03 │ The Satsuma Invasion and “Dual Subordination” — A State with Two Suzerains

⚔️Article 3 │ The Satsuma Invasion and “Dual Subordination”
In 1609, the Shimazu house (Shimazu-shi, 島津氏) of the Satsuma domain in southern Kyushu launched a military invasion of the Ryukyu Kingdom. From that point on, Ryukyu became a peculiar state of “dual subordination” (ryōzoku, 両属): it continued to receive investiture from China (the Ming and later the Qing) while at the same time falling under the control of Japan’s Satsuma domain. This article asks how a double allegiance that lasted nearly three centuries was even possible, and what it means for the history of karate.

🧭Orientation for readers new to Japanese history

Satsuma (薩摩) was a powerful domain (han) at the southern tip of Kyushu, ruled by the Shimazu family. “Domain” here means a semi-autonomous territory governed by a warrior lord (daimyō) under the loose overlordship of the Tokugawa shogunate.
The Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu, est. 1603) was the military government that ruled Japan until 1868. The country was not a centralized state but a federation of domains under the shogun.
“Investiture” and “tribute” were the ceremonial backbone of the East Asian order, in which the Chinese emperor recognized a foreign ruler and received periodic tribute missions in return. Article 2 explains this system in detail. </aside>

1609 — How the Invasion Came About

At the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 — the decisive clash that brought the Tokugawa to national power — the Shimazu had sided with the losing “Western Army.” This left them politically vulnerable before Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康), the victor. Satsuma was also in financial difficulty and needed both a new source of revenue and a way to restore its political standing. The Ryukyu Kingdom, for its part, was losing the profits of its old entrepôt trade as the Ming dynasty entered its decline and the trading order of East Asia grew unstable.

In the third month of 1609 (Keichō 14), Shimazu Iehisa (島津家久, also known as Tadatsune; 1576–1638) — with the permission of the Tokugawa shogunate — dispatched an army of about 3,000 men, with Kabayama Hisataka (樺山久高) as commander-in-chief. Against a Satsuma force equipped with matchlock guns, the Ryukyuan side was quickly defeated; Shuri Castle fell, and King Shō Nei (尚寧王, Shō Nei; 1564–1620) was taken to Satsuma. After roughly two years’ detention, in 1611 the king was permitted to return to Ryukyu. His title as king was never revoked, and Shō Nei continued to reign — but the kingdom’s standing in the wider world had changed profoundly.

📝A point of clarification often blurred in popular accounts: Shō Nei was a captive, not a deposed monarch. He was held in Kagoshima and taken to meet Ieyasu at Sunpu and the second shogun Tokugawa Hidetada at Edo, then released in 1611 to resume his reign. The kingdom and its royal line survived the conquest intact.

The Structure of “Dual Subordination”

After the invasion, Ryukyu was placed under a complex arrangement with two faces.

Subordination to the Japanese side (Satsuma)

Cession of the Amami Islands. The Amami island group — Amami Ōshima, Kikaijima, Tokunoshima, Okinoerabujima, Yoronjima, and others — was absorbed into Satsuma’s direct control. For outward appearances these islands were sometimes still treated as Ryukyuan territory, but in substance they came under Satsuma’s direct rule. This is the origin of the present-day boundary between the Amami region of Kagoshima Prefecture and Okinawa Prefecture.
Incorporation into the kokudaka system. Satsuma assessed Ryukyu at a productive capacity of just over 89,000 koku (a koku being a unit of rice yield used to measure a domain’s wealth) and demanded a fixed annual tribute in kind, known as shinobose (仕上世). A 1611 land survey (kenchi) fixed this figure.
A resident overseer. Satsuma stationed a permanent resident commissioner (zaiban bugyō, 在番奉行) at Naha to monitor Ryukyu’s domestic administration and foreign relations.
The Fifteen Injunctions (Okite jūgo-kajō, 掟十五ヶ条). Imposed in 1611, these regulated foreign trade, weights and measures, dealings with Satsuma officials, and the running of the royal government, setting out the framework of Satsuma’s management of Ryukyu.

Maintaining the relationship with China

Outwardly, Satsuma did not treat Ryukyu as “part of Japan.” The reason was coldly practical: to annex Ryukyu openly would have severed the tributary trade with China, and with it the very profits that made Ryukyu valuable to Satsuma and Japan. On the contrary, Satsuma actively insisted that Ryukyu remain a Chinese tributary.

Thus, when Chinese investiture envoys came to Ryukyu, Satsuma’s resident commissioner went into hiding, and an elaborate “ritual of concealment” was performed so that the Japanese presence would be invisible to the Chinese side. Japanese-style dress and hairstyles were forbidden, and the use of the Japanese language was avoided in front of the Chinese envoys.

As a result, Ryukyu became a state with two faces: outwardly an independent Chinese tributary, but in substance under Satsuma’s control. In the historiography of early modern Ryukyu this is called the system of dual subordination (ryōzoku taisei).

The Economics of Dual Subordination

Dual subordination held together because the calculations of four parties — Satsuma, the shogunate, Ryukyu, and China — happened to align.

Satsuma could siphon off the profits of the China trade through Ryukyu. It functioned as a “back channel” distinct from the shogunate-sanctioned trade conducted through Nagasaki.
The Tokugawa shogunate could keep foreign relations under control while obtaining Chinese goods and intelligence by way of Satsuma. From 1634 onward it became routine for Ryukyu to send a congratulatory mission (keigashi, 慶賀使) on the accession of each new shogun and a mission of thanks (shaonshi, 謝恩使) on the accession of each new Ryukyuan king. These journeys to the shogunal capital were known as “going up to Edo” (Edo nobori, 江戸上り); eighteen such missions were made between 1634 and 1850.
Ryukyu escaped outright conquest and was able to preserve the form of a kingdom. Its entrepôt profits shrank, but it still played a part in East Asian commerce.
China. The Ming court learned of the Satsuma invasion through a 1610 report sent with Ryukyu’s tribute, yet it did not immediately break off the tributary relationship and continued to treat Ryukyu as a tributary state.

A Culture with Two Faces

Under dual subordination, Ryukyu was culturally double as well.

Official documents and diplomacy were conducted in classical Chinese.
Internal records of the royal government used both classical Chinese and the Japanese kana syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), later shifting toward a Japanese-style written register.
The gentry of Shuri and Naha received a Confucian education in the Chinese manner and composed Chinese poetry, while also absorbing the culture of the Japanese mainland — calligraphy, the tea ceremony, noh theater — by way of Satsuma.
Court and diplomatic ceremony combined China-facing rites and performing arts to entertain the investiture envoys (the ukwanshin udui, 御冠船踊, the “crown-ship dances” staged for the Chinese mission) with the Japan-facing pageantry of the processions “going up to Edo.”

For the history of karate, what matters most is that during this period the Ryukyuan gentry maintained direct human and cultural exchange with Fujian Province in China. At Fuzhou stood the Ryukyukan (琉球館), officially the Jūen’eki (柔遠駅) — a hostel where Ryukyuan students, interpreters, and merchants lodged. That some of them learned martial arts there and carried them home to Ryukyu is a possibility repeatedly noted in karate-history scholarship. The traditions that Higaonna Kanryō (東恩納寛量) and Uechi Kanbun (上地完文, Uechi Kanbun) studied martial arts in Fujian belong to the extension of this same channel.

It has also been suggested that the martial arts of the Japanese mainland reached the Ryukyuan gentry by way of Satsuma — the Jigen-ryū (示現流) school of swordsmanship and forms of jūjutsu among them — but firm documentary evidence is scarce.

Re-examining the “Weapons-Ban” Narrative

As noted in Article 2, this point bears repeating. Popular karate books often present a two-stage “weapons ban”: that King Shō Shin prohibited weapons among the populace in the early 16th century, and that Satsuma then confiscated weapons in the 17th, so that — deprived of arms — the Ryukyuans developed an empty-handed martial art.

Of these claims, it can be confirmed that restrictions were placed on carrying or importing firearms and weapons under Satsuma rule. But no reliable source has been found showing that Satsuma confiscated all weapons within Ryukyu. The leap from there to “this gave birth to an empty-handed martial art” is therefore logically unsound.

Even under Satsuma rule, the transmission of armed disciplines — swordsmanship, spearmanship, archery, staff technique (bōjutsu), and sai technique — can be confirmed in later periods.
“Ti” at the time was largely transmitted in secret as an accomplishment of the gentry class, rather than as a self-defense art of the general populace.
Empty-handed martial arts existed in China and on the Japanese mainland as well; they were not peculiar to Ryukyu.

In recent karate-history scholarship, the prevailing view is that the claim “a weapons ban gave birth to karate” is an explanation that spread in the modern era and should, as history, be treated with caution (Bittmann 2012, among others).

A Note for Western Readers

In Western books on karate, the Satsuma invasion and the weapons-ban thesis have often been fused into a single dramatic story: “the Okinawan people were oppressed by Japanese samurai and invented karate as resistance.” This is half true and half a narrative manufactured in modern times.

The Satsuma invasion did indeed subordinate Ryukyu — but it did not destroy the kingdom. Dual subordination rested on a balance of interests advantageous to both sides, and it cannot be captured by a simple scheme of “oppression versus resistance.” The origins of karate are better understood not as resistance to a weapons ban, but as a blend of the bodily culture of the gentry class, martial arts transmitted from China and the Japanese mainland, and indigenous Ryukyuan conceptions of the body.

Notes on Terminology

Dual subordination (ryōzoku, 両属). The condition in which Ryukyu was simultaneously a tributary of China and a subordinate of Satsuma/Japan. It has no exact European parallel; the nearest analogies (a “condominium” or shared suzerainty) are imperfect.
Domain (han) and daimyō. A han was a territory governed by a warrior lord (daimyō) under the Tokugawa shogunate. Satsuma was one of the largest and most powerful.
Kokudaka (石高). A domain’s assessed productive capacity, expressed in koku of rice. It served as the basis for taxation and for ranking domains, even when the actual tribute was paid in other goods.
Shinobose (仕上世). The fixed annual tribute that Ryukyu rendered to Satsuma, paid largely in rice and other produce.
Zaiban bugyō (在番奉行). The Satsuma resident commissioner stationed at Naha to oversee Ryukyuan affairs.
Edo nobori (江戸上り). Ryukyuan embassies sent “up to Edo” — congratulatory missions (keigashi) for a new shogun and missions of thanks (shaonshi) for a new king — performed eighteen times between 1634 and 1850.

Coming Next

Article 4 takes up the Ryukyu Disposition (Ryūkyū shobun, 1872–1879), by which the Meiji government dismantled the kingdom. The ambiguous independence that dual subordination had sustained came to an end before the logic of the modern nation-state.

Bibliography

Kamiya Nobuyuki, Ryūkyū to Nihon, Chūgoku [Ryukyu, Japan, and China], Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2003.
Kamiya Nobuyuki, Taikun gaikō to Higashi Ajia [Taikun Diplomacy and East Asia], Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1997.
Uehara Kenzen, Kinsei Ryūkyū bōekishi no kenkyū [Studies in the Trade History of Early Modern Ryukyu], Iwata Shoin, 2016.
Watanabe Miki, Kinsei Ryūkyū to Chū-Nichi kankei [Early Modern Ryukyu and Sino-Japanese Relations], Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2012.
Kadekaru Tōru, Kindai Okinawa ni okeru tōde no hattatsu [The Development of Tōde in Modern Okinawa] (article), 2001.
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Bittmann, Heiko, “Karatedō-shi to kinbu seisaku ni tsuite no ichi kōsatsu” [A Study of the History of Karate-dō and the Weapons-Ban Policy], Bulletin of the International Student Center, Kanazawa University, no. 17, 2012.
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