Ryukyu Kingdom
Based on Wikipedia: Ryukyu Kingdom
The Kingdom That Played Everyone
For two and a half centuries, a tiny island kingdom pulled off one of history's most audacious diplomatic cons. The Ryukyu Kingdom, perched on a chain of islands between Japan and China, convinced the Chinese emperor it was an independent nation while simultaneously serving as a vassal to Japanese lords. Both powers knew the arrangement was a fiction. Neither wanted to disturb it.
This is the story of how geography, cunning, and the art of useful ambiguity turned a speck of land into the crossroads of Asian maritime trade.
Three Mountains Become One
Okinawa Island, the heart of what would become the Ryukyu Kingdom, spent much of the fourteenth century divided against itself. Three principalities carved up the island: Hokuzan in the north, Nanzan in the south, and Chūzan in the center. The names translate poetically as Northern Mountain, Southern Mountain, and Central Mountain, though calling them mountains dignifies what were really competing chiefdoms.
Hokuzan controlled the most territory and fielded the strongest army. None of this mattered. Chūzan held the economic advantages: the port of Naha, the political capital at Shuri, and Kume-mura, a community of Chinese scholars and administrators who would prove invaluable in the centuries ahead.
The unification came through a man named Hashi, who earned his surname from the Ming emperor himself. In 1421, the emperor bestowed upon him the Chinese surname Shō, pronounced roughly like the English word "show." Hashi became Shō Hashi, and he set about conquering his neighbors with methodical efficiency. Hokuzan fell in 1416, Nanzan in 1429, and for the first time, Okinawa had a single ruler.
The Ming emperor's recognition proved crucial. In the world of East Asian diplomacy, legitimacy flowed from China. The emperor's blessing transformed Shō Hashi from a successful warlord into a proper king, one whose authority other nations would respect and whose ships would be welcome in Chinese ports.
The Thirty-Six Families
The relationship between Ryukyu and China went deeper than diplomacy. In 1392, the Ming emperor sent thirty-six families from Fujian Province to settle in Ryukyu and manage the kingdom's oceanic trade. These weren't random migrants. They were experts in navigation, diplomacy, and the intricate protocols of dealing with the Chinese court.
Their descendants would form the backbone of Ryukyu's government for centuries. Many officials traced their lineage to these Chinese immigrants, whether born in China themselves or claiming Chinese grandfathers. They brought technological knowledge, diplomatic connections, and an understanding of how to navigate the treacherous waters of Ming court politics.
The Ming court kept close tabs on its small tributary. In 1406, the Yongle Emperor received a disturbing report: the Ryukyuans had castrated some of their own children to serve as eunuchs in the imperial palace. The emperor was horrified. These boys were innocent, he declared, and did not deserve such mutilation. He returned them to Ryukyu with strict instructions never to send eunuchs again.
It was a peculiar kind of imperial protection, simultaneously asserting dominance over the small kingdom while shielding its children from exploitation.
The Maritime Golden Age
What Ryukyu lacked in size, it made up for in location. The kingdom sat at the intersection of maritime trade routes connecting China, Japan, Korea, and the rich markets of Southeast Asia. For nearly two hundred years, Ryukyuan ships criss-crossed these waters, carrying goods that transformed the economies of multiple nations.
The arrangement worked because of a Chinese policy called haijin, which translates roughly as "sea bans." Ming China restricted maritime trade to tributary states and those with formal imperial authorization. Everyone else was locked out. Ryukyu, as a loyal tributary, enjoyed preferential access to Chinese ports.
Chinese ships provided by the emperor carried Japanese silver, swords, fans, lacquerware, and folding screens. They returned laden with Chinese medicinal herbs, minted coins, glazed ceramics, and brocades. Then these same ships sailed south, trading with Vietnam, Java, Siam, Malacca, Sumatra, and ports throughout what is now Indonesia and Malaysia.
From Southeast Asia came sappanwood for dyes, rhinoceros horn prized in traditional medicine, tin, sugar, iron, and ambergris, the waxy substance from whale intestines that somehow became essential to perfume-making. Indian ivory and Arabian frankincense rounded out the cargoes.
The Rekidai Hōan, an official record of diplomatic documents, catalogued one hundred fifty voyages between Ryukyu and Southeast Asia from 1424 to the 1630s. Sixty-one went to Siam alone. Ten each to Malacca and Pattani. Eight to Java. For a kingdom whose main island is smaller than Los Angeles, this was extraordinary reach.
Expansion by Conquest
The Shō kings were not content with their original island. Beginning in 1429, Ryukyu pushed outward, conquering the surrounding archipelago through a combination of military force and diplomatic pressure.
The campaigns started small. Okinoerabu Island and Yoron Island fell first, marking the beginning of what later historians would call Ryukyu's "southward policy." In 1447, King Shō Shitatsu conquered Amami Oshima, a significant island to the north. In 1466, King Shō Toku attacked Kikai Island twice. The islanders fought fiercely, inflicting heavy casualties, but eventually succumbed to Ryukyuan control.
The conquest of Kikai proved costly. Shō Toku personally led two thousand soldiers in large-scale operations, an enormous commitment for a small kingdom. The expense bred domestic discontent that would contribute to political instability after his death.
In 1500, a rebellion broke out on Ishigaki Island in the Yaeyama chain. King Shō Shin responded with overwhelming force: three thousand troops and forty-six warships. The Oyake Akahachi Rebellion, as it came to be known, was crushed. Further rebellions in 1507, 1522, 1537, and 1571 met similar fates.
To prevent future uprisings, Shō Shin implemented what the Japanese would later call a "sword hunt." All weapons possessed by the nobility and civilians were confiscated and stored in the royal armory under strict government control. Local lords, called ajis, were forced to relocate to the vicinity of Shuri Castle, where they could be watched and their military capabilities neutralized.
This disarmament policy would prove catastrophic when foreign invaders arrived.
The Fall of the Golden Age
By the late sixteenth century, Ryukyu's commercial dominance was crumbling. The wokou, pirates who terrorized East Asian waters, disrupted trade routes. The Portuguese arrived with their own ships and their own ambitions, injecting new competition into markets Ryukyu had once monopolized. China began withdrawing the preferential treatment that had made Ryukyu's trade possible.
Then came a request the kingdom could not fulfill.
Around 1590, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warlord who had unified Japan, demanded that Ryukyu support his planned invasion of Korea. Hideyoshi's ambition reached further still: after Korea, he intended to conquer China itself. For Ryukyu, a tributary state of Ming China, the request was impossible. Supporting an invasion of their imperial patron would destroy the diplomatic foundation of the kingdom's prosperity. They refused.
Hideyoshi's grand plans collapsed with his death, but the Tokugawa shogunate that followed remembered the slight. In 1609, they authorized the Shimazu family, feudal lords of the Satsuma domain in southern Japan, to send an expeditionary force against Ryukyu.
The invasion exposed the consequences of Shō Shin's sword hunt. With the population disarmed and military forces concentrated around Naha, the central regions of Okinawa lay virtually undefended. This was precisely where the Satsuma army landed.
The occupation proceeded quickly. Some fighting was fierce, but the outcome was never in doubt. King Shō Nei was captured and taken prisoner, first to Kagoshima and then to Edo, the shogunal capital that would later become Tokyo.
The Art of Dual Subordination
Here is where the story takes its strangest turn.
The Satsuma domain could have simply absorbed Ryukyu, turning the islands into another Japanese territory. Instead, they created something unprecedented: a kingdom that was simultaneously a vassal of Japan and a tributary of China, maintaining the appearance of independence while serving the interests of both masters.
The arrangement was a masterpiece of diplomatic theater. Japan had no formal relations with China. Ming China, and later Qing China, prohibited trade with Japan. But both powers needed the goods the other produced. Ryukyu became the solution, a nominally independent nation that could trade with China on behalf of interests it pretended not to serve.
King Shō Nei was released after two years of captivity, and Ryukyu regained a degree of autonomy. The Satsuma domain established a governmental office at Shuri but was careful to maintain the fiction of independence. Japanese were prohibited from visiting Ryukyu without shogunal permission. Ryukyuans were forbidden from adopting Japanese names, clothes, or customs. Most remarkably, Ryukyuan officials visiting Edo were required to pretend they did not speak Japanese, maintaining the illusion that they came from a truly foreign land.
The Shimazu family, lords of Satsuma, exploited this theater brilliantly. They paraded the King of Ryukyu and his officials through Edo, showcasing their unique prize. As the only domain to have an entire kingdom as vassals, Satsuma gained enormous prestige. The more exotic and foreign Ryukyu appeared, the more impressive Satsuma's achievement.
Everyone benefited from the deception. The Satsuma domain gained wealth from Chinese trade. The Tokugawa shogunate maintained access to Chinese goods without the complications of formal diplomacy. The Ryukyuan royal government retained its titles and much of its autonomy. And China received its tribute, preferring not to investigate too closely how the small kingdom managed its affairs.
The Arrangement Holds
For two and a half centuries, this improbable system functioned. The Satsuma domain established their governmental office at Shuri in 1628, and it remained the base of Japanese influence until 1872. The relationship resembled, as some historians have noted, the European concept of a protectorate, though the comparison is imperfect.
In 1655, the Tokugawa shogunate formally approved Ryukyu's tribute relations with the Qing dynasty, which had replaced the Ming in 1644. The justification was pragmatic: maintaining the appearance of Ryukyuan independence gave the Qing no reason to consider military action against Japan. The fiction served everyone's purposes.
The Satsuma domain grew wealthy and powerful from this arrangement. That wealth and influence would eventually help overthrow the very shogunate that had authorized the Ryukyu invasion. When Japan's feudal system collapsed in the 1860s, former Satsuma samurai would be among the leaders of the new Meiji government.
The End of Useful Ambiguity
The Meiji Restoration changed everything. The new Japanese government had no patience for the legal fictions of the old order. In 1872, Emperor Meiji unilaterally declared that the Ryukyu Kingdom was now the Ryukyu Domain, a formal territory of Japan.
For a few years, the appearance of independence was maintained for diplomatic purposes. China still considered Ryukyu a tributary, and the new Japanese government was not yet ready for confrontation. But in 1875, Japan ordered Ryukyu to end its tribute missions to China. The 1874 mission was perceived as an unacceptable show of submission to a foreign power.
On March 27, 1879, Japan formally annexed the islands and reorganized them as Okinawa Prefecture. The Amami Islands, which Satsuma had directly controlled since 1611, became part of Kagoshima Prefecture, where they remain today.
The last king of Ryukyu, Shō Tai, was forced to relocate to Tokyo. As compensation, he was given the rank of Marquis in the new Japanese nobility. Many royalist supporters fled to China, unable to accept the extinction of their kingdom. The king died in 1901, and with him died the living memory of Ryukyuan independence.
The Shō family continues to live in Tokyo, descendants of kings who once played two empires against each other and prospered in the space between.
The Lessons of the In-Between
What made Ryukyu remarkable was not its power but its positioning. The kingdom understood something that larger nations often forget: weakness can be a form of strength when you make yourself useful to everyone.
The tribute system that bound Ryukyu to China was not mere submission. It was a trade agreement dressed in the language of hierarchy. The kingdom received access to Chinese ports, Chinese ships, Chinese technology, and Chinese legitimacy. In return, China received symbolic acknowledgment of its centrality to the world order. Both sides got what they actually wanted.
The dual subordination to Japan and China was similarly pragmatic. Ryukyu could not resist either power militarily. Instead, it made itself indispensable to both, serving as the intermediary through which enemies could trade without the indignity of direct contact.
When that usefulness ended, so did the kingdom. The Meiji government wanted a modern nation-state with clear borders and unambiguous sovereignty. There was no room in that vision for kingdoms that belonged to two masters at once.
Today, Okinawa remains caught between powers. American military bases cover significant portions of the islands, a legacy of World War Two and the Cold War. The Okinawan independence movement, though small, has never entirely disappeared. The question of where these islands truly belong, and to whom, remains unsettled more than a century after the kingdom's formal end.
Perhaps that is the final lesson of Ryukyu: some places are destined to exist in the spaces between, their identity defined not by what they are but by what they connect.