The Course of Ryukyuan History and Other Essays

Castle ruins, remembered songs, an old family genealogy, and the bells of Shuri become evidence in Iha Fuyū’s exploration of Okinawa’s past. These six essays move between scholarship and personal recollection: a preface explains his approach to Ryukyuan studies, inscriptions and poems invite competing interpretations, and a study of Urasoi traces royal memory through tombs, ports, and surviving words.

The title essay considers the statesmen who negotiated Ryukyu’s relationships with China and Japan. Its confident political argument stands beside a sharper criticism of Okinawan social habits and a childhood memoir in which family affection, bereavement, school rivalry, and compulsory hair cutting reveal the pressures of a changing society.

Iha was a pioneering scholar of Ryukyuan language and culture. This collection preserves his historical arguments and the difficult judgments of his period, rather than replacing them with present-day explanations. Complete translated songs, inscriptions, and quotations remain in their original positions. Brief notes clarify readings, distinguish publication dates from later revisions, and identify uncertainties in local expressions and historical names.