Rethinking the ‘Dual Dependence’ of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Abstract

Before Japan annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom (present-day Okinawa prefecture) in the 1870s, the Ryukyu Kingdom is said to have occupied a ‘dually dependent’ position to both Japan and China. This was because the kingdom had long existed both as a tributary state of China and as a dependency of Shogunate Japan following the 1609 Satsuma invasion. While the notion of ‘dual dependence’ is a convenient shorthand for interpreting the Ryukyuan past, this framing is insufficient for understanding the historical processes and debates surrounding the kingdom’s positionality in the nineteenth century. Indeed, while Japan, China and Ryukyu all came to use the term ‘dual dependence’ to reference Ryukyu’s past, this article will argue that as this term meant different things to each of these actors, these divergent perceptions underpinned how each of these actors responded differently to the annexation. Moreover, the article will also suggest that these alternative perceptions may have something to tell us about the historical trajectory of differences in how Japan, China and other states understand today’s contemporary world order. Rethinking the idea of ‘dual dependence’ thus may help deepen our understanding of the processes underpinning the ‘modern’ transformation of the traditional East Asian world order.