Remaking the Ryukyu Monarchy

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 237-239:

The unstable condition of Ryukyuan kingship probably constituted Shō Shin’s most pressing early challenge. His own rise to power, of course, had been a violent intervention. During the fifteenth century, reign changes based on personal military power had been the norm. Local rulers maintained their own armies, ships, and trade networks. In Okinawa, perhaps a dozen lords possessed significant military power. Remnants of deposed rulers from the first Shō dynasty and rulers based in other islands constituted additional potential sources of instability. The monopoly on tribute trade was an advantage to whoever controlled Shuri, but it also made that person a target. Shō Shin struggled for supremacy and legitimacy throughout his long reign. Military campaigns included local warfare not appearing in the official histories, as well as invasions of Yaeyama in 1500, Kumejima (1506 and possibly earlier), and continuing military tensions in Sakishima that included an invasion of Yonaguni around 1522 (or earlier) by forces at least nominally allied with Shuri.

Perhaps the greatest act of power consolidation was Shō Shin’s causing Okinawa’s major warlords (aji) to give up their castles and relocate to Shuri in 1525 or 1526 in return for high noble status—at least according to the common story. Survey histories routinely present this relocation as a simple fact, but we have no indication that it happened as a discrete, orderly event. It is not mentioned in any monument, in the 1701 Genealogy of Chūzan, or in any other text until Sai On’s 1725 Genealogy. Even there, the claim occurs with no explanation, only in the introductory material, and not under a specific year. The 1725 Genealogy text states that the presence of warlords had long been a source of uprisings and disorder. Shō Shin relocated all of them to Shuri, disbanded their military forces, and sent his own officials out to govern their territories. Kyūyō goes into more detail, but its only basis is Sai On’s assertion in Genealogy. Perhaps Sai On had in mind Japan’s early modern sankin-kōtai system.

The relocation of the warlords to Shuri makes logical sense within the overall trajectory of Shō Shin’s reign. We know that he stored weapons in a central armory under his control and reorganized military forces and other key state functions into the hiki system. There was plenty of turbulence and factionalism in the royal court after Shō Shin’s time, but there is no indication of an independent regional power elsewhere in Okinawa that could rival Shuri. Shō Shin brought potential regional rivals such as Nakijin, the Sashiki area, and Kumejima into orbits around Shuri. Regardless of whether and how he relocated or displaced regional rulers, Shō Shin succeeded in concentrating power at the capital to such an extent that no other entity in Okinawa or within the rest of the Ryukyu islands could seriously challenge it by the end of his reign.

Shō Shin’s reign marks the first known use of written documents for government administration. He also created an eclectic ideology in support of royal power. These measures had the effect of transforming Ryukyu’s monarchs and their governments. Before Shō Shin, kings of Ryukyu resembled powerful wakō chieftains. After Shō Shin, they resembled Chinese-style heads of a centralized bureaucracy. The official histories, and most modern ones, project this later, sixteenth-century model of the monarchy back to previous generations. Historians often perform this type of maneuver.

Shō Shin’s centralizing project did not stop with his death. His successor, Shō Sei, further enhanced Shuri’s military capabilities and continued to systematize the bureaucracy and official state rituals. He created a new type of military gusuku and developed the religious ideology of royal authority known later as tedako shisō (son-of-the-sun thought). Shō Sei also brought out the first volume of the Omoro sōshi.