Imperial Chinese missions to the Ryukyu Kingdom

Shuri was the royal capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom. It is today part of the city of Naha, Okinawa.

Upon the accession of a new king, the news was generally communicated to the Chinese capital, along with a petition for investiture, by a formal Ryukyuan tribute mission. Following the 1609 invasion of Ryukyu, beginning with the succession of Shō Hō, Satsuma Domain also had to be notified and asked for approval and confirmation of the new king.[1]

Chinese envoys would then be dispatched - sometimes quite quickly, sometimes not until over a decade later - arriving in ships called ukwanshin (御冠船, lit. "Crown Ships") in Okinawan. The mission would usually consist of two official envoy ships, separate crafts carrying the chief envoy and his deputy, as some uncertainty accompanied the journey;[2] these would be accompanied by a number of merchant ships. During Japan's Edo period, an agent from Satsuma known as a kansen bugyō (冠船奉行, "Investiture (Crown) Ships Magistrate") would be sent down to Ryukyu to supervise the exchanges and interactions between Chinese and Ryukyuan officials, albeit from somewhat of a distance, given the policy of hiding Satsuma's involvement in Ryukyu from the Chinese.[3]

Envoys generally stayed in Ryukyu for four to eight months,[4] and were extensively entertained by the Ryukyuan royal court. A number of structures built for this purpose, including the Ryūtan pond and the Hokuden (North Hall) of Shuri Castle, can still be seen today on the castle grounds. The total Chinese entourage generally numbered between 300 and 800 people, and hosting and entertaining the Chinese envoys was an extremely expensive endeavor for the Ryukyuan court.[2]

A "Dance Magistrate (踊奉行, odori bugyō, O: udui bugyō)" oversaw these entertainments; kumi odori, a traditional form of Ryukyuan dance-drama, was first created and performed for entertaining an investiture envoy and his fellows, in 1719.[5]

King Satto became, in 1372, the first Ryukyuan king to submit to Chinese suzerainty.[6] Beginning with the investiture of Satto's successor, Bunei, in 1404,[7] twenty-two such missions traveled to Ryukyu in total,[4] the last in 1866, for the investiture of Shō Tai.[8]

In the late 19th century, the Sinocentric tributary state system was superseded by the Westphalian multi-state system.[25]

• Ryukyuan missions to Edo
• Japanese missions to Ryukyu Kingdom
• Ryukyuan missions to Imperial China
• Foreign relations of Imperial China
• Ryukyuan missions to Joseon
• Joseon missions to Ryukyu Kingdom
• Kōchi Chōjō
• Rin Seikō

• Goodrich, Luther Carrington and Zhaoying Fang. (1976). Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644 (明代名人傳), Vol. I; Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644 (明代名人傳), Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231038010; ISBN 9780231038331; OCLC 1622199
• Kang, David C. (2010). East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. New York : Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231153188 / ISBN 9780231526746; OCLC 562768984
• Kerr, George H. (1965). Okinawa, the History of an Island People. Rutland, Vermont: C.E. Tuttle Co. OCLC 39242121
• Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2002). Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5; OCLC 48943301
• Suganuma, Unryu. (2000). Sovereign Rights and Territorial Space in Sino-Japanese Relations: Irredentism and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 9780824821593 ISBN 9780824824938; OCLC 170955369
• Chūzan Seifu (ja:中山世譜)

• Mizuno, Norihito. (2003). China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations: The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes toward Ming-Qing China, p. 109. excerpt from Japan and Its East Asian Neighbors: Japan's Perception of China and Korea and the Making of Foreign Policy from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004, as cited in Tsutsui, William M. (2009). A Companion to Japanese History, p. 83.
• Toby, Ronald P. (1991). State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1951-3
• Yoda, Yoshiie. (1996). The Foundations of Japan's Modernization: a comparison with China's Path towards Modernization. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-9-004-09999-9; OCLC 246732011