Okinawa: Center of Asian Trade

From time to time, I read Professor Kerr’s classic about the History of Okinawa. For such a thick book, it’s surprisingly interesting and readable. But I also have a passionate interest in island cultures too, so perhaps I am just biased.

Okinawa though has always been interesting to me. My first encounter with the culture was (amusingly) in a Japanese video game, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, where the characters travelled to different parts of Japan and had many adventures. One chapter, late in the game, is to travel to the southern Ryukyu Kingdom where people speak a different language. I had never heard of Ryukyu, but years later I learned that Ryukyu was a real place. The Ryūkyū Islands, included Okinawa, which is called Uchina in the native Ryukyu language.

What makes Kerr’s book so interesting I think is how he carefully shows the story of how the Ryukyu People, who had very few natural resources, and constantly devastated by typhoons, managed to create a fascinating culture based on Chinese Ming-Dynasty culture, Japanese culture, Malay culture all mixed with native Ryukyu culture. What they lacked in resources, they more than made up with in ingenuity and trade.

It all began during Okinawa’s “three kingdoms” period when three separate kingdoms existed: Hokuzan (north), Chuzan (center) and Nanzan (south), which lasted all of the 14th century. During this time, the king of Chuzan named Satto, reached out to China and became a tributary state. The Okinawa people realized that their livelihood depended a lot of trade with China, so they worked very hard to learn Chinese culture, language, and protocol. They even dedicated a special village named Kumemura (久米村) for Chinese immigrants and descendants who served the court at Shuri (首里).

This impressed the Ming Emperors so much that a special relation developed with Okinawa, and trade flourished. By the time three kingdoms of Okinawa were united under a local chief (anji) named Hashi, the Ming Emperor gave him an official surname, shō (尚), or shàng in Chinese. From then on, Hashi was known as Shō Hashi, the first king of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Thus, the kings of Okinawa all took the name shō until the official end of the Ryukyu kingdom in the 19th century.

Anyway, the Okinawans were brave and skilled seamen so they traded with Siam (Thailand), China, the Malay kingdoms of Java, Malacca and Sumatra and with Korea and Japan. It was in Malacca and other places that the Okinawans came in contact with the Portuguese who described the Lequojos (Portuguese for Ryukyu people) over and over as “brave”, “completely trustworthy” (compared to other merchant groups) and “wealthy”. As Kerr writes about Okinawan traders:

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. (pg. 99)

Naha (那覇), which is the capitol of Okinawa Prefecture now, was the port city used originally by Chuzan, then the Ryukyu kingdom as a whole. Okinawa life centered around three cities: Naha for trade, Shuri as the seat of government, and Kumemura for skilled Chinese bureaucrats.

But as Kerr explains earlier, the trade was incredibly lucrative (pg 94):

• Exotics birds were sent to Korea, while bronze arts from Korea were brought back.
• Japanese bought Chinese luxury goods (silk screens, teaware, art, books, etc), while Chinese bought books from Korea or Japanese swords and lacqerware.
• From Southeast Asia, Okinawans shipped spices, rare woods (e.g. sappan-wood for dye)
• People in Southeast Asia consumed luxury goods from China, Korea and Japan too.

Okinawa’s location in the Pacific Ocean and the skill and bravery of its people made such a lucrative trade possible. For hundreds of years, Okinawans made tremendous profit on this trade, and were able to reach a great level of sophistication and culture for such a small chain of islands.

Even their clothing, as described by later European explorers, reflected this synthesis: Chinese robes according to Confucian-style ranking, hats were Malay-Islamic style, while they wore straw sandals (or barefoot for the lower classes). Their religion blended Chinese Confucian thought with Japanese Shinto, which blended well with local Okinawan religion. Japan, eager to improve relations with the Ryukyu Kingdom, even sent Buddhist missionaries to Okinawa where a handful of elaborate Buddhist temples were set up, even though Buddhism did not reach popular support at the time. The gates of Shuri Castle, meanwhile, were designed with a famous pair of “dragon gate” pillars, whose design was not imported from China or Japan, but rather Siam and Cambodia. Truly, for a tiny chain of islands, the Ryukyu culture was cosmopolitan as anything that existed at the time.

Anyway, as a celebration of Ryukyu culture which still thrives in Okinawa and the surrounding islands, this week is devoted to posts about life and history in Okinawa.