Early Modern Ryukyuan Writers and Classical Japanese

By Robert N. Huey

From the Satsuma Invasion of 1609 to its annexation by Japan in 1879, the once independent Ryukyu Kingdom existed in an in-between space where it exercised considerable latitude in trade relations with China while being monitored by the Shimazu daimyo in Satsuma. Ryukyu officials referred to this situation as a balancing act (utōiee), which required many of them to be highly proficient in written Chinese and Japanese. This book focuses on Ryukyuans' experience with the latter, beginning with how classical Japanese developed as a written idiom in the kingdom. As written Japanese became more important to the Ryukyu Kingdom in its communications with Japan, officials who used the language in their diplomatic, trade, and personal relationships began to experiment with composing in literary Japanese. Such works have long been dismissed as imitative, but by reading them from a literary perspective and taking into account their historical contexts, author Robert Huey shows that particularly in the seventeenth century, a range of styles--inspired by classics of Heian literature--emerged, reflecting the multiplicity of voices within the kingdom: Ryukyuan writers made the language their own by "writing Ryukyu" in classical Japanese.

These Ryukyuan works precede by several decades similar efforts by kokugakusha (national learning scholars) during a surge of Japanese interest in Heian writing, indicating that Ryukyuans were not conforming to mainland norms when they chose to compose in medieval literary Japanese. Thanks to an increase in recent Japanese scholarship on Ryukyuan texts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and large-scale digitizing of premodern texts, Huey is able to examine in detail the knowledge transmission between Ryukyuan writers and Japanese literati, particularly those from Satsuma, and include numerous heretofore untranslated texts that aim to bring these authors to light and celebrate their work.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H75N5ZP8
• ISBN13: 9798880705047
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
• Length: 328 Pages