🏛️Article 4 │ The Ryukyu Disposition and the Creation of Okinawa Prefecture
Between 1872 and 1879, the Meiji government dismantled the Ryukyu Kingdom and established Okinawa Prefecture in its place. This sequence of measures is called the Ryukyu Disposition (Ryūkyū shobun, 琉球処分). This article asks why the Meiji government felt compelled to absorb Ryukyu, and how the Ryukyuan side resisted — setting the story within the wider context of how a modern nation-state was built.
🧭Orientation for readers new to Japanese history
- The Meiji Restoration (1868) ended more than two and a half centuries of rule by the Tokugawa shogunate and returned formal authority to the emperor. The new government set out to remake Japan as a Western-style nation-state.
- The abolition of the domains (haihan chiken, 廃藩置県, 1871) dissolved the roughly 260 semi-autonomous domains (han) that had made up Tokugawa Japan and replaced them with centrally governed prefectures (ken). This is the institutional backdrop against which Ryukyu’s ambiguous status suddenly became a problem.
- The word “disposition” (shobun, 処分) is a piece of bureaucratic language. In Japanese officialese it means that a higher authority unilaterally “processes” or “disposes of” a matter without the consent of the party affected. The connotation is important: from the Okinawan point of view, the term itself signals that something was done to Ryukyu, not with it. </aside>
The New Logic of the Nation-State
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 set Japan on the path to building a modern nation-state along Western lines. A nation-state is a polity in which a single sovereign government exercises authority over a territory bounded by clear borders, inhabited by a homogeneous body of “nationals.” This rests on principles altogether different from the layered, overlapping, and deliberately ambiguous structures of authority that characterized the pre-modern order.
Under this new logic, Ryukyu’s condition of dual subordination — being at once “a part of Japan” and “a tributary of China” (see Article 3) — became intolerable to the Meiji government. To fix Ryukyu’s status was, for Tokyo, a matter of two things at once: defining the national territory and establishing undivided sovereignty over it.
1872 — The Ryukyu Domain Is Created
In 1871 (Meiji 4), the Meiji government carried out the abolition of the domains (haihan chiken), dissolving every domain in the country and reorganizing them into prefectures. Ryukyu, however, was at this point neither a “domain” nor a “prefecture”: it was left standing as a kingdom.
In 1872 (Meiji 5), the government invested the Ryukyuan king Shō Tai (尚泰, Shō Tai; 1843–1901) with the title of King of the Ryukyu Domain (Ryūkyū han-ō, 琉球藩王) and redesignated Ryukyu as the “Ryukyu Domain.” In form, this repositioned the post-Satsuma Ryukyu as a component of Japan’s domestic administrative structure. China did not recognize the change, but Japan, for diplomatic purposes, now began to treat Ryukyu as part of its internal territory.
📝A subtlety worth noting: the title “King of the Ryukyu Domain” was a hybrid. By accepting investiture from the Japanese emperor, Shō Tai was simultaneously enrolled in Japan’s new aristocracy (the kazoku, or peerage). The same king who had been invested by the Qing emperor was now, in parallel, being folded into the Japanese imperial order — a transitional arrangement that could not last.
1874 — The Taiwan Expedition
In 1871, a tribute ship from Miyako Island was blown off course and wrecked on the coast of Taiwan, and most of its crew were killed by indigenous Taiwanese (the Miyako Islanders’ shipwreck incident, which became the trigger for what is known as the Mudan Incident, Botan-sha jiken). In 1874, the Meiji government used this as a pretext to mount a military expedition to Taiwan (the Taiwan Expedition, Taiwan shuppei, 台湾出兵).
What matters here is less the expedition itself than the diplomacy around it. Japan negotiated with the Qing on the premise that “the Ryukyuans are subjects belonging to Japan,” and the Qing — by agreeing to pay indemnity and compensation money, and by characterizing the Japanese action as a “righteous act to protect its people” (homin gikyo, 保民義挙) — appeared to accept that framing. Japan thereafter claimed to have secured international grounds for treating Ryukyu as internal territory.
The Qing reading of the agreement, however, was not necessarily that Ryukyu was Japanese territory. It was a limited settlement concerning compensation for “subjects belonging to Japan,” and the sovereignty over Ryukyu itself remained unresolved. This difference of interpretation would later become a serious point of contention between Japan and China.
1875 — The Ban on Tribute to China
In 1875, the Home Ministry official Matsuda Michiyuki (松田道之, Matsuda Michiyuki) was dispatched to Ryukyu with the following demands:
- An end to tribute to, and investiture by, the Qing.
- Adoption of the Meiji era name and the Japanese calendar.
- Enforcement of Japanese law.
- The stationing of a Japanese garrison detachment.
This amounted, in effect, to stripping the Ryukyu Kingdom of its sovereignty in foreign affairs. The Ryukyuan royal government resisted strenuously and looked to the Qing for rescue. Many members of the gentry undertook what was called “fleeing to the Qing” (dasshin, 脱清) — crossing secretly to China to plead for intervention. Kōchi Chōjō (幸地朝常, Kōchi Chōjō; later known by his Chinese-style name Shō Tokukō, 向徳宏) was a leading figure among them.
1879 — Okinawa Prefecture Is Established
In the third month of 1879 (Meiji 12), Matsuda Michiyuki made his third mission to Ryukyu, this time accompanied by police officers and a detachment from the Kumamoto garrison. On 27 March he announced, at Shuri Castle, the abolition of the Ryukyu Domain and the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture. On 4 April the proclamation “The Ryukyu Domain is abolished and Okinawa Prefecture is established” was promulgated nationwide. King Shō Tai was compelled to relocate to Tokyo, where he was later granted the title of marquess (kōshaku, 侯爵), formally absorbing him into the Japanese peerage. (The Peerage Ordinance was issued in 1884; Shō Tai was made a marquess in 1885.)
In Okinawa, this forceful measure is called the Ryukyu Disposition (Ryūkyū shobun). As noted above, the bureaucratic word “disposition” implies that a superior power settled the matter unilaterally, without the consent of those concerned, and that nuance carries weight in Okinawan historical memory. Many scholars prefer to call it an annexation (Smits 1999).
The End of Dual Subordination and the International Dispute
The Qing protested vigorously against the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture. Li Hongzhang asked the former U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant to mediate, and Grant met with the Japanese statesmen Itō Hirobumi and Inoue Kaoru. In response, in 1880 the Japanese side put forward an island-division and treaty-revision proposal (buntō kaiyaku-an, 分島改約案): Japan would cede Miyako and the Yaeyama Islands to the Qing in exchange for revising the 1871 Sino-Japanese Friendship Treaty (Nisshin shūkō jōki) so as to obtain most-favored-nation commercial treatment. In the Beijing negotiations of that year a draft text was at one point agreed, but the Qing ultimately refused to sign, and the Ryukyu question was left hanging until the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). With Japan’s victory, the Qing could no longer press its objection to the Ryukyu Disposition by force, and Ryukyu’s incorporation into Japan was, in effect, settled for good.
📝A point of precision for readers who may encounter the claim elsewhere: the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), which ended the war, did not itself mention Ryukyu or Okinawa. Its terms concerned the independence of Korea and the cession of Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula, together with an indemnity. It was the Qing defeat — not any specific treaty clause — that removed China’s ability to contest the annexation, after which Okinawa’s status as Japanese territory was treated as fixed.
Preserving the Old Order — and Discrimination
Even after Okinawa Prefecture was established, the Meiji government did not push modernization quickly there. Instead it adopted a policy of preserving old customs (kyūkan onzon, 旧慣温存). Land-tax reform, the local-government system, conscription, and the school system were all introduced far later than on the mainland.
- Land-tax reform (chiso kaisei): carried out 1899–1903, roughly thirty years behind the mainland.
- The Conscription Ordinance (chōheirei): applied to Okinawa Prefecture in 1898. Miyako and Yaeyama were granted a temporary exemption, and conscription was extended to them only around 1903 — about twenty-five years behind the mainland.
- Opening of the prefectural assembly: 1909, about twenty years behind the mainland.
- Elections to the House of Representatives: the main island in 1912; Miyako and Yaeyama in 1919.
This means there was a period in which the Meiji government treated Okinawa almost as “half a foreign country.” The privileges of the old Ryukyuan gentry were left in place for the time being, with the aim of forestalling the discontent that rapid social upheaval might have caused. At the same time, the granting of national rights on a par with the mainland was correspondingly delayed.
The Assimilation Policy
Alongside the preservation of old customs ran an assimilation policy (dōka seisaku, 同化政策).
- Enforcement of standard Japanese: a punishment was used in which a child who spoke in dialect was made to hang a dialect placard (hōgen fuda, 方言札) around the neck. This practice was intensified in the Taishō and Shōwa periods.
- Incorporation into the emperor system: imperial portraits (goshin’ei, the official photographs of the emperor and empress) were granted to schools, and the Imperial Rescript on Education was ceremonially read aloud.
- Encouragement of name changes: Ryukyuan-style names were encouraged to be changed to Japanese-style ones (from the late Meiji into the Taishō period).
During this period, people of Okinawa Prefecture were often called “Ryukyuans” (Ryūkyūjin) by mainlanders and met with a discriminatory gaze. Migrant laborers heading to Osaka, Kobe, Tokyo, and elsewhere not infrequently encountered job advertisements stating “No Ryukyuans or Koreans” — a sight still reported into the 1930s.
The “Translation” of Tūdī
In the history of karate, the Ryukyu Disposition is decisive. For it was precisely amid the dismantling of the kingdom and its conversion into Okinawa Prefecture that “ti” (ti, 手, the bodily culture of the gentry class) was given a new meaning and absorbed into public education.
- Itosu Ankō (糸洲安恒, Itosu Ankō; 1831–1915) was born into the Ryukyuan gentry and learned “ti” in the kingdom’s last years. After the Ryukyu Disposition he campaigned to introduce tūdī into physical education at Okinawa’s prefectural middle school and normal school. In 1905 (Meiji 38), tūdī was adopted as a regular physical-education subject at the Okinawa Prefectural Middle School and the Okinawa Normal School, and Itosu was appointed as a tūdī instructor.
- The Pinan kata (平安, Pinan / Heian) are held to have been created by Itosu, who reorganized and re-edited older forms for use in school physical education. This was an attempt to “translate” Ryukyu’s traditional martial art into the framework of modern Japanese schooling.
Here a decisive turn took place, in which the legacy of the Ryukyu Kingdom was built into the apparatus of modern Japanese national education. Karate is not simply “a martial art that came from Okinawa.” It is the product of the gentry culture of Ryukyu being recast into the format of modern Japanese education. This layered character lies at the very root of the phenomenon we call karate.
A Note for Western Readers
Judged by present-day standards of human rights, the Ryukyu Disposition was the unilateral annexation of an independent state and a disregard for the self-determination of its people. It cannot be justified.
At the same time, the latter half of the nineteenth century was an age of sweeping colonial expansion by the European powers — the colonization of Indochina by the French Second Empire (from 1858), the consolidation of direct British rule in India (1858), the westward expansion and forced removal of Native Americans in the post-Civil-War United States, Russia’s advance into Central Asia, and the expansion of the Dutch East Indies. Japan, seeking above all not to be colonized itself, chose to imitate the logic of the Western powers and to “internalize” its peripheries. This is not a justification; but to discuss the Ryukyu Disposition in isolation from the international situation of its time is to misread history.
Behind the simple story that karate “was transmitted from Okinawa to mainland Japan” lies a painful history: the dismantling of an independent kingdom and its forced incorporation into a nation-state. Anyone who would tell the history of karate should not look away from this fact.
Notes on Terminology
- Ryukyu Disposition (Ryūkyū shobun, 琉球処分). The stepwise process (1872–1879) by which the Meiji government abolished the Ryukyu Kingdom and created Okinawa Prefecture. The word shobun (“disposition”) carries the bureaucratic sense of a matter settled unilaterally from above.
- Abolition of the domains (haihan chiken, 廃藩置県). The 1871 reform that dissolved the han and replaced them with centrally administered prefectures, a cornerstone of the new nation-state.
- King of the Ryukyu Domain (Ryūkyū han-ō, 琉球藩王). The transitional title given to Shō Tai in 1872, simultaneously enrolling him in the Japanese peerage.
- Peerage (kazoku, 華族). The modern Japanese aristocracy, formalized by the 1884 Peerage Ordinance into five ranks (prince, marquess, count, viscount, baron). Shō Tai was made a marquess (kōshaku) in 1885.
- “Fleeing to the Qing” (dasshin, 脱清). The clandestine crossing to China by Ryukyuan gentry to appeal for Qing intervention against the annexation.
- Preservation of old customs (kyūkan onzon, 旧慣温存). The policy of leaving older Ryukyuan institutions and gentry privileges in place rather than imposing mainland reforms immediately.
- Assimilation policy (dōka seisaku, 同化政策). Measures aimed at making Okinawans culturally and politically “Japanese,” including the enforcement of standard Japanese and the dialect placard (hōgen fuda).
Coming Next
Article 5 surveys how Meiji Japan Westernized and built a modern nation-state. The apparatuses into which karate would later be incorporated — school physical education, the conscription system, and budō — were all designed in this period.
Bibliography
- Akamine Mamoru, Ryūkyū ōkoku no hōkai [The Collapse of the Ryukyu Kingdom], Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2004.
- Kabe Masao, Meiji kokka to Okinawa [The Meiji State and Okinawa], San’ichi Shobō, 1979.
- Hiyane Teruo, Kindai Nihon to Iha Fuyū [Modern Japan and Iha Fuyū], San’ichi Shobō, 1981.
- Nishizato Kikō, Shinmatsu Chū-Ryū-Nichi kankeishi no kenkyū [Studies in the History of Late-Qing China–Ryukyu–Japan Relations], Kyoto University Press, 2005.
- Kadekaru Tōru, “Kindai Okinawa ni okeru tōde no hattatsu to Itosu Ankō” [The Development of Tōde in Modern Okinawa and Itosu Ankō] (article).
- Smits, Gregory. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics. University of Hawaii Press, 1999.
- Tomiyama, Ichiro. “Colonization” and “Citizenship” in Modern Okinawa (article).