, also known as King of Lew Chew, , or more officially , was the

title A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify their generation, official position, military rank, professional or academic qualification, or nobility. In some languages, titles may be ins ...

held by several lineages in

Okinawa Island , officially , is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five Japanese archipelago, main islands of Japan. The island is ...

from 1372 until the monarchy's dissolution in 1879. According to the traditional official Okinawan narrative, the legendary ruler Shunten, who supposedly ascended to the throne in 1187, was first to hold the title. Additionally, the notion of a single-line of succession has been maintained despite the Crown clearly recognising several unrelated lineages acceding. However, the monarchy effectively started in 1372 when Satto greeted a Chinese envoy from the newly established

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

, although his son Bunei was the first to be officially recognized as the King of

Chūzan was one of three kingdoms which controlled Okinawa in the 14th century. Okinawa, previously controlled by a number of local chieftains or lords, loosely bound by a paramount chieftain or king of the entire island, split into these three more ...

Shō Tai was the final King of Ryukyu, initially as Second Shō dynasty, hereditary king of the Tributary system of China#Ryukyu Kingdom, Qing tributary Ryukyu Kingdom from 8 June 1848 until 10 October 1872 and finally as the Empire of Japan, Japanese a ...

was the final sovereign ruler of

Ryukyu The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Geography of Taiwan, Taiwan: the Ryukyu Islands are divided into the Satsunan Islands (Ōsumi Islands, Ōsumi, Tokara Islands, Tokara and A ...

until his demotion in 1872 by the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

Meiji Japan The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

to the title of Domain King (琉球藩王, ''Ryūkyū-han-ō)'' and his forced abdication in 1879. He was inducted into the ''kazoku'' with the rank of

marquess A marquess (; ) is a nobleman of high hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The German-language equivalent is Markgraf (margrave). A woman with the rank of a marquess or the wife (or wid ...

(侯爵, ''Kōshaku)'', earning him a hereditary seat in the House of Peers, which his son later inherited. It is curious that Shō, a monarch, was given a rank lesser than that of some Japanese ''kuge'' and ''daimyo'', such as the

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...

turned

prime minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Itō Hirobumi Kazoku, Prince , born , was a Japanese statesman who served as the first prime minister of Japan from 1885 to 1888, and later from 1892 to 1896, in 1898, and from 1900 to 1901. He was a leading member of the ''genrō'', a group of senior state ...

who received the rank of prince (公爵, ''Kōshaku'') in recognition for his achievements in the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

. Mamoru Shō is the current

pretender A pretender is someone who claims to be the rightful ruler of a country although not recognized as such by the current government. The term may often be used to either refer to a descendant of a deposed monarchy or a claim that is not legitimat ...

to the Okinawan throne.

Early forms of the narrative

The earliest known form of the narrative dates to the reign of King

Shō Shin was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom, the third ruler of the second Shō dynasty. Shō Shin's long reign has been described as "the Great Days of Chūzan", a period of great peace and relative prosperity. He was the son of Shō En, the founder of ...

of the

Second Shō dynasty The was the last dynasty of the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1469 to 1879, ruled by the under the title of King of Chūzan. This family took the family name from the earlier rulers of the kingdom, the first Shō family, even though the new royal famil ...

. A stone monument dated 1522 makes reference to "three dynasties of Shunten's, Eiso's and Satto's". His son King Shō Sei expressed the line of succession in a slightly more elaborate form. The ''Katanohana Inscription'' (1543) reads: "Shō Sei, King of Chūzan of the Great State of Ryūkyū, ascended to the throne as the 21st king since Sonton hunten (大りうきう国中山王尚清ハ、そんとんよりこのかた二十一代の御くらひをつきめしよわちへ). Similarly, another stone monument dated 1597 states that

Shō Nei was king of the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1589 to 1620. He reigned during the 1609 invasion of Ryukyu and was the first king of Ryukyu to be a vassal to the Shimazu clan of Satsuma, a Japanese feudal domain. Shō Nei was the great-grandson of Sh� ...

is the 24th king since Sonton hunten(しやうねいハそんとんよりこのかた二十四たいのわうの御くらゐ...). The numbers of kings mentioned in these monuments agree with those of the official history books compiled much later although it is not clear whether the individual members were fixed at this stage. Historian Dana Masayuki relates the notion of the line of succession to Buddhist temples where

ancestral tablets A spirit tablet, memorial tablet, or ancestral tablet is a placard that people used to designate the seat of a deity or past ancestor as well as to enclose it. The name of the deity or the past ancestor is usually inscribed onto the tablet. Wit ...

of the deceased kings were stored. According to the ''

Chūzan Seifu was an official history of the Ryūkyū Kingdom compiled between 1697 and 1701 by a group of scholar-officials led by Sai Taku. It was a continuation of the '' Chūzan Seikan''. It is composed of 19 volumes, one of which is devoted to correspon ...

'', Manju-ji stored the ancestral tablets of Satto, Bunei, Shishō and

Shō Hashi Shō Hashi (1372–1439) was a king of Chūzan, one of Sanzan period, three tributary states to China on the western Pacific island of Okinawa Island, Okinawa. He is traditionally described as the unifier of Okinawa and the founder of the Ryuky ...

, while the tablets of

Shō Taikyū Shō Taikyū (1410–1460) was a king of the first Shō dynasty of the Ryukyu Kingdom of the western Pacific island of Okinawa, reigning from 1454 to 1460. Although described in the official histories of Ryukyu and the Ming annals as a relative ...

and Shō Toku were at Tenkai-ji.

Shō En , previously known as , was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom and the founder of the Second Shō dynasty. Early life and rise to power Kanamaru was born into a family of peasant farmers on Izena Island,"Shō En." ''Okinawa rekishi jinmei jiten'' ( ...

, the founder of the Second Shō dynasty, established Tennō-ji and designated it as the family mausoleum. It is not certain which temples were dedicated to the missing kings of the

First Shō dynasty The was a dynasty of the Ryukyu Kingdom on Okinawa Island in the 15th century, ruled by the under the title of Genealogy of the Kings of Chūzan, King of Chūzan. According to the official history books compiled during the second Shō Dynasty, ...

Shō Chū was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom of the First Shō dynasty. He ruled from 1439 to 1444. Life Shō Chū was the second son of his father, King Shō Hashi. After his father conquered the Kingdom of Hokuzan, Shō Chū was appointed in 1422. S ...

Shō Shitatsu was king of Ryukyu Kingdom who ruled from 1444 to 1449. Life Shō Shitatsu was the eldest son of king Shō Chū. He died in 1449 without an heir and his uncle Shō Kinpuku was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom of the First Shō dynasty. Life ...

, and

Shō Kinpuku was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom of the First Shō dynasty. Life Shō Kinpuku succeeded his nephew, Shō Shitatsu, in 1449. A one-kilometer-long dam, which known as , was built in 1451 by Kaiki (Ryukyu), Kaiki, a somewhat mysterious figure fro ...

. Nevertheless, each king performed "ancestral" worship for deceased kings from different dynasties in the presence of a Chinese envoy, presumably because they deceived the Chinese into thinking that the throne was normally succeeded from the father to the son. According to the '' Ryūkyū-koku yuraiki'' (1713), Ryūfuku-ji in Urasoe, in addition to the above-mentioned temples, served as the royal mausoleum. This temple stored inkstone tablets representing the deceased kings from Shunten to Shō Hashi. According to the ''Chūzan Seifu'', Ryūfuku-ji was originally founded by Eiso under the name of Gokuraku-ji and was re-established by Shō En. Dana Masayuki surmises that Gokuraku-ji used to serve not only as the family mausoleum of the Eiso dynasty but as the state mausoleum tracing the royal line back to Shunten. The apparent conflict between Manju-ji and Gokuraku-ji is resolved if Manju-ji is seen as a representation of the state in relation to China while Gokuraku-ji was the manifestation of Okinawa's own narrative. Shō Shin established

Enkaku-ji , or Engaku-ji (円覚寺), is one of the most important Zen Buddhism, Zen Buddhist temple complexes in Japan and is ranked second among Kamakura's Five Mountain System, Five Mountains. It is situated in the List of cities in Japan, city of Kamak ...

and transferred the function of the family mausoleum from Tennō-ji to Enkaku-ji. Shō Shin founded another temple named Sōgen-ji and decided to use it as the ''state'' mausoleum while the function of Enkaku-ji was clarified as the mausoleum of the Second Shō dynasty. He moved all ancestral tablets, starting from Shunten, to Sōgen-ji and thereby visualized the single line of succession based on Okinawa's own narrative.

Minamoto no Tametomo as the father of Shunten

Minamoto no Tametomo , also known as , was a samurai who fought in the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156. He was the son of Minamoto no Tameyoshi, and brother to Yukiie and Yoshitomo. Tametomo is known in the epic chronicles as a powerful archer and it is said that he onc ...

(1139–1170), the uncle of the

Kamakura shogunate The was the feudal military government of Japan during the Kamakura period from 1185 to 1333. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Kamakura-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 459. The Kamakura shogunate was established by Minamoto no Yori ...

's founder

Minamoto no Yoritomo was the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate, ruling from 1192 until 1199, also the first ruling shogun in the history of Japan.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Minamoto no Yoriie" in . He was the husband of Hōjō Masako ...

, has been consistently treated as the father of Shunten since the earliest official history book, the ''

Chūzan Seikan , compiled in 1650 by Shō Shōken, is the first official history of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. In six scrolls, the main text occupies five and an accompanying summary the sixth. Unlike later official histories such as ''Chūzan Seifu'' and '' Kyūy� ...

'' (1650). The earliest known association of Tametomo with Ryūkyū can be found in a letter written by a Zen monk in Kyoto named Gesshū Jukei (1470–1533) with a request by Kakuō Chisen, another Zen monk serving to Ryūkyū's Tennō-ji. According to a tale which Gesshū attributed to Kakuō, Tametomo moved to Ryūkyū, used demons as servants, and became the founder of the state, which the

Minamoto clan was a Aristocracy (class), noble surname bestowed by the Emperors of Japan upon members of the Imperial House of Japan, imperial family who were excluded from the List of emperors of Japan, line of succession and demoted into the ranks of Nobili ...

had ruled since then. The reference to demons may reflect the centuries-old Japanese Buddhist perception of Ryūkyū as the land of man-eating demons, as seen in, for example, the '' Hyōtō Ryūkyū-koku ki'' (1244). Although at this stage, Tametomo was not explicitly associated with Shunten, the tale apparently circulated in the network of Zen Buddhists connecting Kyoto to Okinawa. A similar tale was recorded in the '' Ryūkyū Shintō-ki'' (1606) by

Jōdo-shū Jōdo-shū (浄土宗, "The Pure Land School"), is a Japanese branch of Pure Land Buddhism derived from the teachings of the Kamakura era monk Hōnen (1133–1212). The school is traditionally considered as having been established in 1175 and i ...

monk Taichū, who visited Ryūkyū from 1603 to 1606. This indicates that by that time, the tale of Tametomo had been known to non-Zen Buddhists. In light of these, the apparent innovation of the ''Chūzan Seikan'' (1650) was the explicit association of Tametomo with Shunten. The tale of Tametomo had a profound impact on Ryūkyū's self-perception. In 1691, for example, the king ordered all the male members of the royal family to use the kanji ''Chō'' (朝) as the first of their two-character given names, presumably to indicate an affinity to Minamoto no Tametomo (源為朝).

Association of the foundation myth with the royal line

Another innovation of the ''Chūzan Seikan'' (1650) was the association of the foundation myth with the royal line. The foundation myth concerning the goddess

Amamikyu , or , is the creation goddess of the Ryukyu Islands in the Ryukyuan religion. Name Amamikyu's name comes from the reading of the Chinese characters 阿摩美久 or 阿摩彌姑, which were most likely written ad hoc for the Okinawan pronunciati ...

itself was recorded in the ''Ryūkyū Shintō-ki'' (1606). However, the ''Chūzan Seikan'' was the first to make reference to the , who supposedly descended from the goddess. Without showing a clear genealogy, the official history books connect the Tenson dynasty remotely to the Eiso dynasty. Eiso's mother dreamed that the sun intruded into her bosom, giving a miraculous birth to Eiso, but Eiso's foster father was said to have descended from the Tenson dynasty. Similarly, Satto was said to have been mothered by a

swan maiden The "swan maiden" () is a tale classified as Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, ATU 400, "The Swan Maiden" or "The Man on a Quest for His Lost Wife," in which a man makes a pact with, or marries, a supernatural female being who later departs. The ...

. Shō En was believed to have descended from Gihon of the Shunten dynasty (i.e., the second Shō family originated from the Minamoto clan), or some other king. It is not clear why the ''Chūzan Seikan'' did not provide a special link to the First Shō dynasty.

Official narrative

Tenson dynasty

The founder of the Tenson dynasty was a descendant of . The 25 generations of the Tenson dynasty ruled the land for 17,802 years, but their names are unknown.

Shunten dynasty

The Shunten dynasty lasted from AD 1187 to AD 1259. In 1186, the 25th ruler's throne was usurped by Riyū.

's son Shunten overthrew Riyū the next year, becoming the king.

Eiso dynasty

The Eiso dynasty lasted from AD 1260 to AD 1349. In 1259,

Gihon Gihon is the name of the second river mentioned in the second chapter of the biblical Book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers (along with the Tigris, Euphrates, and Pishon) issuing out of Eden, branching from a single river ...

, who was the last king of the Shunten dynasty, abdicated his throne. Fathered by the sun, Eiso succeeded him. During the reign of Tamagusuku, the state was divided into three polities. The King of Nanzan (Sannan) and the King of Hokuzan (Sanhoku) came to compete with the King of Chūzan.

Satto dynasty

The Satto dynasty lasted from AD 1350 to AD 1405. Satto, the son of a peasant and a

, replaced Seii as the King of Chūzan. Satto started a tributary relation to the Ming emperor.

First Shō dynasty

The First Shō dynasty lasted from AD 1429 to AD 1469.

, the virtual founder of the

, overthrew Bunei in 1406. He installed his father,

Shō Shishō Sho, Shō or SHO may refer to: Music * ''Shō'' (instrument) (笙), a Japanese wind instrument * ''Kane'' (instrument) (鉦), a Japanese percussion instrument * Sho?, a Dubai rock band People * Shō (given name), including ''Sho'' * Shō (s ...

, as the nominal King of Chūzan. Shō Hashi annihilated the King of Hokuzan (Sanhoku) in 1416. In 1421, after the death of his father, Shō Hashi became the King of Chūzan. He overthrew the King of Nanzan (Sannan) until 1429, unifying the island. The surname Shō (尚) was given by the Ming emperor.Kerr, George. ''Okinawa: The History of an Island People''. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2000. p. 89.

Second Shō dynasty

The Second Shō dynasty lasted from AD 1470 to AD 1879. When Shō Toku, the last king of the

, died in 1469, courtiers launched a

coup d'état A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...

and elected

as king. He became the founder of the

. The kingdom was at its peak during the reign of his son,

. In 1609, the

Satsuma Domain The , briefly known as the , was a Han system, domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Satsuma Domain was based at Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Province, the core of the modern city of ...

conquered the Ryukyu Kingdom. From then on, Ryūkyū was a vassal state of the Satsuma Domain, while the king was ordered to keep its tributary relation with China. The kingdom became a

domain A domain is a geographic area controlled by a single person or organization. Domain may also refer to: Law and human geography * Demesne, in English common law and other Medieval European contexts, lands directly managed by their holder rather ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

in 1872. In 1879,

replaced

Ryukyu Domain The was a short-lived domain of the Empire of Japan, lasting from 1872 to 1879, and simultaneously a tributary state of the Qing Empire, until 1875, before being fully incorporated into Japan as the current Okinawa Prefecture and other islan ...

with

Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan. It consists of three main island groups—the Okinawa Islands, the Sakishima Islands, and the Daitō Islands—spread across a maritime zone approximately 1,000 kilometers east to west an ...

, formally annexing the islands. King

was dethroned and later given the title of

marquis A marquess (; ) is a nobleman of high hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The German-language equivalent is Markgraf (margrave). A woman with the rank of a marquess or the wife (or wido ...

Honored as king posthumously

References

Citations

Sources

* Kerr, George H. (1965). ''Okinawa, the History of an Island People.'' Rutland, Vermont: C.E. Tuttle Co
OCLC 39242121

External links

中山世鑑

中山世譜
{{Government of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Chuzan Monarchs, Ryukyu Monarchs, Ryukyu