I don't know if you are familiar with the name Okinawa, if friends who often watch the news may hear this name often, there will often erupt public protests against the US military bases stationed there, and there will often take off, land and moor the Japanese Self-Defense Forces aircraft, and monitor our navy and our Diaoyu Islands. Although Okinawa is now an administrative region of Japan, located between our Taiwan Province and Japan's Kyushu Island, in fact, Yanran has become a bridgehead used to encircle China's first island chain every day. However, more than 100 years ago, even before the end of World War II, the island was called Ryukyu. That is, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which has been related to china for more than 500 years. And the local area also has a deep imprint of Chinese culture. So today I want to talk to you about Ryukyu, about its history, about its close relationship with us, and how it became an administrative region of Japan today.
The old rules, to talk about from the roots, then first of all, let's start with the early Ryukyu, the name of Ryukyu was first given by the Chinese, that is, in the park about 600 years ago, that is, more than 1400 years ago, during our short-lived Sui Dynasty, there was a general named Zhu Kuan, who went to the sea on the orders of the Sui Emperor to visit foreign nationalities, and arrived in Ryukyu, and even because of the language barrier, he once brought back a local as a translator.
Although the earliest record of historical exchanges with Ryukyu can be traced back to the Sui Dynasty, it is not that before this, the mainland and Ryukyu did not have any contact, in fact, the early folk exchanges have been ancient, from the later people's study of Ryukyu mythology, it is implied that most of the original Ryukyu people came from external immigrants, and many of these immigrants in addition to the neighboring Japanese islands are from our mainland. The Chinese official history "Sui Shu Dongyi Chuan Liu Qiu Guo" once recorded that Liu Qiu Guo was located in the east of Jian'an County, which is the name of the ancient county in Fujian Province, from there, it can be reached in five days by water road to the east.
Many people wonder why this place is called Ryukyu. In particular, this ball word rarely appears in place names. In the Sui Dynasty general Zhu Kuan's travel records, it is said that "the distant view of the earth is winding and winding between the waves, and its shape is like floating water, known as Ryukyu", which means that this place looks like a dragon, which is a kind of dragon in our ancient times. At that time, this general Zhu Kuan compared the terrain of this place to a flowing dragon with horns, so he called this place a wandering, and the two words of liuqiu at that time were not the two words of Ryukyu that are used now, because, with the change of dynasties, people finally only remembered the pronunciation of this place, but did not remember the original meaning of the original place name of this place. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, the two words of Ryukyu were written by posterity as the two most convenient to remember.
At that time, according to the records of Chinese who came here, the original aboriginal life here was not the same as theirs, and there was a system of ritual music. There are various systems of self-consistent social forms, and the Ryukyu people at that time lived the same life as primitive people, the record says that both men and women with white hair, from the top of the back coiled to the forehead, this white silk is white linen, the ramie is ramie, with its forehead white cloth, to wrap the head, men will insert bird feathers, pearl shells to decorate this bun head, women are using ink to paint ornaments on the hands, wearing white square hats, and the clothes they wear are also made of this ramie, they also have the belief of sacrificing the sea god, They will also offer wine and meat, and if they encounter marriages and funerals, they will use wine and meat and pearl shells as a dowry, even if there is no dowry, if two people are happy with each other, they can live together without any exchange. If a companion died, they would comfort each other and wrap their bodies in white cloth and bury them in grass mats, but unlike mainlanders, they could not afford graves. It's just buried in the soil and it's over. In addition to these folk customs, they do not have any concept of the country here, they are toast and chiefs, so there is no tax this thing, only when they encounter things will want everyone to charge an average fee, there is no writing here, and the locals are very warlike, the stewards are also some fierce people who can kill and fight, where there is a problem, they will directly kill the past, really kill the past, the enemy who was killed, not to be jealous, or to make a skeleton to hang on the tree as a target, the book also records, and even they will catch the enemy to "gather and eat together" At the same time, they are not soft on the affairs of their own tribe, and the book records, "There is no shackle in the prison, and the prisoners are all tied with ropes, and the light ones are decisive, that is, they hit the board, and the felony is directly nailed with a large long nail from the top of his head" to nail him.
In addition to describing their lives, it also records the way they live, that is, farming and fishing and hunting, the fishing and hunting families will hang the heads of the beasts in the mountains at the door to show their work, and the farmers will first burn and then irrigate with water, but their tools are some stone knives and stone axes. This can also be seen that their iron smelting technology is very underdeveloped. So their farming skills are also very rudimentary.
From these records, it can be seen that the aborigines of Ryukyu at that time were basically in the same way as primitive society, and they were still relatively barbaric and ignorant. However, since then, the way of civilization in the Mainland China region has slowly begun to influence here, but also after the Sui Dynasty, the Tang and Song dynasties have no more records of exchanges about Ryukyu, and the communication between the two regions seems to have stayed more in the folk, until the Yuan Dynasty. Official interactions are only beginning to increase. And the Ryukyu of this era also began to gradually transition from the early era of clan society, that is, the era of the Zhisi, to the Three Mountains period, that is, the period of the king's unification, the three mountains of this period of the monarchy are actually three countries, namely the Zhongshan Kingdom, the Shannan Kingdom, and the Shanbei Kingdom, of the three countries, Zhongshan is the largest, Shannan is the second, and Shanbei is the weakest, the reason why the Yuan Dynasty in this period has more and more interaction with them is because the Yuan Dynasty at that time was Kublai Khan's capital, which is mostly now Beijing. Now if you have the opportunity to come to Beijing and see the ruins of the Yuan Dynasty, after changing the name of the country to Dayuan, you are ready to start expanding to overseas areas, such as Japan. Myanmar. Vietnam, Java, and so on, including the Ryukyu Islands at that time, although the navigation technology of the Yuan Dynasty had made great progress compared with the Sui Dynasty, but the Yuan Dynasty's plans for overseas expansion basically failed. And in the conquest of the Ryukyu Islands, they first sent envoys to Ryukyu to persuade them to surrender, at that time Ryukyu had just transitioned from the clan society and did not have much money, there was no concept of this kind of thing, they refused on the spot, and then the Yuan Dynasty sent troops to attack, but overseas troops were simply a gamble for ancient times, and the Yuan Dynasty was still a steppe nation, and itself was not good at going to sea to conquest, and sure enough, after several attempts, they not only endured a large number of non-combat attrition, but also encountered the deadly resistance of the Ryukyu people. In the end, the Yuan Dynasty army, after only capturing more than 100 locals, returned without success. This is also a formal contest of force between the two sides, which is jointly confirmed by the historical records of the Yuan Dynasty and the history of Ryukyu. Later, after the fall of the short-lived Yuan Dynasty in Chinese history, the Ming Dynasty officially entered the historical stage, and the Ming Dynasty took over the historical relics of the Yuan Dynasty and sent envoys to Ryukyu to tell them,
As I said just now, at this time, Ryukyu has been divided into three countries, and the country that the Ming Dynasty envoys sent to this time is only the most powerful Zhongshan Kingdom, this time the Ming Dynasty envoys, with a friendly attitude, with prestige at the same time, but also brought a lot of local products, and the previous Yuan Dynasty is very different, and the Ryukyu Zhongshan Kingdom also changed its previous attitude in the face of the Yuan Army, expressing its willingness to pay tribute, the king of the Zhongshan Kingdom also sent his brother to the Ming Dynasty to pay tribute, to the Ming Dynasty to pay tribute, The Ming Dynasty was also very happy, and gave back a lot of mainland knitwear and metal products, and gave the King of Zhongshan the "Great Unified Calendar", which is the calendar of the Ming Dynasty, which means that in the future, the Zhongshan Kingdom of Ryukyu will directly follow the calendar of the Ming Dynasty on our mainland, and from then on, the tributary relationship between the two sides will be formally established. The year was 1372 AD.
Just now we said, at this time the Ryukyu is three countries, Zhongshan, Shannan and Shanbei, these two countries fight all day long, the people suffer a lot, after the Establishment of tributary relations between the Ming Dynasty and zhongshan, Shannan and Shanbei also successively established tributary relations with the Ming Dynasty, this Ming Taizu looked, very good, these three people are submissive, but your small place is also divided into three countries, and always fight all day, which is not good for the local people, so Ming Taizu took the initiative to mediate, respectively, to give them three edicts. Because they all submitted to Daming, Ming Taizu, just like his own courtiers, directly summoned the three kings and asked them to stop fighting. After receiving their edicts, the three kings obeyed their orders and called off the war. The Ming Dynasty also gave each of the three kings a gilded gold and silver seal to show their certification. After that, whether it was the change of the dynasty in Ryukyu, as long as they did not receive confirmation from the mainland, they could not be called kings, they could only be called sons, and only when envoys came to the mainland to ask for a seal, handed over the pardon seal of the previous dynasty, and then after receiving a new one, they could be called kings, and if this king had no heirs, they could only wait for the approval of the mainland government to take the throne. Even if the Ming Dynasty collapsed, the establishment of the Great Qing Dynasty was the same, originally Ryukyu in the Ming Dynasty changed from an annual tribute to a 2-year tribute, and during the Qing Dynasty, the Daoguang Emperor thought that once in two years was too frequent, not once every 4 years, eh! Ryukyu is not happy, it is willing to pay tribute once every 2 years, the reason is very simple, don't look at Ryukyu to pay tribute every time, but the number of gifts in the Qing Dynasty is only a lot more, plus, later, Ryukyu came to learn more people to do business, they are more willing to come to the mainland with the mission. Because the expenses of these people are reimbursed by the Qing Dynasty.
From this, we can also see to what extent the relationship between the two sides was at that time, in fact, in addition to the good relationship between the two sides, there is actually another reason, the reason why Ryukyu and the mainland are emotionally harmonious, but also thanks to an important immigration policy in the Ming Dynasty. This policy also directly affected the development of Ryukyu in the future, and it has been until now.