Baptists,
and the Church Missionary Society each sent Japanese evangelists into the
Ryukyus to attempt "gospelizing this ancient, civilized people." They chose
to send Japanese Christians in the belief that they could more readily
approach the Okinawans. The tables were turned indeed; Christianity, so
long and so cruelly forbidden, was now urged upon the people of Naha and
Shuri by Japanese financed by foreign interests. It soon became evident that
the fundamental Japanese attitudes toward the "inferior" Okinawans merely
reinforced Okinawan opposition. The evangelists—aided and encouraged
by occasional visits made by the American missionaries—found that they
could make progress among their fellow Japanese in Okinawa, but the
Okinawans remained unmoved and suspicious.

SUBSTITUTING NEW LOYALTIES FOR OLD

With the National Education Act of 1872 the Tokyo government had
attacked the immense problem of regional loyalties in conflict with central
authority in Japan proper. By the time the Ryukyu kingdom became
Okinawa Prefecture, "obedience to the emperor" had replaced traditional
standards of loyalty to the local clan or daimyo throughout most of the old
feudal territories, but the problem was by no means completely solved. The
Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 had brought the threat of general civil war and
had betrayed weakness within which invited attack from without.
If Okinawa were to be assimilated, the prejudices of the older
generation would have to be overcome, and the loyalties of the younger
generation would have to be shifted from Shuri to Tokyo. Traditional and
sentimental ties with China would have to be dissolved and the old days of
the independent Ryukyu kingdom must be forgotten. Easy-going, casual life
in the Okinawan community must give way to a more vigorous, disciplined
organization; the individual must learn to snap to attention and to believe
that his duty to the Japanese state overrode all other considerations.
The Japanese who addressed themselves to this problem in Okinawa
enjoyed certain advantages. In the first instance, they could draw upon a
decade of practical experience in other prefectures. In the second, they took
up this new task in a community which held scholarship in high regard.
Literacy was synonymous with privilege and authority in the eyes of the
illiterate peasant.
Families were prepared to make any sacrifice in order to provide
education for promising youth, and villages took pride in young men who
aspired to take the literary examinations. Conversely, the Confucian ideal of
the son's obligation to his parents meant that a youth who accepted these
sacrifices on his behalf felt himself to be under heavy moral obligation to
the family and to the community. Teacher and student commanded the
highest respect in the community. In the Ryukyus an opportunity to study—
at least to learn the elements of reading —was part of the birthright of every
youth of the upper classes. Approximately thirty schools existed at the time
of the king's abdication.
 The Education Ministry at Tokyo determined to create a school system
in Okinawa which would provide a corps of young men to be used in
carrying through a general provincial reorganization. Ultimately the system
would be extended into all the islands and would touch every household
having school-age children.
The schools of Okinawa had been closed during the months of crisis
and uncertainty preceding the king's abdication, and were not reopened until
December, 1879. It was at once evident that these schools were not suited to
Japan's needs. Children in village schools heard professional storytellers
recite traditional tales of propriety and filial piety. Children of the gentry
studied Chinese calligraphy and elementary Chinese classical texts. Youths
who were allowed to enter the Shuri Academy at the age of seventeen or
eighteen years studied the classics in detail, heard formal lecture
commentaries upon them, and studied Japanese texts. Youths who entered
the Kume Village Academy concentrated on Chinese studies.
Tokyo immediately appropriated funds to support the two academies
and to supply salaries for teachers in the lower schools.
Early in 1880, Tanaka Fujimaro, a farsighted and influential vice-
minister of education, visited Okinawa to see for himself what the problems
were. He had been one of the principal authors of the Education Act of
1872; his presence suggested the importance attached to the problems of
education in the new prefecture.
A need for interpreters came first. The Japanese could converse with
the educated leaders at Shuri and Naha, but could not make themselves
understood in the countryside. Moreover, it was a matter of pride as well as
policy that the new authorities should refuse to speak local dialects. The
Okinawans must learn to speak and read the standard Japanese used at
Tokyo. To this end therefore a "Conversation Training Quarter" was opened
in the precincts of the Tempi Shrine in February, 1880, and soon an
elementary Okinawan-Japanese Conversation Book was prepared in two
volumes. It was proposed to develop here a corps of clerks and interpreters
who could use standard Japanese in the government service. In June a
normal school was established to increase as rapidly as possible the number
of teachers competent to spread the new learning in the lower schools.
Toward the end of the year the old Shuri Academy was transformed into a
middle school, three primary schools were opened at Shuri, ten opened in
the Shimajiri district, and one in the northern part of the island. Thenceforth
the expansion of educational facilities was rapid. By 1885, primary schools
had been opened not only in rural Okinawa, but on the outlying islands as
well, bringing the total to fifty-seven.
It was relatively easy for the government to decree the opening of a
primary school, but it was not easy to persuade parents to enroll their
children and keep them there. It is estimated that there were more than
75,000 children of school age in the province in 1884, but that only 1,854
were actually at school. The peasants were reluctant to send children to
school; they were afraid that the costs would be too great, and they did not
trust the newcomers who were intruding themselves upon the Okinawan
community everywhere. They resisted rapid change.
To overcome these objections the prefectural government provided
school supplies and exempted parents from varying degrees of labor service
normally expected of them in the community. An element of compulsion
was introduced by establishing a "school-attendance quota" for each village,
which brought into play the pressure of public opinion and the feeling of
mutual responsibility which is such a marked characteristic of Okinawan
community life.
The normal school was established in the old official residence of the
Satsuma clan representatives at Naha. Five young men graduated from the
normal school's short course in May, 1881. These pioneers in the new era
were sons of distinguished families at Shuri. The choice they had made was
significant; opportunities for a career in government were not promising
and business life was unfamiliar and unpopular among the dispossessed
gentry. They turned to education as a field in which they could distinguish
themselves.
The government was glad to encourage this. In 1882 five young
aristocrats were sent to Tokyo to study at public expense. All were destined
to become important leaders whose names appear again and again in the
annals of Okinawa Prefecture.*
Three girls were permitted to enter the primary classes attached to the
normal school in 1885. This marked the beginning of general education for
women throughout the prefecture. A private high school for girls opened its
doors five years later.
Study of the English language was introduced as a required subject in
the curriculum at the Shuri Middle School. Formal gymnastics— setting-up
exercises—were introduced to serve the needs of a physical-health program,
which later became the basis for military-drill schedules, inaugurated at the
Middle School in 1887. The government sought to stimulate public interest
through exhibitions and through the organization of educational
associations. Students entering the teacher-training courses were given a
small subsidy, essential supplies, and living equipment such as charcoal,
teapots, and mosquito nets.
Most important of all, the influential Mori Arinori, Minister of
Education at Tokyo, found time to tour Okinawa Prefecture, where he found
only 4,824 students enrolled. This represented approximately eleven percent
of the boys and one percent of the girls of school age.
These students were eager to acquire an education, but assimilation to
Japanese ways and manners was slow. More than 1,800 were above
fourteen years of age and some were married. They were reluctant to
abandon traditional dress and to assume the costume and distinctive student
habits then being adopted in other prefectures. Change began in the normal
school and spread slowly. In March, 1888, the normal-school students and
children in the Shimajiri Higher Primary School had their hair cut; the old
topknot and pin denoting social rank gave way to the close-cropped hair
styling common among Japanese students. Middle-school boys abandoned
sash, kimono, and headband in the next year in favor of uniforms, and all
teachers were urged henceforth to wear the standard uniform of a
government employee.
Ten years after the king's abdication, the Ministry of Education at
Tokyo arranged to place portraits of the emperor and empress in every
school in Okinawa Prefecture. They were treáted as semi-sacred objects by
the Japanese teachers, who sought (with slight success) to inculcate among
the Okinawans a feeling of awe and reverence in the presence of these
symbols of national unity and exaltation of the state.
There was little upon which to graft this artificially created creed of
state worship. The seventh governor (Maruoka Kanji) had at one time been
chief of the Shrine Bureau at Tokyo. He was an extreme nationalist,
fervently determined to revive and promote Shinto as a state religion
throughout Japan. During his administration the ancient temple on Nami-
no-ue Bluff overlooking Naha Harbor was declared a state shrine of the
third class, entitled to annual government subsidies.
With the downfall of the kingdom, the ancient Buddhist temples lost
the state support which had carried them through the centuries. Ankoku-ji
alone was designated a "public temple" and given some assistance; the
majority of Buddhist organizations and buildings fell into decay.
There was still a wide gap to be closed between the governing
Japanese and the governed Okinawans. A significant change was heralded
when Japanese scholars began to become interested in the natural history,
language, and literature of the islands. The bibliography of Japanese studies
concerning Okinawa Prefecture reflects the work of ornithologists,
botanists, marine biologists, and geologists who were eager to make new
contributions in their fields in the late 19th century. They had virgin
territory in which to work in the Ryukyu Islands. Tajima Risaburo prepared
Materials for the Study of the Ryukyu Language (Ryu-kyu-go Kenkyu
Shiryo), and Basil Hall Chamberlain, then Professor of Japanese Philology
at Tokyo Imperial University, visited Okinawa in 1894 to collect materials
published in 1896 as An Essay in Aid of a Grammar and Dictionary of the
Luchuan Language. Chamberlain's grandfather, Captain Basil Hall, had
done more, perhaps, than any other individual to bring the old Ryukyuan
kingdom to the attention of the Western world at the opening of the 19th
century; now at its close the grandson published a number of essays
descriptive of conditions within the new prefecture.11
 A number of prominent Okinawans who had taken part in the
transition or had matured during this "Do Nothing" era were quietly
preparing notes and essays recording their own experiences and
observations. The Japanese, however, did not encourage investigations of
historical interest, and pursued a conscious policy of neglect of the old
culture, the ancient monuments, and the old buildings. Okinawans who
suggested that a study of local history should be introduced into the school
curriculum met at once with determined opposition.
The Meiji constitution, promulgated in 1890, promised wide
representation in the national Diet; local interests were to be given a larger
voice in the management of local affairs. But it was at once made clear that
these benefits were not to extend to Okinawa, despite the constitution.
Barriers of language and custom had not yet been surmounted, nor had
economic institutions there been revised. The prefectural administrative
organization was not ready to support local representation in government.
Communal land tenure and the system of taxes paid in goods rather than in
money continued to set Okinawa apart from all other prefectures.
The most serious problem to be overcome was prejudice. Minor
Japanese officials who were the effective administrators, far from the
national capital and the constitution, were jealous of authority in remote and
unrepresented communities. An incident at Hirara in Miyako illustrated the
problem. Natives of Miyako were allowed to visit Tokyo in 1893 for the
first time—fifteen years after the islands had been declared a prefecture.
Miyako had continued to be under an intolerant, inefficient, and oppressive
police administration. A land dispute concerning taxes at last precipitated
crisis. The police threatened to summon a warship to Hirara for punitive
action. Calmer officers at Tokyo restrained police and military hotheads and
paved the way for a committee of leading Miyako natives to visit Tokyo.
They were sent off with great popular acclaim bearing gifts of local produce
for the government leaders at Tokyo. There they were received courteously
by Prince Konoe Atsu-maro, member of the House of Peers and leading
advocate of Pan-Asian solidarity. They were given opportunity to discuss
their problems with Marquis Okuma Shigenobu, Minister of State and
founder of Waseda University. After Miyako's grievances had been laid
before these prominent men the petitioners were given gifts by the
government and dismissed.
Tokyo ordered a petty official of Niigata Prefecture (named Naka-
mura Jissaku) to accompany the group to Miyako. He was instructed to
investigate and report upon the grievances they had laid before the
government. The crowds at Hirara greeted the returning travelers with
immense acclaim, but Nakamura behaved with such intolerable arrogance
that the reception quickly turned into a riot of protest. He acted, it was said,
like a bear-keeper returning his charges to their cage after an exhibition.
Nakamura was merely part of an immense bureaucracy which stood
between the capital, with its good intentions, and the remote islands, under
an indifferent police administration. Representative government provided
for in theory by the constitution at Tokyo was not believed to be politically
feasible or desirable for the new prefecture. In truth, of course, Okinawa
was not ready for it; the new educational system had not yet produced
enough leaders to meet the demands of national political life.
There were 101 schools in existence on December 31, 1891, but there
were only 11,360 students enrolled. Many students did not attend class
regularly. Conditions at the Shuri Middle School and in the normal school
reflected the problems of the time. It was to these higher schools that the
Japanese government must look for qualified young leaders. Nevertheless,
under the unnatural restraints placed upon the prefecture by Tokyo's
"colonial" outlook, they were not yet functioning effectively. Ota Chofu
noted that many students in the middle school were idlers who would not
take their studies seriously; ambition was stunted, for they saw no prospect
of significant opportunity either in government or in local economic life. Of
a class of forty-one members which had enrolled in 1880, only three
finished the course eight years later. By 1895 the middle school had
graduated thirty-eight men. Only three or four entered the government
service. The normal school had a better record, perhaps because every
graduate could anticipate immediate employment and the highest degree of
prestige in any community in the Ryukyu Islands. Between 1880 and 1895 a
total of 109 young men had finished the teachers' training course.
Ambitious youths in Okinawa began to seek opportunities to go up to
Osaka and Tokyo, where the capable individual faced less discrimination as
an "Okinawan" and found much wider economic prospects. On Okinawa
itself youths who had been educated in the new schools, developing some
enthusiasm for Japanese innovations in daily life, were in a minority; their
contemporaries and their elders were not yet persuaded that exclusive
control by Japan was either honorable or profitable.
In 1890 ten young men volunteered for military training as
noncommissioned officers in the Japanese Army. Seventeen others followed
them in the next year. This was promising, from the Japanese point of view,
but the Tokyo government was by no means ready to extend Japan's
conscription laws to the island prefecture. If an Okinawan smarting under
Japanese restraints openly criticized this state of affairs, he immediately
heard charges that the people of Okinawa Prefecture wished to discriminate
against Japanese from other prefectures. If the critic persisted, he was
charged with disloyalty.
The situation was not a healthy one; the crisis of Sino-Japanese
relations concerning Korea was soon to flare into open war. Tension
increased within Okinawa between advocates of pro-Chinese and pro-
Japanese points of view. For thirty years the bitterness born of the Makishi-
Onga incident had infected life at Naha and Shuri. Families and friends
were divided. Members of the "white" faction mistrusted members of the
"black." Many older people were filled with the paralyzing fear that China
would indeed soon invade Okinawa to punish her disloyal tributary people.
On the other hand, students at the normal and middle schools organized
"patriotic societies" in support of the Japanese point of view.
Tokyo had sufficient grounds for caution; fear that China would
reopen the sovereignty issue were well founded, for the Chinese minister at
Tokyo (Li Ching-shu) did not hesitate openly to make an issue of it, and the
Japanese could not be certain upon which side of the issue in Korea the
foreign powers might choose to align themselves.
China, Japan, and Russia were facing one another in an angry mood
on the peninsula nearby and the shadow of this quarrel fell darkly across the
Ryukyu Islands.

Footnote
* Jahana Noboru, Takamine Chokyo, Nakijin Choban, Kishimoto Gasho, and Ota Chofu. The latter's

book Fifty Years of Administration iti Okinawa Prefecture (Okinawa-kensei Goju-nen) forms the

principal source of data for Chapters IX and X of this historical summary.

 CHAPTER TEN
ASSIMILATION BY JAPAN
1890-1940

WAR AND POLITICS:

THE CHINESE THREAT REMOVED

Three events, external to Okinawa, brought an end to the "Do Nothing" era
and powerfully affected the course of Okinawan history after 1890. These
were the inauguration of the forms of parliamentary government at Tokyo,
the successful prosecution of a war with China, and the acquisition of
Formosa.
The clansmen who forced the Tokugawa to relinquish power were
divided among themselves. Those who formed the Cabinet or dominated
the principal ministries of state defended their privileged positions with
bitter determination. Politicians and statesmen who were out of power
sought with equal vigor to whittle away the prerogatives of the Cabinet,
calling for a constitution, a parliamentary form of government, and a wider
distribution of responsibility. In granting a constitution (in the name of the
emperor), the oligarchs bowed to public pressure in the matter of forms, but
yielded little of the substance of power.
The Meiji constitution, providing for representative government, went
into effect in 1890. Throughout the campaigns, elections, and sessions of
the first three diets, the national administration was carried on in an
atmosphere of unrelieved hostility between Cabinet officers and members
of the parliament. Neither trusted the other. "The people's rights" (minken)
had been a central theme in public political debate for some twenty years,
and the issue of "special privileges" was constantly before the public eye.
It cannot be said that there was deep concern or widespread interest in
the political welfare of the Okinawan people or of the new prefecture, but it
was not possible for one prefecture alone to remain outside the normal
administrative framework; every nation-wide measure debated in the Diet
chambers required special debate on the exceptional treatment to which
Okinawa must be subjected. Regularization of Okinawa's provincial status
could not long be postponed.
As for the effect of the Sino-Japanese War, it is doubtful if any
government leader at Tokyo in 1890 thought war could be avoided. It was
rather a question of choosing the most advantageous time to bring about a
decisive change in relations with the giant neighbor on the continent. The
question of rivalry in Korea had to be settled, and the ghost of the Ryukyu
sovereignty issue had to be laid forever.
Party opposition to the government reached an extraordinary degree of
bitterness just after the general election of March, 1894. The government
had administered the election with gross abuse of police powers. Cabinet
and Diet were at loggerheads. The Diet session lasted only three weeks,
during which the premier's foreign policies were subjected to violent attack.
Demands for war with Korea and with China had been deflected in 1872
and 1874 by the Formosa expedition; now again attacks upon the
government were suddenly deflected, and the country rallied to its support,
by a declaration of war.
Hostilities began on July 25, 1894, and war with China was formally
declared six days later. Throughout the country, political factions
temporarily submerged their differences in tumultuous patriotism. People
throughout the provinces clamored for the chastisement of China and
hastened to arms.
Only the Okinawans hung back. The excitement at Naha was intense,
but there was no unity of support for the government. Many persons fully
expected a Chinese fleet to appear in Okinawan waters. Families were sent
to the countryside to await this crisis. Hot argument embittered friends and
neighbors who were not agreed on the proper course of action if the
Chinese should land.
The war continued through seven and a half months. No Chinese
appeared in the Ryukyu Islands, and China's decisive defeat appeared to
banish the Ryukyu sovereignty question.
Japan's victory was confirmed in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed
April 17, 1895. For the moment it seemed that Japan had won great
prestige; at one stroke she had defeated Asia's most extensive empire and
had become a colonial power to boot, for she had acquired the Liaotung
Peninsula, Formosa, and the Pescadores.
As far as the majority of thoughtful Okinawans were concerned,
Japan's victory was greeted with relief, and Tokyo's prestige soared there as
it did throughout the world. China's ancient claims to military and political
greatness were dissolved by this revelation of her weakness. Nevertheless,
three incidents at this moment alerted the Japanese government to the
possibility that some traces of Chinese influence might Unger on in the
Ryukyus.
On May 5, less than three weeks after the Shimonoseki Treaty was
signed, Japan was forced to promise to return the Liaotung Peninsula to
China; Russia wanted it for herself and had found a devious way to prevent
Japan's intrusion there. This hard blow was brought about by successful
Chinese intrigues with Russia, France, and Germany, who joined to bring
pressure upon Japan which Tokyo could not resist. This was precisely the
kind of intervention which Japan had so long feared in the Ryukyu
sovereignty dispute. At about the same time it was discovered that an
unscrupulous man from Kagoshima (Yamanojo Hajime, a primary school
teacher and a rascal) was swindling pro-Chinese Okinawans by representing
himself as a secret agent for China's Viceroy Li Hung-chang, ready to
arrange Chinese aid for Okinawans who agreed to oppose Japan.
Concurrently it was discovered that Chinese officials at Peking and
Nanking were actively supporting a so-called "republic" in Formosa and
encouraging local Chinese in Formosa to appeal to foreign powers to
prevent Japan from assuming control in the island which had just been
ceded by Peking. It was not inconceivable that the same thing might be
attempted in the Ryukyus.
In fact, Okinawan interest in China faded rapidly after the war. The
sentiment which stirred in the hearts of conservative older people could be
ignored, but damage had been done. Official policy stiffened and remained
hostile thereafter to all local traditions and folkways which marked off
Okinawans from other loyal subjects in the empire and retarded the
assimilation of the younger generation.
 Victory also brought possession of Formosa, a rich, unruly, and
undeveloped island southwest of Okinawa and about fifty miles west of the
Yaeyama group. When sovereignty in Formosa passed to Japan, Okinawa
ceased to be a frontier area. Henceforth the prefecture would be of
secondary importance, merely an economically unrewarding territorial link
between Japan proper and the new "treasure island."
 From the Japanese point of view Okinawa's peculiar customs, dialects,
and costumes were thrown into new and perhaps better perspective; they
were odd, to be sure, but not so odd and difficult to understand as the
speech, dress, and customs of the Formosan Chinese or of the aborigines in
the Formosan hills. The similarities of culture in Okinawa and Japan proper
could now be seen more clearly; it was readily apparent that these
outnumbered the cultural differences which had to be overcome. It was
appreciated that the docile Okinawans had yielded to Japanese rule without
significant struggle; by sharp contrast it was to require ten years of bloody
campaigns and reprisals before the Formosans could be reduced to a sullen
acceptance of Japanese rule.
 ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGE AND THE
BASIC LAND REFORM
The eighth governor of Okinawa was Baron Narahara Kogoro (Shigeru), a
haughty samurai from Satsuma, who took office in July, 1892, as the
country moved toward war with China. Tokyo knew that he would rule with
a firm hand for he had been closely associated with Okinawan affairs during
the transition period in the 1870's. He was not popular in Okinawa, but
during his long tenure of office great progress was made toward political
and economic assimilation with other prefectures. His principal assistant,
Hibi Kimei, succeeded him as governor in 1907, carrying forward
Narahara's policies until June, 1913. Such a continuity of administration,
maintained through twenty-one years, was of great importance, for in the
succeeding period of twenty-one years changing ministries at Tokyo sent no
fewer than fifteen governors to Okinawa.
Soon after Narahara took office, a newspaper—the Ryukyu Shimpo —
was founded. This strengthened leadership and promoted the development
of informed opinion on matters of public concern.
In the years 1893-96 a number of highly qualified men surveyed the
problems of administrative reorganization, of representative local
government bodies, and of taxation. The Cabinet was determined to
strengthen administrative controls throughout the social and economic life
of the islands. This would offset the unavoidable necessity of granting an
increasing measure of representation through local assemblies and
(ultimately) Okinawan representation in the Diet. As the functions and
services of government were enlarged, costs had risen in proportion, and
quite naturally Tokyo wanted to shift a maximum share of the cost burden
to the local people.
It will be recalled that in 1892 and 1893 representative assemblies had
been convoked in each district, and that local leaders were permitted to
express their views upon the local budget. In 1896 the districts were
realigned, and the assemblies were granted modest power to influence local
taxation and budgeting for local expenditures. By 1897 Yaeyama and
Miyako—always lagging a little—were brought into harmony with the
prefecture-wide system.
Assemblymen were elected by popular choice, subject to the
governor's confirmation; all other members of the administration were
appointed by him and were paid from the national treasury.
By 1895 it was clearly apparent that there could be no substantial
progress in Okinawa until a far-reaching land reform was carried through. A
Temporary Land Readjustment Bureau was created in 1898 to begin the
formidable task of converting nearly seventy-six percent of the total area—
traditional communal land—to private ownership, capable of sustaining
private enterprise, individual taxation, and a modern administration. Taken
in all its political and economic consequences, this undertaking must be
ranked as one of the great turning points in Okinawan history, and the most
significant event to take place between the king's abdication in 1879 and the
American invásion of 1945.
In the nature of things, such a shift from communal to private
ownership was certain to cause a profound disorganization of traditional
community life. It had to be imposed from Tokyo, working through the
prefectural and district officers, and it provoked bitter opposition. The
rancorous "Black and White" dispute was transmuted now into fierce
opposition to government policies on the one hand and support for them on
the other.
A number of prominent men formed an organization called the Kodo-
kai, through which they sought to restore unity to the Okinawan community
and to reassert some measure of Okinawan leadership in affairs of vital
importance to every native of the old kingdom. Their intentions were
excellent, but they did not sufficiently understand the political implications
of some of their proposals.
In good faith the Kodo-kai proposed that Governor Narahara be
recalled and that Marquis Sho Tai be sent down to take his place. In 1875
the statesman Okubo Toshimichi had proposed a hereditary governorship to
be maintained in the family of the former king. It was believed that if the
king were granted the nominal title and honors of governorship, the most
stubborn anti-Japanese elements in Okinawa would unite with the liberal
advocates of modernization.
By implication this recommendation challenged the wisdom of the
emperor's appointment of Narahara, and the move could be interpreted
abroad as evidence of misrule in Okinawa—or at least of grave
dissatisfaction with Japanese administration. It might draw attention once
again to the sovereignty issue. Tokyo crushed the Kodo-kai movement at
once.
The general land system has been described in an earlier chapter.
Three-fourths of the land was subject to periodic reallocation among farm
households and villages. Of the remaining one-fourth some comprised
private estates held by the nobles, some was set aside for the support of the
village novo, and some, which had been held by the Shuri court, was now
managed by the prefectura! government. The length of time during which
an individual household was permitted to hold and cultivate a given plot
varied from hamlet to hamlet. Usually a family did not hold a piece of land
for more than ten years. Only reclaimed land of a certain character could be
held, bought, and sold privately.
If a household could not meet its tax assessment, the group of
households to which it belonged undertook to make up the difference. Tax
assessments laid on the village were determined by a most complicated
formula. Every village belonged to one of five classes. The land itself was
graded according to its nature as determined in the long-outdated surveys
which Satsuma had made in the period 1609-11. A combination of the
village class plus the land grade led to a determination of the tax to be
levied. This cumbersome and inefficient system could not meet the
demands of a modern economy, but it continued in effect until the land
reform was completed in 1903.
In that year an officer in the Finance Ministry at Tokyo (Mori Kengo)
prepared a report which noted that the farmers of Okinawa bore a
disproportionate share of the prefectural tax burden, and that the periodic
reallocation of land deprived the individual farmer of incentives inherent in
private ownership. The report noted that land was allotted without
consideration of the distance at which it might He from the farmer's house
and that this was wasteful of time, labor, and transport. Since the great
majority of people owned no land, they had none to use as security on
loans. The farmer could borrow only against his crops, which were of
uncertain value from season to season, and hence he was required to pay
exorbitant rates of interest.
The land reform was pronounced complete in October, 1903. Few
villages were left untouched or little modified. Owners of hereditary lands
were confirmed in their titles; lands assigned to support village noro
became the private property of the noro's family. Plots of land were now
registered in the name of the individual farmer who qualified as head of a
farm household. Henceforth the individual would pay land tax, and it would
no longer be paid as tax in kind, but in money.
By 1903 the population numbered 480,000. The reorganization of the
tax base produced a severe shortage in prefectural government revenue—
income for an area which yielded 460,000 yen under the old village-tax
system now yielded only 126,000 yen. It looked as though the prefectural
administration of Okinawa would become a permanent burden on the
national treasury. The number and variety of local taxes upon goods,
services, and licenses was steadily increased, but it became apparent that
relief would have to be achieved through two measures: population pressure
would have to be reduced through migration from Okinawa, and the total
production of goods would have to be increased to meet internal local
consumption demands and to provide an exportable surplus.

DEVELOPMENT OF REPRESENTATION IN
GOVERNMENT
Repeated changes and adjustments at last brought the structure of local
government into line with the general administrative system in other
prefectures. In 1908 Itoman was created a town (cho), followed soon after
by Hirara, Ishigaki, and Nago. Old administrative names were abandoned;
the majiri became son or mura; the three ancient principality divisions
became gun or counties. Salt, camphor, and tobacco monopolies were
united under one office, new taxes were laid on local business, and the
prefectural treasury began to bear a larger share of the cost of local
government.
In 1909 a prefectural assembly was convoked for the first time. The
chairman was Takamine Chokyo, one of the five men who had been sent to
Tokyo at government expense in 1882. Assemblymen were elected by
fellow members of the county, town, and city councils. These men in turn
had been elected by residents of Okinawa Prefecture who paid at least ten
yen annually in taxes on real property. This was a very narrow base for a
system of indirect representation, but it was a step forward. Two local
political organizations offered mild competition in seeking votes; one
(known as the Doshi-kai) elected sixteen assemblymen, the other (known as
the Minyu-kai) placed fourteen nominees. These "parties" or political
associations were concerned with local issues and were not affiliated with
the national political parties of Japan.
Nevertheless, Tokyo watched the elections and first sessions of the
Okinawan prefectura! assembly with keen interest. Special observers were
sent to Naha to report on the conduct of the meetings.
The principal measures introduced by Chairman Takamine reflected
accurately a concern with education, geographical isolation, and public
health. Takamine proposed that a second middle school be established at
prefectural expense, that a submarine cable be laid to link Miyako with
Okinawa, and that an investigation of provincial health problems be
pursued in order to develop a system for the free distribution of medicines.
In the next year the way was paved for Okinawan representation in the
national Diet, but Yaeyama and Miyako were excluded from the electoral
district. The first two men sent to the Lower House at Tokyo (in 1912) were
Takamine Choky o and his associate of early school days in Japan,
Kishimoto Gasho. In a sense this was a reward for thirty years of patient,
often thankless effort to bring about a true assimilation of Okinawa to the
Japanese empire.
Following this advance toward representative government the political
parties at Tokyo moved to capture the votes of the Okinawans. But party
politicians at the national capital had very little to offer in exchange for only
two votes cast by Diet members who were newcomers without significant
personal influence or backing in national politics. The Seiyu-kai opened a
branch office at Naha in 1912, but abandoned it three years later. For two
years Okinawa was ignored by the national political parties. In 1917,
however, the Seiyu-kai found itself hard-pressed by its rival, the Kensei-kai,
and needed every vote it could muster to hold its preeminent position in the
Diet. The Naha office was reopened, despite little local interest in national
politics and virtually no contributions forthcoming for the party's national
treasury.
Marquis Sho, the former crown prince, held a hereditary seat in the
House of Peers by virtue of his rank. In 1918 he was joined for the first time
by a Japanese resident on Okinawa appointed to represent the highest
taxpayers of the prefecture.
 Election laws for Okinawa were revised once again during the
administration of Hara Kei, the first commoner to hold the highest political
office in Japan. Yaeyama and Miyako were brought into the electoral
district, Okinawan representation was raised to five members for the Lower
House, and on April 1, 1920, the people of the prefecture for the first time
enjoyed legal equality of representation with other Japanese in the law-
making body of the empire. Forty-one years had passed since the king's
abdication.
Much remained to be done to secure equality in social and economic
affairs. With only five representatives in a Lower House membership of
381, the Okinawans carried little weight in budgetary matters and virtually
none in the crucial matter of appointments to the governorship. The
governors, on their part, exercised great and often decisive power in
election matters within the prefecture, for they controlled the police, who
administered election laws and had the power of veto in certification of
candidates for elective offices.
After the "Narahara-Hibi" era (1892-1913) the governor's office was
filled by party men. Few showed sympathy or understanding for the basic
problems which beset Okinawa. One appointee (Odagiri Bantaro) so
disliked the idea of "exile" to a remote province that he resigned the
governorship seven days after accepting appointment at Tokyo, without
setting foot in the islands. This provoked resentment.
Some of the governors made a conscientious effort to grapple with a
problem which had no solution, the problem of achieving a self-sufficicnt
economy.
 After 1890 the government encouraged the organization of Young
Men's Associations, Young Women's Associations, Ladies' Patriotic
Associations, Army Reservists' Associations, Farmers' Associations and the
like. In theory, membership was voluntary and the choice of associations by
the individual was dictated by social and occupational interests. In fact,
these associations were highly developed throughout the empire to serve
public finance and policing purposes. The individual gained a considerable
return in mutual-aid benefits and cooperative investment of time, effort, and
association funds. Membership fees and contributions of time, labor,
material, or money formed a substantial supplementary income for the local
government, which expected the associations to perform many civic
services which otherwise would have to be paid for by the government—or
would be left undone. For example, the costs of fire fighting, road repair,
maintenance of shrine grounds and parks, work on public buildings, and
similar enterprises were in large part defrayed by "volunteer" work.
Ostensibly these associations were spontaneous community
organizations which offered a focal point for village social activity, but in
fact they were usually proposed and promoted by government officials
"acting in their private capacities" and were essentially policing organs.
Virtually everyone in a community was expected to belong to one or more
of the associations. They served as a check and cross-check upon individual
activities. It was not easy to refuse membership ; the individualist who
hesitated to join was looked upon askance by the police, the joiner won
approbation and minor opportunities and privileges.
 ECONOMIC CHANGE IN THE 20TH
CENTURY
Okinawa was rapidly becoming overcrowded. Plans for land reclamation,
colonization in Yaeyama, and emigration to foreign lands were put in
motion by the prefectural government.
The Matsuy ama land-reclamation project inaugurated in 1894 was
expected to bring some 12,250 new acres (5,000 chobu) under cultivation.
Agricultural schools and vocational-training courses gradually improved the
efficiency of the farmer. Research and experiment in government
institutions improved the varieties of grain, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables
distributed through the farmers' associations. Superior breeds of livestock
were introduced. Specialists in sericulture and in fisheries were sent from
Japan proper to instruct the Okinawans.
Sugar production offered the greatest profit to brokers and shippers in
Japan; hence the government gave this great attention. Limitations on
acreage were lifted in 1888, but raw sugar was accepted as tax in kind until
1904. Before land reform and redistribution was effected, the sugar industry
was monopolized by men from other prefectures, who controlled marketing
and shipping. After 1903 the Okinawans gradually asserted their own
interests. There was new incentive to produce. Ota Chofu promoted the
establishment of a research office at Osaka through which the Okinawans
themselves could discover ways to enter metropolitan markets. A Sugar
Dealers' Association was founded. After 1905 Japanese from other
prefectures discovered that they were being challenged by Okinawan
investors and management.
 Inexperience led to the organization of too many small independent
sugar companies, and a series of failures occurred. Working conditions and
extraction methods were primitive. Standards of quality for the
manufactured sugar were not high. In 1907 the Ministry of Agriculture and
Commerce at Tokyo organized an Okinawa Prefectural Sugar Improvement
Bureau, to which the governor himself gave enthusiastic support. For a time
the leading newspaper company—the Ryukyu Shimpo-sha—led in
promoting competition among farmers by holding exhibits, awarding prizes,
and stirring the public interest in higher production levels of superior
quality. After 1912 all sugar leaving the islands had to meet certain
standards set by the bureau. Capitalists at Tokyo and Osaka began to invest
in the Okinawan sugar industry, and the government subsidized
experimental farms.
As the plantations on nearby Formosa began to be developed on a
large scale a curious rivalry grew up in the councils of the government;
agricultural experts from the Sapporo Agricultural College (Hokkaido)
became leading advocates of expansion in Formosa, whereas experts from
the Komaba Agricultural Department of the Tokyo Imperial University
were "champions" of the industry in Okinawa. From 1915 onward the
influence of the industrial capitalists was in the ascendant at Tokyo.
Decisions affecting over-all agricultural policies for the prefecture (and for
Formosa) were not being made so much with an eye to the welfare of the
local economy as to profits which would accrue to the companies which had
greatest influence in the government. This rapid expansion of the Okinawan
sugar industry through investment of capital from Osaka and Tokyo was not
fundamentally healthy; the major share of profit derived from Okinawan
land and labor left the prefecture. Local reinvestment by the holding
companies tended to be for the benefit of the sugar industry only. A high
percentage of Okinawa's farming population became entirely dependent
upon the metropolitan markets, which left them extremely vulnerable to
price fluctuations caused by conditions in Formosa or in Japan proper.
In 1915 Governor Orni Kyugoro proposed an elaborate ten-year
economic development program, but some of his actions exposed him to
charges that he was acting more in the interests of large Japanese business
corporations than of the Okinawan economy. At his direction the entire
assets of the Okinawa Sugar Improvement Bureau—which had been
heavily subsidized and developed with public funds—were suddenly
transferred to the Okinawa Sugar Company, and this in turn was absorbed
by the powerful Taiwan Sugar Corporation. The Okinawa-Taiwan
Colonization and Sugar Company likewise passed to the Taiwan Sugar
Corporation, in which the principal shareholders were the Imperial
Household, and the Mitsui and Mitsubishi companies. In this fashion,
control of Okinawa's basic agricultural industry passed entirely out of
Okinawan hands. "Economic colonization" had replaced "political
colonization."
Within forty years the area planted to sugar in Okinawa had been
increased more than tenfold; production volume had increased in about the
same proportion; but after 1919 the value of export-import trade showed
increasing export deficits, until by 1928 the islands imported goods valued
at 11,200,000 yen more than the value of exported products. This great
disparity reflected growth of population and steadily rising standards of
living.
 A tenfold expansion of the most important agricultural industry and of
trade in goods and services could take place only if there were adequate
basic communications between Ryukyu and Japan proper. When Basil Hall
Chamberlain visited Okinawa in early 1894, one ship, leaving Naha every
eighteen days for Kobe by way of Kagoshima, provided the only regular
service. The Sino-Japanese War stimulated development of shipping and
telegraphic services. A submarine cable linked Kagoshima with Naha and
Yaeyama, and a link laid in 1897 tied this in with the international cable
services along the China coast by way of Formosa and Amoy. Miyako
remained isolated until the prefectural assembly voted funds with which to
lay a cable between Naha and Hirara in 1913. The police organization had
telegraphic and telephonic services at an early date (Chamberlain speaks of
a telephone line between Naha and Shuri in 1894), but these were not open
to the public until 1906 and 1910, respectively. As soon as wireless
telegraphy became practicable, the Japanese government established
services throughout the empire; by 1917 a wireless station was opened even
in the remote Daito Islands.
These outlying wireless facilities served the dual purposes of national
defense and of weather forecasting, which was especially important to
farmers and to mariners in the typhoon season. In 1915 the Ryukyu
Newspaper Company arranged for a civilian to demonstrate the new flying
machine in Okinawa; although the demonstration was not a success (the
contraption would not leave the ground), the Okinawans on that occasion
had their first glimpse of an invention which was to revolutionize their
lives.
 The threat of hostile naval action in the seas near Okinawa during the
Sino-Japanese War and again during the war with Russia underscored the
vulnerability of die prefectural economy. Gradually the Mitsubishi's Osaka
Shosen Kaisha emerged as the dominant shipping line upon which the
economic health of Okinawa must depend. The government provided heavy
subsidies to keep ships regularly on the Kobe-Naha route, for the import-
export trade was not great enough in volume or value to justify commercial
services for many years. Technical experts from Japan inaugurated a
twenty-year harbor-development program in 1907. Lighthouses were
constructed on important headlands and weather-reporting services and
facilities extended into the outlying islands.
Coastal shipping continued to be important; hitherto small sailing craft
and dugout canoes carried most commercial goods and passenger traffic
from beach to beach among the islands. A short vehicular road leading
some distance from Naha had been opened in 1885, but significant road
work did not begin until 1897. Naha quickly became the center of a
transport network. Jinrikishas and other wheeled vehicles were brought
from Japan proper for town use and farm service.
A system of town and village projects for building and maintaining
roads was introduced in 1907 and 1908, but it was uneconomical and poorly
coordinated; the well-kept roads of one village might lead only to the
unimproved paths of another. Gradually the prefectural government took
over responsibility for all roads. By 1915 a main highway had been
constructed between Naha and Nago at the center of the best agricultural
district at the north. Subsidies from the national treasury provided for the
construction of a light horse-drawn tram system, centering at Naha and
reaching across the island to Yonabaru and Awase, north to Kadena, and
south to Itoman.
Direct subsidies from the national treasury decreased in number
though the size of subsidies for special projects (local railroad building,
harbor construction, and the like) grew in proportion to the size and
duration of the undertakings. In time Okinawa Prefecture acquired all the
physical equipment necessary to support a modern agricultural economy on
a very modest scale. Roads, railroads, airfields, postal, telegraph, and radio
services, and modern meteorological services had oecome part of the
everyday life of the Okinawan. The records show a steady increase in per
capita wealth as it was reflected in savings deposits in banks and in the
postal-savings service. These things had come to Okinawa slowly; by
almost any standard of measurement Okinawa's physical economy was last
and least in comparison with the advances which had been made in other
prefectures of Japan.
The Russo-Japanese War stimulated the expansion of basic heavy
industries throughout Japan; opportunities for manufacturing and trade
presented by World War I were dazzling. While the battles raged in Europe,
Japan supplied the Allies, and Japanese shipping was in every ocean and
sea. A peak of activity and apparent prosperity was reached in 1918.
Okinawa shared these fluctuations of fortune in common with the total
empire economy. Only sixty-five years after the day when Perry, with all his
guns and ships, could not extract a handful of copper coins from the
bartering kingdom, the total value of goods produced exceeded eighty
million yen, and bank deposits in Okinawa exceeded ninety-six million yen.
 Then came a sharp break. Okinawa shared in the empire-wide postwar
depression; having the least reserves upon which to draw in emergency, it
suffered heavily. Thousands were without work and without food. In 1925
and again in 1928 the Diet at Tokyo voted millions in relief funds to be used
in the rehabilitation of industry and trade in Okinawa Prefecture, the banks
were reorganized, and an office was opened in Tokyo to promote the use of
Okinawan products at the capital and in other prefectures.
This program had scarcely got under way when the Japanese empire
was engulfed in the world-wide economic depression. Okinawa suffered ex
treme hardship; the prefecture was at the bottom of the list in the
distribution of aid on a national scale. Social unrest throughout the islands
called forth a maximum effort to organize relief for the farming and fishing
communities, which had no reserves in money or goods. A new industrial
development plan and a plan for extensive migration was drawn up by
Governor Ino Jiro in 1933, but conditions of general misery prevailed
throughout Okinawa until the coming of the war in China in 1937.
The invasion of China stimulated production everywhere in the empire
; Okinawans found a ready market for foodstuffs and opportunities for
employment in other prefectures, but by 1941 the government was
compelled to invoke the national mobilization laws, which meant
totalitarian control of all aspects of economic and social life in all
prefectures and colonies. A National Savings Association branch was
opened in Okinawa, detailed regulations controlled all food-producing
activities and the rationing system was imposed in every village and
outlying island. By this system of rigidly enforced controls Japan was able
to prolong its economic life.
 War with the Western world was near at hand.

POPULATION PRESSURE AND THE

EMIGRATION PROBLEM
Physical isolation and social discrimination cut off the Okinawans from the
Japanese of other prefectures. Thousands of persons traveled back and forth
from the islands to the metropolitan centers each year, but there could never
be the easy interplay of economic life which other prefectures enjoyed
across common and continuous borders. The other prefectures were
overcrowded, too, offering little attraction to the uneducated Okinawan
peasant or fisherman. Natural disasters continued to strike as frequently and
as severely as they had in centuries gone by, although there were more
agencies now to provide relief and a greater understanding of what could be
done to anticipate and prepare for calamity. Great storms swept Yaeyama in
1899 and 1901. An eruption of Tori-shima in 1903 forced the transfer of the
entire population (690 persons) to Kume-jima in the following year,
disrupting the precarious economy of that small island. A great drought in
1904 brought widespread suffering. The Home Ministry at Tokyo
despatched investigators, granted relief funds, suspended the payment of
local taxes, and organized a public-works project to help in the crisis. An
epidemic of swine cholera swept the islands in 1908, affecting the economy
of every household. The years 1911 and 1912 brought earthquakes and
typhoons, one of which did exceptional damage in Yaeyama. Severe storms
disrupted the economy in 1917, 1918, and 1922. More than seven thousand
buildings were damaged in 1931, and two typhoons in quick succession
wrought havoc in 1933. Millions of yen were spent in meeting the costs of
social relief and the rehabilitation of property on these occasions. Little of
this could come from prefectural sources.
In 1940 there were approximately 750,000 people living in the
prefecture. This meant a population pressure of some 588 per square mile.
The full import of this figure can be realized when it is compared with a
population density of 529 for other prefectures of Japan at that time— and
of 44 per square mile for the United States.
The great surplus of laborers on Okinawa had no significant raw
materials to which they could apply willing hands, and no significant land
areas remained unoccupied within the islands. Emigration was the only
solution.
The problem had become apparent before the turn of the century. In
the long period of police administration in Yaeyama the police department
issued tracts and bulletins advocating development of the distant islands of
Ishigaki, Iriomote, and Yonaguni. These efforts failed. The prevalence of
malaria and the frequency of terrifying storms were very real obstacles to
successful settlement. By tradition Yaeyama was thought of as a place of
harsh exile, where opportunities were too limited to be considered seriously
by anyone who wished to improve his economic situation.
Despite all this, the government persisted in its effort to expand
colonization in the outer islands. A special development loan fund was set
up in 1886, to be used in northern Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama. In 1891
an investor from Hiroshima (Nakagawa Toranosuke) attempted to promote
development of an agricultural-plantation scheme, and in 1894 there were
special efforts made to expand sugar production, leading to the formation of
the Yaeyama Sugar Manufacturing Company in 1896. For the coal mines on
Iriomote, laborers were brought over from Formosa, but for the agricultural
enterprises every effort was made to persuade Okinawans to migrate to
Yaeyama, without significant success.
In 1935 fresh attempts were made to expand settlement on Ishigaki
through formation of a new development company. A group of Yaeyama
residents thought this a good time to petition the prefectural government to
establish a school of fisheries and agriculture. Every possible propaganda
device was tried in the effort to persuade people to leave overcrowded
Okinawa for the southerly islands. After Governor Fuchigami Fusataro
presented a fresh colonization program to the prefectural assembly in 1938,
committees were sent to inspect proposed sites for new settlements. The
Ministry of Finance at Tokyo responded favorably to an appeal for funds
with which to inaugurate a malaria-suppression campaign, set in motion in
1940. On the eve of World War II, in 1941, government officials and
prominent journalists were sent down to see for themselves what progress
had been made. Little substantial change had taken place in the country
districts and subtropical forests of Yaeyama during the sixty years of direct
Japanese administration. Yaeyama was obviously not to offer the solution to
the Okinawan population problem.
The government experienced no difficulty in promoting emigration to
foreign lands and to Japanese colonies in the Pacific.1 Migration to
Yaeyama meant hardship and limited opportunity; emigration to Hawaii, to
the Philippines, Formosa, North and South America meant improved living
conditions and comparative prosperity for the emigrants and for the families
on Okinawa to which they could send international money-order
remittances.
Organized emigration outside the empire had begun in 1899 when
Toyama Matasuke led a party of twenty-seven laborers to the sugar
plantations of Hawaii. Okinawans first entered the continental United States
in 1902. In these early years the men went abroad without families, for they
planned to earn enough to return soon to Okinawa with something in hand
for investment at home. But residence overseas was profitable, and
gradually was prolonged in order to accumulate more capital. Some of the
emigrants summoned wives or arranged for "picture brides" to join them.
Others married among the women of their adoptive country.
At the time of the great land redistribution of 1901-03 many younger
sons of gentry families were left without support, or fell heir to inadequate
shares of income from lands assigned to the family. Men from this hitherto
privileged stratum of Okinawan society were prominent in the first emigrant
groups and carried considerable social prestige to overseas commufiities,
although they were obliged to take up unskilled and unprivileged tasks
wherever they went.
In 1903 a total of 941 laborers went abroad, some to Hawaii, some to
the United States mainland, some to Mexico, and some to the Philippines.
By 1907 more than ten thousand Okinawans were overseas in places as
varied and distant as New Caledonia and Peru. Laws were enacted at Tokyo
to protect their interests as Japanese subjects under contract-labor
conditions. By 1930 more than 54,000 had left Okinawa for foreign lands,
and of these more than half had gone to South America.
 The early emigrants became field laborers. By 1930 their children
were beginning to enter other fields of skilled and unskilled work. This was
especially true in Hawaii, where parents, often at great sacrifice, helped
ambitious sons to enter professional life as doctors, lawyers, and teachers.
Many had established themselves in comfortable businesses; Okinawans
specialized in cleaning-and-dyeing establishments in Argentina or as
restaurant owners and poultry farmers in Hawaii. Some became extensive
landholders and a few became millionaires in the coffee-growing regions of
Brazil. Many emigrants sent their sons and daughters back to Okinawa to be
educated at the Shuri Middle School or at the high schools at Naha.
Thanks to group solidarity and the highly developed sense of mutual
responsibility, newcomers received substantial support from the early
setders in these overseas communities.
The original purpose of migration was not forgotten. A steady stream
of remittances flowed back to Okinawa in growing volume and value.
Whereas the overseas Japanese from other prefectures remitted an annual
average of fifty yen per capita, the Okinawans sent back eighty-eight yen
per capita. These figures are based on the data for 1937, when more than
three and a half million yen reached Okinawa, sent home by no fewer than
40,483 Okinawans.
Obviously the Japanese government had ready at hand a remarkable
instrument with which to relieve population pressure, and an extraordinary
source of hidden revenue for the poverty-stricken prefecture. An Okinawan
Overseas Association (Kaigai Kyokai) was formed as early as 1924. It was
a quasi-official organization, for which the prefectural governor usually
served as honorary president; and Okinawa's most distinguished citizen,
Kanna Kenwa, retired vice-admiral and member of the Diet, traveled widely
in the interests of the association. An Emigrant Training Center was opened
in Naha in 1934. Here emigrants were prepared for the long voyage and the
problems of settlement in a new country. The association used the center as
a headquarters at which to publish a bulletin sent overseas to emigrant
communities and distributed widely within the Ryukyu Islands. Propaganda
urging emigration was distributed throughout Okinawa. For all these
services the prefectural government provided a small annual subsidy.
Ideas as well as letters and international money orders flowed back
into the Ryukyus from these wide-flung communities overseas. There were
few villages on Okinawa which did not maintain communication with
relatives who had gone away to seek fortune in a foreign land. From the
extreme seclusion imposed upon them and fostered by Japan in the early
17th century, the Okinawans were once again conscious of an interesting
world beyond the seas.
In one area emigration was not an unqualified success: the Okinawans
who were sent to work in Japan's mandated islands—the Marianas and the
Carolines in the mid-Pacific—found life bitterly hard on the sugar
plantations. The majority went out as indentured labor with no prospect of
substantial improvement of their economic status within the yen economy.
They had little to remit to families left behind in Okinawa.
It is not surprising that emigration appealed to an increasing number of
men and women living in overcrowded homes and impoverished villages.
On Okinawa health and welfare services did not keep pace with
development in communication facilities, under government sponsorship, or
with sugar planting and manufacture under private ownership and
government subsidy. There were no first-class training facilities for doctors
on Okinawa. Okinawans who studied at the universities in Japan proper or
at the Imperial University at Taihoku (Taipei) in Formosa were reluctant to
return to practice in poverty-stricken Okinawa. By 1939—fifty years after
Japan established the perfecturai government—there were only 178
physicians in the islands, and of these no less than 73 were practicing in
Naha and Shuri.
Little progress was made in combating malaria, venereal disease,
leprosy, and tuberculosis, despite many publicized investigations and
reports, rules and regulations. Until 1904-05—the years of the Russo-
Japanese War—Okinawa Prefecture had the lowest recorded venereal
disease rate among the prefectures of Japan. By 1930 it had the highest rates
in the country for both venereal disease and tuberculosis. This was due in
part to the increased rate of movement in the population and in part to the
vulnerability of a population which suffered from chronic malnutrition.
Hospital facilities were slowly expanded but were never adequate to the
needs of the prefecture. Subsidies were allowed for the development of
sanitary services and a training section for school nurses was established in
the normal school. Special clinics were opened for the treatment of leprosy
in 1928, but the leprosarium on Yagachi Island was not established until a
decade later.
There was a quickening interest in national health standards and public
welfare in the 193o's. The nation was being readied for war. Mobile clinics
began to take elementary medical services into outlying country districts
and to the schools. Government dispensaries began to be established in
remote villages after 1938, the year in which a Ministry of Public Health
and Welfare was organized at Tokyo. Sanitation specialists in the
prefectural police department were expected to supervise and enforce the
application of public-health measures. The success with which they were
applied depended to an important degree upon the training of the individual
policeman and upon the general level of education and understanding
cooperation which he might find in the community to which he was
assigned.

SCHOOL STRIKES AND THE STRUGGLE

FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
Toward the end of the "Do Nothing" era expenditures for education were
less than fifteen thousand yen per year. Much talk of educational ideals and
issuance of many rules and regulations produced few results. Teachers were
being paid as little as one and a half yen per month in 1893. Okinawan
leaders were dissatisfied with the slow growth of the educational facilities,
but the central government expected each prefecture to bear a major share
of educational costs. The Okinawan economy simply could not support a
new school system before land reform and tax reorganization took place;
hence the national treasury supported the prefectural department of
education until 1908.
The first prefectural assembly, convened in 1909, addressed itself to
the problem. In 1910 the appropriation for education exceeded 100,000 yen.
Town and district assemblies, granted local budget autonomy, embarked
upon a race to build primary schools. In some instances the burden proved
too great; there were retrenchments and consolidations, but by 1935 the
total annual expenditure for education exceeded 2,500,000 yen, of which
something more than one million yen were provided by the national
treasury. By 1941 Okinawa Prefecture could boast of 296 elementary
schools, six middle schools for boys, eight high schools for girls, nine
vocational schools, and two normal schools. Approximately ninety-nine
percent of the school-age children were enrolled.
The history of education after 1890 was distinguished principally by
Okinawa's struggle to overcome Tokyo's reluctance to provide education
above the primary grade. The First Middle School remained pre-eminent
because of its age, superior facilities, location, and traditional association
with the past. No more than ten men graduated annually before 1897, but in
the next forty years 2,400 men completed the courses. Among these were
the sons of emigrants to North and South America, to Hawaii, to the islands
of the South Pacific and Malaysia, whose presence in the school body was
in itself a broadening educational asset. Approximately forty-four percent of
the graduates went on to higher education, some to higher preparatory
schools and then on to universities in other provinces. Nearly five hundred
became school teachers.
In forty years only sixteen men went from the Shuri Middle School to
the military and naval academies.
An alumni association, established at Shuri in 1903, served as a link
among men who became community leaders within the prefecture, in the
growing Okinawan communities in the metropolitan areas of Tokyo and
Osaka, and in the emigrant communities. Friendships cultivated at school
contributed much to a gradual breakdown of traditional prejudice
entertained by the people of Naha and Shuri toward men and women from
the outlying islands.
China's defeat in 1895 quickened a desire to be considered "up-to-
date" at Naha and Shuri, and to abandon old-fashioned customs. Students
led the way and set the pace. Men no longer "lacquered" their hair into a
topknot with seaweed paste or oils, but boldly cut it short. The old hairpins
which denoted rank were abandoned. Wide black-crepe sashes for the men's
kimono in the Japanese style became popular.
These were the changing fashions of the year. More important was the
change in names. Women began to add the feminine suffix ko to their
personal names, men took distinctly Japanese names, and families adopted a
Japanese reading for the characters of the surname.2
Gradually thousands left the southern islands to settle in metropolitan
Japan, where they were lost among the millions of workers in the great
cities, and where discrimination was less severely felt or even vanished as
the individual adopted Japanese habits of dress and speech.
In the Ryukyu Islands, however, regional characteristics changed
slowly and the Japanese administrators and "resident merchants" found it
difficult to concede equality to the unsophisticated Okinawans. The story of
the Hirara incident of 1893 illustrated one aspect of discrimination. Another
incident concerned Kodama Kihachi, director of the prefectural department
of education, who was concurrently principal of the Shuri Middle School
and of the normal school in 1894. He took no pains to conceal his contempt
for the people of Okinawa, for he mistook poverty for ignorance and
incapacity. He loudly proclaimed that there was no need for higher
education in the prefecture, and to make his point he removed the study of
English from the list of required subjects at the middle school. This, he said,
was an unnecessary luxury for Okinawans. A public controversy broke out.
The students went on strike in 1895. Among student leaders were Higaonna
Kanjun, Majikina Anko, and Iha Fuyu, all destined to become historians of
recognized authority in Japan, and Kanna Kenwa, who distinguished
himself later as vice-admiral, parliamentary vice-minister, and Diet
member.
Parents gave support to the striking students. Okinawans who held
minor posts in the prefectural government rallied behind them and brought
pressure to bear, which caused Kodama's removal and the restoration of
English to the middle-school curriculum.
Twenty years later a second crisis developed in the educational system
which illustrates certain persistent traditions and characteristics of local
higher education. The need for a second middle school began to be debated
in 1908. As the opening business of the first prefectural assembly (1909)
the chairman, Takamine Chokyo, introduced a proposal that such a school
be created as a symbol of "New Okinawa." A new institution was founded
as a temporary adjunct of the Shuri Middle School. In January, 1911, one
hundred students were enrolled from a list of 557 applicants. Takara
Rintoku was appointed principal, assisted by Shikiya Koshin.*
Politics overruled practical judgment in choosing a site for the new
school. It was constructed at Kadena despite clamorous opposition. As soon
as the students removed to Kadena from the temporary site at Shuri they
began to share public discontent; the site was too far from the population
center and was not hallowed by the traditions of Shuri or Naha. Enrollments
decreased. Only thirty men graduated in the first class (1915), and by 1918
the number of graduates had dwindled to eighteen.
Governor Omi inappropriately proposed that for economy's sake the
Second Middle School and the agricultural school, formerly at Nago, should
be brought under one administration on the Kadena site. This meant an
irreconcilable conflict between the traditions of vocational training
(represented in the agricultural school) and of literary training and
accomplishment (represented in the middle-school curriculum). Students
clashed in pitched battles on the school grounds. Parents took sides.
Teachers throughout the island hotly debated the issue. A general strike at
last paralyzed the prefectural school system.
Principal Takara resigned to take his seat in the prefectural assembly,
where he could battle politically for the separation of the two schools.
Governor Orni was dismissed, and at last, in June, 1918, the Second Middle
School was removed to Naha. In 1916 there had been only seventy-six
applicants for admission at Kadena; by 1927 there were 619 applicants at
Naha, of which only 162 could be enrolled. By 1930 the total number of
graduates exceeded one thousand.
Public debate of the middle-school problem inspired the people of
northern Okinawa and of Miyako to petition for higher schools. A Third
Middle School was established at Nago in 1928, and a branch of the Second
Middle School was opened in Miyako. In 1929 this became an independent
Miyako Middle School. In the same year the Okinawan Prefectural
Educational Association opened a special institution of high standard to
provide evening classes for youths who could not afford to attend regular
courses. In 1936—after many years' service as principal—Shikiya Koshin
resigned from the staff of the Second Middle School in order to establish
the Kainan Middle School, privately financed for the benefit of children of
emigrants whose elementary-school training overseas created special
problems.
Facilities for the education of young women were fewer in number
and of less importance to the government than the middle-school system for
the boys. A girls' high school was founded as an adjunct to the normal
school in 1900, but it had to depend upon private funds until 1902. By 1930
it had graduated more than two thousand students. A Domestic Arts
Institute, founded privately in 1905 with an enrollment of 379, ultimately
won public subsidies until in 1924 it was transformed into the Naha
Municipal Girls High School. In 1927 it became the Second Prefectural
Girls High School. A third girls' school, founded by popular subscription,
was absorbed into the prefectural system in 1930. In 1936 Miyako
succeeded in obtaining a girls' high school, but Yaeyama had neither a boys'
middle school nor a girls' high school until 1942.
The record suggests that the Okinawan people themselves took the
initiative in promoting development of educational facilities at higher
levels. This was done at considerable sacrifice, and won only grudging
recognition and cooperation from the government. Students desiring
education beyond the middle-school level had to choose between the
normal school at Naha or the more expensive life of a student overseas in
other prefectures or in Formosa. More than three thousand men and women
completed the normal-school courses during the first fifty years of
prefectural administration.
 Nine vocational schools were founded between 1902 and 1907, when
economic reorganization followed land reform. Three were founded in
subsequent years. By 1930 there were approximately 4,500 students
enrolled, taxing facilities to the limit.
At the beginning of Japan's second major war with China—in 1937—
more than 100,000 students were enrolled in the primary schools of
Okinawa. This was a new generation. The traditions and history of old
Ryukyu meant little to them and they were only dimly aware of the divided
loyalties which had troubled their grandparents during transition from
kingdom to prefecture. Pretensions to Chinese learning withered away with
the older generation. In 1904 an American student of Okinawan history
visited Kume Village in search of scholars in the old tradition. He found
them few in number and exercising no vital leadership. The study of
Ryukyuan history was discouraged in the schools, but a few men devoted
themselves to the collection and preservation of historic documents. A
public library was proposed in 1899. Two years later Marquis Sho—the
former crown prince—donated two thousand yen to be used in founding a
prefectural library. By 1940 this contained approximately 25,000 volumes
in a general collection and housed the archives of the Ryukyu kingdom and
of the royal house, containing some manuscripts dating from the 15th-
century. Local historians—Iha Fuyu, Majikina Anko, and Shimabukuro
Zempatsu— served successively as chief librarians and curators of these
irreplaceable treasures.
Musty documents meant little to the younger generation. A few of the
grandparents made semi-annual visits to the old Confucian temple and
academy at Kume Village to pay respects before the tablets of Confucius,
but it appears that a newspaper advertisement of this ceremony in July,
1910, marked the last public evidence of interest.
The arrival of a foreigner—Henry Butler Schwartz—to teach at the
Shuri Middle School in 1906 was of far more interest to the younger
generation. Ceremonies at the Confucian academy were vestiges of a past
that was little understood and could not be recalled; lessons in English held
promise that Okinawa—through Japan—would share in what seemed then
to be the limitless possibilities of the 20th century.
Japan and Great Britain were on most cordial terms; diplomatic
equality had been achieved in 1899 and the first Anglo-Japanese alliance
had been formed in 1902 to offset Russian influence in the Far East. This
formal association with the great British empire laid the foundations for
Japan's rapid growth as a world power. Tokyo was prepared to promote the
study of the English language throughout the empire— even in remote
Okinawa.
These were matters of high policy, of which the students at Shuri and
Naha had no substantial knowledge. It was of much more immediate
interest to them to learn the bastardized English-Japanese terms used in
baseball and tennis, both of which were introduced and became popular at
the opening of the century. In 1903 a United States naval vessel, the
"Vicksburg," put in at Naha to pay a courtesy call. This time no blustering
commodore marched with marines to Shuri Castle; instead, baseball teams
from aboard the "Vicksburg" trudged up to Shuri, and on the middle-school
grounds within the castle walls Okinawa's first international game of
baseball was played between the American bluejackets and the middle-
school boys.
 Athletics played an important part in Japan's assimilation program.
Setting-up exercises at the schools preceded military drill. Traditional
Japanese sports (judo and kendo) were introduced, and as the years passed
there was an increasing participation by Okinawan teams in competitive
exhibitions and athletic meets held at Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and elsewhere
in the empire.
The value of travel had not been overlooked as a means to strengthen
Okinawan ties with Japan, to increase respect for Japan's leaders and
leadership in Asia, and to encourage a sense of Okinawan identity with
Japan vis-à-vis foreign nations and peoples. In May, 1894, Okinawan
students were taken on tour in Kyushu for the first time in a century, setting
a precedent for later tours throughout the prefectures and far afield—to
Formosa (1899), to Manchuria and Korea (1906), and to Shanghai and
Nanking (1920). Students from other prefectures were sent down to tour the
Ryukyu Islands and to take part there in local exhibitions and contests.
For twenty years after the king's downfall the merchants and officials
from other prefectures kept aloof in Okinawa, isolated by sharp lines of
political and economic privilege and social distinction. When the turn of the
century brought general economic reorganization, these lines began to blur;
there came into existence a new class of propertied Okinawan businessmen
who rapidly gained experience in managing their own affairs at Naha,
Kagoshima, Osaka, and Tokyo.
In 1905 there were approximately 2,600 Japanese from other
prefectures resident at Naha. To draw them together on the "economic
front" vis-à-vis the Okinawans and to serve their interests, a trade paper, the
Okinawa Shimbun, was founded. Convocation of a prefectural assembly in
1909 brought a fresh challenge to the Japanese community, this time a
challenge to the political supremacy enjoyed by men from other prefectures.
To defend their vested interests in the assembly the "resident merchants"
formed an association in 1911, but they were doomed slowly to disappear as
an effectually organized group of colonial businessmen and administrators.
The Okinawans at the same time gained steadily in a sense of
prefectural solidarity. An Okinawa Prefectural Association was founded in
1899 to promote wider knowledge of administrative affairs, and the serial
publication of Notes on Current Events in Okinawa served as a common
fund of information for minor officials throughout the islands. A Society for
the Improvement of Manners and Customs was formed under official
patronage in 1902. Branches in each local district were expected to
introduce and to encourage the adoption of manners and customs more or
less standard elsewhere in Japan but as yet unknown in the outlying
communities of Okinawa.
The educational system took the lead in the "Japanization" program.
Virtually every home in the island could be reached through the children at
school. With official encouragement the newspapers at Naha and in other
prefectures undertook to promote mutual understanding, not only by essays
and news items, but by contests of many kinds which the Okinawans were
encouraged to enter. Soon after the first prefectural assembly met, tours
were arranged for Okinawans who wished to visit historic and industrial
centers of the empire in the "Home Islands." In time annual excursions
created a continuing interchange of students and tourists.
By the end of World War I, the major obstacles of assimilation had
been overcome. Strong attachment to local scenes and local customs
remained, but in matters of economics and politics the younger generation
thought in terms of identification with nationwide Japanese interests. The
stories of the old kingdom and of the distressing days of transition from
kingdom to prefecture were the tales of grandparents. For ambitious youth,
Tokyo or Osaka (or an emigrant community overseas) held the promise of
the future. With the admission of Yaeyama and Miyako to full political
status in 1921 the internal unification process was complete. The Manhood
Suffrage Act of 1925 quadrupled the electorate in Japan, raising it to more
then 12,500,000, and reflecting public opinion from Yaeyama in the south
to Hokkaido in the far north.
But the ugly problem of social discrimination had not been overcome.
The Japanese government was winning the campaign to have Okinawans
think of themselves as Japanese subjects, but in general there was little done
to overcome the widespread Japanese sense of superiority toward the
Okinawans as an "out-group," a minority of rather second-class, country
cousins. In Japanese eyes the Okinawans stood somewhere between the
former outçastes, the Eta of pre-Restora-tion days, and full-fledged
membership in the nation-family.
Okinawan students in Japan proper found it difficult to gain
acceptance in ordinary lodging houses; Okinawan travelers were subjected
to discrimination in hotels; and employers hesitated to give equal
opportunity to employees from Okinawa Prefecture. The cleavages were
accentuated in emigrant communities in Hawaii, the United States
mainland, and South America. In self-defense Okinawans overseas tended
to organize among themselves and to resist official Japanese efforts to
control and direct their interests. The Japanese overseas in turn sought to
make sure that they were not mistaken for Okinawans, and the very name
"Okinawan" often carried a derisive or contemptuous overtone. Peculiarities
of Okinawan dress, dialect, and diet embarrassed the Japanese.
An outstanding example of differentiation was the Okinawan use of
pork as a main article of diet. This was part of the Chinese cultural heritage;
many Okinawans established themselves in the metropolitan centers of
Japan (and in Hawaii) as proprietors of piggeries. This, in Japanese eyes,
placed them almost on a level with the despised Eta, the butchers and
tanners and shoemakers of the old days. Hand-tattooing among the older
women (no longer practiced) was another Okinawan irritant to Japanese
sensibilities. The strong insularity of Japanese nationalism would not admit
the Okinawans easily to full membership in Japanese society. Before World
War II there was relatively little intermarriage in overseas communities
between Okinawans and the Japanese from other prefectures. The
Okinawans who left Ryukyu for foreign settlements tended to preserve
memories of days when Japanese discrimination was most obvious and
economic pressure most severe, and to cultivate these attitudes among their
own children in the first generation born overseas. Within Japan itself
progress toward full assimilation was more rapid, but by no means complete
at the end of World War II. Much more was done to inform the Okinawans
of traditions and standards prevailing in the "Home Provinces" of Japan
proper than was done in those prefectures to develop a knowledge and
understanding of Okinawans.
In broadest terms, Okinawa's relation to Japan proper may be
compared with Hawaii's relation to the continental United States. The
political dissolution of the monarchy began in 1872 and ended in
annexation to Japan in 1879. Political equality with other prefectures was
achieved in 1920, but social assimilation was not complete by 1945. The
Hawaiian monarchy fell in 1893; annexation took place in 1898, but full
political equality with other states of the Union has yet to be achieved; and
although residents of Hawaii conceive themselves to be loyal American
citizens, they are not yet accorded full political recognition, principally on
grounds of social and cultural differentiation.

RELIGION AND POLITICS IN JAPAN'S

ASSIMILATION PROGRAM
Organized religious activity and propaganda in 20th-century Okinawa was
promoted by two utterly dissimilar agencies; one was the Christian
missionary organization, the other the organized bureaucracy of Japan's
State Shinto. The Okinawans may be said to be fundamentally indifferent to
organized religion and to theological disputes and speculations. The
educated elite—the townsmen—were satisfied with the body of Chinese
Confucian moral precepts and codes of behavior. Emotional life centered in
the family, governed by the beliefs and practices of ancestor worship. A
man behaved as he thought fitting in the eyes of his forebears; the honor of
the family provided strong ethical framework for daily life; duty to one's
superiors carried more weight in argument than obligations stressed by
imported cults. In this the common country people shared. Rituals
associated with ancestor veneration provided expression for instinctive
religious feeling. The noro remained strong in the countryside. Upon this
ancient cult the Japanese nationalists attempted to superimpose organized
State Shinto, but the Okinawans, generally indifferent to organized religious
life, were not sympathetic. Aggressive Shinto propagandists were no more
welcome among them than the Christian missionaries proved to be, for
neither Shinto nationalists nor Christian teachers showed sufficient
tolerance and respect for private and personal beliefs—or non-belief.
Christianity did not gain ground in the Ryukyus until the Okinawans
themselves began to take part in evangelical work. A native of Oshima was
converted while in Hawaii in 1892. He returned to Okinawa and found
employment with the Land Survey Office. About 1903 he began to urge
others to accept Christianity. The conversion of a primary-school principal
was an important gain. This convert in turn won an opportunity to study in
Japan proper on a subsidy provided by the Epworth League of Portland,
Indiana. He was a man of sympathetic character and marked personal
ability, and as principal of the Henja School he enjoyed distinction and
prestige. In a relatively short time he won one hundred and twenty converts.
But such a mass conversion disturbed the community; Christian principles
of family life as interpreted by mission orthodoxy were at many points
incompatible with established customs and traditions. There was an angry
reaction; converts were stoned; some were denied access to community
activities and were not permitted to use agricultural tools to which the
village held communal title.
In time opposition dwindled, but since the poorest members of the
community—those with least to lose and most to gain—were attracted first
to the Christian faith and organization, there was some prejudice among
those who enjoyed a better economic and social status and some formal
education. To give strength and support to local pastors, an American
representative of the Methodist Church, H.B. Schwartz, took up residence at
Naha in 1906, dividing his time between the mission and the Shuri Middle
School, where he was engaged to teach English.3 After 1910 his successor,
the Reverend Earl R. Bull, spent a portion of each year at Naha until 1926.
There he slowly developed the Bettelheim legend to heroic proportions,
adapting it generously. At last the Christian undertaking itself was dubbed
the "Bettelheim Memorial Mission." Okinawans were urged to look back
with gratitude and reverence upon the doctor's strange career, which was
interpreted to have been one of great personal sacrifice in their behalf.
Seventy years after Bettelheim had left the island his biographer could
write: "How the Loo Chooan officials barely tolerated Bettelheim we know
too well. He endured not by the support of diplomatic representatives of
foreign states, but remained on Okinawa through a sustained and exalted
life of sacrificial love." A monument was raised at Naha to commemorate
the missionary pioneer. The development of Christian organizations in
Okinawa supplied new ties with Japan proper, for the foreign missionaries
urged the Okinawans to look upon their fellow Christians in Japan with a
sense of close kinship in spirit.
Japanese nationalists were eager to develop organized State Shinto in
the Ryukyu Islands. It was held that the emperor was of divine descent, and
that respect for the imperial house and for the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu O-
Mikami, provided the essential unifying spiritual element in the national
life. Forms of Shinto worship were expected to take precedence over
Buddhist, Christian, or popular local Shinto rites. Moving slowly, the
national government, through the Bureau of Shrines, schools, and other
agencies, sought gradually to bring the popular local Shinto shrines (the
village altars tended by the noro) into closer formal association and to
absorb and transform popular beliefs.
Local divinities worshiped in field and forest and at seaside shrines in
the Ryukyu Islands were declared to be members of a host of guardian gods
defending the empire. In 1898, soon after Japan had assumed control of
Formosa, it was announced that the bodies of Okinawan seamen slain in
Formosa in 1871 had been found and identified. The alleged remains were
returned to Okinawa and entombed with a flourish of honors at the ancient
Gokoku Temple at Naha—Bettelheim's old home. It was said that they had
"died in the service of the State." Quite unwittingly they had provided the
excuse for Japan's first expedition to Formosa and for the annexation
program which followed. Henceforth all Okinawans who died "in the
service of the emperor" were numbered in the pantheon of national heroes.
In 1909 it was proposed to build a prefectural shrine at Naha and to
construct official shrines in each administrative subdivision throughout the
prefecture. These were to be paid for by local contributions and
assessments. But the government soon discovered that the Okinawans had
little enthusiasm for the scheme; it was put aside until 1923.
The Shinto shrine on Nami-no-ue headland was officially declared to
be the center for religious affairs in the prefecture in 1924. Here the
principal objects of veneration were symbols of four kings of Ryukyu
(Shunten, Sho En, Sho Nei, and Sho Tai) and of Tametomo, alleged to have
been Shunten's father. It will be remembered that Tametomo was a
descendent in the seventh generation of the Minamoto family, founded by
the Japanese Emperor Seiwa. Thus the government hoped to encourage
Okinawans to think of their own royal house as a branch of the imperial
house of Japan. Official shrines were established to commemorate heroes in
Miyako and Yaeyama, and at Naha (in 1927) the Yomochi Shrine and
public gardens were created at prefectural expense to commemorate the
three great agricultural heroes of Okinawa—Noguni Sokan, Gima Shinjo,
and Sai On.
State Shinto—the cult of military hero worship and of reverence for
the imperial family—was promoted in Okinawa with new vigor after the
China incident of 1931-32. Towns and villages were pressed to build new
shrines to accommodate priests serving the national cult. By carefully
placing new shrines immediately in front of ancient local worship-sites, or
adjacent to them, the government sought by association to effect a transfer
of interest from the old to the new.
The manipulation of imperial symbolism confronted the Japanese with
delicate problems. The death of the former king in 1901 marked an
important loosening of emotional ties with traditions of the past. The most
important symbol of the old kingdom had ceased to exist. Members of Sho
Tai's extensive household at Tokyo observed mourning for two years, but
when that period came to an end they gave up the use of traditional
Ryukyuan costume, coiffure, court language, and daily ceremony. Children
of the household were enrolled in the ordinary schools of Tokyo or at the
Peers' School. Henceforth the family of Marquis Sho Ten adopted the
pattern of social life common among other aristocrats living at Tokyo. The
former crown prince died in 1920 and on September 26 in that year was
entombed with his royal ancestors at the Tama Udon at Shuri, the last of the
Sho family to be so honored.
 Meanwhile considerable attention had been given to the problem of
substituting the symbolism of the imperial family for the old loyalties to the
Sho family, hitherto the vital center of national life. At one time it was
proposed that the Emperor Meiji should travel to Naha, but neither he nor
his son, Emperor Taisho, made the journey. Other members of the imperial
family and court chamberlains from the Imperial Household made frequent
journeys to Naha to give evidence of imperial concern for the welfare of the
Okinawan people. Each disastrous drought, typhoon, or epidemic was made
occasion for a token grant of relief funds, and in 1911 the Okinawan Public
Welfare Foundation was established by a grant of 1,500,000 yen from the
privy purse at a time of great hardship and political unrest.
When the Emperor Meiji died in July, 1911, and again in 1914 upon
the death of his widow, the Empress Dowager Shoken, dramatic ceremonies
of "worship from afar" were staged throughout the prefecture to inculcate a
sense of awed respect and to focus attention upon the imperial palace at
Tokyo. Every hamlet was required to celebrate the accession of the new
emperor Yoshihito.
In 1921, Crown Prince Hirohito paused in Okinawa for a day at the
outset of his long and memorable voyage to Europe. This was an occasion
for great local pride, for an Okinawan, naval officer Kanna Kenwa, was
captain of the warship bearing the young prince on this unprecedented tour.
Although it was widely believed that prejudice retarded Kanna's
promotion thereafter to the highest ranks, he became a vice-admiral upon
retirement, and a source of pride to Okinawans conscious of the great honor
which this association with the crown prince implied in Japanese eyes.
 CULTURAL AFFAIRS IN THE 20TH
CENTURY
To a large degree Japanese prejudice toward Okinawans was nurtured in
mistrust of the non-conformist, and uneasiness in the presence of the alien.
Speech, dress, and food habits set the Okinawans somewhat apart. The
individual who could minimize distinguishing Okinawan characteristics, or
who could hold his own in intellectual competition in the academic world,
was free to take his place in Japan's metropolitan communities. Many
achieved academic and literary distinction. To name but a few, Higaonna
Kanjun became Professor of Far Eastern History in the preparatory school
of Tokyo Imperial University; Ohama Shinsen, a professor of law, became
president of Waseda, one of Japan's greatest universities; Miyara Toso
became president of the Japan Philological Institute; Yamanoguchi Baku
achieved distinction as a poet.
It was more difficult to override prejudice in the civil service, in all its
branches, and in the armed services. But even here Okinawans rose to high
position and some influence. Vice Admiral Kanna retired from the navy to
become Parliamentary Vice Minister for Home Affairs; Takamine Meitatsu
became Director of the General Affairs Bureau in the Ministry of
Commerce and Industry; and Yoshida Shien (descendent of Sho Hashi) rose
to a place of distinction in the Foreign Office. Successful Okinawans—
these men among them—gave consistent and energetic support to the study
of history and the Okinawan cultural heritage.
Studies of Ryukyuan language, religion, craftsmanship, and history
came from the Japanese press with fair regularity after 1904, the year in
which Torii Ryuzo published a study of the Ogido shell mounds. A new
generation of Okinawan scholars began to appear, trained in the universities
of Tokyo and Kyoto, and in the leading normal schools. Higaonna Kanjun
opened his distinguished career with the publication (in 1909) of the
Okinawan section of a geographical dictionary of Japan. Iha Fuyu, first
director of the Okinawa Prefectural Library, began to publish a staggering
number of essays concerning language, culture, and history in the Ryukyu
Islands. His authoritative work Ko Ryukyu (Ancient Ryukyu) appeared in
1911.
The Japanese were rather slow to recognize the quality and unique
character of traditional Okinawan arts, crafts, and architecture, and in the
Ryukyus (as in Japan proper) developed significant interest in these things
only after Western connoisseurs led the way. In 1909, Langdon Warner, of
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, toured Okinawa, collected fine textiles
and lacquer, and lectured publicly upon the arts and crafts of the Far East.
His engaging personality, his immense fund of information, and his desire
to learn made a deep and lasting impression.
Soon after this the Sho family assumed certain responsibilities for the
maintenance of historic Okinawan temples—the Enkaku-ji, Tenno-ji,
Tenkai-ji, and Ryufuku-ji—which had suffered serious neglect after 1879. A
government report in 1915 called attention to the importance of historic
Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples throughout the empire, but the ancient
foundations of the old Ryukyu kingdom received scant consideration. The
palace buildings at Shuri were dilapidated. Japanese garrison forces had
occupied them for years. Architectural monuments had been leveled when
the Shuri Middle School was removed to the site of the old Royal Academy
buildings. The Shuri-Naha area contained nearly all the important surviving
architectural monuments and these were disappearing one by one, giving
way to the demands of "progress" in terms of modern roads and modern
buildings.
An American, Ernest Fenollosa, had been a prime agent in persuading
the national government at Tokyo to set up a registry system for national
treasures late in the 19th century. In 1912 an ancient Korean bell at the
Nami-no-ue Shrine was placed under protection of the law, but little more
was done to preserve the neglected gardens, bridges, and buildings of the
vanished kingdom.
As the new generation of Okinawan scholars grew more articulate,
they were able to draw Japanese attention to the importance of the Ryukyus
as a "triangulation point" from which to study the course of institutional and
linguistic history of Japan proper. In 1919 a society was founded at Naha to
promote the study of local geography and history. This grew into an
"Association for the Preservation of Historic Sites and Relics of Okinawa."
In 1923 Majikina Anko published the first edition of his important work
Okinawa Issen-nen Shi (A Thousand Years of Okinawan History). Soon
thereafter Kuroita Katsumi visited Okinawa to gather data for his
monumental study of Japanese history. Tanabe Tai prepared the text and
photographs for a handsome volume entitled Ryukyu Kenchiku (The
Architecture of Ryukyu), published in 1937, which records the palaces,
temples, gates, bridges, gardens, belfries, walls, and fountains which then
survived.
The fiftieth anniversary of Okinawa prefectural administration in 1929
called forth much retrospective comment and publication. On the eve of this
commemorative year Shuri Castle was at last designated a "National
Treasure" and a four-year repair and restoration program began. In 1933 six
more ancient structures were named important national monuments. The list
continued to grow.
This developing interest in cultural characteristics which set Okinawa
apart was not at all to the liking of the military men and extreme nationalist
agitators at Tokyo, and led to a minor crisis in Japanese-Okinawan relations
on the eve of the Pacific War.
Soon after World War I, two young Japanese potters—Kawai Kanjiro
and Hamada Shoji—set out to investigate all the important kilns in the
empire. Through them the eyes of Japan's artists were to be opened to
special qualities inherent in the aesthetic traditions and technical
achievements of Okinawan craftsman.
At the Tsuboya kilns at Naha they found a strongly developed style
and craftsmanship, the Okinawan modification of Korean ceramic
techniques introduced in the very early years of the 17th century. Hamada
was deeply impressed, returning for a second and a third time to Okinawa to
perfect his mastery of the Tsuboya method. His close friend Yanagi Soetsu
became interested; the Japan Folk Art Museum at Tokyo (of which he was
director) became an agency through which Okinawan ceramics, textiles,
and lacquer attracted wide attention. Marquis Sho and the Okinawan
prefectural Bureau of Education arranged for Dr. Yanagi to visit Okinawa.
Soon afterward a study group of twenty-six members of the Japan Folk Art
Association proceeded to the Ryukyus for systematic study of Okinawan
arts and crafts.4 Thereafter motion pictures, lectures, and publications in the
other prefectures began to rouse wide interest in the unique aspects of
Okinawan culture.
In a sense this marked a local cultural renaissance, giving the
Okinawans new pride in their work. Yanagi and his colleagues urged them
not to abandon old craft standards in order merely to satisfy the shoddy
requirements of Japanese export markets. In effect they urged the people of
the Ryukyu Islands not to forget the unique qualities of their total cultural
tradition.
This ran counter to the nationalist program, then moving toward full
tide. At a public meeting in the Naha Municipal Hall in January, 1940, a
discussion of local dialects led to public criticism of official policies.
Okinawans who smarted under discrimination spoke up to protest the
government's concerted effort to suppress local peculiarities of speech and
custom, and the methods employed in doing so.
The incident came to the ears of Governor Fuchigami Fusataro. He
reacted strongly. The Folk Art Association was rebuked and charged with
stirring up sectionalism within the empire; in one or two instances
association members from Tokyo were roughly handled by the governor's
policemen. An angry public discussion led the governor to state vigorously
the official view that every vestige of Okinawa's provincial individuality
must be erased.
These ill-advised remarks brought into the open once more the
problem of discrimination. Governor Fuchigami bluntly proclaimed the
position of the extremists who dominated the civil and military bureaucracy
at Tokyo. National solidarity—the monolithic state dear to the totalitarian—
was essential to the supreme war effort the nation was about to make.
 Members of the Folk Art Association boldly took exception; they
believed that an Okinawan potter or weaver or lacquer-maker could be a
loyal subject even though he remained true to a local or regional craft
tradition. The farmer or the fisherman could be a loyal subject even though
his speech and his dress did not conform to standards set in Tokyo.
He might even make a good soldier.
Of this the military leaders were not convinced. Japan was on the eve
of a great war to which they were about to commit the whole people. The
material and human resources of the empire were everywhere being
mobilized for an enormous military gamble, no less than a bid to secure
political and economic control of Asia. How secure were the Ryukyu
Islands? How faithful were the Okinawans?

Footnote
* After World War II first Chief Executive of Okinawa under the American occupation and later first

president of the University of the Ryukyus.

 CHAPTER ELEVEN
BETWEEN HAMMER AND ANVIL:
OKINAWA AND THE COMING
OF WORLD WAR II
1941-1945

"NATIONAL SOLIDARITY" AND THE

JAPANESE MILITARY
PROGRAM FOR OKINAWA
In 1941 the Okinawans formed the largest minority group within Japan's
forty-seven prefectures. Prejudice corroded Okinawan relations with
Japanese from Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Students at the universities
and higher schools in Japan met with discrimination and heard Okinawa
referred to in contemptuous terms. Pride might be hurt, but loyalty
remained unaffected. The Okinawans as a whole considered themselves
loyal subjects of the emperor. There were individuals with left-wing or
radical sympathies, of course, but there were no anti-Japanese political
organizations within the prefecture, and no overt attempts were made to
appeal to the Okinawans, as such, in opposition to the Japanese government
and people. To understand the situation in 1941 we must review the record
of military activities in Okinawa after the Sino-Japanese War.
 From the militarists' point of view the Ryukyu Islands formed useful
links in the line of communications leading to Formosa and the south, but
the impoverished province added no economic strength to the empire,
Okinawan youths were substandard candidates for military service, and the
loyalty of the population had not been fully tested since the days of
annexation.
Universal military conscription laws enforced elsewhere in 1873 were
not extended to Okinawa until 1898. A few volunteers had been trained, but
public opinion in the older generation strongly opposed military service in
any form in the belief that an armed force maintained on Okinawa would
attract enemies and invite invasion. During the Sino-Japanese War (and
again during the Russo-Japanese conflict) women went daily to the Shinto
shrine on Nami-no-ue or to the Buddhist temple Enkaku-ji to pray that sons
and husbands would be unfit for military service. These things did not
endear the Okinawans to the military leaders at Tokyo.
At last, in 1896, graduates of the normal school who met the physical
qualifications were required to give six weeks of active sèrvice, and as a
gesture of goodwill the army withdrew its garrison from Shuri Castle. In
1898 a regular Okinawan garrison headquarters was established and
conscription laws were put into force. It was soon discovered that, by
design or by chance, the minimum requirements for the conscripts' height
and weight were fixed at a point just above the average for adult males in
Okinawa Prefecture. Okinawa stood at the bottom of the list of averages for
all prefectures. Although the army denied that this was deliberate
discrimination, the Okinawans were unconvinced. The prefecture continued
to show the highest number of rejections among males called up for
examination.
Japan felt a pressing need to develop defenses in the southern islands.
The date chosen to establish a full garrison force on Okinawa is significant,
for in 1898 Germany leased Kiaochow Bay, Russia leased the Liaotung
Peninsula, England leased Wei-hai-wei—all on the China coast—the United
States acquired Hawaii and opened a campaign in the Philippines to crush
the Filipino "Republic." The token purchase of the Philippines from Spain
established U.S. military government in territory which shared a common
sea frontier with Japan's new colony, Formosa.
Six years later the threat of Russian naval raids interrupted regular
communications between Kagoshima and Naha. The prefectural
government and the public felt a keen sense of physical isolation and danger
as Japan went to war with a European power for the first time. Guard units
were stationed on the Ryukyuan beaches to keep watch on cable landings,
and lookout posts were constructed on headlands throughout the
archipelago, alert for enemy craft.
No Russian forces bore down upon the Ryukyus, but five fishermen of
Hisamatsu Village in Miyako one day at sea glimpsed the Russian Baltic
Fleet as it moved northward toward its doom in the Straits of Tsushima.
Speeding to Yaeyama, the fishermen reported what they had seen; the news
was flashed by cable to naval headquarters in Japan; and the fleet was made
ready for Japan's great naval victory. In the Ryukyus the fishermen were
hailed by the Japanese as the "Five Heroes of Hisamatsu."
By 1907, Okinawans were enlisted in every military service branch. A
reservists association was formed in 1910. Divisional headquarters
undertook to promote an Okinawan Physical Culture Society to sponsor
athletic meetings throughout the islands and to develop higher standards of
physical fitness and training in the schools. In 1919 towns and villages
which had good conscript records were honored by citations granted from
the Ministry of War and monuments were erected to commemorate men
who had served the country well. Gradually relations between the armed
services and the people approached the pattern which was common in all
the other prefectures. Okinawans unable to meet minimum physical
standards for military training were conscripted for labor service with the
armed forces or with civilian corporations under contract to them.
For every lack in physical equipment and manpower the military
leaders attempted to compensate by developing fanatic spirit. The so-called
"spiritual mobilization" programs developed in Japan after 1931 paved the
way for extraordinary sacrifices exacted of the common people in World
War II.
As the strength and influence of civil government waned at Tokyo the
number of extreme nationalist organizations increased. A "National Self-
Regeneration Movement" was launched on Okinawa by missionaries of the
new militarism. The "thought police" which had been created as a special
service unit at Tokyo in 1928 became active now in every island outpost of
the empire. Ten teachers in Yaeyama were arrested for "ideological
reasons." Regulations governing a National Spiritual Mobilization Training
School were issued in early 1934. Excessive demands began to be made
upon the public for "voluntary" contributions of time, labor, and money in
support of military preparedness activities.
 Manifestations of extreme nationalism—the mass hysteria which
swept Japan along the road to national defeat—were unpopular in Okinawa.
The common people could not afford the "voluntary" contributions; they
had no traditions glorifying war and the fighting man. Great efforts were
made to convince the people that Japan was a "have not" nation engaged
upon a righteous crusade. Children at school were subjected to an intensive
propaganda campaign and stirred to admiration for heroic deeds reported
from the China warfront after the continental invasion began in 1931. The
youths of Okinawa were prepared to do their duty.
The professional military men believed that the civil population
existed only to feed and service the war machine. They looked upon every
activity not directly geared to military preparation as a waste of time if not
indeed an act of sabotage. In January, 1935, General Ishii Torao,
commanding the Okinawa Garrison Forces, publicly denounced the spirit
and conduct of men of military age in the Ryukyus. His vehement
castigation of the easygoing Okinawan youths was interpreted as a slur
upon Okinawan loyalty and was deeply resented.
In efforts to convince the public of the righteousness of Japan's drive
in Asia, the civil government sometimes went to absurd lengths to
demonstrate national solidarity and solidarity with other members of the
fatal Tri-Partite Pact. The propagandists were hard pressed to provide
convincing evidence of the importance of the German-Japanese alliance and
of German-Japanese friendship. As an illustration, in 1936 the people of
Okinawa were called upon to witness the erection of a large monument at
Hirara, in Miyako, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the erection of
another monument, the German kaiser's gift commemorating Okinawan
kindness to shipwrecked Germans in 1873. The fact that the original gift
had covered Germany's probing of Japan's weak southern frontier was
conveniently overlooked; the propaganda appeal was made to the
Okinawan's sense of mutual obligation created by honors received so long
ago at German hands.

THE COMING OF WORLD WAR II

When the Diet passed the National General Mobilization Law in March,
1938, individual freedoms guaranteed in the Meiji constitution were
foreclosed. The Imperial Rule Assistance Association was formed in
October, 1940; its agents and offices in Okinawa helped to complete
totalitarian political control in support of the army and the Cabinet. By mid-
1941, virtually all provisions of the general mobilization act were in effect
throughout the Ryukyus. This was "national solidarity" at its maximum
development short of war.
Okinawa Prefecture, on the sea frontiers, once again formed an outer
defense line for Japan proper and the Japanese. As matters stood on
December 8, 1941, the islands had little to contribute to the war effort.
There was virtually no surplus in foodstuffs and no significant industry.
There was a submarine base at Unten, but the harbors of Okinawa were
unimportant for large craft, and the airfields were merely way-stations on
the flight southward to Formosa and bases beyond.
To cover the approaches from the south, five airfields were built upon
the flat, unfertile fields of Miyako, and three full divisions of Japanese
soldiers (more than the total local population) were quartered there at the
war's end. Here the hard-pressed country folk felt the heel of war, for the
Japanese from the home islands were unable to communicate freely in the
local dialect and found the local ways of life uncouth and strange. The
Miyako people complained bitterly that they had to bow to every soldier
from the other prefectures, as if they were a conquered people, and were
forced to suffer great privation in yielding their meager stores to the
occupying forces.
Yaeyama suffered to a less degree, for the mountainous terrain
admitted no extension of the airfields. The Japanese from other prefectures
who were stationed there on naval patrol or with the air wings found
Ishigaki City less strange, and there was more abundant supply of food
produced locally to be shared with the Yaeyama people.
No prefecture contributed so little to the preparation for war and its
prosecution through the years, but none suffered as much in widespread
misery, in loss of human lives and property, and in ultimate subservience to
military occupation. Although a handful of Okinawans held important posts
in the civil government at Tokyo and in other prefectures, they were not in
key policy positions. Some ten thousand able-bodied Okinawans served in
the regular military labor corps, but there were relatively few conscripts
trained for combat. Of these only 4,500 were stationed on Okinawa as the
war drew to its close.
Pearl Harbor, Manila, Singapore, Jakarta, Rangoon; in an explosion of
national energy imperial Japanese forces swept in 1942 through Southeast
Asia to the borders of India and from island to island in Australasian seas.
There was excitement and pride throughout Japan. Every prefecture was
organized at every level of social and economic Ufe. From the Kuriles to
Formosa the emperor's subjects felt common exhilaration, sharing the news
of victories as well as the privations and dangers of the war. Sacrifices made
on distant battlefields seemed worth the promise of the future. In Japanese
eyes the wicked Europeans and Americans were being driven out of Asia. A
Co-Prosperity Sphere for Asians was soon to organize under benevolent
imperial direction. Wealth would pour back into Japan and there would be
new lands opened overseas for settlement.
But by 1943 the tide had turned decisively. The public had not
recognized the significance of Japan's defeat at Midway in 1942, and at
Guadalcanal and Saipan, but senior statesmen at Tokyo read the signs of
danger. The basic economy could not support a long war. Military men had
greatly overestimated Japan's capacity to convert new-won wealth into
military goods. Japan's industrial structure could not meet the demands of a
long war. Army leaders had grossly underestimated the United States.
Americans had not proved weak-willed isolationists, willing to negotiate a
settlement rather than to fight in East and West at once. Allied forces were
pouring into the Pacific in a swelling flood. Japan was everywhere in
retreat.
The governments ranged against Japan began to discuss openly the
problems which would rise with Japan's defeat. The Chinese hastened to
announce that they intended to claim not only Manchuria and Formosa but
the Ryukyu Islands as well. On July 7, 1942, Sun Fo announced China's
determination to recover the Ryukyus; Foreign Minister T.V. Soong
repeated the claim in November; Chiang Kai-shek referred to China's "loss
of the Liu-ch'iu Islands" in the unexpurgated Chinese edition of his
manifesto Chinas Destiny, published on March 10, 1943; and Chinese
spokesmen in the United States found opportunity to bring the claim to the
attention of the American public.
To strengthen the capacity of Japan to resist direct invasion and to
consolidate domestic administration, the whole of Japan was divided into
nine major districts in June, 1943. Okinawa Prefecture and seven others
were combined to form the "Kyushu District"
Powerful army leaders insisted that Japan would be able to regain
initiative, mount new offensives, and win through in the end. The generals
refused to entertain thoughts of compromise. The "national spirit"—seishin
—would overcome deficiencies in wealth and arms; kamikaze, the "divine
winds," would drive off and destroy enemies who approached Japan.1
But civilians near the throne and important naval officers weighed
carefully Japan's capacity to resist. Shigemitsu Mamoru recommended that
a peace be made with China to free Japan from commitments on the
continent, and Rear Admiral Takagi Sokichi reported his grim conclusion
that Japan had lost the war at sea and must find a formula for peace.
Such maneuvering behind the scenes took time and great care, for
tensions within the government at Tokyo were extremely high. Anarchy
might engul f Japan if fanatic army officers turned on senior statesmen to
purge the court of dangerous thoughts of peace. The essence of safety for
the nation lay in holding off an Allied movement toward Japan while every
avenue of compromise was carefully explored. Foreshadowed by the Cairo
Declaration and reduced to its simplest terms, the choice was this: if the
imperial government could negotiate surrender before Allied forces reached
Japan and made a land-ing, Japan would lose all her territories overseas, but
the homeland— the heartland—of Japan would be preserved; its political
and social institutions would survive. If, on the other hand, Allied forces
won and held beachheads within home territory, the homeland would be
ravaged, and Japan itself would be destroyed.
The threat of allied invasion from over the seas to the south and east
grew stronger as each week and month went by. Okinawa Prefecture lay on
the path to all the other provinces of the empire. Where did it lie in relation
to this fundamental question, the timing and terms of a surrender?
It is improbable that the men at Tokyo considered Okinawa so
explicitly as this, but none were acting without emotional reference to the
past; they knew that the Western powers could make a case for detaching
Okinawa from Japan proper if there was a desire to draft punitive terms for
peace just short of partitioning Japan itself. Okinawa had been occupied and
garrisoned over the protests of the Okinawan king and government;
moreover, even after the islands had been annexed and declared a province,
Tokyo had offered to divide the archipelago,giving half to China. The Cairo
Declaration had left the way open for negotiation. By virtue of its exposed
location and its history, Okinawa had become again a territorial bargaining
point and pawn, potentially expendable in "the larger interest."
By February, 1944, high-ranking prefectural officers—natives of other
prefectures—began to send their families home to the main islands. In April
many men in the civil government and in the police forces were transferred
to a naval administration. The islands were placed under martial law. By
July a general movement of people to the relative safety of Formosa or
Kyushu began to take place. Okinawan parents who could afford it sent
school-age children on ahead, promising to join them in due course. Infants
were entrusted to the care of older brothers and sisters.
 As the sense of danger mounted, more than twenty thousand young
men and women were pressed into "special service" organizations. The girls
formed nursing corps and working units to take over tasks normally
performed by men.
Intensive propaganda had for years urged every subject to prepare
himself to make supreme sacrifice on the emperor's behalf, but this theme
had been coupled with assurance that Japan was invincible. To the very last
the government refused to disclose the gravity of Japan's war position or to
alert the public to the imminence of disaster. Tokyo gave little thought to
the civil economy on distant Okinawa and did virtually nothing to prepare it
for the crisis of invasion. The Ryukyus were not Kyushu, or Shikoku, or
Honshu; Okinawa retained importance only as a potential field of battle, a
distant border area in which the oncoming enemy could be checked, pinned
down, and ultimately destroyed.
The Japanese of other prefectures had been nurtured for centuries in
traditions of war which exalted skill in close combat and glorified the
mystique of self-sacrifice. Not so the Okinawans, who were unprepared to
take up arms in self-defense.
Naha came under air attack for the first time in October, 1944. Some
ninety percent of the city was burned. Shuri was hit again and again.
Carrier-based planes flew in from the south and east, and heavy bombers
came from the hinterland of China.
Civil-defense measures were hopelessly inadequate. The government
(dominated throughout by men of other prefectures) did nothing to protect
ancient monuments and made no effort to preserve the priceless archives of
the old kingdom. The bureaucrats were psychologically unprepared to admit
that they were losing a war in which they had for years been promised
victory. They could not improvise or take individual initiative in times of
crises, but clung to the symbols of an imperial government which had failed
them. Schoolmasters were ordered to ensure the safety of the emperor's
portrait, for instance; obedient custodians were seen wandering about, not
knowing what to do with framed pictures, helpless from want of direction in
times of grave emergency. (Ultimately an order was given to burn the
photographs en fnasse and with great ceremony.) The total energies of
responsible officialdom were consumed in meeting demands made by the
military forces. General headquarters were established in caverns deep
beneath Shuri Castle walls. Civilians were impressed for labor upon
defensive works thrown up throughout the islands using any materials at
hand. Highways were stripped of their bordering trees, the ancient pines
which had been set out centuries earlier. Private homes were given up and
whole villages taken over to accommodate the garrison making ready for a
desperate stand.
In the midst of these final military preparations the bewildered
ordinary citizens were left to make ready for the crisis as best they could.
Families hurried to the countryside to conceal books and clothes and other
goods in the family tombs or in pits dug in the ravines beyond suburban
settlements.
Late in March, 1945, the Custodian of Treasures of the Sho family
gathered together the principal objects of historic interest and intrinsic value
remaining in the Sho mansions at Shuri. These included ancient crowns of
Chinese style and workmanship (gifts of China's emperors), and Chinese
musical instruments of rare antiquity, which had been registered with the
Japanese government as "National Treasures" and "Objects of National
Importance." There were portraits of the kings and of the royal princes,
splendidly brocaded robes of state, fine ceramics, incense burners,
lacquerware, crystal, silver services, golden ornaments, jewels and beads of
the old high priestesses, and ancient texts and manuscripts. Some of these
rare objects were placed in vaults, some were buried with scant
consideration here and there in the gardens, covered lightly with mats and
earth and brush. Eight custodians were assigned to keep watch about the
premises, but on April 6 the Sho mansion was destroyed by fire and two
days later the Japanese army occupied the grounds, driving off the
Okinawan guards.2
Meanwhile, on March 26 a small American force had gone ashore in
the Kerama Islands, lying low on the horizon west of Naha. They met little
opposition. The local garrison had no stomach for the fight, although this
was found to be the base for 360 "suicide craft" being readied for surprise
attack upon Allied ships in Okinawan waters.
On the evening of March 31 at Shuri, students in the middle school
assembled under cover of darkness for graduation ceremonies. As each
youth was handed his certificate he was given his military orders.
There were rumors of a landing up the coast. An occasional glimmer
of signal lights at sea warned of a great fleet assembled on the horizon.
Civilian interests were no longer of consequence. Families were fleeing into
the hills, seeking refuge in old tombs and rocky caves.
Storms greater than any recorded in a thousand years of history were
about to sweep across these frontier islands.
 THE BATTLE FOR OKINAWA3
The Okinawan campaign began on Easter morning, April 1. A feigned
attack on the southeast coast divided Japanese attention. British naval units
patrolled approaches to the battle site from Formosa. An immense
American fleet lay in the offshore waters, drawn like a noose about
Okinawa proper.
The first assault took place at half past eight o'clock. Twenty thousand
Americans plunged ashore and crossed the beach near Kadena. From the
ancient walls of Shuri Castle Lieutenant General Ushijima watched the
landings. The Americans were astonished to meet no serious opposition.
Ushijima had concentrated his troops to the south, beyond a great
escarpment which crosses the island from shore to shore between Shuri and
Kadena. He planned to draw the invaders to positions under these craggy
heights, from which he could then direct a sweeping fire. He proposed to
hold the Americans there while reinforcements from Japan, by air and by
sea, destroyed the supporting Allied fleet. It was a bold design.
Within twenty-four hours some fifty thousand Americans had landed,
digging in beyond the beachhead and pressing across to the eastern shore,
only four miles away. Thus at one stroke Okinawa had been divided.
From this base on the waist of the island the invasion forces organized
for drives northward into the hills and wooded valleys of the Kuni-gami
district, and southward across the densely populated Shuri-Naha area into
open farmland beyond. On April 5 the Americans began to move. The civil
population fled before them. No provision had been made by the Japanese
high command to protect or segregate the non-combatants; every
Okinawan, old and young, was on his own; he might preserve his life if he
could find sufficient shelter.
The Third Marine Amphibious Corps turned northward. General
Ushijima had decided to let the Kunigami district go by default. There was
a week of savage hand-to-hand fighting in the northern ravines, where some
twelve hundred Japanese soldiers held out, but by May 5 the Americans
were able to declare themselves in full control of northern Okinawa. The
24th Army Corps turned south from Kadena beachhead. Ushijima withheld
his fire as the Americans approached the foot of Kakazu ridge, confidently
waiting for airborne help to come out of the north, the kamikaze corps
which was to swoop upon the American ships. On April 6 suicide planes
did begin to come in from Kyushu bases. They did great damage, but could
not break up the concentrated fleet. On shore the Americans approached the
first strong lines of Japanese defense; the terrible Battle of Okinawa then
began in earnest.
On April 11 the Americans were brought to a halt, pinned down while
enduring the heaviest artillery duel of the Pacific War. By April 24
casualties rose above fifty percent in the ranks of the 96th Division, which
was now replaced.
Shuri did not fall. Its high parapets and immensely thick walls, laid
down five hundred years ago, provided a superb anchor for the line so
stubbornly held across the path of the invading forces. Here lay the heart of
Japanese resistance.
At last it was decided that these walls had to be breached and the
Japanese base of operations rendered untenable. It will be recalled that the
castle had been penetrated only twice before by alien forces; by the
Japanese in 1609 and by Commodore Perry, who marched into its medieval
precincts under cover of the "Mississippi's" guns in 1853.
By a twist of fate, its modern namesake, the U.S.S. "Mississippi" of
World War II, was called upon to be the agent of destruction. Orders went
out to the ship on the evening of May 24; the great fourteen-inch naval guns
were trained on Shuri Castle walls; and planes were sent into the air to
direct the fire. Throughout May 25 the walls were pounded, but there was
no sign of a break. At the end of the second day of continuous
bombardment, observers reported that cracks were beginning to appear. On
the third day the great ship boldly moved close inshore, hurling tons of steel
and explosives against the crumbling walls. By nightfall the ancient castle
was in ruins.
General Ushijima withdrew from the caves beneath Shuri into the hills
of southern Okinawa on May 31. Nothing was left of the ancient city; the
palace was gone, the temples, the great gates, and the ancient gardens of the
Shuri gentry. The castle heights had been under continuous heavy fire for
sixty days. It had required two months for the American forces to make
their way from Kadena to the ruined town, a distance of approximately ten
miles as the crow flies. Naha—three miles away—did not fall to American
control until June 13.
The retreating Japanese fought with unparalleled ferocity from cave to
cave. Organization and discipline were gone, but they disputed every rod of
territory between Naha and the cliffs which mark the southern shore. These
men chose death rather than surrender, but it was with barbaric disregard for
the fate of civilians trapped among them. Terrified Okinawans, with the
wounded and the sick who had taken refuge in caves dotting the
countryside, were often suddenly dispossessed and driven into the open,
into lines of fire from which there was no escape possible. Often they were
made to share the crowded subterranean darkness with retreating soldiers,
while from the shelter of the entrance Japanese snipers took toll of the
advancing foe. The Americans were compelled to train their guns and their
flame-throwers upon every cavern mouth and rocky hiding place.
On the evening of June 20 American scouts pushed ahead toward the
very edge of the cliffs at Mabuni. On the landward side of the bluffs they
found a tunnel leading deep into the earth. They had seen a thousand others
like it in this nightmare battle. They seared it with flame, but made no
attempt to enter, for they were eager to push on to the crest of the hill ahead.
Beneath them, deep within, was a series of storerooms and caves which had
an opening on the seaward side, high above the surf. Here Lieutenant
General Ushijima and his chief of staff were preparing to spend the night,
writing dispatches and saying farewell to their aides. Early on the morning
of June 21 they went to the ledges overlooking the sea, saluted the emperor
at distant Tokyo, and quietly committed suicide.

They had done their duty. The enemy had been held on Okinawa for
more than eighty days. They had demonstrated on Okinawa what must be
expected and prepared for in Japan.
The guns fell silent. The Battle for Okinawa was at an end.
The United States had brought more than half a million men into the
campaign. General Ushijima had some 89,000 regular troops deployed on
Okinawa, but of these only 4,575 were Okinawan conscripts trained and
armed as combat personnel. To this force were added able-bodied
Okinawan males who had been conscripted for regular military labor
services and for "expendable" duties at the front. There were Boy Scouts
and girls who served in the special nursing corps. Altogether more than
twenty thousand young Okinawans were drafted for emergency services
during the last months of the crisis and retreat across the island.
Seeking to cover up the extent of the disaster, the Japanese high
command at Tokyo announced that eighty thousand Americans had been
killed. In truth, more than twelve thousand Americans had died and the
number of wounded exceeded 35,000.
According to American figures. 90,401 Japanese soldiers had been
killed. Only four thousand prisoners of war were taken.
Between the hammer and the anvil, the Okinawans suffered
indescribable loss. It has been estimated that 62,489 perished in this
"typhoon of steel"; of these some 47,000 were civilians who had been
unable to find safety within caves and tombs. More than ten thousand labor
conscripts and civilian "volunteers" serving with the army had met death.
One in eight of the civil population was dead. No family remained
untouched. No one knows precisely how many civilians perished from
exposure, starvation, disease, or unattended wounds.
 With this storm of fire and thunder of guns, the story of the old
kingdom and the modern province came to an end. The Ryukyu Islands and
the Okinawan people passed under American control. A new chapter of
Okinawan history had begun.
 NOTES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND
INDEX
NOTES
The following abbreviations are used in the notes; for other details, see the
Bibliography:
BEFEO : Bulletin de l' École Française de l' Extreme-Orient (Hanoi)
BMFJ: Bulletin de la Maison Franco-Japonais (Tokyo)
HJAS: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Cambridge)
JA: Journal Asiatique (Paris)
JAOS: Journal of the American Oriental Society (New Haven)
JNCBRAS: Journal of the North China Branch, Royal Asiatic Society
(Shanghai)
JSL: Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London
MN: Monumenta Nipponica (Tokyo)
REO: Revue de l' Extreme Orient (Paris)
TASJ: Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (Tokyo)
TP: T'oung Pao (Leiden)

CHAPTER ONE

1. Gerard Groot:Prehistory of Japan, p. 105; Kanaseki Takeo: "Ancient Culture in Yaeyama

Islands" Minzokugaku-Kenkyu (The Japanese Journal of Ethnology), v. 19, no. 2, pp. 1-35, and in
private communications from Dr. Kanaseki, who notes that while Jomon sites are found in Okinawa,

Yayoi sites have been found only as far south as Amami Oshima, in the northern Ryukyus.

2. On archeological materials, early continental relations with the sea islands, and Chinese

notices, see G.B. Sansom: Japan: A Short Cultural History (London, 1952), ch. 1, pp. 15-21;

Williams: "Notices of Fu-Sang and Other Countries lying East of China . . JOAS, v. 11, pp. 90-96,

111-16; Wylie: "Ethnography of the After Han Dynasty—History of the Eastern Barbarians," reo, v. i,

pp. 52-83.

3. On early Chinese interest in mysterious Eastern Sea islands see C.P. Fitzgerald: China: A

Cultural History (N.Y., 1938), pp. 221-24; W. Perceval Yetts: "Taoist Tales, Part III,"New China

Review (Shanghai), v. 2, no. 3 (June, 1920), p. 293. Tales of golden and silver islands, harboring

secrets of immortality, penetrated Renaissance Europe, spurring a search for the Fountain of Youth,

Rica de Oro, and Rica de Plata until the late 17th cent. See Burney: Chron. Hist. Voyages ... v. 2, pt.

2, ch. 15, pp. 261-62; Schurz: Manila Galleon: pp. 126,231-38. Beechey's Narrative refers to

Kinshima and Ginshima during voyage of 1825-28 (v. 2, p. 210).

4. For the materials on thenoro system in this and later chapters I am indebted principally to

R.S. Spencer: "The Noro Priestesses of Loochoo,"TASJ, 2nd ser., v. 8, pp. 94-112, supplemented by

field inquiry (1952) and Simon: "Beitrâge zur Kenntnis der Riu-kiu Inseln,"Beitrâge zu Kultur-und

Universalgeschichte, v. 28, pp. 8-9.

5. B.H. Chamberlain: Essay in Aid of a Grammar and Dictionary of the Luchuan Language,

tasj, v. 23, Supplement; "A Preliminary Notice of the Luchuan Language," Jour. Anth. Inst. Gt.B. and

5., v. 26, pp. 45-59; "A Comparison of the Japanese and Luchuan Languages," tasj, v. 23, pp. 271-89;

Hattori Shiro: "The Relationship of Japanese to the Ryukyu, Korean and Altaic Languages," tasj, v. I,

3rd ser., pp. 100-33.

6. Iha Fuyu:Ko Ryukyu (2nd ed., 1916) pp. 60-62.

7. For the principal origin myths see Majikina Anko: Okinawa Issennen-shi (A Thousand

Years of Okinawan History), pp. 27-28. The "wind impregnation" myth, found in pre-Homeric Greek
stories, was noted by Magellan's companion and biographer Pigafetta in the Spice Islands in 1522,

when Okinawans were trading there.

8. C. Haguenauer: "Le Lieou-K'ieou Kouo du Souei Chou était-il Formose?" bmfj, v. 2, nos.

3-4, pp.15-36. G. Schlegel: Problèmes Géographiques: Les Peuples étrangers chez les Historiens

Chinois. XIX. Lieuou-Kieou-Kouo. Le Pays de Lieou-Kieou," tp, v. 6, no. 2, pp. 165-214. Akiyama

Kenzo: "Zui-sho Ryukyu Koku-den no sai ginmi" (Review of an account of Ryukyu in the Sui

Dynasty records), Rekishi Chiri, v. 54, no. 2, pp. 93-106. See Ryusaku Tsunoda and L. Carrington

Goodrich:Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories for references to Ryukyu (Liu Ch'iu) which appear

in conjunction with Sino-Japanese affairs.

9. J.B. Snellen: "Shoku Nihongi," tasj, 2nd ser., v. 6, p. 179.

10. Snellen, ibid., p. 184.

11. Snellen, ibid., p. 202.

12. On the growth of Shimazu's domains and titular appointments, see Asakawa Kanichi:

Documents of Iriki, pp. 1-36, 98,passim.

CHAPTER TWO

1. Notes, plans, and sketches of Nakagusuku Castle appear in F.L. Hawks 'Narrative of Perry's

expedition (v. 1, ch. 8, pp. 169-71); consult photographic records and drawings of castles, temples,

and domestic architecture in Tanabe's Ryukyu Kenchiku (Ryukyuan Architecture), Tokyo, 1937.

2. Teng and Fairbank: "On the Ch'ing Tributary System," HJAS, v. 6, no. 2 (June, 1941), pp.

135-246.

3. C. Haguenauer: "Relations du Royaume des Ryukyu avec les pays des mers du sud et la

Corée," BMFJ, v. 3, nos. 1-2 (1931), Comptes rendues: pp. 4-16. Tanaka: Textile Fabrics of Okinawa,

Intro., pp. 7-17. Higaonna: History of the Foreign Relations of Okinawa. Kobata: Ryukyu-Marakka-

kan no tsusho kankei ni tsuite,"Keizai Kenkyu, v. 14, no. 5, pp. 579-93; no. 6, pp. 712-24.
 4. Leavenworth: History of Loochoo, p. 42.

5. Sansom summarizes this period of China's overseas activities in The Western World

andJapan, ch. 7, "The Asiatic Trade," pp. 134-51, noting that records concerning the origin of Ch'eng

Ho's voyages (1405-33) were suppressed and presumably destroyed. On Japan's unsatisfactory

tributary and trade relations with China, see Takekoshi's The Economic Aspects of the History of the

Civilization of Japan, v. 1, ch. 17, "Foreign Trade in the Ashikaga Epoch," pp. 211-29.

6. Ross: "New Light on the History of the Chinese Oriental College, and a 16th Century

Vocabulary of the Luchuan Language [dated 1549]," tp, v. 9,2nd ser., 1908, pp. 689-95. Hirth: "The

Chinese Oriental College," jncbras, new ser., v. 22 (1888), pp. 203-23. Pelliot: "Notice of E. Denison

Ross's Article inT'oung Pao for December, 1906," befeo, v. 9 (Jan.-Mar., 1909), pp. 170-71.

CHAPTER THREE

1. See Schuyler Cammann:China's Dragon Robes, pp. 157-58. Mongol precedents established

that five-clawed-dragon designs were reserved for imperial robes, and four-clawed-mtf«£-dragon

designs were proper for nobles and high officials. Bolts of mang-dragon cloth were sent to foreign

tributaries. Only the Kings of Korea and Ryukyu appear to have worn the "dragon robes" in the

Chinese style, and this only for the reception of Chinese imperial envoys. The last gifts of such

embroidered cloth reached Okinawa in 1874.

2. Gabriel S. Ferrand: "Malaka, Le Malayu et Malayur" inJ A, ser. 11, v. 12 (1918), Appendix

I, "L'île de Ghur—Lieou-K'ieou-Formosa, pp. 126-33. Ferrand quotes five Arabic sources, notes that

in Java Ryukyu was known as "Likiwu" or "Likyu" but was generally referred to as "Al Ghur"

(meaning "the place of mines"?) because of its reputation as a source of fine metals and superb

swordsmiths' steel presumed to be in the kingdom. But Ferrand himself equates "Al Ghur" with

Formosa, apparently unaware of the absence of iron mines in Formosa (which was undeveloped

before the 17th century) and without knowledge of Okinawa's role in the transshipment of Japan's
fine wares into Southeast Asian markets. "Al Ghur" is thought by some scholars to be the source of

the Portuguese reference to "Gores" as a people from north Asia's coastal waters. On the possiblity

that they may have been Korean residents of Naha traveling aboard Okinawan ships, see Akiyama:

"Gores naru meisho no hassei to sono rekishi-teki hatten" (Origin and historical development of the

name "Gores") Shigaku Zasshi, v. 39, no. 12 (1928), pp. 1349-59. The principal authority is Kobata

Jun: Chusei Nanto Tsusho-boeki Oshi no Kenkyu (A study of the history of trade and communications

in the Southern Islands in the Middle Ages). Tokyo (1939). 552 pp., andop. cit., Chap. 2, note 3. For

early European cartographic representations of Okinawa see Cortesaò Cartografia e Cartógrafos

Portugueses dos seculos XV e XVI (Lisbon, 1935) v. 2, Plates XIV, XVII, XIX, XXII-III, XXVII-

VIII, LI.

3. For illustrations, see Neil Gordon Munro: Coins of Japan, pp. 161-65; for Chinese notes on

Ryukyuan currency, see Frederic Schjoth: The Currency of the Far East: Chinese Currency, pp. 67-

68, "The Liu-ch'iu Islands of Japan."

4. For this account of reorganization of thenoro system and religious practices I am indebted

to Robert Steward Spencer,op. cit.

5. For the local legends recounted here I have drawn from a collection, in manuscript but

without attribution, made available to me at Hirara, Miyako, by the officers of the Civil Affairs Team

in May, 1952, for whom the manuscript had been prepared, and to conversations with Okinawan

friends from Miyako and Yaeyama.

6. Joaô de Barros:Da Asia (Lisbon, 1777), Decade I, liv. 9, eh. 1, p. 281.

7. Armando Cortesaô (ed.):The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: an account of the East, from the

Red Sea to Japan, written at Mallacca and India in 1512-1515, v. 1, p. 126.

8. Gortesao:ibid., pp. 128-31.

9. Mansell Long worth Dames (ed.): The Book ofDuarte Barbosa, p. 215.

10. Walter deGray Birch (ed.): The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Second

Viceroy of India, v. 3, pp. 88-89.

 11. Charles R. Boxer (ed.): South China in the Sixteenth Century: Being the Narratives of

Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz O.P., Fr.Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550-1575), p. 68.

12. Cammann:op. cit., pp. 157-58.

13. Tsunoda and Goodrich:op. cit., p. 107.

14.Ibid., p. 116.

15.Ibid., p. 128.

16.Ibid., p. 130.

17.Ibid., pp. 123-24.

18. Maurice Collis: The Grand Peregrination: Being the Life and Adventures of Femad

Mendes Pinto, pp. 158-65.

19. E.H. Blair and J.A. Robertson: The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Cleveland. 1903), v. 3,

1569-76, p. 12.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. Schurz: The Manila Galleon, pp. 105-8.

2. Yoshi S. Kuno: Japanese Expansion on the Asiatic Continent, v. 1, Appendix 33, pp. 305-7.

3. A.L. Sadler: "The Naval Campaign in the Korean War of Hideyoshi (1592-1598" tasj, v. 14,

2nd ser. (1937), p. 192.

4.Nihon Meisho Chishi, v. 10, p. 421. Kabayama Hisataka's descendent Sukenori surveyed

China's position in Formosa in 1872-73 in anticipation of the punitive expendi tion sent ostensibly on

Ryukyu's behalf; in 1895 he became first Japanese governor of Formosa, thus in a sense continuing

his family's traditional role as "guardians" of the southern frontier. Rolf Binkenstein: "Die Ryukyu-

Expedition unter Shimazu Iehisa," mn, v. 4, no. 2 )im), pp. 296-230; and "Taichu Shonin," mn, v. i;

1943) nos. 1-2, pp. 219-32. Wolf Haenisch: Die auswertige Politili Ryukyus seit dem Anfang des 17

Jahrhunderts und der Einflüss des Fürsten voti Satsuma, pp. 1-41.
 5.Japan Weekly Mail (Oct. 8, 1879), v. 3, no. 42, p. 1383. For the Japanese text, see Majikina

Anko:Okinawa Issennen Shi (A Thousand Years of Okinawan History) (Fukuoka, 1952), p. 367.

Brinkley also gives this, with slight editorial variation in "The Story of the Riu-kiu (Loo-choo)

Complication" Chrysanthemum and Phoenix, v. 3, pt. 3 (1883), p. 127.

6.Loc. cit.

7. On Satsuma's administrative control organization see Majikina,op. cit., passim.

8. "C. St. P." (ed.):Cocks' Diary (London, n.d.), v. 1, p. 1, ftnt. 4.

9. J.C. Purnell (ed.): "The Logbook of William Adams, 1614-19, and Related Documents," jsl,

v. 13 (1915), pp. 169-70. Cyril Wild (ed.):" Purchas his Pilgrimes in Japan Extracted from Hakluytus

Posthumous, or Purchas his Pilgrimes ... p. 217.

10. Edward Maunde Thompson (ed.): The Diary of Richard Cocks: Cape Merchant in the

English Factory in Japan: 1615-1622, v. 1, pp. 14-15.

11.Ibid.: v. 2, pp. 58-59.

12. M. Paske-Smith:Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa in Tokugawa Days 1603-

1868, p. 32.

13. Fairbank and Teng,op. cit., p. 183. For a facsimile reproduction of the seal, bearing both

Chinese and Manchu script, see Julius Klaproth: San Kokf Τsou Ran To Sets ou Aperçu des Trois

Royaumes, ν. 2, p. 7.

14. Total Shimazu revenues levied in Satsuma, Osumi, Hyuga, and Ryukyu were estimated to

be 732,616 koku in 1635. A document prepared five years later noted that income from the

"Governor of Ryukyu" (RyukyuKoku-shi) stood at 90,884 koku. Asakawa: Documents of Iriki, pp.

337, 358, 363.

CHAPTER FIVE
 1. Edmund Simon: "The Introduction of the Sweet Potato into the Far East," tasj, v. 42, pt. 2

(1914), pp. 711-24.

2. Thompson:op. cit., v. 1, p. 14.

3. Engelbert Kaempfer: The History of Japan . . . 1690-1692, v. 1, p. 62.

4. B.H. Chamberlain: "The Luchu Islands and their Inhabitants,"Geographical Journal: v. 5,

no. 4 (1895), PP· 310-11.

5. [Saion]Eight Volumes on Ryukyu Forest Administration [1738-1748). Trans, by U.S. Civil

Administration, Ryukyu Islands, Naha, 1952, 71 pp.

6. Hsu Pao-kuang (Jo Ho-ko) prepared a "Report of an Envoy to Chuzan" [in 1719] (Chung-

shan ch'uan-hsin lu, or Chuzan Denshin Roku). A Japanese edition appeared soon after, Father

Gaubil made a French translation at Peking in 1752 (v. 23 of Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Paris,

1781), which became a principal reference for subsequent Western notices. Extensive extracts appear

in John M'Leod's Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Alceste along the Coast of Corea to the Island of

Lewchew, with Her Subsequent Shipwreck (London, 1818), pp. 79-97.

7. Chou Huang (Shu Ko): "A Brief Account of the Ryukyu Kingdom" (Liu Ch'iu-kuo chih-

lueh orRyukyu-koku Shiryaku). The embassy was at Shuri in 1756. Chou prepared his report in 1757,

including an unusual bibliography of 50 titles, and presented it to the throne in the following year.

The Wuying Palace moveable-type edition was prepared sometime in the 1770's. Supplemental

editions continued to appear during the next half century. A summary English version by E.C.

Bridgeman, entitled "Lewkew Kwo Che leo: a brief history of Lewchew" appeared in the Chinese

Repository, v. 6 (July 1837), pp. 113-18.

8. S. Wells Williams (trans.): "Journal of a Mission to Lewchew in 1801," jncbras, v. 7, new

ser. (1869-1870), pp. 149-71.

9.Ibid., p. 166.

10.Ibid., p. 150.

11. Cammann: op. cit., pp. 157-59.

 12.Okinawa-ken Kyoiku-kai (pub.): R yukyu (Naha, 1925) 170 pp.

13. C. Boxer (ed.): South China in the Sixteenth Century, Appendix 3, "The Great Granite

Bridges of Fukien," pp. 332-40.

14. Okinawan transcription from Tyra [Taira] Buntaro: My Fifty Favorite Okinawan Songs,

(Naha, 1954) p. 5.

15. Pasfield-Oliver (ed.): Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus: Count de Benyowsky,

etc., With Introduction, Notes and Bibliography ... p. 376-93. "Treaty" text, pp. 392-93·

16. G. Staunton: An Authentic Account of An Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the

Emperor of China . . . [etc.] [The Macartney Mission], v. 2, pp. 459-60.

17. W.R. Broughton: A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean ... In the Years 1795,

1796, 1797, and 1798, pp. 201-2, 203.

18.Ibid., p. 205-6, 207.

19.Ibid., p. 208.

20.Ibid., p. 237.

21.Ibid., pp. 240-41.

CHAPTER SIX

1. Klaproth,op. cit., v. 1, "Notice des Iles Lieou Khieou, appelées en Japonais Riou Kiou," pp.

169-80.

2. Higaonna Kanjun: Outline oj Okinawan History, p. 49.

3. J.F. Kuiper: "Some Notes on the Foreign Relations of Japan in the Early Napoleonic Period

(1798-1805)," tasj, 2nd ser., v. 1 (1924), pp· 55-83.

4. Basil Hall: Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-

Choo Island . . . pp. 61-62. n.b. Henry Ellis, Third Commissioner of the embassy, in 1817 published

"A Correct Narrative" of the embassy. He was not among those who visited Okinawa, but
incorporates a report of their sojourn (see Bibliography). Hall's appreciative description of the

Okinawans was not accepted by some readers whose experience elsewhere in Asia made it

impossible for them to believe that such a friendly people could be found in the Far East. Hall's

account was attacked by a pseudonymous writer ("Amicus") in "A Chinese Account of the Loo-

Choo," published at Malacca in the Indo-Chinese Gleaner, no. 7 (January 1819). "Amicus" had never

visited the Ryukyus, but he did not hesitate to describe the Okinawans as "liars" and to belittle Hall's

susceptibility to Okinawan "deceipt."

5. John M'Leod: Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Alceste to China, Corea and the Island of

Lewchew: With an account of her Shipwreck, pp. 105-6.

6.Ibid., pp. 108-11.

7.Ibid., pp. 112-13.

8.Ibid., pp. 113-14.

9. Hall:op. cit., p. 210.

10. H J. Clifford: The Claims of Loo-Choo on British Liberality. Sect, entitled "The Gospel in

China, Island of Loo-Choo," p. 3.

11. M'Leod:op. cit., p. 338.

12. Hall:Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island . . . and of an

Interviexv with Napoleon Buonaparte at St. Helena, pp. 67-68.

13.Ibid., pp. 79-80.

14. W.U. Eddis: "Short Visit to Loo-Choo in November, 1818,"Indo-Chinese Gleaner, no. 7

(1819), p. 1.

15. James Murdoch: History of Japan, v. 3, p. 528.

16. R. Huish (ed.): Narrative of the Voyages and Travels of Captain Beechey: R.N. ... p. 488.

17. F.W. Beechey: Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beerings Straits. Quoted by

Clifford, op. cit., p. 27.

 18. H.H. Lindsay: Reports of Proceedings on a Voyage to the Northern Ports of China in the

Ship Lord Amherst... pp. 260-61, 263.

19.Ibid., pp. 263, 265.

20. C. Gutzlaff: Journal of Two Voyages along the Coast oj China in 1831 & 1832 . . . with

Notices of Siam, Corea, and the Loo-Choo Islands . . . (1833 éd.), pp. 288-89.

21.Ibid., pp. 289, 290, 291.

22.Ibid., pp. 294-97.

23. Lindsay:op. cit., Enclosure No. 3, "Mr. Gutzlaff's Notes," p. 225.

24.Ibid., p. 226.

25. "Loss of the Transport Indian Oak (Captain Grainger) on Lewchew, Aug. 14,

1840,"Chinese Repository, v. 12, (1843), no. 2, Art. IV, pp. 81-82; J.J.B. Bowman: "Account of the

Wreck of the Indian Oak," The Nautical Mag. and Naval Chron. for 1841, pp. 299-308, 385-94.

26. "Loss of the Transport Indian Oak ..."loc. cit.

27.Ibid., p. 87.

28.Ibid.: p. 88.

29. J.J.B. Bowman's letter to Lieutenant Clifford (dated at Calcutta Sept. 10, 1844) published

in Clifford'sClaims of Loochoo on British Liberality, p. 32.

30. E. Belcher: Narrative of a Voyage of HMS Samarang during the years 1843-1846 ... v. ι, p.

317. See also "Notes of a Visit of H.M. Ship Samarang under Captain Sir E. Belcher to the Batanes

and the Madjicosima Groups in 1843-1844,"Chinese Repository, v. 13 (1844), pp. 150-63.

31. A full account of French negotiations, with documents, is found in F. Marnas: La

"Religion de Jésus (laso Ja-kyo)" Ressuscitée au Japon dans la second moitié du XIXe siècle. Tome I,

Première Partie: Aux Portes du Japon: Livre Premier: L'avante-post des îles Riu-kiu, pp. 91-188. H.

Cordier: "Les Français aux îles Lieo-K'ieou"Mélanges d'Histoire et de géographie orientales, ν. 1

(1914), pp. 296-317. See also the letters of T. Α. Forcade and A. T. Furet written from the mission at

Naha.
 32. M.C. Greene: "Correspondence between the Shogun of Japan, A.D. 1844, and William II

of Holland," tasj, v. 34 (1907), pt. 4, pp. 121-22.

33. Horie Yasuzo: Nihon shihon shugi no seiritsu (Formation of Japanese Capitalism), p. 106,

note 4.

34. Marnas,op. cit., v. 1, p. 133 (text of notes exchanged with Shuri).

35. Clifford,op. cit., p. 3. An account of Lieutenant Clifford's career may be found in J.H.

Bernard: The Bernards of Kerry, pp. 85-90.

36. Diaries, journals, letters, and official dispatches prepared by his contemporaries

(American, French, and British missionaries, foreign service officers, naval diplomats, and seamen)

provide an important check upon the missionary-doctor's voluminous letters and communications to

the press. After a half-century lapse missionary-biographers undertook to reconstruct Bettelheim's

life, drawing on the Bettelheim papers and upon communications with his family. For citations of

official correspondence see principally W.G. Beasley: Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834-

1838, pp. 77-82. S.W. Williams' "Journal of the Perry Expedition to Japan, 1853— 1854" (tasj, v. 37,

pt. 2 (1910), pp. 149-71) is the most important contemporary journal. Bettelheim reveals himself to

an unusual degree in his long letters. For his apotheosis as "the greatest humanitarian since Christ"

one must consult the letters of his family and the publications and letters of later missionary-

biographers. I am indebted especially to Rev. H.B. Schwartz: The Loochoo Islands: A Chapter in

Missionary History and to Rev. Earl R. Bull: "The Trials of the Trail Blazer, Bettelheim" and

"Bettelheim as Physician, Jew, Layman and Transactor," in the Japan Evangelist, v. 32 (1925), no. 2.,

pp. 51-59; no. 3., pp. 87-93; no. 5, pp. 153-59·

37. Bull: "The Trials of the Trail Blazer, Bettelheim," p. 54.

38. Clifford, op. cit., "Copy of Instructions given for the Guidance of Dr. Bettelheim," pp. 2-3.

39. Clifford, op. cit., "Letter VII," p. 3.

40. On Bettelheim's "direct methods" see "Letter from B.J. Bettelheim, M.D., giving an

account of his residence and missionary labours in Lewchew during the last three years,"Chinese
Repository, v. 19 (1850), pp. 17-49.

41. Higaonna Kanjun: "Dr. Bettelheim's Study of the Loochoo Language,"Japan Mag., v. 16,

no. 3 (Dec., 1925), pp. 78-81. see also Higaonna "The Bible in the Loochoo Dialect" in the preceding

issue (no. 2, Nov., 1925), pp. 50-52.

42. Bull: "The Trials of the Trail Blazer, Bettelheim," p. 57.

43. For a summary of London's consideration of Bettelheim and its policy toward Okinawa,

see Beasley,op. cit.

44. A.L. Halloran:Wae Yang Jin: Eight Months' Journal Kept on Board One of Her Majesty's

Sloops of War during Visits to Loochoo, Japan and Poo too, pp. 26-30. Halloran, present during the

interviews, gives an informal summary of the incident. Beasley,op. cit., provides the texts of official

reports.

45. "Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-War Preble, Commander James Glynn, to Napa and

Nangasacki"U.S. Senate Documents: 32nd Congress, 1st Session (1851-1852), v. 9, Ex. Doc. #59,

Ser. 6 20., pp. 44-45.

46.Foreign Office Correspondence, v. 155. Bonham to F.O., no. 58, 4 May 1849. Cited by

Beasley,op. cit., p. 78.

47. Rev. George Smith, Bishop of Victoria:Ten Weeks in Japan, p. 339.

48.Ibid., p. 341.

49. Beasley,op. cit., p. 81.

50. Earl Swisher: China's Management of the American Barbarians: A Study of Sino-

American Relations, 1841-1861, with Documents, p. 202. The piracy case is recorded inU.S. Senate

Documents, 34th U.S. Congress, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. 99, pp. 12-183.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1. "Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-war Preble, fete.]," pp. 76-77.

 2.Ibid., p. 78.

3. "Correspondence Relative to the Naval Expedition to Japan, 1853-1854; Mr. Conrad to Mr.

Kennedy, 5 November, 1852"U.S. Senate Documents, 33 rd Congress, 2nd Session (1854-1855), v. 6,

Ex. Doc. no. 34, Serial 751, p. 5.

4.Ibid., p. 6.

5.Ibid., pp. 7-9.

6.Ibid., pp. 12-13 (Perry to Secretary of the Navy).

7.Ibid., p. 15 (Everett to Perry).

8. W.L. Schwartz: "Commodore Perry at Okinawa: From the Unpublished Diary of a British

Missionary,"Am. Hist. Rev., v. 51, no. 2 (January 1946), p. 262.

9. F.L. Hawks (ed.): Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas

and Japan, Performed in the Years 1852, 1853and 1854,under the Command of Commodore M.C.

Perry, United States Navy, Washington, 1856, v. 1, p. 153.

10. W.L. Schwartz,op. cit., p. 266.

11. S.W. Williams: "Ajournai of the Perry Expedition to Japan, (1853-1854)," tasj, v. 37, pt. 2

(1910), p. 9.

12. Hawks,op. cit., p. 155.

13. Williams,op. cit., p.11.

14. Hawks,op. cit., p. 159.

15. Williams,op. cit., p. 13-14.

16.Ibiâ., ¡oc. cit.

17. "Correspondence" (Perry to Secretary of Navy), pp. 28-29.

18. Williams,op. cit., p. 15.

19.Ibid., op. cit., p. 17.

20.Ibid., op .cit., p. 20.

21. W.L. Schwartz,op. cit., p. 268.

 22. Hawks,op. cit., p. 159, fmt.

23.Ibid., op. cit., p. 191.

24.Ibid., loc. cit.

25. Williams,op. cit., p. 23.

26. W.L. Schwartz:op. cit., p. 269.

27.Ibid., p. 270.

28. Williams,op .cit., p. 41.

29. Hawks,op. cit., p. 215.

30. Williams,op. cit., p. 42.

31.Ibid., op. cit., p. 43.

32. E.V. Warriner:Voyager to Destiny, Ch. 14, "Ashore on Okinawa," pp. 109-16 ct. seq.

33. Hawks,op. cit., p. 275.

34.Ibid., op. cit., p. 276.

35.Ibid., op. cit., p. 278.

36. Williams,op. cit., p. 71.

37.Ibid., op. cit., p. 81.

38. "Correspondence,"op. cit., p. 81 (Perry to Secty. Navy, No. 30., Hongkong, Dec. 24,

1953).

39.Ibid., p. 109 (Perry to Secty. Navy, no. 39, Naha, Jan. 25, 1854).

40.Ibid., pp. 112-13 (Secty. Navy to Perry, Washington, May 30, 1854).

41. Williams,op. cit., pp. 96-97·

42. Hawks,op. cit., p. 493·

43. Williams,op. cit., p. 237.

44.Ibid., p. 238.

45. Hawks,op. cit., p. 495·

46. Spalding: The Japan Expedition: Japan and Around the World [etc.], p. 342.
 47. Hawks,op. cit., p. 495-496.

48. Spalding,op. cit., p. 337.

49. Hawks,op. cit., p. 498 ftnt.

50. Williams,op. cit., p. 248.

51. Spalding,op. cit., p. 337.

52. Hawks,op. cit., p. 498.

53. H.T. Whitney, M.D.: "Protestant Mission Work in the Loo Choo Islands,"Chinese

Recorder, v. 18 (Dec., 1887), p. 472. For a postwar evaluation, published in Japanese by

contemporary Okinawan contributors to commemorate Bettelheim's departure, see "Dr. Bernard Jean

Bettelheim" [English title], Okinawa Times, Sept. 1, 1954.25 pps. illus. I am indebted to Mr. Bull's

accounts (in the Japan Evangelist, v. 32, 1925) for the following notes on Bettelheim's subsequent

career:

Bettelheim abandoned the Loo Choo Mission, he asserts, because of failing eyesight,

publication problems for his translations of the Gospels, and the education of his children. He

rejoined his family at Hongkong and sailed for England via Java and the South Pacific. While the

ship put in at Bermuda for a prolonged period of repair, Bettelheim crossed to New York, liked the

United States, sent for his family, and settled for two years in New York and Connecticut. He lectured

widely, and at one time persuaded a Missionary Society to launch a campaign (for which he acted as

secretary) to raise $5000 on his behalf.

"Dear Friends [he wrote], let me tell you, what I ask of you, properly considered, is not that

you should commence a new work in Japan, but that you may please to help me continue and extend

labors already carried on in a Japanese principality, for the last eight or nine years—labors, too,

which under God, have been abundantly blessed." (Bull: "Trials of the Trail Blazer, Bettelheim," p.

91).

On December 18, 1860, Bettelheim was at last ordained (as a Presbyterian), and sent to

Illinois on Home Mission work. He became a Mason (Lodge 294, Pontiac, 111.) and on April 16,
1863, enlisted as a major and surgeon in the 106th Regiment of the Illinois Volunteer Infantry, then at

Helena, Arkansas. Bull makes no further mention of Bettelheim's ministerial work. After Vicksburg,

the capture of Little Rock, and the war's termination, Bettelheim opened a drug store at Odell, 111.,

lecturing occasionally on conditions in the Ryukyus and Japan. In February 1868 he moved again, to

Brookfield, Missouri, where he died of pneumonia on February 9, 1870.

Adm. Putyatin's secretary, Goncharov, met Bettelheim during the Russian visit, Jan. 31 to Feb.

9,1854. He felt that Okinawa demonstrated that "a Golden Age is still possible" and that it

represented "the one remaining bit of the ancient world as represented by the Bible or by Homer. . .

."He noted with foreboding that "the new civilization is already touching this forgotten, ancient little

corner of the world." Describing Perry's token force and its claims (which amused him), he observed

that "... everything is ready; at one door stands religion with a cross and rays of light . . . and at the

other, the 'people of the United States,' with their cotton and woollen goods, guns, cannons, and

various other arms of the new civilization." Basil Hall's praise had scarcely done sufficient justice to

the Okinawans, Goncharov had thought, and he was therefore astonished by Bettelheim's rancorours

comment. He concluded that an accurate appraisal of Okinawa lay somewhere between Hall's

admiration and Bettelheim's condemnation. The missionary is described as "a thinnish man with a

Semitic face, not pale but 'faded,' and with hands thar looked somewhat like birds' claws, and a

voluble talker. There was nothing attractive about the man; in his conversation, in his tone, in the

stories he told, in his greeting, there is a sort of dryness—a slyness—something which made one feel

unsympathetic. ... I began to get suspicious of this all-embracing criticism of the Ryukyuan people.

Our crew told me later that when they asked the inhabitants 'Where lives the missionary?', they [the

Okinawans] showed obvious dislike for him, and one of them said, in English, 'Bad man! Very bad

man!' Thus, in responding to their dislike of himself the preacher probably exaggerated his account of

Ryukyuan vices." (From an abstract, by Ella Embree, of Goncharov's Fregai Pallada [1916 éd.], Ch.

IV, "Likeyskiye Ostrova" or "Visit to the Ryukyus," pp. 233-70.)

 54. 'Swisher:op. cit., "Memorial: Fukien Officials Transmit an Okinawan Account of

Commodore Perry's Visit to Naha," pp. 296-97.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1. A.T. Furet: "Lettres" [to Leon de Rosny, dated at Hongkong, 1854, and Naha, 1858],Revue

de l' Orient et de Γ Algerie, Ser. 2, v. 16 (1854), pp. 399-401; Ser. 2, v. 18 (1856), pp. 22-28, 127-32;

Ser. 3, v. 2 (1858), pp. 109-15.

Lettres à M. Leon de Rosny sur l' archipel Japonais et la Tartarie Orientale, par le Pere Furet.

. . (1860), "Le Grande Ile Lou-Tchou" (Hongkong 12 Oct., 1955), pp. 3-21; "Les Lettres de Lou-

Tschou" (Naha, 1 June 1858), pp. 23-30; Une Excursion à Lou-Tchou" (Naha, 28 June, 1858), pp. 31-

40.

F. Marnas:op. cit., v. 1, pp. 253-90.

2. Officiai translations of the oaths of allegiance to Satsuma sworn by the king (Sho Tai) and

the Council of State were laid before General Grant during his consideration of the Ryukyu

sovereignty controversy. See Japan Weekly Mail, v. 3, no. 42, p. 1383, and no. 43, p. 1421 (Oct. 25.,

1879); F. Brinkley: "The Story of the Riu-Kiu (Loo-choo) Controversy,"Chrysanthemum and

Phoenix, v. 3, pt. 3 (1883), pp. 122-53.

3. "Coronation of the King of Loochoo,"China Review, v. 7 no. 4 (1878-1879), pp. 283-84.

4. For the Chinese view of the Formosa incident and subsequent Sino-Japanese controversy,

see T.F. Tsiang: "Sino-Japanese Diplomatic Relations, 1870-1894,"The Chinese Social and Political

Science Review, v. 17, no. 1 (April, 1933), pp. 16-53. Tsiang ignores the history of Okinawan

relations with Satsuma. A summary translation of fifty-one letters, notes and memoranda by Viceroy

Li Hung-chang are published in C. Leavenworth:op. cit., pp. 159-86.

Japan's point of view is reflected in Brinkley's "Story of the Riu Kiu (Loo-Choo)

Contoroversy" cited in Note 2, above. See also Ariga Nagao's chapter on "Diplomacy" in Alfred
Stead: Japan by the Japanese, pp. 151-72. Kuzuu Yoshihisa: Nisshi Kosho-gai Shi (Brief History of

Diplomatic Relations between Japan and China), v. 1, pp. 134-35· Okinawan accounts will be found

in Iha's Ryukyu Ko Kon-ki (pp. 485-97), Ota's Okinawa Kensei Go-ju-nen (p. 23et seq.), and

Majikina's Okinawa Issen-nen Shi (pp. 625-39).

On diplomatic, legal, and military aspects of American involvement, see film microcopies of

records in the National Archives, especially covering General Charles W. LeGendre's activities.

Microcopy 77: Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, Roll 39, v. 2 (Sept. 13, 1867—

Dec. 27, 1878); Roll 40, v. 3 (Jan. 1,1879—Feb. 28, 1855. Microcopy 92: Despatches from United

States Ministers to China, Rolls 25 to 63, (Jan. 3, 1867—Dec. 5, 1882); Microcopy 100: Despatches

from United States Consuls in Amoy, Rolls 4 to 9, (May 28, 1868 to Oct. 27, 1893); H.B. Morse:

International Relations of the Chinese Empire, v. 2, The Period of Submission, 1861-1893, pp. 270-

75, 321-22; U.S. Department of State:Messages and Documents, 1879, PP· 606-7, 637-38; Messages

and Documents, 1880, pp. 194, 199-202, 686 Messages and Documents, 1881, p. 230. J.B.

Moore:History and Digest of International Arbitrations to which the United States has been a Party,

v. 5, pp. 4857, 5048. Payson J. Treat: Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Japan,

1853-1895, v. 1, pp. 473-83, 493-98, 541-56, 567-69; v. 2, pp. 25, 71-74, 98-104, 126-27, 141-44,

179-80. Edward H. House: The Japanese Expedition to Formosa (Tokyo, 1875), pp. 192-231. The

most concise analysis is Hyman Kublin's "The Attitude of China During the Liu-Ch'iu Controversy,

1871-1881,"Pacific Historical Review, v. 18, no. 2 (May, 1949), pp. 213-31.

5. House,op. cit., Text of the Agreement, pp. 204-5.

6.Dajokwan Nisshi, no. 70 (Oct. 16, 1872). Subsequent references in no. 76 (Oct. 29) and no.

89 (Oct. 31).

7. "Memorial to the Throne" published in Peking Gazette, Dec. 15, 1874. Trans, in Japan

Weekly Mail, v. 6, no. 4 (Jan. 23, 1875), p. 70.

8. "On the Ryukyu Embassy,"Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, March 20 and May 25, 1875,

quoted with commentary in Japan Weekly Mail, v. 6, no. 22 (May 29, 1875), pp. 466-67.
 9. H. Ogawa: Meiji Gaikoku Yoroku (Diplomacy of the Meiji Era), Tokyo (1920), p. 69.

10. W.W. McLaren: "Japanese Government Documents," tasj, v. 42, pt. 1 (1941), pp. 477-78·

11.Ibid., p. 287.

12.Japan Weekly Mail, v. 2, New Ser., no. 2 (Jan. 11, 1879), p. 42.

CHAPTER NINE

1. Ota Chofu: Okinawa Kensei Goju-nen (Fifty Years of Provincial Administration in

Okinawa), pp. 45-46.1 am indebted to this work for most of the facts cited for the period 1878-1927.

2.Japan Weekly Mail, v. 3, no. 15 (April 12, 1879), p. 454.

3.Ibid., no. 24 (June 14, 1879), p. 766.

4. Tsiang,op. cit., p. 37.

5. A.M. Pooley (ed.):Secret Memoirs of Count Tadasu Hayashi: G.C.V.O., pp. 316-17.

6. Ota,op. cit., p. 4.

7. Ibid., pp. 59 et seq.

8. B.W. Bax: The Eastern Seas: Being a Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. "Dwatj" In China,

Japan and Formosa, pp. 96-103.

9. F.H.H. Guillemard: Cruise of the Marchesa to Kamschatka & New Guinea, v. 1, pp. 26-63.

10. Ishimoto Iwane: "Miyako Shima no Doitsu shosen sonan kyuko kinnen-hi" (The

Monument to the German Warship on Miyako Island) and "Dokutei Shaon kinen-hin sono ta"

(Commemorative Tokens of Imperial German Gratitude, and related matters), Nanto, Issue no. 3

(1944), PP· 1-95.

11. B.H. Chamberlain: "The Luchu Islands and Their Inhabitants,"Geographical Journal, v. 5

(1895), pp. 289-319, 446-61, 534-45.

CHAPTER TEN
 1. For bibliography and historical data on the vital emigration problem, see James L. Tignerà

study of The Okinawans in Latin America (Washington, D.C., 1954). (Scientific Investigations in the

Ryukyu Islands, Report No. 7), 660 pp.

2. For a brief study of Okinawan names and name changes under Japanese influence see U.S.

Gov., OSS: Okinawan Studies No. 3, The Okinawas [sic]of the Loo Choo Islands: a Japanese

Minority Group, pp. 60-68. For a summary discussion of cleavages, segregation, Japanese

intolerance, etc., see pp. 68-83; also Toyama and Ikeda: "The Okinawa-Naichi Relationship" Social

Progress in Hawaii (Honolulu) v. 14 (1950) pp. 51-65.

3. H.B. Schwartz,op. cit.

4. Shikiba Ryusaburo:On Ryukyu Culture (Ryukyu no Bunka), pp. 1-40.Kogei (Tokyo) no. 49

(Jan., 1935); no. 99 (Oct., 1939); no. 100, no. 103 (Oct., 1940). Gekkan Mingei (Tokyo), no. 8 (Nov.,

1939); no. 12 (March, 1940); no. 21 (Dec., 1940).

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1. For detailed analysis of the situation at Tokyo, see Robert J. C. Butow's Japan s Decision to

Surrender (Stanford, 1954).

2. Maeshiro Bokei (Buhei Maehira) : unpublished Report to the Arts and Monuments Adviser,

U.S. Department of State, mimeographed, dated June 2, 1953. Six of the Okinawan deputy custodians

were killed in the Battle for Okinawa. Chief Custodian Maeshiro was picked up by an American unit

on July 10, interned and questioned. Released, he picked his way back to the Shuri ruins to discover

that an American, counter-intelligence group, its Japanese-American interpreters, and its Okinawan

employees had scoured the estate in search of unusual curios. There was evidence that some of the

treasure had survived the bombing, but only a few fragments of ceramics, lacquerware, and damaged

paintings remained on the site. Some of the treasures, including royal crowns, magatama, and a
priceless edition of the Omoro Zoshi texts were subsequently offered for sale to certain American

museums. Of these some were traced and recovered.

3. Okinawan Times (pub.):Tetsu no Bofu (Typhoon of Steel), Tokyo (1950), 487 pp. Walter

Karig (ed.):Battle Report: Victory in the Pacific, chs. 29-39, pp. 343-449. Gilbert Cant:The Great

Pacific Victory, ch. 23, pp. 355-82. F.T. Miller: History of World War II, ch. 102, "Okinawa," pp. 920-

37. Admiral Sir Bruce A. Fraser: "The Contribution of the British Pacific Fleet to the Assault on

Okinawa, 1945,"London Gazette (Supplement, June 2, 1948), pp. 3289-314. Nichols, Charles S., and

Henry I. Shaw:Okinawa: Victory in the Pacific (Historical Br., G-3 Div., H.Q., U.S Marine Corps),

Washington (1955), 332 PP·

 BIBLIOGRAPHY
A NOTE ON OKINAWAN STUDIES AND
REFERENCE MATERIALS

The present list is designed to direct attention to the range of materials available for studies

concerning the history of the Ryukyu archipelago and the Okinawan people before the period of

American occupation. It is not a "bibliographer's bibliography." It does not include references to

publications in the physical and biological sciences, nor does it attempt to list the voluminous body of

materials issued by the United States military government since 1945.

Priceless archives of the Ryukyu Kingdom and of the Japanese provincial government were

destroyed at Naha and Shuri in 1945. Scholars must henceforth rely chicfly upon Japanese

transcriptions preserved in texts prepared before and during World War II. Fortunately, major

collections of original documents relating to the Satsuma clan administration of the Ryukyu

dependency (1609-1879) are still to be found at Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, and Kagoshima.

Selected Japanese references noted here include works consulted in preparation of this

summary history. For an extensive bibliography of Japanese and Western language references

(including the science literature) one must consult, the mimeographed checklist of some 3,500 items

prepared in 1952 for the Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council. A preliminary

search was undertaken in forty-one public libraries and private collections throughout Japan. The

work was done at my direction, with the superb assistance of Dr. Nagamine Mitsuna, Director of the

Library Science Research Office, Tokyo University, and with the cordial cooperation of Dr.

Kanamori Tokujiro, Director of the National Diet Library; Mr. Kuwa-bara Makoto, Librarian for the

Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai; and Mr. Ogura Chikao, Assistant Librarian at Kyoto University.
 For the accumulation of references in Western languages I am indebted principally to Messrs.

P. M. Bettens, E.E.H. Ord, F. RatlifF, and C.C. Thorp, members of a graduate seminar in History at

the University of California (Berkeley) in 1954.

Important Chinese accounts of embassies to the Ryukyu Islands are in-eluded, but no thorough

studies of Ryukyu-Chinese relations based on Chinese sources have come to attention in preparation

of this work.

Private journals, public reports, and official correspondence concerning the Ryukyus

contribute much to an understanding of the process of Western penetration of the Far East. I have

included here scattered references—often only a sentence or two—found in the early Portuguese,

Spanish, and English records of the 16th and 17th centuries. The 18th century yields little until its

closing decades. Then for a century Okinawa was caught up in the rivalries of the European powers

as they attempted first to penetrate China, then Japan, eager to lay a treaty basis for commerce and

mission activities governed by Western legal concepts.

Western notices of the Ryukyus from about 1780 to 1880 fall into three categories: travel

accounts, mission literature, and official reports. The Industrial Revolution brought new conditions of

literacy and leisure; stay-at-home readers devoured tales of exploration and adventurous travel in

every part of the world, and to this public were directed the handsomely illustrated accounts of Basil

Hall and his companions, and the quasi-official reports of Broughton and Beechey. The mission

literature—French, British, and American—was generated by an evangelical fervor, which the new

leisure and industrial prosperity could afford to support. Okinawa was be-lived to be the threshhold

over which Christianity could for a second time penetrate Japan. Mission accounts must be read with

critical reserve, for the belief that "ends justify means" is found to color evangelical reports and

representations. The official correspondence relating to the Ryukyus clearly demonstrates how

thoroughly intermixed missionary interests and political and military activity had become in the

effort to open Japan and China to Western trade and diplomatic intercourse.
 Perry's voluminous Narrative marked a turning point. Much space was devoted to the

activities of the American squadron in the Ryukyus, but Perry's spectacular success in breaching the

walls about Japan quickly diverted British and American attention from Okinawa, though France

maintained her interest until 1858.

After the Ryukyus were annexed by Japan in 1879, the Japanese began to publish extensively

concerning the new prefecture, gradually increasing the volume, quality, and diversity of their studies

of Okinawan history, folklore, language, economics, geography, the natural sciences, and the arts and

crafts. Western notices dwindled in number and became specialized, emphasizing for a time political

problems relating to the Sino-Japanese sovereignty dispute. An American (Charles Leavenworth)

published a brief and fragmentary History of Loo Choo in 1905. German and French scholars

produced a series of valuable studies in history and ethnography just before World War I and again

before World War II. A series of missionary pamphlets and brief historical notices was published by

the two Americans (Henry B. Schwartz and Earl R. Bull) who resided in Okinawa in the period 1906-

24.

World War II again brought Okinawa and Okinawan studies into some prominence. Military

histories recount the Battle for Okinawa in great detail. Political and social studies are beginning to

be made in the universities, and the Pacific Science Board series of scientific studies in the Ryukyu

Islands (siri) has pointed the way to a new era of interest in this strategic point on the western Pacific

frontier.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND REFERENCE

GUIDES

Basil Hall Chamberlain made a first "Contribution to a Bibliography of Luchu" in 1896, and

Charles S. Leavenworth appended a list of references to his brief study The Loochoo Islands

published at Shanghai in 1905.

 In 1914 Edmund M.H. Simon published the first important review of Okinawan studies as

"Beitráge zür kenntnist der Riu-kiu Inseln" in Beitráge zür Kulturgesellschaft (Leipzig, v. XXVIII,

pp. 16-162), and in 1940 Rolf Binkenstein at Tokyo published "Okinawa-Studien" in the Monumenta

Nipponica (v. Ill, pp. 554-566), later revised and issued privately at Berkeley, California, in

September, 1954.

During World War II agencies of the United States government prepared handbooks and

bibliographies for use in psychological-warfare work, and in the training of men for military-

government duty. For example, the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services

(oss) published Okinawan Studies, an odd compendium, in several revisions and variant titles (e.g.,

"The Okinawas [51V] of the Loochoo Islands: Japanese Minority Group," illustrated by photographs

of "typical" Okinawans, taken from the Honolulu police files), which undertook to explore cleavages

within Japan which might be exploited for propaganda purposes. The U.S. Navy Department, Office

of the Chief of Naval Operations, issued a comprehensive Civil Affairs Handbook: The Ryukyu

(Loochoo) Islands (OpNav 13-31, Washington, D.C., 1944), compiled under the direction of Dr.

George P. Murdock of Yale University.

Materials for the Navy's Handbook were drawn from the reference-abstract files of the

Institute of Human Relations at Yale University. A Critical Bibiography of the Ryukyu Islands was

submitted to the University of Hawaii byJ.W. Moran as a Master's thesis, in 1946. In 1953-54 a

Reference List of Books and Articles in English, French and German was prepared as a seminar

project in the Department of History of the University of California at Berkeley. This list, with minor

revisions, is the basis for the present Bibliography.

Bettens, Ord, Ratliff and Thorp: The Ryukyu Islands, a Reference List of Books and Articles in

English, French and German) U. California, (Berkeley), 1954. Dittoed. 33 pp.)·

Binkenstein, Rolf A. A. : Beitrage zu einer Kulturhistorischen Bibliographie der Ryukyu

(Okinawa)—Inseln. Berkeley, Cal. (1954) photolith. 66 pp. Important listing of Japanese, Chinese
and Okinawan works. Romanization of names offers problems, e.g. "Agaionna" for Higaonna;

"Shideharu Hiroshi" for Shidehara Tan; "Makina" for Majikina.

Kerr, George H., with Higa Shuncho, Kudeken Kenji, et al.: The Ryukyu Islands. A

Preliminary Checklist of Reference Materials in Japanese and Western Languages, arranged

Alphabetically by Author. Tokyo (1952) Mimeo. 291 pp.

Murdoch, Cmdr. G.P., et al, ed.: Bibliography appended to U.S. Navy Civil Affairs Handbook

—Ryukyu (Loochoo) Islands OpNav 13-3 Washington (1944).

Nihon Minzokugaku Kyokai, pub. "Okinawa Kenkyu, tokushu" (Okinawan Studies, special

number) Minzokugaku Kenkyu Tokyo v. XV no. 2 (1950) pp. 67-230; bibl. pp. 121-135.

Yonaguni Zenzo: Okinawa Rekishi Nempyo (Chronological Tables of Okinawan History)

Tokyo (1953) 132 pp.

Standard bibliographies for Japan and China (Wenckstern, Nachod, Cordier, etc.) carry

references to the Ryukyus under appropriate headings.

Abeel, David, Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighboring Countries from 1829 to 1833.

N.Y. (1834 ed.) Ch. XVI "Loo Choo Islands" pp. 361-367; (1836 ed. Ch. XVII "Loo Choo

Islands" pp. 347-353.

Adams, Arthur, "Notes from a Journal of Research into the Natural History of the Countries Visited

during the Voyage of H.M.S.Samarang, under the Command of Sir E. Belcher, C.B." [1843-

1846] [See Belcher.]

Adams, Will: "The Logbook of Will'm Adams, 1614-1619, and Related Documents." ed. by J.C.

Purnell. JSL v. XIII (1915) pp. 156, 169-170, 308, passim.

Alexander, Robert Percival, The Political Status of the Ryukyu Islands (Unpublished M.A. thesis)

George Washington University, Washington, D. C. (August 1951).

Allen, Herbert G. "The Lewchew Islands" China Review (Hongkong) v. VIII (1879)pp. 140-143.

"Amicus" (pseud.), "Chinese Account of the Loo-Choo" Indo-Chinese Gleaner (Malacca) No. 7

(January 1819) pp. 4-11.

Appleman, Roy, [et al] : The U.S. Army in World War II: Okinawa: the Last Battle: v. II, Pt. il.

Historical Div. Dept. Army, Washington (1948) 529 PP·

Asakawa Kanichi, ed.: Documents of Iriki, Illustrative of the Development of Feudal Institutions of

Japan. New Haven (1929) (On Shimazu revenues) pp. 337, 358, 363.

Aston, W.G.: "On the Loochuan and Aino Languages" Church Missionary Intelligencer London

(1879).

Baelz, Ernst von, "Die Riu-Kiu-Insulaner. die Aino und andere kaukasieràhnliche Reste in Ostasien"

Korrespondenze-Blatt der Deutschen Gessellchaft für Anthropologie Ethnologie und

Urgeschichte v. XLII (1911) pp. 187-191.

Balfour, Frederick Henry: "The Kingdom of Liuchiu" Waifs and Strays from the Far East Shanghai

and London (1876) pp. 55-62.

Ballantine, Joseph W.: "The Future of the Ryukyus" Foreign Affairs (N.Y.) v. XXXI no. 4 (July 1953)

pp. 663-674.

Barbosa, Duarte: The Book of Duarte Barbosa. An Account of the Countries bordering

on the Indian Ocean and their Inhabitants, written by Duarte Barbosa and completed about the year

1518 A.D. Trans, from the Portuguese text, first published in 1812 A.D. by the Royal Academy

of Sciences at Lisbon .. . Edited and annotated by Mansel Longworth Dames. Hakluyt Society,

Ser. II v. 49, London (1921) v. II pp. 215-216 "Lequeos."

Barrett, George: "Report on Okinawa: a Rampart We Built" NY Times Magazine (Sept. 2it 1952) pp.

9-11 ; 62-65.
Barton, T.: "Okinawa Preview of Japan" Mag. Digest v. XXVI (Sep. 1945) pp. 33-42.

Bax, Capt. B.W.: The Eastern Seas: being a Narrative of the Voyage ofH.M.S. "Dwarf" in China,

Japan and Formosa London (1875) pp. 95-103.

Beasley, William G.: Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834-1858 London (1951) pp. 77-82.

Beechey, Frederic W.: Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Beerings Straits... Performed in

H.M.S. Blossom in the Years 1825, 26, 27, 28. London (1831) v. II, pp. 138-226, 446-512, 657-

658. See Huish, Robert (ed.), for condensed 1836 version of Beechey's Narrative.

Belcher, Sir Edward: Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang during the Years 1843-46,

Accompanied with a Brief Vocabulary of the Principal Languages . . with Notes on the Natural

History of the Islands by Arthur Adams London (1848} v. I pp. 73-97; 312-323. v. II pp. 51-72;

298-321; 438-444; 467-470.

-: "Notes on the Batanes and Madjicosima Islands" [Miyako in 1843] Chinese and

Japanese Repository (London) v. Ill (July 1, 1865) pp. 313-326. Bell, Otis W.: "Play Fair with the

Okinawans" Christian Century 20 Jan. 1954. Bennett, Henry Stanley: "The Impact of Invasion

and Occupation on the Civilians of Okinawa" U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings v. 72 (Feb. 1946)

pp. 263-275.

[Benyowsky, Mauritius Augustas, Count de] : Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus, Count de

Benyowsky, with an Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Capt. S. Pasfield Oliver London

(1904) pp. 376-393; 428.

Bernard, John Henry:The Bernards of Kerry Dublin (1922) "The Clifford Family" pp.

85-90 (on H.J. Clifford, founder of the Loo Choo Naval Mission). Bettelheim, Bernard J.: "Letter

from B.J. Bettelheim, M.D., giving an account of his residence and missionary labors in

Lewchew during the last three years" [1849] China Repository (Canton) v. XIX (1850) pp. 17-

49; 57-90.

-: Letter to Reverend Peter Parker, M.D. Canton (1852) 42 pp.

[-]: "Loochoo Naval Mission: Extract from the Report for 1850-1851, written by Dr. Bettelheim,

Missionary at Napa" North China Herald No. 78 Shanghai (24 January 1852) (Reprinted in

Shanghai Almanac and Miscellany for 1853).

[For further correspondence by Bettelheim, and relating to him, see Clifford: The Claims of Loochoo

on British Liberality].

(N.B. Bettelheim's Journals were destroyed by fire; ms copies exist made by E.R. Bull, Shawnee,

Perry County, Ohio (1956). Other Bettelheim mss and memorabilia in custody of Mrs. Bess

Bettelheim Pratt, Los Angeles, Cal.) Copies of B's. Gospel translations are in British Museum

and Tokyo University collections.

Biernatzki, K.L., "Beitrâge zur geographischen Kunde von Japan und den Lutschu-Inseln"

Zeitschriftfur Allgemeine Erdkunde v. IV (1855) pp. 225-247.

Bingay, Malcolm W.: "Life in Loochoo" Forum v. 104, No. 1., pp. 44-45.

Binkenstein, Rolf: Beitraege zu einer Kulturhistorischen Bibliographie der Ryukyu (Okinawa)—

Inseltt Berkeley (1954) 66 pp. [Privately issued].

-: "Die Ryukyu-Expedition unter Shimazu Iehisa "Monumenta Nipponica (Tokyo) v. IV No. 2 (1941)

pp. 296-302; 622-628.

-: "Okinawa-Studien" Monumenta Nipponica (Tokyo) v. III No. 2 (1940) pp. 194-206; 554-566.

-: "Zur Frage der Ryukyu-Gesandtschaften" Monumenta Nipponica (Tokyo) v. IV No. 1(1941) pp.

256-269.

-: "Taichu Shonin" Monumenta Nipponica Tokyo (1943) v. VI, No. 1-2 pp. 219-232.

Birch, Walter deGray, ed: See D'Alboquerque.

Black John R.: Young Japan Yokohama (1880-1881) v. II "The King of Liu-kiu's Own Story" pp.

399-405; 421-445.

Blair, E.H. and J.A. Robertson: The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 Cleveland, Ohio (1903) v. Ill, p.

72 [Letter from Fray Diego de Herrera to Felipe II of Spain, dated Mexico, Jan. 16, 1570, urging

conquest of China, Lequios, Jabas (Java) and Japan.]

Bocher, Α.: Les Premiers rapports de la France avec le Japon. Aventures d'un missionaire français

aux îles Liou-tcheou (Japon) 1844-1846 Paris (1895) 24 pp.

Bowman, J.J.B.: "Account of the Wreck of the Indian Oak" The Nautical Magazine and Naval

Chronicle for 1841 London (1841) pp. 299-308; 385-394.

Bowring, Dr.: "The Madjicosima Islands. A Short Notice of the Madjicosima (Meia-co-shi-ma or

Meia-koon-koomah) Islands" JNCBRAS (Shanghai) Part III (1851-52) Art. I (1852) pp. 1-8.

Boxer, Charles, ed.: South China in the Sixteenth Century, being the Narratives of Galeote Pereira,

Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P., Fr. Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550-1575). Hakluyt Society, London

(1953) Second Ser. No. CVI pp. xl, xli, xliii.

Braibanti, Ralph: "The Outlook for the Ryukyus" Far Eastern Survey (N.Y.) ν. XXII, No. 7 (June

1953) pp. 73-78.

Bridgman, E.C., "Lewkew Kwo che leo, a brief history of Lewchew, containing an account of the

situation and extent of that country, its inhabitants, their manners, customs, institutions, etc."

[Chou Huang's embassy notes, 1757] Chinese Repository v. VI (1837) pp. 113-118.

Brinkley, Frank: "Ryukyu Islands" [in "History of the Japanese People"] Encyclopaedia Britannica

14th ed. v. XIX (1950) p. 782.

-: "The Story of the Riukiu (Loo-choo) Complication" Chrysanthemum and Phoenix (Yokohama) v.

Ill Pt. 3 (1883) pp. 122-153.

Broughton, William Robert: A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean ... in the Years 1795,

1796, 1797 and 1798 London (1804) Book I Appendix III a "Specimen of the Language of the

Natives of the Lieuchieux Islands..." pp. 84-109; Book II, Ch. 1, pp. 199-211 ; Ch. 3. pp. 235-

246.

Brown, V.H.: "Luchu Islands, Where Nine of Commodore Perry's Men Found a Last Resting Place"

China Weekly Review (Shanghai) v. LV No. 3 (1930) pp. 88, 124.

Brumbaugh, T.T.: " 'God Forsaken Okinawa" Christian Century v. LXVII No. 23 (June 7,1950) pp.

700-701.
Brunton, Robert H.: "Notes Taken During a Visit to Okinawa Shima,—Loochoo Islands" tasj

(Yokohama) v. IV (1876) pp. 66-77.

Bull, Earl R.: "Bettelheim as Physician, Jew, Layman, and Transactor" Japan Evangelist (Tokyo) v.

XXXI (1925) No. 5, pp. 153-159.

-: "The Trials of the Trail Blazer, Bettelheim" Japan Evangelist (Tokyo) v. XXXII (1925) No. 2, pp.

51-59; No. 3, pp. 87-93.

Burd, William W. : Karimata—a Village in the Southern Ryukyus Pacific Science Board (SIRI Ser.

No. 3) National Research Council, Washington, D.C. (1952) 141 pp.

Burney, James: A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific

Ocean London (1803-1813) v. II Pt. 2, ch. XV, pp. 260-268; v. Ill pp. 431-432.

Cammann, Schuyler: China's Dragon Robes, N.Y. (1952) pp. 157-158.

Cant, Gilbert: The Great Pacific Victory—From the Solomons to Tokyo N.Y. (1946) ch. XXIII "To the

Last Line" pp. 355-382.

Chamberlain, Basil Hall: "A Comparison of the Japanese and Luchuan Languages" TASJ v. XXIII

(1895) pp. 271-289.

-: "A Preliminary Notice of the Luchuan Language" Journ. Anthropological Institute of Great Britain

and Ireland (London) v. XXVI (1879) pp. 45-59.

-: "A Quinary System of Notation Employed in Luchu on the Wooden Tallies Termed Sho-chu-ma"

Journ. Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland v. XXVII (1898) pp. 383-385.

-: "Contributions to a Bibliography of Luchu" TASJ v. XXIV (1896) pp. 1-11.

--: Essay in Aid of a Grammar and Dictionary of the Luchuan Language (Supplement to Vol. XXIII,

TASJ) (1895) 272 pp.

-: "On the Loochooan Language" Report of the 64th Meeting of the British Association for the

Advancement of Science London (1895) pp. 789-790.

-: "On the Manners and Customs of the Loochooans" TASJ v. XXI (1893) pp. 271-289.

-: "The Luchu Islands and Their Inhabitants" Geographical Journal (London) v. V No. 4 (1895) PP.

289-319; 446-462; 534-545.

-: "Two Funeral Urns from Loochoo" Journ. Anthropological Institute of Great

Britain and Ireland (London) v. XXIV (1895) pp. 58-59.

Chow, S.R.: "The Pacific After the War" Foreign Affairs (N.Y.) v. 26 (1942) pp. 71-86.

Clifford, H.J., ed.: Loochoo Mission: Extracts from the Journal of the Society's Missionary, Dr.

Bettelheim, 1850-1852 London (no date) 61 pp.

-: The Claims of Loochoo on British Liberality 5th ed. London (1850) 257 pp., Pagination irregular.

Title page dated 1846, but items bear 1850 as latest date. Nineteen principal sections, with

numerous subdivisions, present appeals for support and addresses by Lieutenant Clifford,

founder of the Mission, extracts from diverse journals of voyages, shipwrecks, etc., letters to and

from Bettelheim, Peter Parker and others concerned with the Mission, and a brief history of the

organization. Extracts from letters, appearing elsewhere in the press, reflect considerable

editorial tampering.

-: The Seventh Report of the Loochoo Mission Society for 1851-52 London (1853) 32 pp. See also

Clifford "Vocabulary of the Language Spoken at the Great Loo Choo Island in the Japan Sea," a

supplement to Hall's Voyage to Loo Choo, etc. (1818).

Clutterbuck, Walter J.: "The Lu-chu Islands" Travel and Exploration (London) v. IV No. 20 (1910)

pp. 81-88.

[Cocks, Richard] : The Diary of Richard Cocks, Cape Merchant in the English Factory in Japan,

1615-1622 Hakluyt Society, London (1883) v. I pp. 7-11; 14-15; v. II pp. 58-59; 166-167; 271-

273. Edited by Edward Maunde Thompson. Tokyo ed. (1899)

Cogan, Henry, ed. : The Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez-Pinto Done into English by

H.C. Gent [in 1653] London (1947) pp. 220-223.

[Cole, Allen B., ed.]: Diary of Edward Yorke McCauley See McCauley.

Collis, Maurice: The Grand Perigrination: Being the Life and Adventures of Fernâo Mendes Pinto

London (1949) pp. 158-165.

Cordier, Henri: Histoire de les rélations de la Chine avec les Puissances Occidentales . . . 1860-1902

Paris (1901-1902) v. I pp. 530-535; v. II pp. 579-580; v. III p. 215.

-: "Les Français aux îles Lieou-K'ieou" Mélanges d'histoire et de géographie orientales Paris (1914)

v. I pp. 296-317.

-: "Les Français aux îles Lieou-K'ieou" Bulletin de Géographie Historique et Descriptive (Paris) v.

XXV No. 3 (1911) pp· 410-425.

[Cortesâo, Armando, ed.]: The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires See Pires.

Cortesào, Armando: Cartografia e Cartógrafos Portugueses dos seculos XV e XVI Lisbon (1935) v.

II, Plates XIV, XVII, XIX, XXII-III, XXVII-VIII, LI. (Early Portuguese maps showing the

Ryukyus).

D'Alboquerque, Afonso: The Commentaries of the Great Afonso D'Alboquerque, Second Viceroy of

India. Translated from the Portuguese edition of 1774, with notes and introduction by Walter

deGray Birch. London, Hakluyt Society. (1880) v. Ill, pp. xiv-xxi; 88-89.

Dames, Mansel Longworth, ed. See Barbosa.

Davies, W.: A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean: in which ... the Coasts of Japan, the

Lieuchieux and the adjacent isles, as well as the Coast of Corea have been examined and

surveyed . . . performed in H.M.S. Sloop Providence and its tender in the Years 1795-1796 and

1798 London (1804).

deBarros, Joâo: Da Asia Lisbon (1777) Decade I, liv. IX, Ch. 1, p. 288.

DeMailla, J.A.M.M.: Histoire Générale de la Chine Paris (1777) v. V pp. 514-515.

Dennett, Tyler: Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of the Policy of the United States with

Reference to China, Japan and Korea in the 19th Century. N.Y. (1922) pp. 272-4; 438-9.

Denucé, J.: "Les îles Lequios (Formose et Riu-Kiu) et Ophir" Bulletin de la Société Royal Belge de

Géographie (Bruxelles) v. XXXI No. 6 (1907) pp. 435-461.

Dickins, F. V., and Lane-Poole, S. : The Life of Sir Harry Parkes, KCB, GCMG London (1894) v. II

Ch. XXXI, pp. 186-199.

diMaria, L.: "Pozizione delle isole Liuschotten e Liu Kiu" Cosmos di Cora Torino (1873)

Dòderlein, L.: "Die Liu-Kiu Insel Amami Oshima" Mitteilungen der deutschen Gessell-schaftfür

Natur-und Volkerkuttde Ostasiens (Yokohama) v. Ill, Nos. 23, 24 (1880-1881) pp. 103-117; 140-

156.

Dumont d'Urville: Voyage Autour du Monde Paris (1857) v. I, pp. 390-405.

Eddis, W.: "Short Visit to Loo-Choo in November, 1818" [in the brig Brothers] Indo-Chinese

Gleaner (Malacca) No. 7 (1819) pp 1-4.

Eder, Mathias: "Neue Studien uber die Sprache der Ryukyu-Inseln" Monumenta Serica (Peking) v.

IV, Fase. 1 (1939) pp. 219-304.

Ellis, Henry: Journal of the Proceedings of the late [Amherst] Embassy to China, comprising a

Correct Nanative of the Public Transactions of the Embassy [etc.] London (1817) pp. 469; 472-

473; 477-479·

F
Fairbank, John and Teng, S.Y.: "On the Ch'ing Tributary System" HJAS v. VI No. 2 (June 1941) pp.

135-246.

Farre, Frederic, J.: "Medicine in Lewchew. Introduction of Vaccination" Medical Times and Gazette

(London) v. VII (1853) ΡΡ· 136-138; 164-166; 188-190.

Ferrand, Gabriel S.: "Malaka, le Malayu et Malayur" Journal Asiatique Ser. II, v.

XII Paris (1918) Appendix I, "L'île de Ghur—Lieou-K'ieou—Formose" pp. 126-133. (Quotes Arabic

sources.)

Fink, Harold: "The Distribution of Blood Groups in Ryukyuans" Am.Journ. Physical Anthropology

(Washington, D.C.) v. V, No. 2, n.s. (June 1947) pp. 159-163.

Fitzgerald, C.P.: China: A Cultural History N.Y. (1938) pp. 221-224. (On early Chinese interest in the

Eastern Sea islands.)

Forçade, Theodore Augustin: Lettre à M. Libois (August 12, 1845) Nouvelles Lettres Edifiantes des

Missions de la Chine et des Indes Orientales, Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (Lyons) v.

XVIII (1846) pp. 363-383.

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Ryukyu controversy with Prince Kung (pp. 413-416) with Viceroy Li (pp. 432-433), widi

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UNSIGNED ARTICLES, EDITORIALS, ETC.

Annales de Γ Association pour la Propagation de la Foi: (Lyons and Paris)

"Notice sur le royaume de Lieou-Kieou ou LuChu" v. XVIII (1840) p. 376

"Autre notice sur l'ile principale Lieou-Koeou" v. XXI (1843) p. 250

"Les Missionnaires aux Lieou-Kieou" v. XXVI (1848) pp. 438; 458. v. XXIX (1850) pp. 293, 396.

Annales de Γ Extrême-Orient (Paris)

"Le différends des îles Lieou-Kiou" v. II (1879-80) pp. 189-190.

"La situation aux îles Liou-Kiou" v. II No. 13 (1879) p. 251.

"La Chine et les îles Liou-kiou" v. II (1879-80) pp. 123-124.

"Les îles Liou-Kiou et le Japon" v. II (1879) pp. 13-16.

Annales des Voyages de la Geographie et de l'Histoire (Paris)

"Renseignements sur les iles Lekes ou Lieu-kieu; extraits du Journal de vaisseau "le Frederick" de

Calcutta, dans son dernier voyage de Nangasagui au Japon, en 1803" v. IX (1809) pp. 390-393·

China Mail (Shanghai)

 "Visit of the Reynard to Ryukyu in Oct. 1850." No. 303 (Nov. 28, 1850).

"Visit of the Sphinx to Ryukyu in Feb. 1852" No. 368 (Mar. 4, 1852)

China Review (Hongkong)

"Loochoo" v. XIII (1885) p. 225 (note on the last tribute mission).

"Coronation of the King of Loochoo" v. VII, No. 4 (1878-79) pp. 283-284 [Notes and Queries:

"Loochoo seeks authority for royal accession"), v. XVII No. — (1887) p. 114.

China Times (Tientsin)

[Published extracts relating to the Ryukyus from the official Peking Gazette v. I (Nov. 1886-

Dec. 1887) p. 573. v. III (1889) p. 556. v. IV (1890) pp. 186; 411; 440; 491; 525; 603; 634; 649; 777.

v. V (Jan-March 1891) p. 79. Chinese and Japanese Repository (London)

"Notes on the Batanes and Madjicosima Islands" v. Ill, No. 24 (July 1, 1863) pp. 313-326. Chinese

Repository (Canton)

"A Brief History of Lewchew [by a Chinese envoy in 1757] v. VI (1837) pp. 113-118.

"Notes of a Visit of H.M. Ship Samarang, under Captain Sir E. Belcher to the Batanes and

Madjicosima Groups in 1843-1844" v. XIII (1844) PP· 150-163. "Loss of the Transport "Indian

Oak" (Capt. Grainger) on Lewchew, Aug. 14,

1840" v. XII (1843) PP- 78-88. "Report of a Visit to Lewchew by HBM screw sloop Reynard (Capt.

Craycroft)

Carrying the Bishop of Victoria" v. XIX (1850) p. 623. "Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-war Preble" v.

XVIII, No. 6 (1849) pp. 315-332. Chinese Commercial Guide (Shanghai)

"The American Compact with Lewchew" (1863) p. 262. Christian Century (Chicago)

"Snafu in Okinawa" v. 67, No. 33 (Aug. 16, 1950) pp. 965-967.

"Okinawa Brings a Clear Choice" v. 67, No. 41 (Oct. 11, 1950) p. 1189.

"If Okinawa is not to be 'God Forsaken* " v. 67, No. 48 (Nov. 29, 1950) pp.

1414-1415.

Chrysanthemum (Yokohama)
"Miyako-shima, an Island in the Liu-Kiu" v. I (Dec. 1881) pp. 471-472. Deutsche Japan-Post

(Tokyo)

"Die wirtschaftlichen Verhaltnisse der Riukiu-Inseln" v. 3, No. 7 (1910-11) pp. 10-12: Der Seewart

(Hamburg)

"Beitrâge zur Kiinstenkunde: Naha (Liu-Kiu-Inseln)" No. 3 (Jan. 1932) pp. 155-164. Globus

(Braunschweig)

"Webemuster und Tatoweirungen auf den Lutschu-Inseln" v. LXXVI No. 1 (1899) pp. 19-20.

"Ein Besuch auf Okinawa-shima [Liu-Kiu Archipel]" v. XLIII n. 24 (1883) pp. 373-77.

Imperial Academy, Tokyo (Proceedings)

"Bone Artifacts used by Ancient Man in the Riu-Kiu Islands" v. XII, n. 10 (Dec. 1936) pp. 352-54.

Indo-Chinese Gleaner (Malacca)

"Chinese Account of Loo-Choo" [Supplement to Hsu Pao Kuang's account, carried to 1808] No. VII

(1819) pp. 4-8. Japan in Pictures (Tokyo)

"Off the Beaten Track" v. V, n. 4 (1937) pp. 114-15. Japan Weekly Chronicle

"A Chinese Account of the Luchus" (22 July 1909) pp. 143-145. Japan Weekly Mail (Yokohama)

(1872-1917)

[Numerous articles concerning Ryukyu and Japan's policies and activities relating to the archipelago,

e.g. Official Sino-Japanese correspondence relating to the Ryukyu controversy, v. Ill No. 45

(Nov. 8, 1879) pp. 1487-1491.] Journal Asiatique (Paris)

"Sur la langue de Lieou-Kieou: note anonyme" 2nd ser. v. I (1828) p. 248. Journal of the North China

Branch, Royal Asiatic Society (Shanghai)

"Retrospect of events in China for the year 1873" n.s. VIII (1873) P· 184 (On the wreck of the

Benares in the Ryukyus). Missiones Catholiques (Lyons and Paris)

"Le Bouddhisme aux îles Lou-tchou (Japon)" v. X (1878) pp. 164-165. "Le Premier Missionaire du

Japon au XIXe siècle" v. XVII (1885). Neumanns Zeitschrift für allegemeinen Erdkunde (Berlin)

"Berichte eines Chinesen über die Liukiu-Inseln" v. I (1856) p. 262. North China Herald (Shanghai)
The Story of the Liu-chiu Complication (April 11, 1893) pp. 405-410.) Description of Loochoo by a

Native of China [in the Ryukyus 1853] No. 187 (Feb. 25, 1854) [reprinted in Shanghai Almanac

and Miscellany for i £55.] (See also Hawks: Narrative, v. II, pp. 395-406.) Nouvelles Annales

des Voyages de la Géographie et de Γ Histoire (Paris) "îles Rieou-Kieou" v. XIII (1822) pp. 302-

317. "Les habitants des îles Lieukieu" v. XXV (1825) p. 128.

"Notice sur les îles Lou-tchou ou Lieou-kieou par le capitaine Frederic Beechey"

v. XXXVII (1828) pp. 370-374. "Voyages aux côtes du Nordest de la Chine sur le navire Lord

Amherst" v. LXI (1834) pp. 99-104.

"Voyage du Capitaine Beechey dans le Grand-Ocean" (1825 à 1828) v. L (1831)

pp. 70-79.

Ostasiatische Rundschau (Hamburg)

"Ein deutscher Gedenkstein auf Miyako-shima, Riu-Kiu Inseln" ν. 19 (1936) pp. 606-8.

Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (Gotha)

(Trans, of article in the Japan Weekly Mail concerning Ryukyu's political dependence) v. XXIV

(1878) p. 439. Royal Geographic Society, London (Proceedings)

"The Loochoo Islands" v. I (1879) pp. 210-13. Shanghai Budget (Shanghai)

"Visit of the Curlew to Ryukyu" 27 Nov. 1873.

Shanghai Evening Courier (Shanghai)

A Trip to the Loochoos [HMS Curlew in search of the Benares] 27 Jan. 1873. St. Petersburgische

Zeitschrifte (St. Petersburg)

"Die Lieou-Kieou-Inseln" v. VIII (1822) pp. 291-306. The Friend (Honolulu, Sandwich Islands)

"Visit of the American Bark Merlin to the Loo Choo Islands" v. IX, no. 2 (Feb. 20, 1851 pp. 9-10)

includes Capt. Welch's letter " To the Regent and Other High and Illustrious Mandarins of Loo

Choo" reprinted in Warriner: Voyager to Destiny pp. 245-247.) Time Magazine (N.Y.)

"Okinawa: Leavittown-on-the-Pacific" v. 66, No. 7 (15 Aug. 1955) pp. 18-20. "Okinawa: Forgotten

Island" v. 54, No. 22 (28 Nov. 1949) pp. 24-27. Tour du Monde (Paris)
"La Chine et les iles Liou-Kiou" v. II (1882) pp. 123-124. Wan Kwoh Kung Pao (Shanghai)

"The Loo Choo Islands" v. XVII, No. 11 (Dec. 1905). Zeitschrift fur Allgetneine Erdkunde (Berlin)

"Berichte eines Chinesen über die Liu-Kiu Inseln" (1856) pp. 262-69.

Official Publications

[Great Britain]

Foreign Office: General Correspondence Relating to China London v. II (1840) pp. 209-212; 223-

226.

Government of India: "Narrative of Facts attending the wreck of the Transport Indian Oak on the Loo

Choo Islands, communicated from the Political Secretariat Office, Government of India, to C.B.

Greenlaw, Esq' Secretariat to the Marine Board, Calcutta." Journal Asiatic Soc. Bengal.

(Calcutta) v. IX No. 2 (1840) pp. 916-923.

[For extensive citation of official correspondence concerning British interests in the Ryukyus, see

W.G. Beasley: Great Britain and the Openihg of Japan, 1834-1858. London, 1951.] [United

States Government] Department of State

Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1875. Washington v. I (1875) pp. 313-

316.

Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1881. Washington (1882) pp. 229-

232.

Record of Proceedings: Conference for the Conclusion and Signature of the Treaty oj Peace with

Japan. Washington (1951) pp. 78; 93-94.

[For full documentation of U.S. relations with Japan and China concerning the Ryukyus, see J.

Payson Treat: Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Japan, 1853-1895. 2 vols.

Stanford (1932).]

The Senate

Senate Documents. 33rd Congress, 2nd Session (1854-1855). Washington v. VI, Ex. Doc. No. 34,

Ser. 751. Correspondence Relative to the Naval Expedition to Japan, 1853-1854.

Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Research and Analysis Branch (R&A) Psych. Div. Social Relations

in Japan Divisional Report #17 (R&A 259) Washington (19 Mar. 1942).

Okinawa Studies No. 1: The Okinawas [sûr] a Japanese Minority Group Honolulu

(1944)

Okinawa Studies No. 2: The Okinawas [5/c] Their Distinguishing Characteristics Honolulu (1944).

Okinawa Studies No. 3: The Okinawas [sic] oj the Loochoo Islands, a Japanese Minority Group

[with Bibliography] Honolulu (1944). U.S. Navy Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Civil

Affairs Handbook—Ryukyu (Loochoo) Islands OpNav 13-3 Washington, D.C. (1944) 334 pp.

[Bibliography pp. 291-306].

Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas: Information Bulletin—Okinawa Gunto (1944) 127 pp.

Hydrographie Office: Asiatic Pilot v. II The Japanese Archipelago 3rd ed. (with 1943 Supplement).

Washington (1930), pp. 729-774. U.S. Army

U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific: Summation of United States Military Government Activities in the

Ryukyu Islands. Nos. 1-12. (Nov. 1946-Aug. 1948). GHQ, Suppreme Commander for the Allied

Powers (SCAP): Economic and Scientific sections: Report of an Economic Mission to the

Ryukyus. Tokyo (Dec. 1949) 62 pp. mimeo.

Strategic Bombing Survey: The Campaigns of the Pacific War. Washington, D.C. (1946) pp. 324-331.

Government Ryukyu Islands (GRI) GRI Land Problem Committee: Study on Land Problem in

Okinawa Naha (Oct. 1955) 145 pp. plus Appendix (Recommendations) 54 pp. Japanese

Government: Japanese Embassy, Washington, D.C. "Okinawans Look to U.S. Congress for Help

in Land Dispute" Japan Report (Washington) v. I No. 6. Nov. 30, 1955, pp. 9-10.

A Selected List of Japanese References

Akiyama Kenzo: Nisshi Kosho Shiwa (A Study of Sino-Japanese Relations) Tokyo (1935) 575 PP-

-: "Zui-sho Ryukyu Koku-den no sai ginmi" (Review of an account of Ryukyu

in the Sui Dynasty records) Rekishi Chiri v. 54, no. 2, pp. 93-106.
Akiyama Kenzo: "Gores naru meisho no hassei to sono rekishi-teki hatten" (Origin and historical

development of the name Gores) Shigaku Zasshi Tokyo v. XXXIV no. 12 (1928) pp. 1349-1359.

-: "Rishi Chosen to Ryukyu tono tsuko" (Communications between the Li

Dynasty of Korea and Ryukyu) Shigaku Zasshi Tokyo (1930) v. XLI no. 7, pp. 788-825.

-: "Ryukyu Seito igo ni okeru Shimazu-shi no shokumin seisaku no hatten"

(Development of Colonization Policies by the Shimazu Family after the Expedition to Ryukyu [in

1609]) Shigaku Zasshi Tokyo v. LVIII no. 3 (1931).

[Hakuhunkan: pub.] Nihon Meisho Chishi (Geography of Noted Places in Japan) Tokyo (1901) v. XI

Ryukyu.

Higaonna Kanjun: Reimeiki no Kaigai Kotsu-shi (History of Early Overseas Communications) Tokyo

(1941) 436 pp.

-: Gaisetsu Okinawa Shi (An Outline of Okinawan History) Tokyo (1950) 82 pp.

-: Okinawa Shogai-shi (History of Okinawa's Foreign Relations) Tokyo (1951)

58 pp.

Ilia Fuyu: Ryukyu Kokon Ki (Ryukyu, Past and Present) Tokyo (1926) 622 pp.

-: Ko Ryukyu (Old Ryukyu) Tokyo (3rd ed. 1942) 466 pp.

Kobata Jun: Chusei Nanto tsusho-boeki Oshi no kenkyu (A Study of the History of Trade and

Communications of the Southern Islands in the Middle Ages) Tokyo

(1939) 552 pp.

-: "Ashikaga jidai Ryukyu to no keizai-teki oyobi seiji-teki kankei ni tsuite" (Concerning the

economic and political relations with the Ryukyus in the Ashikaga Period) Shigaku Zasshi v.

XLVIII no. 2 pp. 1-28; no. 3 pp. 21-48; no. 4 pp. 39-74. Tokyo (1937)

-: "Ryukyu-Marakka-kan no tsusho kankei ni tsuite" (Concerning the Ryukyu-

Malacca Trade Relations) Keizaishi Kenkyu Tokyo v. 14 no. 5, pp. 579-593; no. 6, pp. 712-724.

Majikina Anko: Okinawa Issen-nen Shi (A Thousand Years of Okinawan History) Tokyo (1923) 640

pp. 2nd ed. Fukuoka, 1952.

[Okinawa-ken Kyoiku-kai, pub.]: Ryukyu Naha, (1925) 467 pp.

[Okinawa-kensei, Nslitlu,pub.]: Okinawa-ken Tokei Sho, Showa 11 [1935-36] (Statistics of Okinawa-

ken for 1935-36) Naha (1938) 146 pp.

[Okinawa Times, pub.]: Tetsu no Bofu (Storm of Steel) Tokyo and Naha (1950) 437 PP-

Ota Chofu: Okinawa Kensei Goju-tien (Fifty Years of Okinawa Provincial Administration) Tokyo

(1940) 379 pp.

Shidehara Tan: Nanto Enkaku-shi Ron (A Study of the History of the Southern Islands) Tokyo (1899)

234 pp.

-: "Sho Hashi no koki to Muromachi jidai no Nichi-Ryu kotsu" (Rise of Sho

Hashi and communications between Japan and Okinawa in Muromachi period) Kokugakuin Zasshi v.

IV no. 11.

Shimabukuro Genichiro: Okinawa Rekishi (History of Okinawa) Naha (1932).

Tanabe Tai and Iwaya Fujio: Ryukyu Kenchiku (Architecture of the Ryukyus) Tokyo (1937) Text 62

pp. 103 plates.

Yanagi Soetsu: "Ryukyu no Bunka" (Ryukyuan Culture) Mingei Sosho no. 2 (1942). [Yanagi Soetsu,

ed.]:

Kogei (The Art-crafts) Tokyo no. 49 (Jan. 1935); no. 99 (Oct. 1939); no. 100 (Dec.

1939); no. 103 (Oct. 1940).

Gekkan Mingei (Folkarts Monthly) Tokyo, no. 8 (Nov. 1939); no. 12 (March,

1940); no. 21 (Dec. 1940).

Yanagida Kunio, ed.: Okinawa Bunka Sosetsu (Essays on Okinawan Culture) Tokyo (1947) 342 pp.
 INDEX
The following abbreviations are employed: C. = China, Chinese; J. = Japan, Japanese; O. =

Okinawa, Okinawan; R.=Ryukyu, Ryukyan; Pl.=Plate(s). Page numbers in italics refer to text figures

or maps.

abdications, 51, 104, 244-5, 381-4

Abe Masahiro, Lord, 277

Abyssinians, 126

Adams, Will, 170-2

Aden, 126

administrative affairs, 97, 102, 105-15, 118, 121-2; after Keicho, 138, 168, 185—6; under Slio Jo-

ken, 191-8; under Sai On, 199-210; revisions imposed by J., 368-9, 398-401; prefectoral growth,

423-7; World War II, 465; abdication crisis, 393; associations formed to aid, 429; training for,

79, 88, 226, 346

Admiralty, British, 233, 234, 293

Adnet, Mathieu, 278-9

aesthetic life, 195, 223

agriculture: after Keicho, 169, 183-5; after annexation, 404-5; research, training, 406, 430; policies,

431; leaders, 452

Ainu, 24, 26, 41, 402

airplanes first seen, 432-3

Akahachi (Oyake Akahachi), 118, 121

Alaska, Russian, 229

"Alceste," 252, 257, 258, 261,passim

Ama no Iwa To, 37 Ama-bo (fishers' community), 35 Amami-dake, 35

Amami islands, 8, 9, 116, 158,159, 227, 390

Amami-kyu, 35-6

Amami Oshima, 35, 49, 51, 123, 136, 138, 147, 168, 170

Amami-ya (origin myth locus), 35

Amaterasu O-Mikami, 36-7, 451

Amawari, Lord of Katsuren, 98

Ameku Seigen-ji, 266, 275, 334

American: squadron, 295, 297-341, passim; shipping in Far East, 238, 239, 269, 292, 298-9; envoy

(Tokyo) receives O. appeals, 385; cemetary established (Tomari), 335; missionaries active, 269-

70, 344, 450-1.

Americans: ashore, 297-341,passim; beachcombers, 409-10; baseball team, 446; remove Chinese

mutineers, 296; rescue O. envoy, 351 ; launch invasion, 468-9:see also United States of America

Amherst Mission to Peking, 249, 252, 258

Amity and Commerce, U.S.-J. Treaty of (1858), 347 Amoy (China), 230

ancestor-worship, 110, 217-9, 268, 450

Anglo-Chinese War, 249, 270, 282, 299

Anjah, 266-7, 5271

anji, 36, 62, 86-8, 106-7, 185, 206, 395 f.

anji-okite, 107

Ankoku-ji, 415

annals, royal, 82, 225

Annam, 64, 91

Annapolis, U.S. Naval Academy bell, 100 fn., 336-7

annexation: of Oshima, 362; of Ryu-kyu, 364, 382, 449

Anping (Formosa), 174

anti-American feeling (1854), 330-1

anti-foreign decrees (J.), 262

anti-foreignism (J.), 348

anti-war sentiment, 459-60

"Antony the Negro," 172

Arabic references to Ryukyu, 477

arable land estimates, 16; problems, 207-8

Arabs, 73, 90-1

Arai Hakuseki, 201, 202

archeology, 24, 26-7, 454

architecture, 27, 28, 62, 113, 134, 197, 212, 21 221-2, 223, 244, 287, 317, 383, 405, 455; Pi- 1-4,

6-10, 12, 18-20, 23, 25, 20

archives, 445

aristocrats in government, 185; after annexation, 395-6

arts and crafts, 112, 195, 206, 220-1, 451, 455; see also crafts

"Arts and Learning" proclamation, 192

Asato (Azato) district, 83

Asato Hachiman Shrine, 101

Ashikaga: shogunate, 64, 81,153; Taka-uji, 63; Yoshimochi, 70; Yoshimitsu, 70; Yoshimasa, 139

assemblies, political, 401, 424

assimilation: of C. in O., 178; of J. in O., 188; of O. ordered by Tokyo, 368; problems, 392-7;

progress, 411, 441-2, 446-7

Association for Preservation of Historical Sites and Relics of O., 456

astronomical studies, observatory (Shu-ri) 204-5

Ata (Acting Gov., Kyushu), 48

Awase, 433
Ayuthia (Siam), 88-9

Azato (Asato) district, 83

Ba family, 188; Rio-si, "Treasurer of Lew Chew," 336

baba (racing grounds), 216

banking, 313, 408, 434

Barbosa, Duarte, 128; The Book of, 124

barrier islands, 13, 158, 465

Barrington, Daines, 229

Barros, Joao de, 126

basa, 94

batata, 183 fn.

Beechey, Frederic W., 262-3, 265, 266, 271, 355

Belcher, Sir Edward, 273-4

bells, noted, 90, 109, 332, 336, 33761.

bell-casting, 99, 100, 195

Bengalese, 126

Benten-do, 221, PL 7

Benyowsky, Count Mauritius de, 227-9; Compact (1771), 228

Bettelheim: Dr. Bernard Jean, 279-95, 299-300, 302, 306-11, 313-22, 324, 325-6, 328, 329, 330, 337-

40, 346,451, 452, 485-6, PL 26; Bernard James GutzlafF, 282, 289; Lucy Lewchew, 285; Mrs.,

281, 284, 286, 289, 325, 337; Victoria Rose, 281

Bettelheim Memorial Mission, 451

"Bettleheim Problem," 291

Bezaiten-do, 221, Pl. 7

Biddle, James, 299

Bingham, John Α., 359, 385-6

Bitchu, Lord of, 140

Black Current, the, 23

"Black" vs. "White" factions (Shuri), 418, 424-5

"Blossom," 262-3, 265, 266, 271, 355

Board Incident (1854), 330-2

Bongo Dono (Lord of Bungo), 171

Bonham, Sir John, 292-3, 294-5

Bonin Is., 269, 302, 320, 355

Bonotsu Harbor (Kyushu), 140

books, 225, 267

border definition problems (1868), 349, 354-6,

Borneo, 68, 92

Botan tribe (Formosa), 356, 359

Botel Tobago Is., 28, 95

Bowman, J.J.B., 271-3

Bowring, Sir John, 295

bridges, monumental, 222, 223, PL 12

Britain, 11,12,230,274,292, 342, passim

British interests, actions: 17th-cent. traders, 169-72; Macartney embassy report, 230-1; Miyako

survey, Admiralty report, 231-3, 233-4; "A Ices te," "Lyra" survey, 252-3; Tokara raid, 261-2;

"Blossom" survey, 262-3; "Lord Amherst" survey, report to Parliament, 263-5; "Samarang"

survey, 273-4; "Indian Oak" incident, 271-4; Bettelheim problem, 279-82; 289-95; Perry's

hostility to, 302, 327; Palmerston threatens Shuri, 294; coercion, 315; Namamugi Incident
 aftermath, 348-9; Royal Navy in Battle of Okinawa, 468; appraisals of O. character, 170 172,

230, 231-4, passim, 252-74, passim, 279-80, 294, 409

"Brothers," 260-1

Broughton, William Robert, 95, 231-4, 261, 410

Brunei (Borneo), 68

Bryson, Capt. Lesley, 295-6

Buddhism: introduced, 55-6; Korean influence, 81; as cultural stimulus, 99; sutras acquired, 112;

clergy vs. Xavier in Kyushu, 146; evangelical doctrines, 156; in O. national life, 190;

ceremonies, temples, 215, 415; decline of, 219-20; monuments, 221, 455; sutras as war booty,

159; Shin, 148, 190, 220, 344; Shingon, 190, 220; priests pensioned, 376; 20th-cent. official

attitudes, 451; Bettelheim's attitude, 284, 336-7; Perry's attitude, 319-20

bugyo, 159

building crafts, 221-2

Bull, Rev. Earl R., 451, 485-6

Bunei, King, 80, 82, 83

Bungo, Lord of, 171

burial customs, 98, 195, 218-9, 244

Burma, 11, 66, 126

Cairo Declaration, 10-3, 465, 466

calender, solar, introduced, 365

Cambodia, 64

cannibalism, 44

"cap-ranks" at Shuri, 95
Cassel, Douglas, 359 castle architecture; see architecture

cartography, 203, 240

Caroline Is., O. laborers in, 439

Catholic missionaries, 146-7, 169, 173-4, 202, 228, 233, 275-6, 278-9, 285, 344, 346.

Cecilie, Admiral, 277-8

census, 393-4; see also population

ceramics, 94, 112, 220-1, 456

ceremonial life, 68, 69, 70, 84, 89, 96, 108, 131, 133, 156, 193, 215-9, 251, 254, passim

Ceylon, 66

Ch'ai San, 137

Chamberlain, Basil Hall, 4, 34,193,415, 432

Champa, 126

chancellor, 186

Chang Pei-lun, 391

Cheng Ch'eng-kung (Koxinga), 176-7

Cheng Chih-lung, 177

Chiang Kai-shek, 10, 11, 464

chief priestess, 36, no, 194

Ch'ien Lung, Emperor, 230

chikudun, 189

Chin K'an, 133

Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, Emperor, 29-30, 40

china: And Okinawa: Sui dyn. summons, 40; Kublai Khan's demands, 51; tributary relations 63-74,

passim; Kume village founded, 75-8; formal relations developed, 78-80; vital O. trade interests,

71, 82, 136, 159, passim; political, cultural relations, 79-80, 84-5, 89, 130-5,153, 155, passim;
 commerce, 93-4,127, 179-82, passim; Bettelheim problem, 291; "Robert Browne" mutiny, 296;

postwar C. claims to O., 12, 464

Vs. Japan: in Korea (13 th, 16th, 19th cents.), 51,151-5, 356-8; in Formosa, 356-60; in

maritime trade, piracy, 64, 70, 135-43, passim; Ryukyu sovereignty dispute, 356-78, 384-92, Republic

of: II

"China Incident" (1937), 435

Chinen: peninsula, 38; Shrine, 194

Chinese brothers as Miyako culture heroes, 119

Chinese interests, activities: notices, 39, 40; 18th-cent. reports, 210-1; attitudes, 214-5; appraisals, 89,

133, 340; court etiquette, cultural heritage in O., 69, 76, 449; influence diffused, 73,167;

concepts of government, 191-2; ióth-cent. Liu-ch'iu history, vocabulary, 133; interpreters, 91;

investiture for O. kings, 68,176, passim; language of diplomacy, 306-7; military mission

unwelcome in O., 133; moral maxims, 204; studies at Kume, 212-3, 34-6» 412; superstitions,

219; Taoism, 219; textiles, 96; coinage, 99; embassies, 132, 203-4, passim; emigrants; 76, 142;

trade with Satsuma, 246; prestige wanes, 205; calendar replaced, 365; reign-names abandoned,

368; Anglo-Chinese War, C. version, 272; indemnity payable (1874), 360, 367; ports open to

missionaries, 274; proposals to provoke war, 386; threat to O. removed, 420-3; claims, 14, 63,

387-8, 464

Chinese Repository, 307

Ch'ing (Manchu) dynasty, 175; investiture granted by, 176

Chisho, 44

cho created, 427

Chou Huang, 134, 189, 211-3, 480

Christian religion: missionaries, 144, 203, 257, 410-1; missions, 285-6, 288, 345, 449-51;

proscription, 172-4, 203, 261-2, 267-8, 345, 270, 285-6, 288; unlawful propaganda, 267, 340,

344; converts, 173, 228, 450-1; prospects, 338; see also Catholic missionaries; missions
chronology, xviii

Ch'uang-chou, 71-3, 93, 124, 139, 166, 167, 169-70, 183, 222, 266, 375

Chusan Is. (China Sea), 271, 272

Chuzan Gate (Shuri), 89; tablet, 89

Chuzan: principality, 62, 74, 81, 83, 84, 107, 115, 378; History of 36, 46, 225

class divisions; see ranks; titles

clerics distrusted, 147

Clifford, Herbert J., 256-7, 279-80, 282-3, 289, 291

climate and architecture, 221-2

clothing; see costume

coal mines (Yaeyama), 362, 407, 436

coaling depot, U. S. (at Naha), 326, 333

Cochrane, Sir Thomas, 290-1

Cocks, Richard, 170-2, 184, 224

coercion, Presidential orders, 306; Perry's policy, 311, 328, 333-4, passim; British, 315; French,

277; J., 342-84

coiffure, 95-6, 411-5, 442, 453

coinage, 29, 99, 195-6, 214, 328-9, 332, 337, 340, 351, 362, 408

Collis, Maurice, 144, 146

Colonization and Sugar Company,Okinawa-Taiwan, 431-2

commerce, 78, 99,126-9,139, 171, 267,319, 398-9; see also trade

communal land-holding, 197-8, 404, 424

communications, 121, 432

community interdependence, 196-7

"Compact with Lew Chew," 333-6

conflict of interests, 249-50, 255

Confucian elements in O. life: standards, 185, 193, 209, 412; administration, 191-2; texts, 244;

training, 352; ethics, 450, doctrine, ideals, 193, 209, 214, 220; school, 133; temples, 194, 215,

221, 243, 445; hostility to noro cult, 156, 215; "Golden Age of antiquity realized," 340 485-6

Conrad, C. M., 303

"consent of native," 305-6, 311

conservation projects (18th cent.), 207ff.

constitutional development, 420-1

Contee, Lt., 308

contract-labor laws, 438

"Conversation Training Quarter," 413

copper mining, 407

costume, 95-6, 178, 192, 230, 321, 414-5, 442, 448, 453; Pl. 5, 11, 13-4, 17, ip-22, 25, 27 "Council

of Fifteen," 186

Council of State, 163, 164, 186, 209, 213, 244, 350, 366-7, 372

"Country of Propriety," 133

court (Shuri), 95, 96, 394-5, passim

court (Tokyo), 364, 367

courtesy and hospitality assessed: 4, 232, 233-4, 250-7, passim, 261, 263-8, sim, 271-4, passim,

308, 309, 409; see also Shurei no Kuni

courts, law, 186, 332, 401 crafts, craftsmen, 75, 206, 397, 404, 456-7

crest, Sho family, 101, 471

crime, punishment, 4, 193, 213-4, 255, 365; see also legal affairs

crown princes, 176, 353, 453~4 cuisine, 217, 448-9

"Cultivate Men of Ability in the Sea Country," 226

cultural affairs: diffusion, 44, 114, 115; development, 13th cent., 52; stimulus of tribute system and

international trade, 66, 81-2; impoverished 18th-cent. inheritance, 210, 211; synthesis, 214-7;
 accelerated change, 423; student leadership, 80, 442, 454-8

culture heroes, 52, 118-20, 452

"Current treasure of Ryukyu," coinage, 351

curriculum for O. students at Peking, 225-6

customs administration, 362

Daiiji Sei-in Osho, 153

Daito Is., 401, 432

Dalboquerque, Afonso, 124, 128

Damien, Marines, 172

dancing, dance forms, 96, 216-7, 223-4

Dazai Shundai, 201

defense frontier, 13, 148, 158, 237-41, 264, 354-6, 460, 463, 465, 468-72

defenses, 142, 158-9, 240, 258-9, 262, 270, 272, 334, 460, 463-4, 466-7, 469-72; see also military

affairs

Delong, C. E., 364

Deshima trading depot, 173, 246

dialects, xvii, 35, 448; see also language dictionaries, 34, 133-4, 225, 266, 285, 415

Diet, National (Tokyo), 421, 428

disasters, natural, 23,198,199, 221, 241-4, 435-6

discontent: under Satsuma, 215; under Tokyo, 372-3, 381-2, 383, 396, 399, 416-7, 418, 441, 442-4;

on Miyako, 351, 417

discrimination, 117-8, 188, 393, 398-9, 417-8, 442, 460

district divisions, 87, 186, 427

"Do Nothing" era, 400-2, 404, 440-1 Doshi-kai, 427

"dove's-eye" coins, 196

"dragon-boat" racing, 216, 217

Dragon Lake (Shuri), 114

Dragon Palace and fire-myths, 36

dragon pillars (Shuri castle), 109, 317 drama, 98; see also dancing

"dual subordination," 15, 166-7, 185, 203, 214-5, 227, 247-50, passim, 374-5,385

Dulles, John Foster, 9

Dutch interests, activities; 124, 166, 169, 170, 177, 246, 249, 275; see also Holland

"Dutch Scholars," 205 dyewood, dyeing techniques, 94, 95

earthquakes; see disasters

Eastern Sea Is., 29-33

Eaton, William, 172, 184

economy & economic problems: basic poverty, 402; reorganized by Eiso, 53; Satto's rule, 63;

peaceful maritime trade vital, 90; under Sho Shin, 105-6, 108, 115-6; Sakishima, 122-3;

Satsuma's survey, 159; under Sho Nei, 183-5; Sho Jo-ken's administration. 195-9; Sai Ons

admin., 200, 205-8; gentry status, 206; general decline, 209; discussed at Edo, 202; resources,

230-1; disasters, 241-3, 434-5; Western contacts adversely affect, 249-51; inflation, 351; post-

annexation adjustments, 362; backwardness, 402-4; vulnerability, 406; J.'s "Do Nothing" era,

402-8; ineffective representation, Tokyo, 408-9; 20th-cent. change, 430-5; colonization attempts,

432; depression, 434-5; frustrated development, 436-7; postwar rehabilitation 8; capital ventures,

182, 403-4, 434

Eddis, William Upton, 260-1

Edo, 157, 160, 203, 240; Bay, 300

education, 204, 212-3, 243, 412-5, 441-7; abroad, 225-6; academies, 226-7, 346; in C., 79, 205; in ].,

368-9; agriculturai schools, 430; compulsory, 413; royal patronage, 226; partisanship and dual

subordination, 143; Bettelheim's offer, 284-5; see also schools

Education Association, Okinawa Prefectural, 444

Egyptians, 126

Eiji, King, 51

Eiso, King, 51

"Eleven Distinctions of the Age" of Sho Shin, 105-6

Ellis, Henry, 480-1

embassies abroad, 43, 44, 91, 112, 131-5,168,201, 247, passim; see also envoys

Emigrant Training Center (Naha), 439

emigration, 8, 397, 435-9, 448

encirclement, J/s, 34g, 354-6 Engi-shiki, 112

England, 3, 4, 68 fn., 262; see also Britain; British English language use, study: by Mae-dera, 253;

by Anjah, 266-7; by Itara-shiki, 312, 318; by others, 265, 271, 346,347; at Shuri Middle School,

414, 446

English-Loo Choo dictionary, 266

Enkaku-ji (Shuri), 109, 113, 165, 221, 455, 460; Pl. 1, 2, 9

Enomoto Buyo, 355, 377

envoys, O., 73, 230, 263, 351, 366; to C., 65, 80, 88,176, 184, 370, 374, 378, 387, 390; to J., 175,

201, 363-4, 357, 374, 201, 367, 373

epidemic sickness, 241-3, 393, 402, 435

Erabu Is., 168

European interests, activities: in Asia, 3, 124, 144-8, 169, 237-9, 274, 358-9; encounter Okinawans,

Malacca, 93, 124; 18th cent., 229; baffled by "dual subdordination," 166-7, 231, 265-7, passim;
 in Sino-J. sovereignty dispute, 374

European visitors in Ryukyu: first, 146, 257; 17th cent., 169-74; 18th cent. 227-34; early 19th cent.,

249-96; Perry's expd., 297-341; French, 275-9,344-7; Russians, 330,485; scientists,

missionaries, 409-11, 451; see also ships.

Everett, Edward, 305-6

exclusion edicts, 172

exiles and cultural diffusion, 43

exotic trade goods, Naha, 90-4

factionalism (Shuri), 156, 350, 418

famine, 51, 198-9, 241-3; see also disasters

Farewell, The, by Mr. Gillard, 258

female chieftains, Kyushu, 42

festivals, 76, 215-7, 365, 368

finance, 390, 396-7, 438-9

firearms, 144

First Middle School (Shuri), 413-4, 441

"Five Annual Festivals," 219

"Five Great Temples," 143, 147

"Five Heroes of Hisamatsu," 461

Folk Art Association, Museum, Japan, 456-7

folklore themes, Sakishima, 120-1

Forcade, Theodore Α., 275-6, 278, 285

foreign affairs interests, activities: foreign immigration banned, 173; royal house as symbol in, 245;

C.'s attitude, 248-9, 357, 359-60, 375, 384-93 397; controlled by Satsuma, 185, 344; ambiguity,

267; intrusion dreaded, 249; French warning, 275; uncertainty vs. West, 248; J. assumes

management, 364; J. office at Naha, 347, 365, 372; overseas travel restricted, 375; see also

trade

foreign exchange remittances, 438-9

Foreign Ministry, branch, 365, 372

Forest Administrator, 198

forest conservation, 207-8, 243

Forestry Division, uscar, 207

Formosa, 11, 13, 22, 54,142-3,152,153, 169, 174, 176-7, 302, 385, 422-3, 437: Incident, 356-60, 368,

452

Formosa-Ryukyu sugar rivalry, 431

Formosan-Chinese on Iriomote, 436

fortunetellers, 219

France and French interests, 68 fn.; pressure at Naha, 275-9; protectorate sought, 275; blunders, 276-

7; Catholic mission, 275-9, 285, 344-7; occupation anticipated, 327; trade planned, 343-4;

language study, 278, 345, 347; treaty, 277, 343-4, 347, 364

frontier problems, J. & O.; 173~4, 349, 354-6, 361, 463

Fuchigami Fusataro, 437, 457 fudai daimyo, 157

Fukien (China), 127, 177, 222, 230

Fukien Trading Depot, 93, 171; see also Ch'uang-chou

Fukuhara Minoru, 400

Fumi no Imoko, 41, 42

Fumon-ji, 99

funeral customs, 195, 215, 218-9, 244

Furet, Auguste Theodore, 344, 346

Futenma cave, 38

garrison, J., at Naha, 369-70, 375, 460

"Gate of National Learning," 382

"Gate of Propriety " (Shuri), 133

Gaubil, Father, 233, 479

German shipwreck, monument (Miya-ko), 410, 462

"Ge-roo," 258

gifts, noteworthy, 68, 74, 89, 94, 258, 261, 263, 267, 268, 273, 308, 311, 329, 336-7, 363-4, 371

Gihon, King, 51, 53, 103

Gima Shinjo, 183-4, 452

Ginama village, 102

Ginowan Oyakata, 350, 363, 367, 371, 373

Glasson, Lt., 330-1

Glynn, James, 292, 295, 299 f., 301-2

Goeku, Prince of, 102, 104

Gokoku-ji (Nami-no-ue), 81, 100 fn., 284, 319-20, 336-7, 452

Gokuraku-ji, 55

Goncharov, Ivan Alexander, 485-6

"Gores," 127, 477

Gosamaru, Lord of Nakagusuku, 98

government, 54, 86, 185-7, 191-2, 196, 390, 428, 440-1, passim

"Governor of Satsuma and R.," 353

governorship, 399-400, 423, 425, 429

Grant, Ulysses S., 376, 383-90, passim

Granville, Lord, 295

"Great Days of Chuzan," 104-15 Great Britain; see Britain

"Great Liu-ch'iu," 54 Guerin, Nicholas-Francois, 276, 344 gun, created, 427

Gushikawa Choei, 191

Gusuku-dake shellmound, 29

Gutzlaff, Rev. Karl Frederich Augustus, 263, 265-9, 281, 282, 288, 292-3,299

hachimaki, 95, 230; Pi. 5, 13

Hachiman, War God, 101

hairpins; see kanzashi

Hakluyt Society (London), 124

Hakuseki; see Arai Hakuseki

Hall, Basil, 4,187 fn., 249-60 passim, 264, 266, 294, 302, 415-6,480-1, 485-6

"Hall of Learning" (Naha), 243

Hamada Shoji, 456-7

Hamahiga Pechitt, 273, 275

Han China, 30-1

Han Wu Ti, Emperor, 30, 40

Handbook for Administrative Officers, 205

"Handbook for Travellers," 166, 203

handicrafts, 404; see also arts and crafts; craftsmen

Haneji Choshu; see Sho Jo-ken

Haneji River project, 207

Haniji, Lord of Hokuzan, 82 Han-0, 364

Happy Immortals, 30, 40

Hara Kei, 428

hara-kiri, 49, 211, 214

harbor development, 433

Hares, William, 256

Harris, Townsend, 345, 347

Harvard Journal for Asiatic StudieSy 67

haryu-sen, 76, 216, 217

hatome-seny 196, 351

Hawaii, 238, 437-8, 448-9

Hawks, Rev. Francis L., 297-8, 321

Hayashi Shihei, 240

Hayato people, 24, 42, 46

Hayes, Rutherford, 389

health, welfare services, 439-40; see also

medical affairs

"Heavenly Grandchild," 36

Heda-misaki, 51 heimin, 188, 190

Hemmij, 246

Henja School, 450

hereditary rights, 382

Herrera, Diego de, 148

Heshikiya Chobin, 208-9; Incident, 215

Hi people, 42
Hibi Kimei, 423, passim Hidaka Is., 38; noro, 101, 197

Hideyoshi, 124, 144, 147-8, 151-6, 160

Higa Shuhei, xvi, Pl. 55

Higaonna Kanjun, 442, 454

High Court, 186

high priestess, 36, 110-111, 194

high schools,

higher education; see education

Hindu states, 92

hiragana script, 35, 224

Hirara (Miyako), 27, 116, 221, 410, 416-7, 427, 442, 462

Hirata Tentsu, 176

Hirohito, Crown Prince, 453-4

Hirth, Frederick, 134

Hisamatsu Village (Miyako), 460-1

historical studies, 225, 445, 454-6 Ho, Augustine, 275, 276

Hoju-chang, 386 Hochi Shimbun, 368

Hokuzan, 61, 74, 82, 85, 107, 146; Warden of, 85

Holland, 3, 4, 68 fn., 238-9, 343, 364, 385

Home Ministry Office (Naha), 372

"Home Provinces" vs Okinawa, 448-9

Honda Chikamasa, 159 honesty, foreigners comment on, 127 129, 255, 265, 271, 274, 288, 292, 294,

480-1

Hoo Hea-me Tajin (Lindsay), 265

Hosokawa agents (Ningpo), 141

Hosokawa Katsumoto, 139

hospitality, O.: comment on exceptional, 145, 170, 214, 228-9, 230, 231-3, 252-8, passim, 261, 262-

3, 264-9, passim, 271-4, 409, 410; near exhaustion, 270

hostages (in Satsuma) 160, 165, 167

House of Peers (Tokyo), 428

Hsiang (Sho) family name, 89, 187

Hsi-yang people, 68

Hsu Pao-kuang (Jo Ho-ko), 204, 21 , 214-5, 479

Hsuan Te, Emperor, 89, 137 Hui Ti, Emperor, 83, 84

"humming-bulb" arrows, 27

"Hundred Faithful Retainers," 85

"hundred kingdoms in the sea islands," 30

Hung Hsi, Emperor, 89

Hung Wu Ti, Emperor, 65, 83, 135

Hyuga (Kyushu), 35, 46, 158, 353

Ichiki, family, 182; Shoemon, 245-6; 357

Ichirazichi; see Itarashiki

ideal or "classical" society in O., 214, 340, 485-6 Ie, Prince, 363, 364,371, 372, 381, 395

Iha Fuyu, 35, 179, 442, 445, 455

Iheya Is., 37, 51, 102, 103, 400, 401

Iheya no Amaganushi, 110

Iheya noto, 103

Iidabashi (Edo), Ryukyu han office, 377

Ijichi Sadaka, 184, 361, 362, 363 i-jin, 214 ikat, 94-5
Ikegusuku Oyakata, 367, 374

immigration, 119, 188

imperial household, 432, 453

Imperial Rule Assistance Association, 463

imperial symbolism, 365, 452-3, 467

import-export trade, 408, 433; see also trade

impoverishment, 169, 210, 350-51, 393, 434-6

In Gan-cho, 287

indemnity, Chinese, 367, 368-9

India, 7, 90, 152

"Indian Oak" wrecked, 271-4

Indies, 74, 91, 94

Indo-China, 74, 217

Indonesian culture, 26 Ino Jiro, 434-5

Inoue Kaoru, 362

inter-island reations, 22-3,116-23, passim, 368-9,394, 427,432,433

international rivalries, 297, 302,333, 342

international "Ryukyu sovereignty"

issue, 384-92

interpreters, 91, 144, 213, 261,271,276, 278, 291, 295, 298, 306,308, 312,318, 412-3; Pi. 2 s

investiture, 65, 97, 103, 131, 176, 181, 185, 213, 231, 352

Irabu Is., 401

Iratu O-Sho, 80

Ireland, 256, 279, 282

Iriomote Is. (Yaeyama), 407, 436

irrigation projects, 207 Ise Grand Shrine, 34, 42

Ishigaki Is., 21, 26, 49, 436-7

Ishigaki settlement (Yaeyama), 27, 11 5, 221, 241, 427, 463

Ishii Torao, 462

Islamic expansion, 104, 126, 169

"Islands of Gold and Silver," 129

Itagaki Taisuke, 375-6

Itarashiki Satonushi, 312, 320, 345-50; Pi. 25

Ito Hirobumi, 377, 388

Itoman, 27, 60, 427, 433

Iwajiri Eisuke, 278-9

Iwakura Tomomi, 358, 389

Izu Is., 48-9

Jahana Noboru, 414 fn.

Jana Teido Oyakata, 156, 165, 168 japan: Before Keicho Invasion (1609): early notices, 39, 40-5;

refuses C. tributary status, 70, 135-6; relations with O., 135-43 passim; alert to danger on

southern frontier, 148; Hideyoshi's demands, 153-6; Satsuma to chastize R., 157-8

Relations with O., to 1834: Satsuma subjugates R., 158-65; Sidotti affair alarms Edo, 205; on

defensive, surveys frontiers, 239-40, 242; reacts to 1824 Tokara raids, 262; reaffirms seclusion

policy, 276; force threatens British castaways, 272; cultural, political influences, 191-2, 200-3,

205 passim; Western pressure upon J. increases through O., 293 ; Perry's view ofJ.-O. relations,

302-6 passim; Perry discusses O. with Edo, 330

After 1834: vulnerability demonstrated in O., 342 ff.; territorial expansion after 1868, 12; direct

intervention at Shuri, 371-8; acts to terminate R. problem, 377; annexation, 381; post-annexation
 "do nothing" policy, 400-10; sovereignty dispute with C., 384-92; assimilation, 442-54; prestige,

422; State Shinto imposed, 451; nationalism and archeology, 24; discrimination, 448-9; policy

toward, 3, 5, 9; "fringe territory" sacrificed. 10, 13

Japanese in O.: attitudes toward, 268, 462; discrimination, 448-9; frontiersmen in, 46; migrants, 81;

miss onaries in, 100; barons compete for trade, 139, passim; resident agents, Naha, 185;

privileges in, 188; influence, 195, 200-2, 204, 214-5, passim; dominance after 1879, 398-400;

J. Christian evangelists, 410-11; students in, 278, 347, 456-7 Java, 66, 68, 77, 78, 81, 88, 95

Jesuits, 146, 203 Jews Society, London, 281 Jimmu, Emperor, 33, 37, 368 jito, 47

jito-dai, 107, m Jo Ho-ko, see Hsu Pao-kuang Jomon culture, 26, 27

Joten Ryotoan-Osho, 153

judicial affairs; see legal affairs; courts

Kabayama family, 158,478-9; Hisataka, 158, 159

Kadena, 433, 433-4, 469

Kaempfer, Englebert, 193, 217, 224

Kagoshima: Prefecture, 46, 353; trade, 136, 169, 182, 343; Sho Nei's exile, 159, 160-2; Ryukyu

liaison office, 168, 375; loans to Shuri, 243; O. students in, 226; British bombard, 348-9;

merchants at Naha, 398-9,407; Bay, 158, 299

Kaigai Kyokai, 439 Kaiho Yoshu, 226 Kai-ka To association, 399

Kainan Middle School, 444

Kakinohana, 15th-cent. envoy, 88

Kamakura (Japan), 49, 55, 109

Kamei Korenori, 151-2, 155

Kami-Unten village, 277

Kammu, Emperor, 47

kana phonetic symbols, 50, hi

Kanagawa Treaty (1854), 330, 332

Kanaseki Takeo, 26

Kanemaro (Sho En) as Royal Treasurer, 101, 103; see also Sho En Kaneshigawa family (Miyako),

121

K'ang Hsi, Emperor, 203, 221

Kangwha Treaty (1876), 356

Kankei Gate (Shuri), 287, 381

Kanna Kenwa, 439, 442-3, 453, 454, Pi-34

kan-sett, 181 ; PL 16

kanzashi, 95, 192, 414-5, 442; PL 14, 17

karate, 217

Karimata Watch Station (Miyako), 123

kasuri fabrics, 94-5

katakashira, 95-6

Katsuren Castle, 98; Lord of, 165

Kawai Kanjiro, 456-7

Kawarada Moriharu, 408

kebiishi-cho, 47

Keelung (Formosa), 174

Keicho 14 (1609), 156; Invasion, 158-65, 168, 180

ken replace han, 353

Keng Ching-chung, 177

Kennedy, J. P., 303

Kensei-kai, 428
Kerama Is., 51, 394, 468

Kibi no Makibi, 44

Kikai Is., 101, 103, 123, 136, 158, 159, 168, 382

Kikoe-Ogimi, 36, no, 194

Kimbara Meizen, 408

kimi-bae, hi

Kin cave, 38

Kin, Prince, 201

Kinashi Seiichiro, 375, 382

king: abdicates, 51, 244-5, 381—4; role evolved, 45, 52, 80,102,106,185,189, 245, 372, 381, 425,

passim

"Kings Assistant," 80

Kishimoto Gasho, 414 fn., 428

Kochi Oyakata (Sho Toku-ko), 370, 374, 378, 387, 390

Kochi Pechin, 367

Kodama Kihachi, 442-3

Kodo-kai, 425

Kogen-ji, 99

Kohatsu Riko, 205

Koken, Empress, 43 koku, xviii

Kokugaku, 243

Kokugaku-mon, 382

Kokushi-kan (Peking), 79

Komaba Agr. Dept., 431

Konko-ken Shu, 225

Konoe Atsumaro, Prince, 417

Korea, Korean affairs: J. annexation, 12; 14th. cent., 64; tributary to C., 73, 135; dipi. rei. with O., 74,

81; annals, 104; arts, crafts, 112, 217, 220-1, 455; language studies, 134; trade, 136, passim

Korean conflicts affecting O.: war and truce (1950-2), 6, 7, 8; Mongol invasion J., 51; J. invasions,

151-5; J. quarrel, 355, 357-8; Sino-J. War, 419, 421

Koreans, 80, 91, 132, 220-1, 477

Koremune family, 56 Kotabaru saltworks, 198

k'o-t'ou (kowtow), 69, 249, 274

Koxinga, 176-7

Kubaka Castle (Miyako), 120

Kublai Khan, 51, 152

Kudaka Is., 38, 101, 194, 197

kuei-chou (trade passports), 139

Kumamoto Div., 372, 382

Kumaso people, 24, 46

Kumayaa (Iheya), 37

Kume Is.: government, 51, 74, 115, 168; economy, 182, 197; people, 120, 351, 394, 400, 401, 407,

435

Kume village: administration, 75-6, 199, 204; Confucian academic center, no, 167, 186, 194, 212,

221, 225-7, 346, 412, 445; economy, 75-6, 195, 205, 206, 243, 394, 404; politics, 178, 373, 375;

traditions, 178, 445

Kumehadzu, female chieftain, 42 Kung, Prince Regent, 385,386,389, 390

Kunigami district, 86, 186, 469

Kunjan Anji, 165

Kunra Gushiku legend, 209

Kuo Tzu Chien (Peking), 79

Kurile Is., 9, 238, 240

Kyoto, 46-7, 94, 136, 143, 225

Kyoto-Peking quarrels, 137, 141-2

Kyushu, 30, 35, 39, 41, 47, 135, 202, passism

labor surplus (1940), 436

lacquerware, 195, 222-3, 455

"Land of Happy Immortals," 40

"Land of Propriety," 79,133, 193,/mssiu

land reform (1903), 424-6, 437-8

land use, problems, 16, 196, 197-8,208, 224-6, 424-6, 430, 437-8

language: affiliations, 34; of court, 453; vocabularies, 133-4, 285; see also dictionaries

language-study: by Bettelheim, 280; 282-3, 285, 288; by Chamberlain, 34, 415; by French priests,

275, 278, 285, 345, 346; by others, 415

languages studied, used, by O.: C., 93, 212-3, 224-5; English, 253, 265, 266-7, 271, 312, 318, 346,

347, 414, 442-3, 446; French, 278, 345, 346; J., 50, in, 143, 224-5, 412-3

Lasatnane (Malacca), 126

leadership, 351-2, 454

Leavenworth, Charles S., 76, 445

leave-taking, poignancy of, characteristic, 120,229, 232, 257-8, 262-3,268, 273, 409; PL 15

Left-wing interests, 8, 459

legal affairs, 211, 255, 311-2, 335, 365, 368-9, 400, 428

LeGendre, Charles W., 357-9

Leturdu, Father, 276, 279

leprosarium, Yagachi, 440

"Lew Chew Compact" (1854), 3, 330-6, 341, 385

"Lewchew" (junk), 272-3

Li Ch'ing-shu, 419 Li dynasty (Korea), 136

Li Hung-chang, 385, 386-7, 391-2, 397, 422

Li T'ung-yen, 212-4

liaison office, Kagoshima, 168, 375

Library, Okinawa Prefectural, 455

libraries, 445

licensed quarters (Naha), 195

Lindsay, M.H.H., 263-5

linguistics; see language

Lisbon, report, to, on O., 128

literary accomplishments, 195, 213, 224, 346; examinations, 186; classic themes, 98

Liu Ch'iu (Ryukyu), variant transcriptions of name, 40, 126, 127, 129,146 170, 184, 193, 227, 228,

229, 230,254, 255, 259, 305, 312 Loochoo Han, 382

Loo-Choo Mission, 256-7, 273, 279,

281, 290, 313, 343, 410 Loochoo Mission Committe, 282 "Lord Amherst," 263 "Lord of the Earth"

(Taoist deity), 219 Lord of the Southern Island (Shimazu), 58, passim

Lord of the Twelve Southern Islands

(Shimazu), 157 loyalty issue after annexation, 411, 458,

462 Lo-yang, 39

luxury trade, 90, 94, 99, passim Luzon (Philippines), 92, 153 "Lyra," 252, 258, 261

Ma Pin, 77

Mabuni, 300, 471

Macartney's embassy, 230-1, 249

McCauley, Edward Y., 298, 311, 318

Machiminato, 49, Pl. 24

M'Leod, John, 252-3, 259 ff.

Madama Bridge, 223, Pl. 12

Maedera, 253-4, 258

Maeshiro Bokei (Maehira Buhei), 488

magatama, 27

Mahomaru, 121

Majikina Anko, 442, 445, 456, Pl. 32 majiri, 87, 186, 427

Makishi-Onga Affair, 345-50, 362, 418

Makishi Pechin, 347, 348, Pl. 25; see also Itarashiki

Makiya Jissai, 198

Malacca, 66, 90, 91, 93, 126-9,145, 146

Malaya-Okinawa relations, 92, 95

Malayan-Chinese on O., 271

Malayan settlement (Yaeyama), 21

Manchus, 175-6, 178 mang-dragon fabrics, 133, 477

Manjiro; seeMung, John Manju-ji, 99, 100

"Manners and Morals, Society for the Improvement of," 447

Manyo-shu and Omoro Soshi, 112

Manzanmo field, 224

Marco Polo, 55

Marianas Is., O. laborers in, 439

martime enterprise, 78, 90; see also shipping; trade marine surveys, 234, 403

Maruichi Shoten, 407

Maruoka Kanji, 415

Mascarenhas, Jorge, 129

"Master of the Chinese Potato," 184

matriarchal society, 33-4

Matsuda Michiyuki, 371-8 passim, 381, 399

Matsudaira Sadanobu, 240 Matsumae, Lord of, 202, 238

Matsuyama land reclamation project, 430

Maxwell, Sir Murray, 252 ff.

Meadows, T. T., 295

measure, units of, xviii

medical affairs, 205, 255, 267, 269-70,. 365, 437, 439-40

Meguro Mori Toyomioya,, 122

Meiji: Constitution, 416; era, 353; Restoration, 4, 352-3; Lmperor, 352,. 303. 384

"Meiji-maru," 382

mei-to-sen, 29

Melanesian culture, prehistoric, 26

Memoirs of Benyowsky, 227-9

metals, metal-working, 99, 198, 208, 231, 407; see also bells; coinage

meteorological services, 432

metsuke, 178, 251-2. 285 Mie fort (Naha harbor), 142, 270

migration, 17, 20-2, 24, 25, 34, 436-7 military affairs: Early years (to 1609): prehistoric conflict,

31, 33, 46, 49-50; the atiji, 50, 59, 62, 83, 86, 106-7; first Korean conflict, 13th cent., 54; local

wars, 14th cent., 60-2; O. unified, 85-6; expedition to Kikai, 100-1, to Sakishima, 118, 121, to

Amami, 123; Hachiman, God of War, 101; succession disputes, 50, 60-2; 82, 83, 97-9, 101;

control, suppression of arms, 54, 96, 107, 178; resistance to wako raids, 142; second Korean

conflict (Hideyoshi's demands), 151-5; O. refuses aid to J., China refuses aid to O., 153, 155

Subjugation, occupation (1609-1879): invasion, defeat, 157-9; Kabayama Hisataka, mil. gov.,

and Honda Chika-masa, deputy gov., 159; Ryukyus become J.'s frontier vs. Western nations, 172,
174, 178, 239, 262, 272, 278, 354-6; U.S.A. supports first J. expedition to Formosa, 356-60; O.

objects to proposed J. garrison, 369-70; garrison established (1875), 372, 375» 376, reinforccd, 378

Under prefectural government (1879-1945): J.'s reluctance to enforce conscription in O., 418;

O. volunteers few, 418; reaction to Sino-J. War, 421-2; expansion of military training, conscription,

459-62; reaction to Rus-so-J. War, 460-1 ; J. contempt for un-warlike O., 269,462; mobilization for

W. W. II,462-8; Battle for O., 468-72 Okinawans as military material: firm, 127,128-9,158-9,272;

but un warlike, 4, 254-5, 272, 441, 459-60, passim; as volunteers, 418, 459-62; as soldiers, 457-8; as

conscript candidates, 460; as labor conscripts, 463; as combat troops, 464; training, 441

Weapons: J. swords in O. commerce, 94, 127,128; swords worn, 96, 128, 130; as taxes-in-

kind, stored, 53-4; called in, 96, 105, 107, 178, 185, 261, 268; issued vs. buccaneers, 142; supply

demanded by Hideyoshi, 153, 155;'manufacture, import, suppressed by Satsuma, 178, 179;

Napoleon's views on absence of arms, 258-9; firearms introduced, 144

Defences: vs. wako, 142; vs. J. (Satsuma), 157-9; castles, 60, 61,98-9; forts (Yara, Miei),

142, 270; during Perry's stay, 334; Russo-J. War, 460; inadequately prepared for W.W. II, 467; Battle

for Ο , 468-72, passim

Occupations of O.: by Satsuma, 158-60; by J., 37-8; by Perry, 3, 4, 297-341; after World War

II, 3, 5-17, passim

Ryukyu as a frontier barrier: 3, 5, 6-10, 13, 173-4, 354-6, 463-72 Military Talks

concerning the Coastal Provinces, 240

Minamoto family, 47, 452; Tametomo, 45-50; Yoritomo 49; Tadahisa, 56

Minamoto-Taira conflict, 48

Ming China, 65, 71, 77, 96, 138, 142, 153, 214-4, 222, passim

Ming relations with O., 65-74 passim, 97, 130-5, 153, 175-8

minken, 420-1

minority problems, 448-9

Minyu-kai, 427
missions, missionary activities: Buddhist, 55-6; Catholic, 169, 172-4, 228, 275, 276, 278-9, 346;

Protestant, 252,260, 263, 265-9, 294, 297-335, passim, 337-8, 351, 445-6, 450-1; O. as door to

Japan, 270; Press, 306; see also Catholic

missionaries missions (diplomatic, trade), 85, 130-5, 140, 168, 181, 367, 371-8

"Mississippi" uss, 4, 306, 340, 470

Mitsui Company, 407, 432

Mitsubishi Company, 403, 432

mitsu-domoe, 101

Miyake Kunihide, Lord of Bitchu, 140

Miyako, ai, 23, 37,116-23, 241-2, 351; administrative affairs, 116-23 passim, 121—2, 159, ι68, 332,

351, 400-1, 410, 416-7,424,428,448; economic affairs, 91, 115, 207, 407, 436-7; external affairs,

74, 138, 231-33, 296, 390,427, 432; social affairs, 120, 205, 221, 243- 4, 394, 444, 452;

traditions, 118-21, 225; war-time role, 460-1, 463; see also Hirara; Broughton; Belcher; Bryson

Miyako-jima Kashira, 121 Miyako-jofu, 122

Miyara Toso, 454 Mo family, 188

moat system, 206, 404-5, 406

Momojana, 85

monetary system, xviii, 408; see also coinage

Mongol empire, 47, 51, 54, 64, 151

monuments: noted by Chou Huang, 211; Onna Nabe,224; to Wm. Hares, 256; to Bettelheim, 451;

German, at Hirara, 462; national, 222 Moreton, Rev. E. H., 337-9, 341, 343

Mori: Arirpri, 414; Kengo, 426; Teru-moto, 151

"Morrison," 269, 299, 307

Moslem world and O. trade, 73, 91-2, 104, 126

Motobu Peninsula, 37, 61, 85, 86, 107, 158, 207, 276

Mung, John (Nakahama Manjiro), 300-1, 322-3, 343-4

Muro Kyuso, 204

music, 96, 193, 217, 223, 344

mutinies, 171, 295-6

Mutsuhito, Crown Prince and Emperor, 352, 363, 384

mutual aid programs, 196-7, 206, 404-5, 406

Nabeshima Naoakira, 383, 399

Nago town, 27, 207, 427

Naha, Naha harbor: name variants, 253, 261, 294, 299; port and trade, 73, 80, 85, 91-2, 99, 136, 139,

143, 169-70, 208, 234, 246, 289, 302, 330, 354, 403, 432; town, town life, 27, 33, 80, 92, 133,

169, 187, 195, 206, 243, 382, 394, 400, 409, 433, 444, 447, 467, 470, Pi. 28

Nakagami district, 86, 186

Nakagusuku Castle, 98, Pl. 29

Nakahama Manjiro; see Mung, John Nakamura Jissaku, 417

Nakashima licensed quarter (Naha), 195

Nakasone Tomotnioya, 118, 121

Nakaya Kanemaru, 121

Nakijin (Motobu), 37, 61, 62, 85

Nakijin Choban, 414 fn.

Nakijin, Prince, 371-2, 373, 381, 395

Namamugi incident, 348, 361 names, xvii; changes after 1879, 442

Nami-no-ue, 81, 307, passim; Shrine, 221, 415,452, 455, 460

Nanking, Treaty of (1842), 274, 291

Nanto, 26, 41, 42, passim

Nanto Shi (by Arai), 201

Nanzan Castle, 86

Nanzan principality, 60, 74, 82, 85, 107

Napoleon, 4, 258-9

Narahara Kogoro, 361, 363, 400, 423

Narahara-Hibi era (1892-1913), 429

Narrative of the . . . [Perry] Expedition, 297-341, passim

National Academy, 243

National General Mobilization Act, 435, 462-3

"national leaders" program, 40, 85, 134-5, 201, 414, passim

National Savings Association, 435

"National Self-Regeneration Movement," 461

national solidarity issue, 457, 459

National Spiritual Mobilization Training School, 461

national treasures, 455-6, 468

natural disasters, 53, 198-9, 209, 351, 435-6

Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronical, 273

Naval Mission; see Loo Choo Mission Nazc (Amami Oshima), n6, 403

Nema Ikari, 120

neolithic Japan, Ryukyu, 25

nepotism, 185

Netherlands, The, 343, 374, 385

neutrality, 143, 390

New York Herald, 300

Nicholas (of "Usmay Ligon, Lequio"), 228

Nihongi, 31
"Nimrod," hms, 272, 273

Ningpo (China), 129,138,139,141,145 nishi in O. dialects, 35

Nishimura (Naha), 382

Nishimura Sutezo, 400

Nobunaga; see Oda

Nobunaga Noguni Sokan, 183-4, 452

normal school, 413, 418, 442 noro cult, priestesses, 31-2, 33, 36, 37, 55, 110—1, 193-4, 97, 217,

219, 426, 450, 451-2

northern Ryukyus, 159-60, 353, 382 Notes on Current Events in O., 447

O family, 188 o-amu shirare, hi oath, Sho Nei's submission, 160-2

occupation, proposed by Perry, 304-5.. 327-8; opposed by Fillmore, 327-8; see also military affair

Oda Nobunaga, 151

Odagiri Bantaro, 429

off-lying islands, 51, 54

Ogasawara (Bonins), 269

Ogasawara Sadayori, 355

Ogido shellmounds, 454

Ogyu Sorai, 201, 204

Ohama Shinsen, 454

Ohana-batake (Shuri), 114

oji-ke, 395-6

Okinawa: And C.: 29-31,62-74, 75-80, 84-5, 89, 93, 96, 106, 130-5, 137-9, 141-3, 152-3, 166-7,

174-82, 211-4, 225-7,230-1,248-9,296, 341, 356-60, 374-7, 384-92, 418-9, 420-22, passim And
 J.: 10, 14, 24, 26-8, 33-5, 37, 39, 40-4, 45-50, 56-9, 99-100, hi. 134-44, 146-8, 151-^8, 169-71,

172-4, 179-82, 185, 191-2, 201-3, 214-5, 237, 239-41, 245-8, 262, 270, 275-9, 291, 295, 298-

302, 326-7, 342-50, 352 ff. Island: 22, 23, 42, 48, 57, 253 Prefecture: 4, 377-8, 381-472

History of 184 Battle of, 4-5, 14-5, 468-72; see also World War II

Okinawa Issen-tien Shi, 456

"Okinawa Problem," 3

Okinawa-Japanese Conversation Book, 413

Okinawan studies, 415, 454-5

Okinawans overseas, 16, 17, 72, 88-9, 93, 104,126-9,146; in Brazil, Hawaii, Mexico, N. Caledonia,

Peru, P.I., Argentina, 438 444, 448-9

Okiverabushima, 382

Okubo Toshimichi, 352, 358, 360, 366, 368-70, 371, 376, 425

Okuma Shigenobu, 417

Omi Kyugoro, 431-2, 444

Omine village, 219

Omoro Soshi, 35, hi, 112, 488

"One-leg Pavilion," 209

Onga, 345, 347, 348

Oni-ga-shima, 48

Onna Nabe, 224

Ono no Imoko, 40

Ordinance of Shimazu Iehisa, 162-3

origin myths, 35-39

Osaka: merchants at Naha, 398-9, 407; office for R. economic affairs, 430; Rice Exchange, 364

Osaka Shosen Kaisha, 433

Osakabe no Maki, 42
Osato; see Ozato

Oshima group, 227, 362

Oshima-gori, 382

O-sho, 80

Osumi (Kyushu), 46, 58, 158, 353, 382

Ota Chofu, 307-8, 393, 398, 402, 414 fii., 417, 430, PL 31

Otomo, Lord of Bungo, 145

Otomo Yoshishige, 147 Outer Islands, 115,116-123, passim Overseas Association, Okinawan, 439

overseas students in O., 441, 444

Owan, 346; Beach, 209; Pechiti, 243 Oyakata (Uekata), 188 Oyamise, 80

Oyake Akahachi; see Akahachi

Ozato (Osato), 62, passim

Ozato, lords, of, 48, 60, 165

pacificsm, 259, 459-60

Pahang (Malaya), 68

Paihua, 68

painting, 223

Palembang (Sumatra), 68, 92

"Pallas," 329-30, 485-6

Palmerston, Lord, 293, 294, 295

palm-seeds, 243

Pan Wi, 360

pantheism, 217
Papal States, 68 fia.

paramount chieftains, 59

Parker, Peter, 269-70, 281

Parkes, Sir Harry, 350

"Partridge," 265, 266

pastimes, 96, 217

Patani-Okinawa relations, 91, 92, 126

patriotic societies, 418

patronage (arts), 106 f., 206

pechin, 189

Peking, 83, 84, 134-5, 141-2,152, 225-7, 341, 366, 372

pension crisis, 396

perry, Matthew calbraith: Career and character: background, 297; temperament, 297,301, 309,310,

319-20, 324, 325, 329; calculated incivility, 307-8, 309,313-4,318,324-5,329; Spalding's

comment on, 334; Williams' comment on, 328, 332; Bettelheim's flattery, 298, 308, 318-20, 339-

40 Expedition: 297-341 Narrative: preparation, 297, 298; variant records, 298; costs, 298 fn.

Policies and actions: policy framework, 295; "Grand Design," 9, 302, 326-7; influence, Glynn

report, 307; first proposes occupation, 304-5; Washington directives, 303-6; presidential wishes

flouted, 310; show of arms, 310, 315-6, 319, 325, 328, 334; coercion, 4, 310, 311-3, 315-9, 323-

4, 325, 328, PL 18, igy 20; proposes protectorate, 326-7; Washington rejects proposal, 327-8;

demands on Shuri outlined, 323-4; rejected, 324-5; "Board Incident," 331-2; concept of

technological aid, 302, 336 persecution: of Buddhists, 190, 344; of Christians, 173-4; of O.

leaders, 350 Persia, 66 Peru, 438 Pescadores, 174

petitions: re Bettelheim, 290,291-2,293, 294, 338-9; re Perry's Shuri Palace visits, 314, 315; re J.

"protectorate," 374

Philippines, 14, 92, 152, 437-8

Philological Institute, Japan, 454

philology and prehistory, 35

Physical Culture Society, O., 461

physical survivals, Chuzan period, 210

Pierce, Franklin, 4, 327

"pigeon-eye" or "dove's-eye" coins, 351

Pigitari Yunun-usu, 119

Pimeku, 31, 35

Pinto, Fernao Mendez, 144-6

piracy, 64, 100, 132, 138, 139

Pires, Thomé, 124, 128

"Plymouth," 322

poetry, 215, 223-4, 373

police, 47, 179, 206, 393, 399, 401,416, 429-30, 436, 457

politics, 428-9

population estimates, divisions, 15, 16, 187,188, 241, 294, 393-4, 426-7, 435-9

ports, 85; see also Naha, Tomari Portsmouth Treaty, 12

Portugal, 3, 68 tn., 90, 174

Portuguese, 93, 124-30,144-5,169,170

Potsdam Declaration, 13

Poutiatine; see Putyatin

poverty, 15, 196-7, 203, 210, 211,241-3, 265, 294

"Preble," 292, 299-300

prefectural affairs, 427, 435, 438

prefectural status proposed, 377

prehistory, 21-2, 26-9, 117

prejudice, 416-7, 441-2, 454, 459

prestige, Shuri's, 114, 187

primary schools, 413,414; see also schools prime minister, 186

"Prince of Haneji," 191

princely families, 395-6

printing, 112,400

prisons empty, 365

pro-China factions, 156, 165, 373, 375

pro-German propaganda, 462

pro-Japan factions, 156, 191 f.t 350

propaganda for war, 462

propriety, 193, 369

prosperity, 99, 434

prostitutes, 190

protectorate: established by Satsuma, 157-69;

proposed by Perry, 326-7; imposed by Japan, 360-70

"Providence," 231-3, 410

public health, welfare, 365, 401-2, 437

Public Welfare Foundation, O. 453

Putyatin (Poutiatine), 330, 342, 485-6

"queen countries," 33

queen as chief priestess, 194

railways (tram lines), 433

"Raleigh," 270

Rangakusha, 205

ranks, titles, 80, 95,188-9, 247, 317, 372

ransom, of Sho Nei, 160

rebellions, 60, 98, 101, 176-8, 376

Reception Hall for Ambassadors, 134

reciprocity, British, desired, 273

recreation, 217

Red Cross Society, 402

regalia, 488

regency change (1853), 320-1, 367

Regency Council of Three, 123 ; see also Sanshikan

regents vs. Perry, 309, 310, 314-5, 328, 329

Rekidai Hoati, 82, 225

religion, 32-4, 37, 55, 81,156,173, 190, 194, 217-9, 261, 285, 344, 445, 446, 449-50, 452-3; see also

Buddhism; Christianity; Catholic missionaries; missions; noro; Taoism remittances, importance

of overseas, 197, 438

reorganizations imposed, 368-9, 372, 392-3

Report of an Envoy to Chuzan, 479; see also Hsu Pao-Kuang representative government, 416, 424,

^ 427-30

"Republic of Poland," 227

"resident merchants," 398-9, 406, 442, 447

"residual sovereignty," 9, 302

resources, 15, 53, 179

revenues, 159, 179, 246

reversion question, 8

rice production, 405

Rin Koku-yo, 184

Rin Sei-ko, 374

riots, 97, 204, 373, 417

Risshisha, 375-6

rivalries, pro-C., pro-J. factions, 143, 418, 424-5

Riyu, 50, 53

"R.J. Robertson" shipwreck, 410, 462

roads, 97, 433

"Robert Browne" mutiny, 295-6

Robertson, Vice-consul, 291-2

Roosevelt, F. D., 11

Roosevelt, Theodore, 12

root-deity, 32

Rose, Sir George, 281

Ross, E. Denison, 133

Royal Academy (Shuri), 455

Royal Asiatic Society (China), 214

royal house: annals, 82, 225; court embellished, 109; after annexation, 395; income, 159, 363;

mausoleum, 109

royalty as a social class, 188

Russia, 4, 7, 9, 12, 229, 238, 342, 390, 391, 419

Russian interests, activities: account of O., 485-6; squadron at Naha, 329-30; Baltic Fleet, 461; envoy

at Peking, 238, 249, 262, 327; policies, 376

Russo-J. border conflicts, 9, 354-5

Russo-J. War, 433, 434, 440, 461; treaty, 12

Ryokonin Kokoroe, 166, 203

Ryueimon, "Master of the Chinese Potato," 184

Ryufuku-ji, 455

Ryukyu, name variants, xvii; see also Liu Ch'iu "Ryukyu, Beautiful Country of the Southern

Ocean," 99

Ryukyu-go Kenkyu Shiryo, 415

Ryukyu hart abolished, 381

Ryukyu Islands: awarded to Kamei, 152; penetrated secretly by missionaries, 173-4; population

estimates, 15, 16, 187, 241, 294, 393-4, 436; as defensive barrier, 13, 239-41, 465; mapped as

defense measure (1797), 240; and China's Western treaties, 274; in Perry's "Grand Design," 302;

status question after 1868, 353-4; and Formosa in Chinese view, 388; mobilized for war, 158-9,

463 Ryukyu-kan (Kagoshima), 168 Ryukyu kingdom: embarassed by Sino-J. quarrels, 15th-16th

cents., 142; revenues assessed, 159; subordination to J. concealed, 166; as seen by Richard

Wickham, 170; trading depot, Ch'unag-chou, 183; economy discussed at Edo, 202; R., Korea,

Hokkaido studied by Hayashi, 240; revenues pledged by Shimazu to Osaka moneylenders, 246;

exploited by Shimazu for political prestige, 246-7; king as Shimazu's vassal, 247; vulnerable

position vis-à-vis China, Western world, 249; British relations reviewed by Lindsey, 264; French

protectorate refused, 275; treaty with Holland, 343; sovereignty issue and Formosa, 356-60; in

early Meiji diplomacy, 361 ; division prposed, 390; becomes Ryukyu han, 363 Ryukyu

Newspaper Company, 432-3 Ryukyu Shintpo, 423, 430-1, 432 Ryukyu Shinto-ki, 36 Ryukyu

tsuho, 351
Ryukyu University site, 114 fn., Pi. 36 Ryukvuan: racial components, 20-2; language forms, 27;

interest in J. studies of Western science, 205; studies, 415; -French Treaty (1855), 277, 344

"Sabine," 276, 279, 284

Saburo; see Shimazu Hisamitsu

sacred fire, 32

Sagara. Major, 383

"Sage of Nago," 201, 204

Sai On, 190, 199-2ic, 215, 404, 452

Sai On's discendents, 212

Saigo Takamori, 358

Saigo Tsugumichi, 358,388

Saihin; set Shimazu Nariakira

St. Helena, 258

"St. Peter and St. Paul," 227

Sakhalin, 12, 376

Saki-shima, 117, 274, passim

salt production, 198

"Samarang," 273-4

Samudra, 67

samurai of Ryukyu, 382

San Francisco Treaty Conference, 7

Sankoku Tsuran Tosetsu, 240

Sanshikan, 123, 163, 186, 367

Sansom, Sir George, 34

Sanuki Province (Shikoku), 49

Sanzan, 82, 87, 108

sappan, 94

satonushi, 189

Satsüma: J.'s southern frontier (to the 13th cent.), 3, 16, 42, 46, 56, 58; benefits from O.'s luxury

trade, 14th-16th cents.), 124, 136, 139; frontier security questions, 146, 148,152,157; subjugates,

exploits O. economy, 157-8,159,162-4,169-70,175-6,179, 180, 182, 185, 188, 199, 202, 203;

exploits O. vis-à-vis shogunate, Western powers, 240, 244, 245-8, 251-2, 272, 276, 291, 299,

301, 322, 326, 343, 344; leads Imp. Restoration movement, 353; evolves protectorate for O.,

361-82, passim; dominates new prefecture after annexation, 382 f.; Rebellion, 376, 411 Satto,

King, 62, 65, 74, 77, 80 Savers, Edmund, 172 scholar-ruler relationship, 199-200 scholarships to

Peking monopolized, 226-7

schools: Kume Village, 167, 186, 212, 225-6, 346, 412; Shuri, 226-7, 346, 413, 438, 442-3, 445-6,

468; system, 226, 412, 440-1, 443-4; population, 413, 417-8, 445; riots, strikes, 227, 442-4

Schwartz, Rev. Henry B., 445-6, 451

science interests, 18th cent., 204-5

sculpture, 109, 223

"Sea Adventure," 170-1

seasonal activities, 215-7

seclusion edicts, 239, 245-8, 262, 315

"second generation" students return to 0., 441

Seifa Utaki (Chinen peninsula), 38 Sei-i, King, 62 Seiwa, Emperor, 47, 452 Seiyu-kai, 428

Sekigahara, Battle of, 155, 157 sekko-sen, 181

Seoul, 81, 112, 136

seppuku, 49, 211, 214

Seward, William, 354-5

Shan Hai Ching, 29

Shang (Sho) 187; see also Sho Shang Ta-mun, 320-1

Shantung Peninsula, 44

Shigemitsu Mamoru, 11, 465

Shikano (Inaba), 151

Shikina-en (Mawashi), 383, PL 10

Shikiya Koshun, 443, 444

Shimabukuro Zempatsu, 445

Shimajiri district, 86, 87, 186, 401

shimamochi, 396

Shimazu: "Lords of the Southern Islands," 56-8, 64, 136, 138, 140, 148, 152, 179, 190, 226, 246,

247, 248 fn. 278-9, 343, 344, 353-4, 47i, 479; Hisamitsu (Saburo), 344-53, passim; Hisatsune,

58; Iehisa (Tadatsune), 157, 160-1, 247; Nariakira (Saihin), 247, 277-8, 301, 343, 344-7;

Sadahisa, 58; Shigehide, 246; Tadaharu, 140; Tada-toki, 58; Yoshihiro, 157; Yoshihisa, 147, 153,

154-5, 165 Shimonoseki Treaty (1895), 12, 421-2 Shin sect, 148, 190, 220, 344 Shineri-kyu, 36

Shingaki Is., 42 Shingon Buddhism, 190, 220 Shinko-sen, 180, PL 16 Shinto, 81, 101, 225,

396, 415, 450-3 shipping, 63, 348, 403, 433 ships, touching Ryukyu, 170-1, 227, 231-3, 250,

252, 257, 258, 260-2, 263, 265,266,269-70,271-4,275,276,277, 279, 283-4, 289, 291-

4,295,296,299-302 if., 306, 307, 329-30, 338, 340, 355, 371, 382, 409-10, 485-6 shipwrecks.

23,44, 89, 145,231-3,271-3, 335, 362-3, 410

Shiro, Prince, 97

Shishido Tamaki, 390, 391

shizoku, 188

Sho dynasty, "first": founded, 86, 89; name, 89; see also Sho kings Sho dynasty, "second": founded,

101-3; attains peak prosperity, 104-16; subjugated, 159-66; extinguished, 381-3; see also
Sho kings Sho family: name, 89, 187; crest, 101, 471; tombs, 103,109, 244,453 ; invest-

Sho family (cont.) mcnts, 407; prestige, 453; patronage, 455; treasures, 467; mansion, 468; see also

Sho kings Sho Jo-ken (Prince of Haneji), 36, 46, 190, 191, 219, 225

Sho kings (chronologically): Shi-sho, 84, 89; Hashi, 83-90, 96-8, 102, 137, 159; Chu, 97; Shitatsu,

97; Kimpuku, 97; Taikyu, 98; Toku, 100-1; En (Kanemaro), 95, 101-4 452, Pi. 11; Seni, 104;

Shin, 104-15,121,131,159; Sei, 115, 123; Gen the Mute, 123; Ei, 123-4, 148; Nei, 152-3, 157,

160, 162, 165-6, 180, 185, 362, 452; Ho, 180, 185; Ken 175; [Shitsu]; Tei, 177, 194; [Eki]; Kei,

199, 200, 209; Tetsu, 226; On, 226; Sei, 241; Ko, 244-5; flku]; Tai, see Sho Tai Sho Tai, King:

inaccessible to Perry, 310, 315, 316; receives French gifts, 345; renews oath to Shimazu, 347;

enthroned, 352; changed status announced by Tokyo, 363; pleads ill-health, 372; seeks release

from C. obligations, 374; abdicates, 381-2; begins Tokyo exile, 382-4; LiHung-chang poses as

champion, 385; C. propose substitute king, 387; conduct as Marquis, 397; business interests,

407; proposed as "hereditary governor, 425; death, 452-3; household changes, 453; Pi. 27 Sho

Ten, Crown Prince, 100 fn., 428, 445, 453, Pi. 30

Sho Toku-ho (Kochi Oyakata), 370, 390

Sho Shiro, 97

Shobei, 171

shogunate, 139-40, 203, 273, 354

Shoken, Empress, 453

Shotoku Taishi, Prince, 39

Shoun-ji (Hirara), 221

Shu Ko; see Chou Huang Shumbajunki, King, 50 Shunten, King, 45-6, 48-50, 52-3, 452

Shurei no Kuni, 79, 133; Pi. 3, 18

Shuri Academy, 226-7, 346, 413

shuri: Castle-Palace: founded, 50; Hashi enlarges, 85; burned, 97; Sho Shin beautifies, 109, 112-3;

Satsuma troops occupy, 159; construction, 221; national symbol, 245; Perry first penetrates, 315-
 7; Perry's second visit, 328; J. troops occupy, 381-2; decays, 394-5; made "National Treasure,"

455-6; J. garrison withdrawn, 460; becomes J. headquarters for Battle of Okinawa, 467-9;

destroyed, 5, 470; illustrated, 113, 212, 287, 317, Plates 8, 18, 19, 36

Court and government: under Chinese influence, 73; patronage, 94; "go-between," Sino-Japanese

trade, quarrels, 136, 140, 141-2, 147, 152-5; "dual subordination," 166, 175-6, 191-2; internal

economy, foreign trade, 242-3, 247-8, 265, 269, 278; Bettelheim embarasses, 291-5; fears

British reprisals, 296; conflict with Perry, 297-341; reports to Peking on Perry, 341; "Black-

White" factionalism, 350; unsuccessfully resists "protectorate," 360-74; ceases to function as

effective government, 382

Town: "Kintching," 253; architecture, 27; development, 90, 107-8; prestige, 114; population, 187,

394; tax immunities, 195; craftsmen, 206, 404; schools, 226-7, 243, 346, 413, 438, 442-3, 445-6,

468; impoverished gentry, 361, 397; made a city, 400; cleanliness noted, 409; bombed, 467;

obliterated, 470; speech, xvii; after occupation, 488 Shuri-Satsuma Agreement, 160-3 Siam, 74,

81, 88-9, 92, 95-6, 170, 217 sima nu pitu of Miyako, 119 Sino-Japanese conflicts, 136-7, 141-2,

143,160 fn., 360, 366, 376-7, 385, 389, 390, 399-402

Sino-Japanese Convention, 390-2 Sino-J. War, 418, 421-2, 432, 460

"Six Courses in Morals," 204 Sixth (Kumamoto) Division, 370

"Small Liu-ch'iu" (Formosa), 54

Smith, Rev. George, Bishop of Victoria, 293-4

smithies, district, 198

smuggling, 74, 182, 246

social affairs: local distinctions, 76; 15 th-cent. life, 96; 17th-cent. hierarchy, 188;

status, rank, costume, 192; Chinese report on, 212, 213-5; unrest, 243; post-annexation change, 395;

discrimination, 428-30, 448-9

Soejima Taneomi, 357

Sogen-ji (Tomari), 109, 213, Pl. 6

sojito-ke, 396

Sonoda Yasutaka, 378

Sonohyan Utaki (Shuri), in, Pi. 4

Soong, T. V., claims Ryukyus for China, 464 sotetsu palm-seeds, 243, 406-7

sotsiii-bushi, 48

South America, O. settlers in, 437-8

"Southern Island people," 41

Southern Islands, 26 f. ; History of the, 201

Soviet Russian empire, 54

sovereign equality incomprehensible at Peking, 248-9

sovereignty issue, 9, 333, 342, 355, 365-6, 418-9, 421

Soyemon Dono, 172

Spain, 3, 68 fn., 91

Spalding, J. Willet, 298, 311, 318, 319, 334, 337, 338, 339-40

Spanish activities, interests, 124, 148, 152, 158, 169, 170, 173-4

"special service" recruits, 466

Spencer, Robert Stewart, iti, 193 spies, 251-2, 285, 323, 335

"spiritual mobilization" for war, 461

sports, 217, 446

Staunton, Sir George, 231, 233

steam-power, principles studied, 306

Stirling, Sir James, 342

storehouses, ancient, 28, 53

students. 79, 80, 134-5, 143, 167, 205, 225, 226-7, 346, 414, 446

Study of Three Countries, 240 subordination, effects of, 167

succession, royal, 97, 102, 104, 185

sugar, 122, 156, 184, 194, 405, 430-2, 436, 437

Sugar Commission, 406

Sugar Company, Okinawa, 431-2

Sugar Corp., Taiwan, 431-2

Sugar Dealers' Association, 430

Sugar Improvement Bureau, Okinawa Prefectural, 431

Sui dynasty (China), 39, 40

Suiko, Empress, 39

Sumatra, 78, 81, 91, 92, 95

sumpturary laws, 195, 206

Sun Fo, claims Ryukyus for China, 464

Sun Goddess, 35, 36

Sunakawa Otono, 120

Sunda (Java), 92

"supplementary trading goods," 71-2

Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (Tokyo), 5

"Susquehanna," 306, 310, 311

sweet potato, 156, 171, 183-4, 198

swine culture, 31-2

"Sword Edicts," Hideyoshi's 107

swords, of anji, 96

swordsmithy abolished, 178

Taichu, 46, 156, 225 Taiki, 65

Taira family, 47, 48, 49

Taira-Minamoto conflict, 48

Taisei, King, 51

Taisho, Emperor, 453

Taiwan; see Formosa

"Taiyu-maru," 371, 403

Tajima Risaburo, 415

Takagi Sokichi, 465

Takagoshi Castle (Miyako), 119

Takahara Pechin, 240

Takamine: Chokyo, 414 fn., 427, 428,. 443; Meitatsu, 454

Takara: Rintoku, 443-4; Uekata, 177

Takasago (Formosa), 174

Takashina, Dr., 383

Taketomi (Yaeyama), 26; Uekatoj 223.

Tama Udon (Shuri), 109, 244, 453

Tamagushiku, 120; King, 52, 59-60, 62;

Shrine, 194 Tametomo, Minamoto no, 45-50, 225, 452

Tamsui (Formosa), 174

Tanabe Tai, 456

Tanaka Fujimaro, 412

Tane Is., 41, 42, 58, 75, 141, 144

T'ang T'ai-tsung, Emperor, 152

Taoist cults, traditions, 30, 219

Tarama Is. (Miyako), 119,121, 207, 351

Taromai, Lord of Nanzan, 85, 86

tattooing, 30, 449

taxation, 51, 122, 169, 185, 194-5, 243, 350-1, 405-6, 425-6, 430

Taylor, Bayard, 298

Tayal people (Formosa), 30, 54

Tea Commissioner, 198

technical developments, 198, 433-4 Tei: Einei, 336; Junsoku, 201, 204

telegraphic cable services, 432

Tempi Shrine, 413

temple-building patronage, 99

Temposan mint (Kagoshima), 351 Teng, S. Y., 67

Tenkai-ji, 455 Tenkaizen-ji, 112 Tenno-ji, 455

Tenryu-ji: Kyoto, 100, 137; Shuri, 99-100

Tenryuji Toan Todo, 154 Tenshi-kan, (Naha), 80, 134 Tensón dynasty, 36, 44, 45, 50, 52 Tcnteishi,

36

Testament of Sho Ko, 244-5

textiles, 94, 95, 122, 195, 223, 230, 406, 455

"Thirty-six Families," 75, 178

"thought police," 461

"Three Principalities," 62, 87, 108, 222, 427

tidal waves, 198, 241-3, 435; see also disasters

Tientsin Treaty (1858), 390-1

Timor traders at Malacca, 126

titles 56, 58,89,152,188 f., 247, 364, 397

To-imo, 184

"Tokai-maru," 283

Tokara Is., 42, 141, 261-2, 272, 278, 346

Tokugawa family: Minamoto stock, 50; Iemitsu, 107, 224; Ieyasu, 157, 158, 170;

Tsunayoshi, 200; Yoshimune, 204,205; shogunate, 191,245-8,352-3

Toku-no-jima, 42, 158, 159, 382

Tokyo government, 4, 5, 6, 13, 364, 400-2, 427 Toma family, 196

Tomari (Tumai), 75, 80, 91, 114, 132, 133, 187, 206, 311-12, 330, 333, 334, 335, 394, 404, Pl. 20

tombs, 98, 218-9, 244 Tomokoji, 382

Tomoyose Anjo, 208

Tonkin native in Ryukyu, 228

Torii Ryuzo, 454

Tori-jima, 66, 435

Torin-ji (Yaeyama), 221

Toyama Matasuke, 437

Toyotomi adherents, refugees, 172

Toyotomi Hideyoshi; see Hideyoshi

tozama daimyo, 157 trade: general, 63, 74-8,88,99,138,143, 166, 351; with C., 71, 77, 85, 93, 130-3,

166, 169, 179, 181, 366; with J, 136, 140, passim; with Korea, 94, 136; with Southeast Asia,

91, 124-9, 169; with West, 169-72, 240, 265, 278 293; after annexation, 398, 403, 408, 432-3,

434; see also commerce traders of "60 nations" at Malacca, 126 traditional living patterns, 16,

373, 424-5

Travellers' Advice, 203

treasures, 90, 467-8, 488

Treasury of the Royal Succession, 82

treaties, compacts, etc., 7, 12, 160-3, 228, 277, 330, 332, 335-6, 340, 343, 344, 347, 356, 360, 390-1,

421-2, 446

trials: shipwrecked Portuguese, 145; Board, 331-2

tribute: system, 62, 66, 68-9, 71, 130-5, 136, 180, 225-6, 247, 361, 373-4, 385, 392; missions, 153,

176, 180-1, 230, 366; ships, 138, 180, 351, 356, Pl. 16; from Chuzan, 51, 71, 153, 159, 180; to

Chuzan, 74, 117

trusteeship, 7, 9

Tsuboya kiln (Naha), 221, 456

Tsuji licensed quarters (Naha), 195, 401

Tsu-li-kwan, 336

Tsushima, 355-6; Lord of, 201; Straits 44

Turn ai; see Tomari

T'ung Chih, Emperor, 375

turbans, 95, 192, 230; Pl. 5, 13

"Tuscan," 263

typhoons, 23, 432; see also disasters

Typinsan (Miyako), 231-3

uekata (oyakata), 188 Uesugi Shigenori, 399 Uezu Uekata, 175 uoatiju, 37, 61

Ukinju-Hainju springs, 38

ultra-nationalism unpopular in O., 461

Ungusuku Kanedono, 119

unification of O. (1429), 86

United States of America: post-war policies, 3-17; enters Far Eastern area, 237-9; Navy Department

receives Glynn's report, 292-5; moves on J. through Ryukyus (Perry Exped.), 297-341; presses

J.'s frontiers, 354-5; interests in first Formosa Exped., 357-9; questions J. on Lew Chew

Compact obligations, 364; drawn into R sovereignty conflict, 385-92; Pres. Hayes reports to

Congress on R. sovereigntv dispute, 389; moves on J. through R., WW. II, 468-72
Unten Harbor (Motobu), 61, 85, 158, 276, 463

Untura, 118, 121 Uputaki Castle (Miyako), 119

Urasoe, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 59, 62, 83, 166; Prince of, 104

urban life, 169, 190-1, 195, 206, 394, 427

Ushijima, Lt.-Gen., 469, 470, 471

Usmay Ligon, 227-8

Vancouver, James, 229

Vickery Report, 5

Victoria, Bishop of, 293-4

Victoria, Queen, 273

"Victorieuse," 277

villages, 196-7, 203, 404

vocational schools.. 443, 445: see also schools

"Vostock," 329-30

voting, franchise base, 427

Wa country, peoples, 29-32, 138

Wade, Sir Thomas, 360

Waiting Harbor, 49, Pi. 24

waka, 224

Wakasa Byoin, 402

wakijito-kef 396

wako, 101, 124, 132, 138-9, 142

Wang Chi, 181

Warden of the North, 97, 107

Warner, Langdon, 455

Waseda University, 417, 454

Washington Monument, 332, 336-7

Wasson, James R., 359

Watch Office, Hokuzan, 187

water conservation, 243

weapons, 107, 179; see also military affairs,

weapons weaving, 95, 122; see also textiles

weights, measures, xviii, 208

Western: accounts of R., 240-1, 250-1; barbarians, 227-34; books, attitudes toward, 267-8; influences

through 18th-cent. J., 204-5; powers in Far East, 349, 460: visitors create misunderstanding,

hardship, 249-50, 251,

"white" vs. "black" factions, 350

Wickham, Richard, 170, 171, 172

Williams, S. Wells, 187 fn., 269-70, 298, 339, passim

wind-impregnation myth, 36

wireless services, 432

World War I stimulates economy, 434

World War II: Miyako "occupied" by J. military, 463 ; J. illusions of victory, 434; crisis of realization

at Tokyo, 465; evacuation of O., 466; O. as battleground, 4, 60,462-8; air attacks begin, 467;

inadequate civil defense measures, 467; last-ditch defences prepared, 467; Battle for Okinawa,

468-72; Am. forces occupy Kerama, 468; civil population sacrificed by J. army; 469; Kadena

Beaches, Kakazu Ridge, 469; kamikaze attacks, 469; Ushijima's HQ destroyed, 470; Ushi-
 jima's suicide at Mabuni, 471; forces engaged, 471-2; casualties, 472; civilian sacrifices

estimated, 5, 472

"worship from afar," 194 Wu San-kuei, "King of Chien," 177 Wu Ti, Emperor, 70

xabattdares, 126

Xavier; Francis, 146

Yaeyama, 21, 26-7, 49, 74, 91, "St 123, 159, 168, 173, 196,205, 206, 221, 241, 243, 274, 332, 344,

362, 390, 394, 400-1, 407, 422-3, 424, 428, 430, 432, 435-7, 444, 452, 461, 463

Yafuso of Nanzan, 82

Yagachi Is. leprosarium, 440

Yajiro (Paul), 146

Yaku Is., 41, 42, 202

Yalta agreements, 12

Yalu River (Korea), 64

Yamakawa (Kagoshima Bay), 158, 184

Yamanoguchi Baku, 454

Yamanojo Hajime, 422

Yamato, 24, 33, 39 Yamato Bugyo, 174 Yamato haka, 49 yambara people, 61

Yami people, 28, 31, 54, 95

Yiuiagi Soetsu, 456-7

Yang Chien, Emperor, 39

Yara Fort (Naha), 142

Yashima-haka, 49
yen values, xviii

Yi T'ae-jo, King, 64

yohai-jo 100

Yomochi Shrine (Naha), 452

Yomochi bridge (Shuri), 223

Yomui-kan, 205

Yonaguni Is. (Yaeyama), 21, 49, 118, 121, 174, 436-7

Yonagusuku, Prince, 201

Yonabara Oyakata, 364, 367, 371

Yonabaru tram line, 433

Yonaha Sedo Toyomioya, 122

Yonahabaru, Lord of Hirara, 119

Yoron Is., 159, 168, 382

Yoshida, Kiyonari, 388

Yosoidon, Queen, 103-4, 109, 146

Yoza River project, 207

yuku-bitu, aliens in Miyako, 119

Yung Lo, Emperor, 83, 89

yuta, 219, 402

zaibatsu interests, 431-2, 433

Zakimi, 347

"Zayton" (Ch'uang-chou), 222

Zen Buddhism, 100, 190, 220

Zenkan, 55
Zuisen-mon, 287
AFTERWORD BY MITSUGU
SAKIHARA
 PART A: PRE-MODERN OKINAWA
Introduction. George H. Kerr (1911-1992) wrote Okinawa: The History of
an Island People in 1958. It evolved out of his 1953 work, Ryukyu:
Kingdom and Province Before 1945. His other major work is Formosa
Betrayed (1965). In these works, he was consistently a friend of the weak
and oppressed; however, in his zeal to right wrongs, he was sometimes less
than impartial.
Okinawa was the last great battleground of WWII, and suffered great
turmoil during the war and in the years that followed. Okinawa: The
History of an Island People, published by Charles E. Tuttle Company
thirteen years after the end of the war, reminded Okinawans of their proud
heritage and helped to give them courage to face the future.
In the years since Kerr wrote this book, old data have been
reinterpreted and new information has become available. So, it is time to
update the story.

The Disarmament Issue (see page 105) may be traced to the Momourasoe
Balustrade monument of 1509. Its inscription eulogizes King Sho Shin
(1477-1526), listing his achievements. In 1932, Ifa Fuyu, the father of
Okinawan studies, deciphered the fourth achievement as follows: "This
country used the armor for utensils." He explained that Sho Shin turned all
iron arms in the country into useful tools and utensils.i Furthermore, he
suggested that the martial art of karate developed in inverse proportion to
the decline in number of arms, particularly after the Satsuma conquest of
Ryukyu in 1609.ii
Based, on Ifa, Kerr said "Private ownership and use of arms were done
away with."iii He further added that, in an attempt to forestall the dangers of
insurrection, "it was first ordered that swords were no longer to be worn as
personal equipment. Next, the petty lords were ordered to bring all weapons
to Shuri, to be stored in a warehouse under supervision of one of the kings
officers."iv No sources were cited for these statements. To make this story
of a peace-loving, unarmed kingdom all the more convincing, Kerr relates
the story that Napoleon Bonaparte, in exile on Saint Helena, was astonished
when he heard that Ryukyu possessed no arms of any kind.v
However in 1955, Nakahara Zenchû pointed out a serious error in Ifas
inter-pretation.vi Article four is now translated thus: "Fourth, brocade and
embroidered silk are used for garments, and gold and silver are used for
utensils. Swords, bows, and arrows are exclusively accumulated as weapons
in the protection of the country. In matters of finance and armament, this
country excels other countries,"vii
Sho Shin unified the Ryukyus in 1500. The 1477 observation of King
Sho Shins procession by Korean castaways in Okinawa attests to fully-
armed troops.viii However, weapons do not appear to have been as abundant
in Ryukyu as in contemporary Japan. First of all, Ryukyu did not produce
iron, and second, Sho Shins fifty-year reign minimized chances for their
use. However, it was the nature of the ruling class that was of particular
significance. Ryukyus ruling class was a hereditary gentry not dependent
upon armed might for their status— unlike the contemporary samurai rulers
of Japan. That Ryukyus ruling class wore no arms was erroneously ascribed
to an alleged ban by either Sho Shin or Satsuma.
Satsuma prohibited new export of arms to Ryukyu in 1639, only in
consequence of the Tokugawa embargo of arms going overseas in 1634.ix
Also, in 1699, Satsuma issued a regulation entitled "Prohibition of Those
Who Travel to Ryukyu Carrying Arms."x Ryukyuans were permitted to
bring their arms to Satsuma for the purpose of repair, but export of arms to
Ryukyu was not allowed because these might be unlawfully exported
overseas beyond Ryukyu.

Ryukyu as Satsuma's Cormorant Theory compared Ryukyu under

Satsuma with the cormorant of the Nagara River in Japan, which would
catch fish only to be made to disgorge it to its master. It is expressed more
fully in the following sequence.xi

1. Ryukyus foreign trade was fabulously profitable.

2. Japan was closed to foreign trade except at Nagasaki.
3. Therefore, Satsuma invaded Ryukyu to circumvent
the seclusion law.

The first assumption is simply not true at the turn of the seventeenth
century. Kerr states that "the immediate effect of the Keicho invasion was a
sharp break with the past."xii Actually, Ryukyus overseas trade had reached
its peak and gradually declined during the long reign of Sho Shin.xiii During
the past several decades, Ryukyu was trading with China and Japan only.
 Second, there was no seclusion law in 1609, but several such laws
were issued between 1624 and 1639. In 1609, when Satsuma invaded
Ryukyu, Satsuma was in fact at the height of overseas activities.xiv It was
only after 1630 that Satsuma used Ryukyu as a proxy in its own trade with
China.xv
Third, Ryukyus tributary relationship with China was of a diplomatic
and commercial nature rather than a political one. "Appointment of the
Ryukyu king and his chief ministers was subject to the prior approval of
Satsuma, overlord of Ryukyu. "xvi The investiture of the Ryukyu king by
the Chinese emperor "was a ritual that had nothing to do with the
ascendancy of the king to political authority; it merely confirmed it."xvii
Tokugawas anti-Christianity edicts were enforced in Ryukyu. During
the period from 1846 to 1854, the Reverend Bernard Bettelheim was
hindered in his efforts to proselytize by the order of Satsuma-Tokugawa,
which was the real power behind Ryukyu.xviii In diplomatic incidents over
safe conduct passes in 1634 and 1636 with the Dutch in Nagasaki, and with
Koxinga in 1670, .it is clear that Ryukyu was under the effective control
and protection of Japan.xix
Ryukyu obtained silver in Japan for its trade with China, whereby it
obtained Chinese merchandise which was transshipped to Japan. Its
activities in Japan were carried on under Satsuma's auspices. Satsumas
greatly increased imports after 1631 alarmed Tokugawa, as they meant the
outflow of precious metals. Tokugawa limited silver export to China to 300-
400 kan per ship from about the 1680s.xx
Satsumas investment had grown rapidly but its enthusiasm died just as
quickly. First of all, the Ming dynasty was in its last stage of decline. The
government-controlled market was not as generous as it used to be, and
pirates (many of them renegade Ryukyuans and Japanese) were rampant on
the high seas. Second, Ryukyuans sabotaged the interests of Satsuma.xxi
Satsuma was furious and at least one Ryukyuan official was executed for
negligence, but there was no effective means to eliminate it completely.
In 1686, Tokugawa imposed a ceiling of 804 kan of silver, in debased
coins. At the order of Satsuma, Ryukyu envoys unsuccessfully appealed to
Tokugawa for an increase in trade capital in 1697 and 1702. Satsuma told
Chatan Chôai, Ryukyu s regent in 1706, that in spite of the inferior quality
of goods purchased at Foochow, their prices kept rising year after year; that
their sales in Kyoto brought little profit; and that the total sales situation had
deteriorated further because of the debased silver.xxii Satsumas capital
investment plummeted to a mere 100 kan in 1672.xxiii
In 1714, Tokugawa raised the quality of the new Shotoku silver.
However, Satsuma was ordered to reduce the amount of trade capital from
804 kan to 604 kan for the shinkô mission and from 402 kan to 302 kan for
the sekkô mission, in terms of the newly upgraded silver. Thus, in 1716,
Satspma paid 1,208 kan of Hoei silver to Tokugawa for 604 kan of Shotoku
silver.xxiv
It seems that immediately after 1609 there was no limit to the amount
of silver export from Ryukyu to China, and during this period Satsuma
invested either all or most of the silver export. At one time it amounted to as
much as 1,000 kan. Satsuma was eager to promote the trade, but it incurred
a considerable loss. In addition, Tokugawa feared the outflow of silver. In
1685, the Ryukyu envoy to China, Ikegusuku Anken, urged reforms,
including motivating Ryukyu by giving it a share of the trade. In 1686,
Satsuma and Ryukyu put up 402 kan each, for a total of 804 kan of silver,
and in 1716, they put up 302 kan each, for a total of 604 kan.xxv
In 1753, Tokugawa forced the Kiso River embankment project upon
Satsuma—which incurred a huge debt of 13,378 kan of silver.xxvi The
following year, Ryukyu scheduled a shinkô mission with 604 kan of silver,
but Satsuma raised only 151 kan. Upon the urging of Ryukyu, Satsuma
increased it to 202 kan, and the remaining 402 kan was supplied by
Ryukyu.xxvii
In 1756, Satsuma told Ryukyu that because of the coin debasement
and consequent trade disadvantages, it .would like to decrease its trade
investment. Ryukyu dissuaded Satsuma.xxviii But in 1773, Satsuma again
brought up the issue. Ryukyu insisteci Satsuma continue its investment and
promised greater profits for Satsuma.xxix In 1808, Satsuma told Ryukyu that
it had to reduce the silver for the China trade because of financial
difficulties, and Ryukyu again was reluctant to agree.xxx In the 1820s,
Satsuma was still investing, but only token sums of about 22 or 23 kan of
silver.xxxi This seems to be the nadir of Satsumas involvement in the
Ryukyu-China trade.
In contrast, the eighteenth century in Okinawa is often called the
Golden Age, or Renaissance.xxxii It is certainly not compatible with the
popular view that Ryukyu had been a slave society at Satsumas beck and
call since 1609.
The official productivity assessment may have been close to actuality
at the start of the seventeenth century but, with the passing of time, it
became largely fictitious. This disparity between the official and actual
productivity is observed throughout Japan but is especially large in the
peripheral, initially underdeveloped areas, such as Ryukyu. Takao Ryosuke,
tax officer of Okinawa Prefecture in 1892, reported that the land area under
cultivation in Ryukyu grew fivefold between 1611 and 1892.xxxiii If so,
83,085 koku, the official figure for 1611, might have grown to as much as
415,000 koku in 1892. Economic development had been far from stagnant.
During its Tempo financial reform, Satsuma was able to reap a
substantial profit by having Ryukyu pay taxes not in the traditional form of
rice, but rather in local textiles and sugar at a fraction of the market value,
while the official amount of tax in terms of rice remained unchanged.
In viewing the entire Tokugawa period, it seems safe to say that
Satsumas exploitation of Ryukyu in the form of taxation only became
intensified after 1830. Prior to that it had been relatively benign because
taxation was based upon a rather stationary official production assessment
that always lagged far behind the actual yield, which kept growing.
In addition, although Satsuma had the potential to exercise military
power, it was not free to use it against Ryukyu. Even Satsumas initial 1609
expedition was launched in the name of the Tokugawa shogunate. Ryukyu
was included in the writ of stipends renewed by the shogun with each new
lord of Satsuma. If there was a misgovernment of Ryukyu, Satsuma had to
defend itself at the court of the Tokugawa shogun, at the risk of having its
stipend reduced or withheld. Even in the event of a foreign invasion of
Ryukyu, Satsuma was not quite free to act without permission.
Probably it was this fear of foreign intervention—from China or from
Europeans in East Asia—that Ryukyu was able to use against Satsuma for
the purpose of maintaining advantages. Only when Satsuma was desperate,
in the early nineteenth century, did it exploit Ryukyu. For this exploitation,
Ryukyu no doubt suffered, but since it was extralegal, Zusho the Reformer
had to pay with his life when Tokugawa found out.
Overall, the Ryukyu-Satsuma relationship during the Tokugawa period
can be roughly described as symbiotic. Satsumas 1609 conquest of Ryukyu
was a source of immense pride to Satsuma. In the numerous accounts of
Satsumas Ryukyu invasion, Ryukyu is invariably described as a great
foreign kingdom, second only to Korea at the Court of Peking. The greater
Ryukyu, the greater the glory of Satsuma. Satsuma never missed a chance
to exploit it. That could explain Lord Shimazu Iehisa's benign treatment of
Ryukyu and unusual courtesy to King Sho Nei during his captivity. With the
addition of Ryukyu, with 120,000 koku Satsuma, with about 770,000 koku,
became the second largest daimyo—with corresponding honor and prestige.
Satsumas Ryukyu-China trade did not actually grow as hoped. However, the
possibility was always there, and Satsuma did fully exploit Ryukyu during
the Tempo Reform in the early nineteenth century. Without Ryukyu, it
would have been difficult for Satsuma to overturn the Tokugawa shogunate
in 1868.
Ryukyu probably gained much more than it appeared to on the surface.
Because Satsuma ruled indirectly through the indigenous government, the
Ryukyu government system was stabilized and even strengthened, because
it was in the interest of Satsuma. On the eve of the war of 1609, Ryukyus
Sho dynasty was in decline, yet it continued until 1879, thanks largely to
Satsumas support of the status quo. It even enjoyed a modest prosperity.
Two outstanding statesmen, Sho Jo-ken and Sai On, clearly attested to this
fact.
 Ryukyus trade was entrepot trade with China on the one hand and
Satsuma and Japan on the other. Thus, access to the Japanese market was
indispensable to middleman Ryukyu. As for Satsuma, no doubt it valued
Ryukyu for trade purposes as well as for political prestige, but for Japan as
a whole, Ryukyu was not indispensable, since there were trade enclaves at
Nagasaki and Tsushima. That is why Tokugawa often restricted Satsumas
trade through Ryukyu, which became a competitor to Nagasaki. Ryukyus
China trade survived because she was a part of Satsuma, which was able to
use its political power on behalf of Ryukyu. It explains why Ryukyu was
adamant against Satsumas withdrawal from the Ryukyu-China trade. In this
sense, Ryukyu needed Satsuma much more than Satsuma needed Ryukyu.
Literally, it was a matter of life or death for Ryukyu to remain within Japan.
Tokugawa-period Satsuma has been vilified by those modern
historians who have projected back to the entire Tokugawa period the
ruinous condition in which Okinawa found itself under the Meiji
government. However, in 1750, Minister Sai On stated that the annual tax
paid in rice to Satsuma might appear as a considerable loss to Ryukyu but
actually it was not so, and in the final analysis it was Ryukyu that gained
much from the relationship with Satsuma.

NOTES TO PART A

i Ifa Fuyu, "Ko Ryukyu no bubi o kôsatsu shite, karate no hatten ni

oyobu," 1932, reprinted in Ifa Fuyu senshu, 1: 1961, 405-425.
 ii Ifa Fuyu, Ryukyu kokonki, 1936, p. 210; Tôyama Kanken states that
King Sho Shin enforced an absolute ban on arms, and in 1609 Satsuma
confiscated all arms. Karate-do, 1962, 14.
iii George Kerr, Okinawa: The History of an Island People, 1958, 105.
iv Ibid , 107.
v Ibid., 258-259.
vi Nakahara Zenchu, "Ryukyu ogoku no seikaku to buki," in
Nakahara Zenchu senshu, I: 1969, 585-594.
vii Tsukada Seisaku, Ryukyu koku himonki, 1970, 23, 82.
viii Songjong Taewang Sillok, 104, pp. 11 a-12b. Ifa Fuyu, Onarigami
no shima, 1942,73-143.
ix Nakahara, "Ryukyu ôgoku no seikaku to buki," Okinawa to
Ogasawara, #4 (Feb. 1958), 38-43.
x Sappan Reiki Zasshu, MS., 25, 57-57.
xi Kerr, Okinawa, 166 ff.
xii Ibid, 168.
xiii Shunzo Sakamaki, "Ryukyu and Southeast Asia," Journal of Asian
Studies, 23:3 (May 1964), 385.
xiv Iwao Seiichi, Shinsen boekishi no kenkyu, Tokyo, 1958, 184, 189-
90.
xv Kimiya Yasuhiko, Nikka bunka koryushi, Tokyo, 1955, 63-34.
xvi Robert K. Sakai, "The Ryukyu Islands as a Fief of Satsuma," The
Chinese World Order, ed. by J. J. Fairbank, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, 134.
xvii Ta-tuan Ch'en, "Investiture of Liu-ch'iu Kings in the Ch'ing
Period," The Chinese World Order; 137.
 xviii Toguchi Shinsei, "Sakoku to Ryukyu," Okinawa bunka, VII:I
(Aug. 1969), 23.
xix Kobata Atsushi, Kinsei shoki no Ryu-Min kankei, 85, fn. 1.
xx IjicHi Sueyasu, "Sasshu tobutsu raiyuko," MS., 1840, folio 50-50a;
Toguchi Shinsei, "Sakoku to Ryukyu," Okinawa bunka (Aug. 1969), 23.
xxi Kagoshima kenshi, II, 730.
xxii ibid.,731.
xxiii ibid., 726.
xxiv Ibid., 730.
xxv Ibid, 734
xxvi Ibid, 734.
xxvii Okinawa no rekishi, 205.
xxviii Ryukyukan monjo, folio 71-78.
xxix Ibid., folo 28-29.
xxx Nakahara Zenchû senshu, 1:340.
xxxi Ginowan Chokon, Ryukyu ikkencho, MS, 1820, folio 35.
xxxii "Okinawa" in Iwanami koza: Nihon rekishi (Tokyo, 1962),
Gendai-hen, III, 318-319.
xxxiii Sasamori Gisuke, Nanto tanken (Tokyo, 1894), 403.
 PART Β: OKINAWA SINCE 1945
UNDER THE UNITED STATES

Finally, when the guns were silent and the smoke cleared in June 1945,
there was hardly anything standing on Okinawa. The sun beat down on the
ruins of ancient castles and the rubble of towns and villages. White bones
and rusted helmets were strewn among the rubble.
On August 15, 1945, when Japan surrendered, the U.S. military
government created the Okinawan Advisory Council, composed of fifteen
Okinawan leaders. This marked the beginning of Okinawa under U.S.
occupation.
The Okinawan relationship with the new rulers, until about early 1951,
was characterized by uneasy goodwill. Wartime Japanese propaganda made
Americans out as decadent monsters, but the GIs turned out to be
surprisingly decent—though this is not to say that there were no ugly
incidents. Overall, the chaotic socio-economic conditions left no room for
any activities except securing the most basic needs of life: food, clothing,
and housing. There was an assumption that most GIs would be home by
Christmas, as Truman was fond of reassuring Americans.
However, the birth of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, followed
by the outbreak of the Korean War a year later, transformed Okinawa
overnight from the dumping ground of the Pacific to the keystone of the
American defense line in Asia. Plans were formulated for the conversion of
Okinawa into a permanent military bastion, and the San Francisco Peace
Treaty in 1951 gave the United States all rights over Okinawa and its people
for an indefinite period.
Okinawa was to be a showcase for democracy in Asia. In October
1949, Major General Josef R. Sheetz, the military governor, launched a
two-pronged policy for Okinawa: economic recovery and the
democratization of government. The former was to be achieved by the
construction of massive military complexes, the expenditure for which was
to help the local economy. The latter was to be achieved by allowing
Okinawans limited autonomy by popular election of the legislature and
leaders in four island groups, Amami, Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama.xxxiv
However, implementation of this policy immediately ran into serious
problems. Vast military complexes required the expropriation of land on a
long-term basis. USCAR (the United States Civil Administration of the
Ryukyus), which replaced the U.S. military government, tried to purchase
the land in fee simply with a single lump sum payment—at a price it
unilaterally determined. The pro-posai was rejected by the landowners at
once, whereupon USCAR expropriated the land without the landowners'
consent. When the landowners protested, they were met with rifles and
tanks, and they ended up in jail while their homes were bulldozed. Tipped
off by the Reverend Bell, an American missionary, Roger N. Baldwin, of
the International League for Human Rights in New York, contacted the
Asahi Shimbun, the largest daily newspaper in Japan. The resulting full-
page coverage, published on January 13, 1955, led to a nationwide long,
hard campaign to rescue Okinawa from the sorry aftermath of the war.xxxv
In June 1956, U.S. Congressman Milton Prices fact-finding mission
simply brushed off the Okinawan complaints. The response was instant and
explosive, with massive spontaneous rallies throughout the islands.
USCAR, whether to keep a low profile to avoid exacerbating the situation,
or to retaliate, placed the towns off-limits to service personnel, inflicting
economic hardship on the local businesses, which finally led to the collapse
of Okinawan resistance. Then USCAR offered a sweetened compromise
that led to the end of the land dispute in December 1958.xxxvi
In 1950, as part of the democratization plan, governors were elected in
each of the four island groups. Taira Tatsuo, who won the most important
gubernatorial election—that of Okinawa—advocated "reversion now," a
proposition adamantly opposed by USCAR. The newly-elected legislatures
also followed suit. In April 1951, barely a year after their creation, the four
regional governments were Replaced by the Provisional Central
Government of the Ryukyus, whose chief executive was now appointed by
USCAR. A year later, in April 1952, it was made permanent as the GRI
(Government of the Ryukyu Islands).
In October 1956, the chief executive of GRI, Higa Shuhei, died. Toma
Jugo, mayor of Naha, the capital, who supported the U.S. policy in the land
dispute, was appointed the next chief executive. In the December 1956
election to determine the next mayor of Naha, Senaga Kamejiro, the
People's Party chairman and an alleged communist—as well as a sharp
critic of the U.S.—won on the platform of immediate reversion to
Japan.xxxvii
USCAR responded by freezing Naha's assets in the Bank of the
Ryukyus. This brazen U.S. interference in municipal affairs drove the voters
to support Mayor Senaga. When the pro-U.S. municipal council voted non-
confidence in Mayor Senaga, he promptly dissolved the council and called
for an election. The result doubled the pro-Senaga faction, making it
impossible for the city council to vote non-confidence again. Undaunted,
High Commissioner Moore, in November 1957, arbitrarily revised the
municipal laws so that Senaga could be deposed. As a sop to the voters, a
week before the second mayoral election, Moore granted the Education Act
proposed by the GRI Legislature, which USCAR had previously opposed,
as a concession. In the mayoral election of January 12, 1958, Senagas
handpicked successor, Kaneji Saichi, won by landslide.xxxviii
In April 1958, High Commissioner Moore announced a réévaluation
of the military land issue. Mayor Kaneji made a modus vivendi with
USCAR.xxxix Finally, in November 1958, under new High Commissioner
Booth, the military land issues were resolved, including a big increase in
land lease fees, while the Okinawans tacitly acknowledged new
confiscations.xl
One of the byproducts of all these activities was the increasingly
active labor unions. In May 1956, there were five unions with 600
members; by December 1958, there were fifty unions with 10,000
members. At the same time, due mainly to the huge payments by the U.S.
and Japanese governments, there was economic prosperity: from September
1959 to September 1960, $20,000,000 in land lease fees was paid to the
Okinawan landowners. In 1960, the Japanese government paid $860,000 in
pensions. This flow of money created an air of prosperity, as consumer
goods such as televisions, refrigerators, and private cars became more
available. Still, the prices of commodities were high, taxes were heavy, and
there was no social security system.xli
 In May 1959, a new military ordinance (number 23, Code of Penal
Law and Procedure) made it criminal for Okinawans, who are Japanese
citizens, to support reversion to Japan, and unduly restricted the Okinawan
people' s activities by unilateral interpretation, inclusive of capital
punishment. Okinawan opposition forced this ordinance to be indefinitely
postponed in August.xlii
In April 1961, the Okinawa Civil Liberties Union was formed. In June
1961, the All-Okinawa Labor Union was founded, comprising forty-five
unions with 13,000 members.xliii The high commissioner permitted the Sun
Flag to be flown over the public buildings on national holidays. In August
1961, Dr. Edwin O. Reischauer, U.S. ambassador to Japan, visited Okinawa
and made a speech in which he advocated treating Okinawa on the same
level as Japan while, at the same time, justifying the U.S. occupation.
In February 1961, High Commissioner General Paul Caraway arrived.
His administrative style could best be described as a mix between
benevolent paternalism and highhanded authoritarian personal government.
Local newspapers dubbed him "Typhoon Caraway." Much like Colonel
Purdy in the Tea House of the August Moon, Caraway forced his version of
democracy down the throats of Okinawans, like it or not. Acts that passed
the Okinawan legislature which promoted closer ties between Okinawa and
Japan were vetoed. Instead, Caraway issued ordinances that distanced
Okinawa from Japan. In carrying out reforms and purges as he saw fit, he
not only ignored the GRI but also bypassed USCAR. In a speech made in
March 1963, he declared that, in Okinawa, autonomy was a myth and a
cover-up of the incompetent and irresponsible. It not only confirmed the
worst fears of anti-American factions who were now more furious than
ever, but also completely demoralized the pro-American factions who
dreamed of eventual reversion to Japan by cooperating with the U.S. xliv
As his arbitrary government continued to intensify in all areas, things
went from bad to worse until U.S.-appointed Chief Executive Ota Seisaku
was forced by popular pressure to resign in June 1964. Unable to improve
the situation, and criticized even by the Washington post xlv Caraway was
dismissed on August 1, 1964 xlvi
- The new high commissioner, General Albert Watson (serving August
1964-September 1966), promised to be responsive to the peoples will; to
help Okinawa obtain assistance from Japan; and to abolish unnecessary
military ordinances. However, as fate would have it, he turned out to be the
one responsible for the beginning of the end of the U.S. control of Okinawa.
In June 1966, the Ryukyuan Central Circuit Court had two unrelated
cases before it: the Socialist Tomori Election Qualification case and the
Mackerel Tax case. In the former, Tomori, a socialist, was duly elected to
the legislature, but USCAR ordered that he be disqualified. In the latter, the
question was which— the USCAR ordinance or GRI statute—should apply
in determining the tax rate on the import of mackerel. The Ryukyuan court
followed GRI statutes, since neither case had anything to do with the U.S.
military. However, Watson—overriding the Ryukyuan court decisions—
ordered both cases to be transferred to the USCAR court. Immediately,
Okinawan judicial bodies and popular rallies decried Watson's decision.
At issue was the legal force of military ordinance, which the
Ryukyuan Central Circuit Court held to be superseded by Executive Order
#10713, of the President of the United States, which guaranteed the
Ryukyuan people:

liberties enjoyed by the people in democratic countries, including

freedom . . . from deprivation of life, liberty or property without due
process of law.xlvii

This forced USCAR into an impossible dilemma. USCAR, an organ of

the U.S. Department of the Army, was in no position to disregard the
Executive Order of the president, and yet if the Ryukyuan court were
allowed legal review, Watson admitted that USCAR would be unable to
function. He appointed a team of three American lawyers to adjudicate. On
September 28, Watson adamantly refused to cave in to the Okinawan
demand and resigned. On December 2, the American legal team, in keeping
with U.S. constitutional law, upheld the right of the Ryukyuan court to
exercise legal review.xlviii it was last time that USCAR invoked the naked
power of state to force its will upon Okinawa. Okinawa did turn out to be a
showcase for democracy, after all.
Meanwhile, Japan was enjoying economic prosperity and political
freedom under the new constitution. Okinawans, as Japanese citizens, felt
that they were being cheated out of what was due them, thanks to American
military rule. Japan also desired the reversion of Okinawa. Partly, it was a
national guilty conscience for the tragic Battle of Okinawa and for allowing
Okinawa to remain occupied while they themselves had been free since
1952. For others it was a matter of national disgrace to allow a part of their
soil to remain under alien rule. Certainly the Okinawan issue provided
ample ammunition for the opposition to attack the Liberal Democratic party
in power. Tokyo was increasingly willing to extend economic assistance to
Okinawa, but such assistance was often blocked by USCAR administrators,
who feared that it would erode their power, while they themselves made no
offer in its stead—to the immense irritation of Okinawans. Eventually,
USCAR was compelled to make one concession after another.
The outbreak of the Vietnam War, in 1960, had profound
consequences for Okinawa. In December 1961, the U.S. Marine Corps in
Okinawa began training troops for special anti-guerrilla warfare. In
November 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff formally mobilized U.S. forces in
Okinawa for Vietnam. Okinawans, having so recently suffered from war
themselves, resented being drawn, however indirectly, into the war efforts
in Vietnam. Around 1968, students from the University of the Ryukyus
demonstrated against Kadena Air Base, calling on young American soldiers
to join their peace movement.
That the U.S. was occupying Okinawa against the will of the people
while allegedly fighting for the self-determination of Vietnam was
incongruous. Yet, if the U.S. returned Okinawa to Japan, it could be seen as
a slap in the face to Russia, who adamantly held on to the Kurile Islands,
indisputably Japanese territory.
When all of these factors converged, the political disadvantages of
maintaining the status quo outweighed the military advantages, and the
United States and Japan agreed that Okinawa should be returned to Japan.
The reversion took place on May 15, 1972, ending twenty-seven years of
American occupation.
 There had been significant accomplishments, especially in the fields of
health and education, in the years since 1945. One was the extermination of
malaria in the Yaeyama Islands. Malaria was endemic to the Yaeyama
Islands for centuries, costing innumerable lives. Attempts to eradicate it
were frustrated until joint efforts by the GRI and USCAR resulted in no
new cases being reported in 1962.xlix
Another bright spot was in the field of higher education. Before,l
Okinawa was the only Japanese prefecture without any institution of higher
education. The situation was remedied in October 1949, when the
University of the Ryukyus was established by USCAR. In addition, many
Okinawans were sent, under the GARIOA (Government and Relief in the
Occupied Area) Fund, to the U.S. for higher education. As of 1972, a total
of 1,045 Okinawans availed themselves of the opportunity. Of this number,
28 students received doctorates, 262 received master's degrees, and 155
received bachelor's degrees.' There were also those who went to Japan to
study, including contract students, national scholarship students, and private
students. As of 1980, approximately 3,924 students graduated from
institutions of higher education in Japan.li Never before had so many
Okinawans received higher education—either at home or overseas.

POST-REVERSION YEARS

The post-reversion years were years of hope and frustration. Throughout the
twenty-seven years under U.S. control, Okinawans regarded the reversion to
Japan as the panacea for all the real or imagined ills and evils caused by the
Americans. However, the euphoria over the 1969 Sato-Nixon joint
communiqué promising the reversion was short-lived. Okinawans asked for
"affluent Okinawa without military bases" but what they received was
"affluent Okinawa with military bases." And the affluence of Okinawa
turned out to be superficial and deceptive.
In the first important elections—the prefectural governorship,
prefectural legislature (both in June 1972), and the mayorship of Naha (in
November the same year)—the progressive faction candidates who pushed
for reversion won overwhelming victories. Governor Yara Chobyo staked
his political fortune on an agenda that included social welfare, an anti-war
policy, solution of the U.S. base issues, opposition to a Japanese self-
defense force, and local autonomy. The opposition Liberal Democrats
criticized Yara for being hopelessly unrealistic. Okinawa was dependent
upon subsidies from Tokyo for 70% to 85% of its budget, and there could
be no local autonomy. Tokyo spent 2,371 billion yen on the six-month
Okinawa International Ocean Exposition that opened on July 25, 1975, but
the number of visitors turned out to be about twenty percent less than the
anticipated 5,000,000. The influx of such a large sum, in such a short time,
in such a limited area, caused a severe dislocation. The excessive number of
hotels built and the abrupt downturn of visitors after the Exposition caused
many bankruptcies and tragedies. One of the most tangible aftereffects of
the '75 Expo was the huge inroad made in the Okinawan tourism market by
large Japanese enterprises. The net benefit of the '75 Expo was the quickly
expanded network of highways and transportation.lii
In June 1976, Taira Koichi, chairman of the Shadaito Socialist Party,
succeeded Yara as the second post-reversion governor of Okinawa. In the
prefectural legislature election, also, the progressive party won the majority.
Taira lobbied for local autonomy and fought for confirmation of the
landowners' rights. But Tokyo simply turned a deaf ear to his proposals. He
was about to redouble his efforts when he fell ill and resigned in November
1978.liii
In the aftermath of the worldwide oil shock, which hit Japan with
particular vehemence, the economic outlook failed to improve. Okinawa
was suffering the highest unemployment rate in Japan, in addition to such
other issues as lingering post-war problems and the question of land
ownership.
The December 1978 gubernatorial election proved to be a turning
point from progressive to conservative. Nishime Junji held the progressives
responsible for inattention to the mounting unemployment while wasting
time in fruitless ideological strife. He advocated, instead, attracting business
and development by cooperating with Tokyo. Voters chose Nishime's
economy-first policy. Nishime aimed to close the economic gap between
Okinawa and Japan through regional development, such as the Chujowan
Bay development, extension of motor highways, a prefectural university of
the arts, and the 1987 Japan national athletic meet in Okinawa. He also
created a prefectural foundation for international exchange. By cooperating
with the conservative forces in control in Tokyo, Nishime initiated huge
national projects to be brought to Okinawa. In two gubernatorial elections,
in 1982 and 1986, he was victorious.
However, in spite of his efforts, not everything went as smoothly as he
wished. The Okinawa International Center and Okinawa Convention Center
were built, but the Japan-Southeast Asia Exchange Center never got off the
ground. A tax-free zone opened, but never functioned as it was supposed to.
Exceptions were steadily improving public facilities, such as highways, and
a rapidly growing tourism industry, which counted about three million
visitors a year. The Okinawan economy was rapidly moving from total
dependence on the military bases to one centered on tourism. However, the
resort rush pushed the price of land excessively high and destroyed natural
resources. Controversy over a new airport on Ishigaki Island in Yaeyama
became particularly rancorous and spread internationally, dividing the
parties into two hostile camps—one for develop-ment, the other for
protection of nature."liv
The gubernatorial election of November 1990 was held under the
influence of the Persian Gulf crisis. Nishime ran his own re-election, while
his elder son was trying for a seat in the Upper House of the Diet and his
second son for his second term in the prefectural assembly. This empire
building, and Nishime's support for Japan's pro-U.S. Gulf War policy—an
anathema in Okinawa'lv—created a fatal schism among his backers.
In contrast, the progressives, long out of power, were eager and united
behind Ota Masahide. He advocated peace and justice, and benefited from
the Gulf War scare and anti-bases forces. Ota easily won the election, but
his supporters were a minority in the prefectural assembly, and he was
without allies in power in Tokyo.
His initial years in office were rough, and he could not show much for
his efforts. Okinawa was overburdened by the U.S. presence. The average
income was the lowest in Japan, and the unemployment rate was the
highest. These facts remained unchanged. Ota stated that it was impossible
to remedy these problems without first resolving the military base issues,
which would take a long time. And all along he insisted there would be no
deal.'lvi Nothing would change, then.
The rape of a schoolgirl by U.S. Marines in 1995 mobilized Ota to
action. Fueled by the incensed populace, he defied Tokyo by insisting on
the removal of bases. Washington and Tokyo offered profuse apologies and
sympathy but not much else. Ota pursued the matter all the way to the
Supreme Court, which, in August 1996, simply rebuffed him.
He stated, philosophically, that it would be illusory if people expected
that something could be achieved if only the governor refused to lease the
land. But this illusion was the very source of his power.lvii Once the people
realized it was indeed nothing but an illusion, Ota would lose that power.
The 1996 anti-bases referendum asked the voters two questions:
whether the Japan-U.S. Forces Status Pact should be revised and the
number of bases be reduced, or whether the pact and the bases should
remain unchanged.lviii Despite frenzy of the prefectural government, voter
turnout was merely 59%, of which 89% voted "yes" to the first question,
meaning the bases should be removed and the pact be revised.'lix Low voter
turnout may be indicative of the unspoken fear of many, who pondered the
economic consequences. At present, there is no way to earn more money
from the leased land than from leasing it to the U.S. military. Another
possibility—whether the voters would allow the bases to remain but the
troop discipline be strengthened—was not proposed. Was the referendum
leading?
The basic issue at hand was (and remains) the intrinsic unfairness of
the burden on Okinawa compared with the rest of Japan. It was the
pervasive Not-In-My-Backyard syndrome and the politicians' reluctance to
face the issue, but Ota kept at it.lx In the 1999 election, he was ousted, by a
huge margin, by Inamine Keiichi, a man of practical bent.

Since 1945, Okinawa has suffered many difficulties, but in the

process, there seems to have been a rebirth. Though Okinawa still suffers a
lower rate of employment than the national average, the traditional family
structure is still strong enough to support the unemployed members.
More Okinawans than ever before are moving to mainland Japan in
search of a new life, and more people from other areas are settling in
Okinawa—a new phenomenon. Okinawans and those from other
prefectures are meeting face-to-face in large numbers for the first time. The
University of the Ryukyus faculty and student body are no longer Okinawan
only. Moreover, thanks to 27 years of U.S. government, there are more
Okinawans with an international outlook than the average in Japan. Now
there is a national university and at least five private institutions. Before
1945, there was little serious study of Okinawa's history and culture. Now,
several colleges and universities in mainland Japan and in Okinawa offer
courses and conduct research on various aspects of Okinawa.
Correspondingly, publications on Okinawa, academic and otherwise, have
rapidly increased. Okinawa's very peculiarities have been recognized as
valuable in themselves and as a tool to delve into the remote past of Japan.
Nowadays, it is not at all a rarity to see Okinawans among the higher
echelons of national institutions. Even in the field of popular literature,
which used to be considered unattainable for Okinawans because of a
language handicap, there are a few who have attained the highest honors in
Japan, such as the Akutagawa Awards. This phenomenon is clearly
noticeable also in academics, sports, and popular entertainment. It seems
that Okinawa is, for better or worse, ineluctably being drawn into the
mainstream of modern Japan.

NOTES TO PART Β

xxxiv Nakano Yoshio, Arasaki Moriteru, Okinawa mondai nijuunen,

1965, 27; Okinawa Times, comp. Okinawa Encyclopedia, III vols, 1983,
269-270.
xxxvIbid, 50-68.
xxxvi Ibid, 76-106.
xxxvii Ibid, 112-113.
xxxviii Ibid, 114.123.
xxxix Ibid, 127-128.
xl Ibid,., 132-134.
xli Ibid,146-147.
xlii Ibid,., 134-135.
xliii Ibid, 165.
xliv Ibid, 182-186.
xlv Dated May 3, 1964. Cited in Okinawa mondai kihon shiryoshu,
comp. by Nanpo dobo engokai, 1968, 1284.
xlvi Ibid, 1285.
xlvii Ibid., 196.
xlviii Ibid, 1292.
xlix Okinawa Encyclopedia, III: 535.
 l Teruya Yoshihiko and Yamazato Katsumi, comp. Postwar Okinawa
and America: Fifty Years of Cross-Cultural Contact. 1995, 32-55.
li Okinawa Encyclopedia, 1:151.
lii Ryukyu shimpo. comp. Fukkigo zenkiroku gendai Okinawa jiten,
1992, 32-33.
liii Ibid., 33.
liv Ibid., 34-35.
lv Ibid., 35.
lvi Higa Ryogen, 95-98 Shin Okinawa Repooto, 1998, 15-17.
lvii Ibid.
lviii Okinawa-ken koho, June 24, 1996.
lix Shimabuku Kazuya, Fukkigo no Okinawa, 1979, 119.
lx Ibid., 258-259.
 PART C: REVISIONS TO CHAPTER
FOUR
This appendix presents information from recent scholarship which either
clarifies, corrects, or adds to statements made by Dr. Kerr in Chapter Four
of this volume.

Page 156 states that the sweet potato was introduced from Fukien
Province in 1606, whereas recent scholarship dates this event to 1605. It
should also be noted that, although sugar cane production technology did
not reach Okinawa until 1623, sugar cane itself had long been grown in
Okinawa but was consumed as a fruit.

Page 157 makes reference to the aftereffects of the Battle of

Sekigahara in 1600. It should be noted that the barons who came to be
styled fidai (lit., "hereditary") daimyos were the ones who had been
Tokugawa vassals or had been on Tokugawa's side before 1600. Regarding
the tozama (lit., "outside") daimyos, it should be noted that most anti-
Tokugawa daimyos were simply abolished immediately after 1600. Over
the next few decades, even barons who had sided with Tokugawa were
disposed of, under one pretext or another, if they posed potential danger to
Ieyasu Tokugawa.

Page 157-8 discusses Satsuma-Ryukyu relations in the period

following the Battle of Sekigahara, from 1600 until February of 1609, at
which point Satsuma moved against Okinawa. The following information
has come to light:
The Satsuma clan had ranged itself against Tokugawa in the Battle of
Sekigahara. But by no means was it defeated in the battle. Having hastened
back to their home province at the southwesternmost tip of the Japanese
archipelago, they were fully prepared to take on the Tokugawa. At the same
time, Satsuma daimyo Yoshihiro had abdicated and assumed the tonsure of
a priest to express apologies to Tokugawa, but refused to go to Edo to pay
homage. The Tokugawa could not afford to send an expedition all the way
to Satsuma at the risk of leaving Edo defenseless. To fight Satsuma on their
home ground involved high risk. If the Tokugawa could not win a quick and
decisive victory, they might lose everything. There were others who might
be tempted to follow Satsuma. Finally the Tokugawa confirmed the House
of Shimazu with the fief intact. Yoshihiros son, Tadatsune, now known as
Iehisa, succeeded as daimyo in 1602. The next year, he went to Edo to show
submission.
Lord Iehisa lived in fear of offending his master, and did his best to
please the shogun. Now, the lord of Satsuma alleged to have possessed—
but to have lost in a fire—an Ashikaga shogun document conferring on the
Shimazu family the title, since 1206, of Lord of the Twelve Southern
Islands. Based on this flimsy title, the lord of Satsuma often made a claim
on Ryukyu, creating diplomatic impasses. For example, in 1592 and 1597,
Hideyoshi, who occupied the highest civilian position in the imperial court,
ordered Ryukyu through Shimazu to join his Korean expedition. Ryukyu
refused, making Shimazu uncomfortable. Later, when Ieyasu became
shogun, Lord Shimazu Yoshihisa of Satsuma wrote to King Sho Nei in
1606:

We now would like to send a message to you. Please do

not take it amiss. [Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu] issues orders
over all the land. There are no quarters of land that do not
offer their produce to him and there is no one who is not
under his command. . . . Though I am retired . . . every year I
have someone from my family go to pay him homage. . . . As
for your country paying homage to the Shogun, why should
you be behind others?
In the past I have urged your three ministers on this
matter several times, but I have not heard that anyone has
been sent to pay him homage. Are these ministers not
negligent within? If no homage is paid this year, how can one
expect it to be otherwise next year? We hope that no danger is
in store for you.
Your country is adjacent to China. It has been over sixty
years since trading ships stopped between China and Japan.
Our shogun is unhappy with the situation and, through the
efforts of Iehisa, he wishes to have talks with you so that
every year trading ships may come to your country for the
purpose of conducting trade between Great Ming and Japan
to fill the needs of each other. If it can be done, it would not
only enrich our country but your country and people would
also receive benefits. . . . This is the intention of our shogun.
 That is why Iehisa has sent two officials to tell you this. If
your ministers ignore this matter and the shogun makes an
inquiry, what might Iehisa do?
This fear has been with me day and night. . . . Whether a
country survives or perishes is in the hands of the lord. We
beg you to consider this. (Ryukyu Satsuma ofuku monjo-an,
circa 1620s, Photostat, 1965, 67-71.)

This letter was completely ignored by Ryukyu. Lord Yoshihisa of

Satsuma was trying his best to please the shogun. Several other letters of
similar nature were sent in vain. Though it was the Satsuma soldiers who
invaded Ryukyu, it was the shogun's pressure that made them do so.
In 1606 Hsia Tzu-yang, investiture envoy from Ming, arrived in
Ryukyu. Lord Iehisa of Satsuma urged Ryukyu to send a congratulatory
mission to Ieyasu only to be ignored.
In 1600, Ieyasu ordered Shimazu to negotiate with China to open trade
with Japan. Shimazu sent an emissary to Peking and succeeded in inducing
China to dispatch two Foochow ships to Satsuma in 1601. However,
Japanese pirates (wako) plundered these Chinese ships and they stopped
coming. Anxious to please the deeply disappointed leyasu, Iehisa cast his
eyes toward Ryukyu. (Muto Chohei, "Sappan no Shina boeki ni tsuite,"
Kokumin Keizai zasshi v. 24-1, 84.) After several such "rude behaviors" and
"terrible happenings," Satsuma finally received permission from Shogun
leyasu to chastise Ryukyu.
 leyasu on his part was at this time deeply concerned with problems of
European pressure upon Japan. He mistrusted Spain, and feared Spain's
activities based upon the Philippines. It would be greatly to Japans interests
to extend garrison forces into these islands through which the Europeans
must pass to approach the shogun's port at Nagasaki. With Satsuma's forces,
these southern islands could be transformed; stepping-stones from the south
could become a barrier on the southern sea frontier.

Page 159 discusses the survey of the administration and economic

potential of Ryukyu as made by Honda Chikamasa. Corrections to the
figures cited in Chapter Four, as well as additional details are noted below:
The first cadastral survey of 1611 (and the last ever) showed the total
as 123,700 koku of rice (one modern koku is equivalent to 5.11 bushels).
This was added to the Shimazu daimyo stipend granted by Tokugawa
shogun. This figure consists of the Amami-Oshima Islands with 29,470
koku and the reconstituted Ryukyu Kingdom (Okinawa, Miyako, and
Yaeyama Islands) with 94,230 koku. The Amami-Oshima Islands were kept
by Satsuma as its own direct territory (,kuraireji ).
The initial tax paid to Satsuma in 1611 was in kind worth 32 kan of
silver (equivalent in rice of 2,666 koku). This tax to Satsuma was stabilized
at 11,933 koku. However, of this amount, Satsuma received only 8,783
koku, and the rest was for shipping charges paid to the private shippers.
When the tax rice was carried on the Ryukyu government bottoms, Ryukyu
did save the expenses.
An important point to be noted is that these production and tax figures
are official figures determined at the beginning of the 17th century, yet
immutable forever because they were set by the founding shogun, leyasu,
who was enshrined as a divinity whose words were not to be challenged.
Yet, time passes and things change. Over the two and a half centuries of the
Tokugawa period, Ryukyus productivity kept growing while the tax rate
lagged behind, largely owing to the introduction of new food plants, such as
sweet potatoes, improvement in food technology, such as sugar production,
and the opening up of the barren land. Tax to Satsuma, 14,200 koku,
represented about 15% of the total productivity at the early 17th century,
but the same amount of tax payment represented a mere 4.5% of the
310,000 koku of the estimated actual production of Ryukyu by the early
19th century. Satsuma twice attempted to carry out cadastral surveys but
had to be satisfied with negotiated increases to the final figures of 94,230
koku in 1722.

Page 160 contains the section entitled "The Conditions Laid Down for
a King's Ransom" which discusses King Sho Nei's period as a hostage in
Japan. The following information enlarges upon the information on this
event as presented in Chapter Four.
Both the Tokugawa and Shimazu houses claimed lineage from the
Minamoto (Genji), the most illustrious warrior line in Japan. By tradition,
only the Minamoto and Taira clans were qualified to the office of shogun.
Since the House of Sho, king of Ryukyu, was also alleged to be a
Minamoto, descended from the founder of the Kamakura shogunate, all
three families were supposedly members of the same warrior aristocracy. To
demean King Sho Nei would be to demean themselves, for the greater King
Sho Nei, the greater Shimazu Iehisa who defeated Sho Nei. Sho Nei was
given special treatment befitting a head of a foreign state. When he met the
shogun, he was seated across from him on the same level. It was an
exceptional honor.
During the Tokugawa period, one way a lord's measure was made was
by the size of the fief he held, expressed by koku production. A lord with
over 10,000 koku of stipend was considered daimyo. Of about 270 daimyos
during the Tokugawa period, most numerous were hereditary daimyos with
less than 50,000 koku fiefs. The Ryukyu kingdom was officially 123,700
koku. It ranked at the upper end of the middle class, and was by no means
considered small. Moreover, although institutionally, the king of Ryukyu
was a sub-vassal of the shogun, he was allowed an audience with the
shogun.
The Ryukyuan mission to Edo was treated on the same level as the
Korean mission. Satsuma stated that at the Imperial Court of Ming in
Peking, Ryukyu was treated second only to Korea, implying she could not
be treated any less at Edo.
Satsuma's own attitude may be surmised by the many colorful Ryukyu
woodblock prints or Ryukyu books circulated in the cities on the occasions
of the Ryukyu mission's visits to Japan. These were published by
commercial publishing houses. One readily noticeable characteristic is the
highly exaggerated terms in which everything Ryukyuan is described. If the
huge stipends of Okinawan officials and generals were added together, the
Ryukyu kingdom's wealth would easily surpass that of Satsuma. And of
course, Ryukyu kingdom was second only to Korea at the Imperial Court of
Peking! An apparent aim, no doubt, was to satisfy the ego of the men of
Satsuma, but having exaggerated the value of their treasure, they could not
but show deference to their "special guests from overseas," at least publicly.
No one was allowed to approach them without Satsuma permission.
King Sho Nei and his retinue were escorted to Edo to be presented to
Shogun Hidetada, stopping on the way to pay respect to the founding
shogun Ieyasu, retired at Sumpu. Shimazu Iehisa savored the political value
of the occasion, traveling with great pomp through the inland sea and up the
eastern seaway to the capital with a captive king in his train. Sho Nei was
only a "small" king, to be sure, but not even the great Toyotomi Hideyoshi
had enjoyed the satisfaction of bringing a foreign monarch in submission to
his court.

Page 160 also discusses the significance of certain "Articles

Subscribed to by the King's Councilors." Their significance may be clarified
by the following:
The fifteen articles were concerned with bringing Ryukyu more in line
with the status quo of Tokugawa Japan. Article 1 bans trade with China
without permission from Satsuma. This implicitly recognizes that there was
no Ryukyu-Southeast Asia trade any longer. Articles 6 and 13 reinforce
Satsuma's control of foreign trade. If these articles were to be interpreted as
Satsumas move for monopoly, the policy would be neither strange nor new.
There was nothing sinister about them. Because foreign trade was an
obvious source of wealth leading to possible armament and war, every
daimyo including Tokugawa sought to control unauthorized foreign trade
within their territories. Independent means of wealth on the part of a vassal
was frowned upon.
 Page 165 discusses the motives that Kunjan Anji may have had in
electing to remain at Kagoshima after being released as a hostage. It is
important to note that this episode reveals the fundamental affinity among
the aristocracies of Satsuma and Ryukyu, insofar as Kunjan Anji was given
command over a troop of Satsuma warriors. If he were considered a
foreigner, he would never have been given command of the Satsuma troops.

Page 166 makes mention of Sho Neis kingdom after his death. It
should be noted that the kingdom not only survived "in name" for 268
years, as mentioned in Chapter Four, but also regained a measure of
independence and prosperity during that time. Chapter Four describes the
kingdom as possessing "fictitious independence" but recent scholarship
takes a different view.
It was a semi-autonomy very much like that enjoyed by all daimyos.
Rights of coinage and standard measurements were reserved for the
shogunate. Free foreign contacts, free foreign travel, gambling, and slavery
were banned all over Japan. Even the question of dual subordination is not
without precedent. Since the mid-fifteenth century, the So Family, lord of
Tsushima, had been in a similar situation in regard to the Yi dynasty of
Korea.
What Shimazu daimyo carried out may well be regarded as within the
traditional governance of its own subordinate vassalage. Laws of the
Tokugawa were a priori yet were often subject to varying interpretations
and, above all, to the constantly changing balance of power between
Shimazu and Tokugawa. Tokugawa shogunate may have felt it had to keep
Ryukyus trade with China under control because it was somewhat irksome.
After all, Tokugawa had the Nagasaki trade with China and the Dutch,
which was much larger in scope, in addition to trade with Korea through
Tsushima. As long as Satsuma carried out its Ryukyu trade with China with
restraint and did not flaunt the profits, Tokugawa could tolerate it. After all,
the shogunate was not dependent on the trade profits. Satsuma, meagerly
endowed by nature and burdened with a huge nonproductive military, class,
was eager for the extra revenue Ryukyu provided. Lastly, for Ryukyu, it was
a matter of life or death to be a part of Tokugawa Japan through the
Shimazu clan, for Ryukyu depended on entrepot trade between China and
Japan. Ryukyus renowned trade with Southeast Asia had by 1609 ceased
more than two decades earlier.
Throughout the Tokugawa period, Ryukyu obtained silver and other
goods in Japan and exported them to China, where Ryukyu purchased
Chinese merchandise, such as pharmaceuticals, to be shipped to Japan.
There the cycle would start again, with profits added from Ryukyus brown
sugar sales in Osaka. Thus, Ryukyu would have met a dire predicament if
Japan had not been a market for the Chinese merchandise Ryukyu imported,
and if Japan had not supplied the silver Ryukyu needed in China. Ryukyu
Minister Sai On stated in 1750 that annual tax rice paid to Satsuma might
appear as a considerable loss to Ryukyu but actually it was not so, and in
the final analysis it was Ryukyu that had much to gain from the
arrangement at that time with Satsuma. (Sai On senshuu, 73.)
First proposed by Iha Fuyu and widely accepted is the idea that the
pressures and requirements of "dual subordination" warped the personality
of the Okinawans into a slave mentality. In support of this assertion is the
Ryukyu as Satsumas Cormorant theory, which is fully discussed earlier in
Part A. Here it suffices to say that Satsuma is alleged to have exploited
Ryukyu to such an extent that the kingdom of Ryukyu was reduced to a
country of slaves to Satsuma, and in spite of this exploitation, Ryukyu never
attempted to rebel against Satsuma during the long Tokugawa period.
Ryukyu did not rebel simply because there was no reason to do so. As noted
above, it was in the interest of Ryukyu to be within Tokugawa Japan as a
part of the powerful Satsuma domain. Second, since Ryukyu became a
vassal of Satsuma, it was sine qua non for the Ryukyu gentry to educate
themselves in the learning and arts of Japan. In addition, the standard of life
improved due to the introduction of cotton and new agricultural industry
such as sugar production.
It may be conceded that the defeat of 1609 demoralized the top
leadership, but the masses were hardly affected, and the lots of members of
the middle gentry class might have even improved. By 1609, the Ryukyuan
society was fossilized. Since the days of the great king Sho Shin who
unified the Ryukyu Islands in 1500, the three unobtrusive kings who
followed quietly retreated in the face of the abrasive intrusion of the West
into the East China Sea. By about the 1570s, Ryukyu was trading only with
China and Japan. The declining trade must have adversely affected the
economic life of the population. At the turn of the 17th century, discontent
seems to have been brewing among the gentry, as indicated by the abortive
rebellion of the Jana clan in Shuri in 1592. The second Sho dynasty was
obviously on the decline.
The fact that this dying dynasty survived until 1879 seems to be due to
the shock of the Satsuma invasion in 1609, which was duly authorized by
Tokugawa. In July 1609, Ieyasu granted Ryukyu to Shimazu. Satsuma
carried out the first and only cadastral survey of the entire Ryukyu Islands
from 1609 to 1611. The survey recorded the gross productivity of Ryukyu at
123,700 koku. In 1634, the Tokugawa shogun added Ryukyu to the
stipendiary grant of the Shimazu daimyo. By this act, Ryukyu was now in
fact and in law a part of Tokugawa Japan. The Amami Oshima Islands,
closest to Satsuma, were kept for the Shimazu daimyos treasury. The rest,
89,086 koku, was returned to King Sho Nei of Ryukyu. The 89,086 koku
was further divided into 50,000 koku for the kings treasury, and the rest was
for his vassals. These figures, called kokudaka, represented not revenue, but
gross production assessment.
In 1611, based on the results of the cadastral survey, Ryukyu was
assessed a tax in kind of eight special products. The tax was equivalent to
32 kan of silver or 2,666 koku of rice. This taxation seems in no way
excessive, as the rate was uniform throughout all the territories under the
Shimazu daimyo. Although the amount gradually increased over the years,
the rate of increase was also uniform. The only disadvantage to Ryukyu was
that the tax was to be delivered at Kagoshima with the transportation
charges to be borne by the taxpayer. However, during the Tempo Financial
Reform of Satsuma (1830-1840) Satsuma exacted extra revenue from
Ryukyu by means of monopolizing Ryukyus special products. Some
modern Ryukyuan scholars have projected the situation in the late 19th
century back through the entire Tokugawa period, accusing Satsuma of
plundering Ryukyu from the beginning of the 17th century.
It may be quite possible that in the immediate post-1609 period,
Ryukyuan leaders were in shock, for there are some records indicating a
few high ranking officials were reprimanded for self-indulgence. However,
it must be remembered that the defeat of 1609 affected the ruling class only.
The war was between the ruling classes of Satsuma and Ryukyu—the rest
of the society was not involved. There simply is no reliable contemporary
source on the battle, but it is believed that the battle lasted only a few days
and there were few Ryukyuan casualties.
Ryukyus ruling class, unarmed and untrained in the arts of war, did not
rebel against Satsuma not because they had been reduced to slavery but
because they were masters of diplomacy, skilled in survival. The Ryukyu
kingdom not only survived, but went on to prosper from the late 17th to the
early 18th century. This is nothing short of a miracle when compared to the
fate of many daimyos. Many who sided against Tokugawa in 1600 were
simply eliminated. Even those who sided with Tokugawa were later
removed because their strength was seen as a threat. Perhaps Ryukyu
survived because it was weak and posed no danger. Minister Sai On (1682-
1761) stated that the art of survival for a small country like Ryukyu is like
riding a galloping horse with a rotten rein; it cannot be pulled in too hard,
neither can it be let too free. As shown in Part A, Ryukyu skillfully
maneuvered and enjoyed a degree of prosperity in the late 17th century. In
contrast, Satsuma, Ryukyus overlord, suffered financial insolvency for most
of the Tokugawa period. Satsuma stayed in the Ryukyu-China trade only at
the insistence of Ryukyu. Ryukyu believed it was a part of the natural order
of the universe for the small and weak to serve the large and strong who, in
turn, were obliged to be benevolent toward them.
There are those who lament that the peasantry in Ryukyu suffered
because they now had to serve two masters, Ryukyu and Satsuma. It should
be noted that actual records were examined of how the products from the
land were shared by the government, the stipend holder, and the peasant
tiller of the land. Because of the discrepancy between the official
assessment and the actual production, the peasant's share was always at
least 33% of the actual production. The official share was sometimes as
small as 6%. Since the peasantry could supplement their food needs and
income with non-rice, and therefore non-taxable, products like sweet
potatoes, their life may have been at the subsistence level but they did not
starve. Peasants did not serve two masters, in the sense of having to make
tax payments to both Ryukyu and Satsuma. The tax to Satsuma must
therefore have been made from the government revenue.
 PART D: ERRATA IN ORIGINAL
EDITION
Part D corrects typos and makes corrections, based on recent
scholarship, of errors offact in the original edition of Okinawa: The History
of an Island People.
p. 22 par. 2, line 1 Delete "Caucasoid" p. 28 par. 2, line 2 Replace
"women" with "men" p. 35 par. 2, line 3 Replace "phonetic" with "syllabic"
p.46, par.2, lines 6-12 Replace from "The story itself was not . . . interests
of the Japanese" (end of paragraph) with "Minamoto Tametomo (1139-77)
was one of those popular heroes that people refuse to believe died. One
alleged scenario took him to Okinawa to father a son and brought him back
to Japan after a few years. This rumor had been in circulation in Japan in
one form or another for many decades. When Prince of Haneji (aka) Sho Jo-
ken compiled the History of Chuzan in 1650, he simply incorporated the
legend into the history."
p. 50 par 1, line 4 Replace "were of Minamoto" with "were allegedly
of Minamoto"
p. 51 par 2, line 3 Replace "(Sessai)" with "(Sessei")
p. 51, par 2, line 6 Replace "Heda-misaki" with "Hedo-misaki"
p. 62, par. 3, lines 1-4 "The defection. . . to Urasoe" Delete the entire
para-graph'
plate 3, following p. 70, line 2 in the caption "This gate . . . emperor."
Replace with "On this gate was displayed a tablet inscribed "Land of
Propriety," a gift of the Chinese emperor." King Sho Ei (1573-1588)
ordered that the tablet inscribed Shurei no kuni (Land of Propriety) be hung
on a great gate to Shuri Castle.
plate 4, following p. 70, line 4 in the caption Replace "Some fragments
survive." with "It was rebuilt after 1945."
plate 5, following p. 71, line 4 in the caption "... the Japanese kimono
..." Delete "Japanese" and close.
p. 75, par. 4, line 7 Replace "special position among the common
people." with "were treated as gentry." p. 82, par. 3, line 2 Replace "Haniji"
with "Haneji" p. 83, par. 3, line 6 Replace "Azato" with "Asato" p. 83, par.
4, line 5 "and made himself King of Chuzan." Delete and close.
p. 86, p. 2, line 7 Replace "Shimojiri" with "Shimajiri"
pp. 89-90, last paragraph in p. 89 that begins "Hashi ..." and the next
paragraph that begins "In order to . . ." Delete these two paragraphs
and close.
p. 95, par. 5, line 2 Replace "women" with "men" This was seen, albeit
rarely, among elderly men as late as the 1930s.
p. 97, par. 4, line 1 "Sho Chu lived only five years." Insert "more" after
"years." to make it read "Sho Chu lived only five years more."
p. 99, par. 4, lines 5-9 "This is an interesting. . . from the north."
Delete and close.
Replace "Kanemaro" with "Kanemaru", as follows: p. 101, par. 4, line
4; p. 101, par. 5, line 1; p. 102, par. 2, line 1; p. 102, par. 3, line 1; p. 103,
par. 1, line 4; p. 103, par. 2, line 2; p. 103, par. 2, line 5; p. 103, par. 3, line 1
p. 103, par. 4, line 10 Replace "Kanemaro's" with "Kanemarus " p. 102, par.
5, line 1 Replace "Kanemaro's" with "Kanemaru's" p. 112, par. 3, line 6
Replace "Tenkaizen-ji" with "Tenkaiji Temple" p. 114, par. 3, line 2 Replace
"Tomari" with "Kume-mura" p. 118, par. 1, line 4. Replace "Untura" with
"Ufutura" p. 121, par.3, lines 11 and 12 Replace "Untura" with "Ufutura" p.
122, par.2, line 1 Replace "Meguro Mori" with "Meguro-mori" p. 122,
par.2, line 3 Replace "Yonaha Sedo" with "Yonaha-sedo" p. 124, par. 2, line
3 Replace "in 1611" with "1570s" p. 133, par. 4, line 4 Delete "in 1554" and
close
p. 133, par.4, lines 6-9 Replace "(Country of Propriety). The king in
turn . . . all to see." with "(Land of Propriety). Later, King Sho Ei (1573-
1588) ordered the tablet to be hung on a great gate to Shuri Castle for all to
see." p. 134, caption at the bottom, line 2. Replace "1396" with "1396-
1405" p. 136, par. 5, line 4 Replace "phonetic kana" with "syllabic kana" p.
140, par. 5, line 5 Replace "Kyushu" with "Kagoshima" p. 142. par. 4, line 9
Replace "Yara and Miei" with "Yaraza and
Miigusuku"
p. 142, par. 4, line 10 Replace "These were completed in 1553" with
"Yaraza was completed in 1553 and Miigusuku shortly after"
p. 156, par. 3, line 2-3 Replace "sugar-cane culture" with "sugar
making technology"
p. 166, par.2, line 2 Delete "in name" and close.
p. 166, par.3, lines 7-9 Replace "the Satsuma clan . . . check them"
with "the Satsuma clan managed to obtain Tokugawa permission for
Ryukyu to continue to trade with China and sell the imports in Kyoto."
p. 168, par. 4, lines 1-4 Replace "The immediate effect. . . upon on
their own resources" with "The immediate effect of the Keicho
invasion was the shock to the top leadership. But the damage was contained
to a minimum, for both Tokugawa and Satsuma had use for Ryukyu. The
peasant masses were hardly affected. For most of the middle class gentry,
after the initial demoralization, it even proved to be an impetus to finding
new alternatives."
p. 169, par. 2, last line. Replace "steadily declined" with "stagnated for
a while, but found a way to live under a new master." p. 175, par.6, line 1
Replace "Uekata" with "Oyakata".
p. 177, par.4, line 5 Replace "Uekata" with "Oyakata"
p. 179, par. 2 and 3 Replace entire paragraphs 2 & 3 with the
following:
Satsuma and the Okinawan Trade with China
It must be understood that Satsuma conquered Ryukyu only with the
explicit permission of Tokugawa. Therefore, Satsuma presented Ryukyu to
Tokugawa, who graciously accepted Ryukyu only to add it to the writ of
stipend of Satsuma. In turn, Satsuma kept the Amami-Oshima Islands and
returned the rest to King Sho Nei of Ryukyu. Ryukyu was now legally a
part of Tokugawa Japan, but indefinitely assigned to Shimazu daimyo of
Satsuma. But Satsuma was not quite free to do as it pleased with Ryukyu.
One of the largest non-hereditary daimyo, Satsuma enjoyed a large stipend,
but little power, and it was under the constant watchful eye of Tokugawa.
In 1611, Satsuma completed a cadastral survey of Ryukyu, most likely
the first one ever done in Ryukyu. It showed a gross productivity of 89,086
koku (later corrected to 83,085 koku), without Amami-Oshima, which was
ceded to Satsuma. Of this amount, the Ryukyu government was assigned
50,000 koku, and the remainder was to be distributed to Ryukyus own
vassals. Tax to Satsuma was first calculated in goods, but later was
converted into silver in the amount of 52 kan. The tax rate was the same as
in the rest of Satsuma domain. This remained the same for the rest of the
century n1. A more detailed discussion of the topic will be taken up in
Chapter 12.
Shimazu daimyo of Satsuma now enjoyed a gross total productivity,
not revenue, of 701,000 koku including Ryukyus 123,700 koku, making it
the second largest daimyo in Japan.
p. 180, par. 1-2, entire paragraph 1 and the first 4 lines of par. 2. I.e.,
from "Since the trade with . . . responsibility for it," Replace these lines
with the following:
One of the prime objectives of the Keicho conquest was to establish an
official trade relationship between China and Japan. Therefore, in 1611
when King Sho Nei returned home, he was forced to take with him a
missive, composed in his name by Satsuma at the order of the shogun
Ieyasu, addressed to the Ming government. In essence, it informed China
that Japan was now unified under the Tokugawa shogun, who wished to
open trade with China, threatening that if China refused, the shogun was
prepared to launch an expedition of a great army against China.n2
p. 182. par.2, lines 7-10"Delete "His success. . . upon each mission." p.
183, par. 1, line 1. "in 1606" should be replaced by "1605" p. 183-184, par.
3, lines 2-3 Replace "an official . . . than he," with "magistrate of
agriculture,"
p. 184, par. 2, lines 1 Replace "After Noguni Sokan" with "After Gima
Shinjo"
p. 184, par.4, line 2 Replace "Ryuiemon" with "Riuemon"
p. 184, par 5, line 1 Replace "sugar-cane culture" with "sugar
production"
 p. 184, par 5, lines 2-4 Replace "In 1623 . . . experimentally. The trial
was a success." with "Okinawa long had sugar cane, but people treated it
like a fruit and did not know how to make sugar out of it. Gima, magistrate
of agriculture, sent one of his men to China to learn the process of sugar
making. In 1623, he succeeded in producing sugar in Okinawa for the first
time." Continue paragraph with "Sugar production . . . market." p. 186, par
3, line 2 Delete "of different ranks" and close, p. 186, par 5, line 4 Replace
"Shimojiri" with "Shimajiri" p. 187, par 2, line 14 Delete "Higa Shuncho,"
and close p. 188, par 2, the last two lines Delete (shizoku) and (heimin) p.
188, par 4, line 5 Replace "the titles uekata or" with "the title oyakata" p.
190, par 2, line 1 Delete (heimin) and close p. 190, par 3, line 2 Replace
"heimin" with "commoners" p. 198, par 3, line 4 Replace "Kotabaru" with
"Katabaru" p. 205, par 4, line 4 Replace (Yomui-kan) with (Yomu-ihen) p.
205, par 4, line 5 Replace "followed precedents set by Sho Jo-ken" with
"followed useful precedents" p. 206, par 3, line 7 Replace "Gushikawa"
with "Gushichan" p.210, par 2, last two lines Delete "and were forced to
wear the tribute yoke which Satsuma had contrived." p. 211, par 4, line 1
Replace "Li Tung-yen" with "Li Ting-yuan" p. 221, par. 2, line 6 Replace
"Benten-do" with "Benzaiten shrine" p. 224. par.3, line 3 Replace from
"known as waka, so highly prized in Japan" to end of paragraph with
"known as ryuka. The composition of this verse form is governed by strict
rules limiting the number of syllables to 30 (8+8+8+6). It is highly prized in
the Okinawan literary tradition just as waka is in Japan. Educated
individuals wrote both waka and ryuka, but ryuka was by far the more
common." p.224, par 3, line 4 Replace "phonetic hiragana" with "syllabic
hiragana" p.224, par. 4, the last stanza of the short poem quoted, "Miun chi"
should be "Miunchi"
p. 224, par.5, line 6 Replace "Manzanmo" with "Manzamo" p. 224, par
5, last line Delete "phonetic" and close p. 225, par 3, line 9 Delete "(if not to
fabricate)" and close p. 225, par 4, last line Replace (the Konko-ken Shu)
with (the Konkokenshu) p. 240, par. 2, line 7 Replace "the scholar" with
"the patriot" p. 240, par. 2, line 14 Replace "Tosetsu" with "Zusetsu" p.243,
par. 2, line 16 Replace "sotetsu palm" with "cycad" p.246, par. 1, line 19
After "koban' add "gold pieces" so that it will read "five million koban gold
pieces."
p.247, par. 1. line 2 Before "sister" add "adopted" to make it to read
"adopted sister"
p. 348, par. 1, lines 4-9 Replace "In June, 1862, Makishi Pechin . . .
relentless Shimazu Hisamitsu." with
"In June 1862, overruling Ryukyus protest that Makishi Pechin should
remain confined as a prisoner, Satsuma summoned Pechin to Kagoshima on
emergency state business. Though Pechin did not know it, his rare talent in
the
English language and foreign affairs was sorely needed in Kagoshima
at the time. He was to be appointed professor of English for the Satsuma
officials. He set sail in July under heavy guard, but when the ship was a few
miles north of Motobu Peninsula, he leaped overboard." p.350, par 3, line 1
Replace "Uekata" with "Oyakata" p. 351, par.3, line 3 to the end of
paragraph, i.e., "during the 17th and 18th . . . a hundred or more." Replace
with the following:
 "In 1699, the pigeon-eye sen was equal in value to 50 Japanese mon.
In the late 1860s, as a measure of the financial reform, Satsuma managed to
obtain Tokugawa permission to use the Ryukyu tsuho (Ryukyu currency),
ostensibly to ease Ryukyus financial troubles. It was to be circulated only
within Satsuma and Ryukyu, but Satsuma fully intended to circulate it
beyond its borders. From 1857, Satsuma minted 1,000,000 ryo of gold's
worth of Ryukyu tsuho in 2 or 3 years. As it cost 36 mon to mint Ryukyu
tsuho worth 124-248 mon, Satsuma made a fabulous profit.n3
Later, in 1861, Satsuma ordered Ryukyu to accept copper one mon as
equivalent to 2 iron mon, whereas, up to then, the two used to be of equal
value. It meant that Satsuma-minted copper could now purchase twice as
much in Okinawa. As a result, prices of commodities soared, several
districts went bankrupt, and many farmers sold their daughters into
prostitution.n4
p. 353. entire par.2 Replace "Technically. . . feudal rule."
with "Technically, Tokugawa Yoshinobu had surrendered the
hereditary post of shogun only, and not his control over the family's own
territories. Thus, the Tokugawa as the largest daimyo still remained intact.
Anti-Tokugawa forces led by Satsuma and Choshu clans were unsatisfied.
They provoked and defeated the Tokugawa forces in the Boshin civil war in
1868. This finalized the transition of power from the Tokugawa to the new
Meiji imperial government." p.353, par. 7, line 1 Replace "tribute" with
"tax" p. 361, par. 3, line 7 Delete "hanshi" and close p. 361, par. 4, line 3
Replace "tribute" with "tax" p. 363, par. 3, line 3 Replace "Uekata" with
"Oyakata" p. 364, par. 4, line 6 Replace "tribute" with "tax" p. 371, par. 1.
line 2 Replace "Uekata" with "Oyakata" p. 373, Par. 1, lines 2-3 Replace
"han-shi or Okinawan samurai. . .
clerical gentry" with simply "Okinawan gentry" p. 374, par. last par.
line 2 Replace "Rin Sei-ko" with "Rin Seiko" p. 381, par. 4, lines 1-2
Replace "Kankei Gate" with "Kankai Gate"
p. 382, par. 4, line 3 Replace "Okiyerabushima" with "Okierabushima"
p. 383, par. 4, lines 1-2. Replace "On May 27. . . ninety-six courtiers"
with:
"On March 29, at 9 p.m., King Sho Tai and his family left Shuri Castle
and moved to the mansion of the crown prince. About one thousand men
and women, officials and commoners, who had been waiting for hours on
their knees on both sides of the road, burst into loud wailing. Their tears wet
the roadside grasses and their wailings reached the high heavens.
On April 27, Crown Prince Nakagusuku departed. The road to Naha
was lined on both sides with masses numbering more than 10,000. The
skies were clear without a speck of cloud.
On May 27, the last King of Ryukyu, Sho Tai, and his suite of ninety-
six courtiers appeared through the gate on their way to Tokyo in exile. Great
crowds, old and young, and men and women, all in their best official
costumes, lined both sides of the road to Naha Port. Shedding tears, they
prostrated themselves. Even the Japanese police who were looking on could
not help tears welling up in their eyes. Mid-night there was a thunderous
rainfall.n5* p. 399, par. 3, line 5 Replace "Kai-ka To" with "Kaikato" p. 400,
par.2, line 1 Replace "(Narahara Kogoro)" with "(Narahara Shigeru)"
p. 414, par. 2, lines 1-4 Replace "The government was glad to
encourage this ... of Okinawa prefecture" with "In 1882, thanks largely to
the second governor, Uesugi Mochinori, five young men were selected to
go to Tokyo to study at prefectural expense. They were all from the gentry
class except Jahana Noboru, a commoner. While the others studied liberal
arts, Jahana, at the request of the prefecture, studied agriculture, graduating
from the Imperial Tokyo University in 1891. He was the first commoner
and the first Okinawan to receive a bachelor of arts. In Okinawa, he was
appointed a specialist in agriculture, a higher civil service position. Alone
among the oligarchy of Gov. Narahara Shigeru and his faction, he fought
injustices wherever he found them. Alone, defeated, and insane, he died in
1908.
Another of the five who deserves mention is Ota Chofu. He proved to
be more realistic than Jahana, and he distinguished himself as a leading
journalist in the progressive forces of Okinawa."
p. 417. Entire par. 1 & 2, "Tokyo ordered . . . political life." Replace
by the following:
"In 1884, Gusukuma Seian from Okinawa was on Miyako Island as an
advisor in sugar production. When he saw the islanders suffering under the
poll tax system, he teamed with Nakamura Jissaku, a pearl culture
businessman, from Niigata, to have the poll tax system abolished. They
received fervent support from the peasants, but prefectural authorities
blocked them. Finally they bypassed Naha and went directly to Tokyo
where, with popular support from the newspapers, they appealed to the
sympathetic ears of the members of the Diet . Their bill, Petition for the
Reform of Okinawa Prefectural Government, passed the Diet in 1894, and
eight years later, in 1903, the infamous poll tax was abolished.n6
 plate 35, caption for Higa Shuhei, line 3 Replace "Yutenja" with "Yun
tanja." p. 438, par. 2, last line. Replace "high" with "middle" p. 460, par, 3,
line 4 Replace "Wei-hai-wei" with "Weihaiwei" p. 461, par. 1, lines 3-
7 Replace "Speeding to Yaeyama . . .
Hisamatsu." with "Rowing 80 miles over the rough open seas to
Yaeyama, the fishermen reported what they had seen: however, the honor of
the first report on the Russian fleet went to another Japanese ship. The five
fishermen's story was forgotten. But in 1935, after 30 years, the Ministry of
the Navy suddenjy presented them an award, and the newspapers hailed
them as great heroes.n7
p. 462, par. 2, line 4 Replace "General" with "Colonel" p. 463, par. 3,
last line. Replace "occupying forces" with "garrison." p. 477, footnote 2,
line 5 from bottom. Replace "Kobata Jun: Chusei Nanto Tsusho-boeki Oshi
no Kenkyu" with "Kobata Atsushi, Chusei Nanto Tsuko-boeki-shi no
Kenkyu"
p. 479, footnote 14, line 1, after "revenues" add "(sic)" It should be
"gross productivity," not just revenue.
p. 479, footnote 14, line 3, after "income", add "(sic)." It should be
"gross income," not just income.
p. 517, References Replace "Kobata Jun: Chusei Nanto Tsusho-boeki
Oshi no Kenkyu" with "Kobata Atsushi, Chusei Nanto Tsuko-boeki-shi no
Kenkyu"
p. 529, Index Replace "Kotabaru" with "Katabaru"
p. 538, Index, under Sho kings Replace "Kanemaro" with
"Kanemaru."
p. 534, Index, under Oyakata Delete (Uekata)
 p. 541, Index Delete "uekata (oyakata), 188."

Footnote

n1 Shinzato Keiji, et al. Okinawa-ken no rekishi, 1972. 94-95.

n2 Ryukyu kankei monjo, MS, V: folio 11-12.

n3Okinawa Encyclopedia, III, 904.

n4 Ibid., 682.

n5The diary of Oka Tadasu, a Japanese police officer and a member of the special contingent,

Ryukyu shutcho nisshi, reprinted in the Ryukyu shozoku mondai kankei shiryo, II, 1975. No

pagination.

n6Okinawa Encyclopedia, III, 34, 141.

n7Okinawa Encyclopedia, III, 294.