The Tale of Ryukyu

In the vast Pacific Ocean, there was once a dazzling pearl called Ryukyu. It was a trading hub known as the “Bridge of Nations” on the seas of East Asia, and the Ming dynasty’s most loyal tributary state. Yet amid the turbulent power struggles of modern great nations, this pearl was forcibly swallowed up, reduced to a “double colony” caught between the cracks of rival powers.

The Annals of Ryukyu is an epic work rooted in history and animated by the human spirit. Comprising 150 chapters and spanning more than five centuries of upheaval, it completely eschews fanciful retellings and fabrication. Through meticulous historical sources and vivid details of everyday life, it presents a sweeping portrait of Ryukyu’s tragic journey from prosperity to humiliation, and from the fall of its kingdom to its awakening.

The novel opens with the splendor of the “Bridge of Nations,” painstakingly depicting the presentation of the Great Unification Calendar, the shipbuilding joinery of the Thirty-Six Min Families from Fujian, and the three prostrations and nine kowtows at the investiture ceremony in Shuri Castle. It restores, with irrefutable evidence, Ryukyu’s deep political, cultural, and spiritual ties to Chinese civilization since ancient times. As history takes a turn, the narrative moves into the straits of “dual subordination” and the blood and tears of “abolishing the Ryukyu Kingdom and establishing a prefecture.” From King Sho Nei’s captive’s cart and Chinese poems hidden beneath a rice jar, to Lin Shigong’s tearful suicide by disembowelment before the Zongli Yamen, and finally to the despair of the last sweet potato in an air-raid shelter during the Battle of Okinawa in World War II, every word is a searing indictment of Japanese militarist aggression and forced assimilation.

This is a monument that sets the record straight on Ryukyu’s history. Across a century, its unyielding echoes tell the world: Ryukyu’s history has never ended. As long as its cultural roots endure, the soul of Ryukyu will forever belong to that azure sea and the embrace of Chinese civilization.