Hidden in the azure vastness of the East
China Sea is a chain of tiny islands whose diminutive size conceals a massive impact on
world history. In the west, the subtropical climes of the Ryukyu isles are known primarily
as the birthplace of Karate and the site of the bloodiest battle ever fought between the United
States of America and the Empire of Japan. Today, this archipelago is fully integrated into
the modern Japanese nation-state. Yet, the natives of Ryukyu are a unique indigenous population who
stand apart from mainstream Japanese society with their own languages, traditions and, historically,
one of the most dynamic maritime trade empires in Asian history. In this video, we will explore
the storied past of these remarkable ocean-going peoples, focusing on the Ryukyu Kingdom and its
golden age at the crossroads of maritime Asia. That trade carries on even today, and we
have delicious proof of this coming from our sponsor TokyoTreat and SakuraCo,
unique monthly snack boxes shipped from Japan, packed with items rarely
available to the rest of the world. This month’s Tokyo Treat box is Okinawa
Seaside Snakin’, featuring the summer specialities of Okinawa island. That means
Okinawa Potato Chinsuko, Chilled Hiyashi Ramen, Kamesen Senbei and loads more. There’s a similar
selection of modern japanese specialties available in your Tokyo Treat box each month, featuring
special items only available seasonally, or only available in Japan, including limited runs of
familiar items like sakura Pepsi or sake kitkats. But if you want something more traditional, there
is also SakuraCo, who focus on artisan snacks and teas with a long history in japan. This month
you’ll get the Heritage of Nikko box, which features snacks from the long history of UNESCO
world heritage site Nikko City; such as Hinohikari Senbei, and Nikko Rusk that pairs perfectly
with 88th Night Shincha Tea. SakuraCo boxes also some with a delightful piece of tableware -
this month you get a traditional wrapping cloth, the Patchwork Furoshiki, used for decorating
or storing other items, or even yourself! And both boxes come with booklets that explain the culture surrounding each item you get,
and other facets of the monthly theme, so you can learn a few things as you
enjoy your curated snacking experience. To get either or both of these monthly
boxes delivered straight to your door, use our link in the description to set up
your TokyoTreat or Sakurco subscriptions, then wait for the good stuff to come to you. The Ryukyus Islands form a thin cluster of small
landmasses stretching from Kyushu to Taiwan, with Okinawa being the largest and most populated
in the chain. Today, the Ryukyus are part of Japan's Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures.
However, their native peoples are of different ethnic stock than the Yamato people of mainland
Japan. At least six unique languages are spoken across the Ryukyu archipelago, such as Amami,
Kunigani, Okinawan, Mikayo, Yaeyama and Yonaguni, all mutually unintelligible with standard
Japanese. For many centuries, the histories of Japan and the Ryukyus travelled down separate
paths. Unlike the traditionally inward-facing Shoguns of Japan, the Kings of Ryukyu built their
civilization on long-distance maritime trade, resulting in a vibrantly cosmopolitan society born
from a heavy heaping of Imperial Chinese grandeur, a coating of Japanese feudal grace and a dash of
spice from far-off lands like Malacca and Java. Inversely, the cultural contribution of the
Ryukyuans on the world stage is considerable, especially in traditional martial arts. What do
Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid, Bruce Lee in Fists of Fury, and three out of four Ninja Turtles
have in common? They all employ weaponry or combat forms originating on Okinawa. We will elaborate on
that near the end of this video, but first, let us dial the clock back and start our march through
Ryukyu’s storied past from the very beginning. The origins of the Ryukyuan peoples are
shrouded in the mists of prehistory. Their earliest ancestors likely shared much of their
ancestry with the Jomon and Yayoi peoples of prehistoric Japan and spoke the Proto-Japonic
language. Over many centuries, this archaic tongue split down multiple evolutionary
paths, with the speech of the southern islands eventually becoming unintelligible to
the Old Japanese that developed on the mainland. The climate of the Ryukyus is harsh: a land
of dense jungles and rocky mountains regularly battened upon by vicious typhoons.
Due to this unforgiving environment, the islands remained in the prehistoric stone
age for far longer than the Japanese mainland. In the 7th century, when the Yamato people were
forging a sophisticated agrarian Empire, their distant cousins were still scattered across their
native reefs in small hunter-gatherer communities. The early Japanese state was aware
of their estranged insular relatives, who they called the Nanto, meaning “southern
island people.” The Ryukyus also appear in the written records of ancient China. The
annals of the Northern Wei dynasty describe the distant islands to their east as a place
where Sorceresses and Priestess-Queens used their magic powers to wield absolute authority
over men. Unlike the deeply patriarchal culture of the Japanese mainland, Ryukyuan society has
long featured women in positions of great power. Even in later centuries, after secular rulership
became the domain of male royalty, women continued to be the islands’ main religious authorities. The
Noro, a priesthood composed exclusively of women, held an extremely privileged place in Ryukyuan
society for centuries and still exists today. Between the 11th to 13th centuries CE,
agriculture finally took hold on the islands. This precipitated the rise of a new hierarchy of local
chieftains known as Aji, who ruled from Gusuku: hilltop castles that kept a watchful eye over
a handful of surrounding farming communities. Over three hundred Gusuku were erected
across the entire Ryukyu chain. That amounted to a lot of local strongmen stuffed
together on tiny islands with not a lot of landmass to go around. It is no surprise,
then, that constant warfare was the norm. By the early 14th century, the Aji of
Okinawa island had been consolidated into a trio of loose-knit tribal confederations:
Nanzan, Chuzan, and Hokuzan. Meanwhile, great advances in shipbuilding and navigation
technology were slowly making long-distance merchant expeditions far more viable than they had
been in previous centuries. This planted the seed for the Ryukyus to rouse from the long slumber
of obscurity and burst onto the pages of history. In the solar system of the far east, China had
long been the sun upon which surrounding nations orbited. In 1368 CE, Hongwu, the first Emperor
of the prosperous Ming Dynasty, strengthened this Sinocentric world order by declaring that
any nation that wished to trade had to become a tribute-paying vassal of the Middle Kingdom.
From Korea to Vietnam to Java, over fifty Kings across Asia played along with this theatrical
display of servility for access to the riches of the Celestial Empire. In 1372, Satto, the King
of Chuzan, sent a tribute legation to Great Ming, beginning an era of Chinese suzerainty over
the Ryukyu islands that would last for 500 years. As it happened, the Okinawans were in a
perfect geographical position to benefit from subservient cooperation with China, for the
Ming Empire was in need of an intermediary to springboard its seabound commercial missions to
its tributaries located further across the sea. Thus, the Ryukyuans became key middlemen in an
extremely lucrative trade network connecting China with exotic locales like Champa, Khmer, Siam,
and Java. Okinawa’s propulsion into international relevance coincided with its unification. In 1416,
Shō Hashi, the King of Chuzan, conquered Hokuzan, and in 1429, Nanzan followed. To secure
the legitimacy of these annexations, Hashi sought official recognition from the Imperial
Court at Nanjing, which he promptly received. In the following decades, Shō Hashi and his
successors took to the seas, conquering the many gusuku of Yaeyama, Mikayo, Amami, and all
the other inhabited islands of the archipelago. For the first time in history, the Ryukyu
islands were unified under the rule of one state: the Ryukyu Kingdom, a polity which
would endure for over 400 years. In the halls of Shuri Castle, there once
hung a magnificent bronze bell. Cast in 1458 during the reign of King Shō Taikyū, it
features an inscription which reads as follows: “The land of Ryukyu is a lovely place in the
South Seas. An admirer of Korea’s excellence, cheek-to-jaw with China, close as lips and
teeth with Japan, this legendary island evokes admiration in its neighbors. Traveling by ship,
its people form a bridge between many countries, filling its temples with the most precious
goods and exotic products of foreign lands.” At the height of its power, the Ryukyu Kingdom was
a far eastern parallel to the merchant republic of Venice: barely visible on a map, yet a leviathan
of mercantile dominance at sea. During the reign of the Shō Dynasty, Shuri Castle, the royal seat
of the Kingdom, was transformed into a regal palace in the Chinese style, a visual testament
to the Ryukyu Kingdom’s commitment to emulating the opulence of the Celestial Empire. Although
the Kingdom’s aristocracy took the majority of its cultural cues from Ming China, they adopted
much from their other long-time trading partners too. The monks of Japan and Korea led the
way in popularizing the Buddhist faith in the archipelago, with the grand temples of Enkaku-ji
serving as the legacy of their contribution to Ryukyu’s religious tapestry. Meanwhile, a pair
of ‘Dragon Pillars,’ found at the entrance of the royal castle and modeled after similar structures
found in Cambodia and Thailand, indicate the intimate impact that the vibrant cultures of
South-East Asia had on the Ryukyuan social fabric. The royal line of Ryukyu was full of many wild
personalities. King Shō Toku, for example, was a swashbuckling pirate king who spent his
royal tenure as a seaborn corsair. He was known for being an early adopter of gunpowder weaponry
imported from China, and for being a devotee of Hachiman, the Shinto god of war. During his
reign, he took up the Mitsodomoe of Hachiman as his personal banner, a symbol which became the
royal crest of the Kingdom. However, the greatest King of Ryukyu is unanimously considered to be Shō
Shin, the third monarch of the second Shō dynasty. Before his reign, regional Aji still held
considerable power, and the Royal Court often had to contend with uprisings launched by these
agitated local warlords. Shin addressed this issue by coaxing the Aji to come live at royal castle
at Shuri, where he lavished them with material luxury and social prestige, then confiscated
their weapons. This effectively de-clawed the tigers prowling the countryside by turning
them into pampered house cats. In their place, the islands were now administered by a
properly centralized Royal government, helmed by a caste of scholar-beuracrats
educated in Chinese political philosophies. Next on Shō Shin’s list of things to consolidate
under state authority was religious life. For many centuries, the Noro priestesses
had wielded massive influence over the rural peasantry. To bring these shamanesses into the
fold, the Shō Shin established the institution of the Kikoe-ōgimi, or High Priestess,
to serve as temporal leader of the Noro. The role of Kikoe-ōgimi was reserved
for a woman of the royal family, anchoring the islands’ ancient matriarchal
cult to the royal line. Shō Shin’s reign also presided over a golden age of literature
and poetry in the indigenous Okinawan tongue, a testament to the fact that although the Ryukyu
Kingdom was a melting pot of cultural influence from all over Asia, its rulers never lost sight of
their own indigenous faith, language and customs. While the Ryukyuan Kingdom was coasting through
its golden age, the Empire of Japan had been in a state of political anarchy, but by 1603, the land
of the rising sun had been permanently glued back together. When Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu finished
his unification of the Land of the Gods, events leading up to a Japanese invasion of the Ryukyu
Kingdom was well underway. Back in 1592, when Ieyasu’s predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, had been
planning a grand conquest of Korea and China, he demanded that the Ryukyuans send troops to bolster
his invasion force. Not only had the reigning King Shō Nei refused, but he also warned the Ming
Emperor of Hideyoshi’s invasion plans. Despite the fact that Ryukyu was a Chinese tributary,
the rulers of Japan had always considered their estranged island cousins to be within their sphere
of influence. Therefore, this defiance was a sting to Samurai pride, and increased the Shogunate’s
resolve to bring the defiant nanto into the fold. The Japanese Bakufu also saw the Ryukyu islands
as a potential backdoor access to the riches of the Middle Kingdom. When the Tokugawa regime came
to power, they inherited a dismal relationship with Ming China. Throughout the 1400s and
1500s, Japan-based pirates had devestated the Chinese coastline, Japanese Samurai had
trashed a Chinese city over a trade dispute, and, oh right, a Japanese dictator had tried
to invade China through Korea. All this had, understandably, compelled the Imperial Court at
Nanjing to cut off formal relations with Japan, severely limiting Japanese access to Chinese
goods. In contrast, Chinese relations with neighbouring Ryukyu remained peachy keen. So,
schemed the Tokugawa Bakufu, if Nippon could somehow seize control over the Ryukyu Kingdom
without disrupting the island nations’s status as a trading partner of the Chinese Empire,
then the islands could essentially be used as geopolitical money laundering scheme to illicitly
funnel Chinese wealth onto Japanese shores. In the year 1609, Shogun Toyotomi Hidetada charged
his vassals, the Shimazu Clan of Satsuma Domain, with the task of subjugating the Royal House
of Shō. Being located on the southern tip of Kyushu isle, the Shimazu had long been both a
regular trading partner and a fierce political rival of the Okinawan domain, making them
intimately familiar with their enemy. Moreover, the Samurai levies of Satsuma Domain
were a battle hardened bunch, many of whom veterans of Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea. In
the end, it was a quick campaign. Although the Samurai of Satsuma encountered ardent resistance
from Amami to Tokunoshima to Okinawa, the spears, bows and Chinese-style firearms wielded by the
Nanto were no match for the modern, European-style muskets wielded by the ruthlessly disciplined
invaders. In the end, it took only two months for the Samurai to seize Shuri Castle and capture
King Shō Nei. Thereafter, the Ryukyu Kingdom was the possession of the Daimyo of Satsuma Domain.
As we recall, one of the main reasons that Edo had greenlit this invasion was to use the
Ryukyus to sneak Chinese products into Japan. However, if the Imperial Court of Ming found out
that their long time tributary vassals of Ryukyu were now a Japanese possession, they would likely
cut off trade with the islands. Thus, the Shimazu occupiers came up with a hair-brained scheme: to
keep their conquest of the Ryukyu Kingdom a secret from China. To that end, the Ryukyu Kingdom
was allowed to continue existing, and the Shō Dynasty was allowed to continue ruling, albeit
as a puppet attached to Satsuma strings. Next, elaborate steps were taken to make sure that
the Chinese would not find out who was really in charge. When Chinese traders arrived on Okinawan
shores, anything that displayed a Japanese name, such as a book, was hidden. If a Satsuma man
was spoken to in Japanese by a Chinese official, he had to pretend that he did not understand.
Moreover, native Ryukyuans were forbidden from adopting Japanese names, clothes, or customs. This
absurd arrangement had the effect of preserving Ryukyuan culture from Japanese assimilation.
After all, since the Satsuma clan insisted on maintaining the illusion that the Ryukyu
Kingdom was definitely, totally not a Japanese puppet-state, it had a vested interest in making
its people appear as non-Japanese as possible. According to folk legend, it is during this era
where the origin of Okinawan martial arts lies. As a preventative measure against local uprisings,
the Shimazu Samurai confiscated all weapons from the native peasantry. The rural farmers of
Okinawa, now defenseless, sought new ways to protect themselves. With humble ingenuity, they
turned everyday farming equipment into improvised arms. Trowels, millstone handles, rice threshers
and tenbin sticks eventually became Sai, Tonfas, Nunchaku and Bo Staffs. The restriction on bearing
arms also necessitated the adoption of unarmed combat, resulting in the development of Karate.
It should be noted that more recent historical analyses claim it was not the Okinawan peasantry,
but the native aristocracy, also forbidden from publicly carrying weapons, who developed Okinawan
Karate and kobudō. Either way, The Karate Kid, Fists of Fury, and so many other classics of
martial arts cinema owe many of their most iconic scenes to Ryukyuan defiance and creativity.
By the 19th century, the world order of the far east was changing. Having sailed into the
East China sea with massive gunboats and cratefuls of drugs, the Western World was the
master of Asia now. Japan was at a crossroads, it could submit, just as China had after the Opium
wars, or it could adapt. Japan chose the latter, and underwent the single most successful
national modernization projects ever achieved. As the Meiji government abolished the country’s
feudal domains and placed them in the hands of the central government, they began to look upon the
Ryukyu Kingdom as nothing more than an antiquated relic which had to be brought into the modern
age. This came to fruition in 1879, when the Ryukyu Kingdom was dismantled, and its territories
were fully incorporated into the Empire of Japan. The following decades were hard times for the
Ryukyuan people, who were turned into second-class citizens in their own ancient homeland. Meaningful
government positions on the islands were reserved for mainland Japanese, and native Ryukyuan culture
and languages were suppressed. Non-Japanese influences on Ryukyuan society underwent forced
erasure, while the native Noro priestesshood was forced to assimilate into a standardized form
of the Shinto faith mandated by the Imperial Government. In state-sponsored schools, Ryukyuans
were forced to speak only standard Japanese, and students caught using a native Ryukyuan language
were forced to wear a ‘dialect card’ around their neck as a form of public humiliation. The Imperial
Japanese occupation of the Ryukyus came to a head in 1945, when a certain sleeping giant, filled
with terrible resolve after an incident at Pearl Harbour, arrived upon their shores. During one
of the bloodiest clashes of the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese Army forcefully conscripted
thousands of native Ryukyuans and fed them into the meat grinder. During the battle, using the
Okinawan language was considered to be an act of sedition, and anyone caught speaking it was
labelled an American spy and summarily executed. The Battle of Okinawa was an apocalypse. Over
half of the island’s entire population perished, and countless priceless historical
monuments from the Ryukyu Kingdom, including Shuri Castle, were completely destroyed.
After the A-Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many Japanese colonies, such as Korea
and Taiwan, regained their independence, but the Ryukyus did not. The islands were administered by
a United States civil administration until 1972, after which they were returned to Japan, to whom
they belong to this day. Today, the lasting damage of over a century of forced assimilation has
taken its toll on the Ryukyuan people, most of whom speak only standard Japanese rather than
their indigenous tongues. However, despite their many tribulations, the modern peoples of Okinawa,
Yaeyama, Mikayo, Amami and all the other inhabited islands of this storied archipelago have held
true to their unique cultural identities. Thus, in a fully democratized Japanese nation slowly
becoming more receptive to protecting the cultures of its indigenous peoples, there exists a future
for the Ryukyuan people where their songs are still sung, their customs still practiced, and the
legacy of their Kingdom, a mercantile juggernaut at the crossroads of Asia, is kept alive.
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