was a

scholar-bureaucrat The scholar-officials, also known as literati, scholar-gentlemen or scholar-bureaucrats (), were government officials and prestigious scholars in Chinese society, forming a distinct social class. Scholar-officials were politicians and governmen ...

and

diplomat A diplomat (from ; romanization, romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state (polity), state, International organization, intergovernmental, or Non-governmental organization, nongovernmental institution to conduct diplomacy with one ...

of the

Ryūkyū Kingdom The Ryukyu Kingdom was a kingdom in the Ryukyu Islands from 1429 to 1879. It was ruled as a Tributary system of China, tributary state of Ming dynasty, imperial Ming China by the King of Ryukyu, Ryukyuan monarchy, who unified Okinawa Island t ...

. He was known for leading a movement to petition the government of

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

China to rescue the Ryūkyū Kingdom from annexation by

Imperial Japan The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...

. It was standard at the time for members of Ryūkyū's aristocratic class to have two names: and . "''Rin Seikō''" was his Chinese style name, while or was his Japanese style name.

Life

Rin Seikō was born in

Kumemura was an Okinawan community of scholars, bureaucrats, and diplomats in the port city of Naha near the royal capital of Shuri, which was a center of culture and learning during the time of the Ryukyu Kingdom. The people of Kumemura, traditionally ...

, a community descended from Chinese immigrants in the Ryūkyū Kingdom. He had studied in the in his early years. Having been chosen to start on the track to becoming a bureaucrat, he traveled to China to study at the age of 26, remaining at the Imperial Academy in Beijing for seven years. Upon returning to Okinawa, he was made instructor to the Crown Prince

Shō Ten Marquess was . He lost that title upon the abolition of the kingdom and the forced abdication of the king, his father, Shō Tai, in 1879, and later succeeded to the title of in the ''kazoku'' peerage following his father's death in 1901. Lif ...

. Many people believed he would be elevated in position and power after King

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 ...

's death. But the government of Meiji Japan wanted to annex Okinawa, and unilaterally abolished the Ryūkyū Kingdom, and declared the islands to be the , with King Shō Tai as in 1872. Worrying about the future of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Rin Seikō left for China with Kōchi Chōjō and Sai Taitei (蔡大鼎) for help. With the

Ryūkyū-kan were institutions serving as homes and bases of operations for Ryukyuan missions to Imperial China, Ryukyuan missions in early modern Fuzhou (Fujian province, China) and Kagoshima, Kagoshima, Kagoshima (Satsuma Domain, Japan). Fuzhou The Chines ...

Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian, China. The city lies between the Min River (Fujian), Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Eastern Min, Mindong linguistic and cultural regi ...

as their base, Rin and Kōchi petitioned the government of Qing Dynasty China to rescue the Ryūkyū Kingdom from annexation by Imperial Japan, but there was little response. Finally, Japan replaced the Ryūkyū Domain 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 ...

on March 11, 1879. Rin Seikō went to Beijing to request that China send troops to the Ryūkyū Islands in the next year, but there was little response. Later, he heard that China had signed a peace treaty with Japan in

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

. Feeling hopeless, he killed himself by

sword A sword is an edged and bladed weapons, edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter ...

in Beijing.

References

*比屋根照夫「林世功」（『沖縄大百科事典』（沖縄タイムス社、1983年）） *上原兼善「林世功」（『日本歴史大事典 3』（小学館、2001年）） {{DEFAULTSORT:Seiko, Rin 1842 births 1880 deaths Ryukyuan people of Chinese descent 19th-century Ryukyuan people 1880s suicides Suicides by sharp instrument in China