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For the expedition to Formosa furnished employment for the Satsuma samurai, and, at the same time, assured the Ryukyu islanders that Japan was prepared to protect them. The campaign in Formosa proved a very tame affair. It amounted to the shooting-down of a few semi-savages.
The arrangement made was that China should indemnify Japan to the extent of the expenses incurred by the latter in punishing the aborigines. A fact collaterally established by the Formosan affair was that the Ryukyu Islands belonged to Japan, and, in 1876, the system of local government already inaugurated in Japan proper was extended to Ryukyu, the ruler of the latter being pensioned.
He was prompted thereto by Fujiwara Michinori, commonly known as Shinzei, whose counsels were all-powerful at the Court in those days. *The celebrated littérateur, Bakin, adduced many proofs that Tametomo ultimately made his way to Ryukyu and that his descendants ruled the island.
It was a mere question of precedence, but in the sequel Zuisa was seized, Ningpo was sacked, and its governor was murdered. The arm of the shogun at that time could not reach the Ouchi family, and a demand for the surrender of Sosetsu was in vain preferred at Muromachi through the medium of the King of Ryukyu. Yoshiharu could only keep silence.
This girdle was divided into several zones the inner zone with the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, Korea, the Ryukyu archipelago, and Formosa; the outer zone with the Marianne, Philippine, and Caroline Islands, eastern China, Manchuria, and eastern Siberia; the third zone, not clearly defined, including especially the Netherlands Indies, Indo-China, and the whole of China, a zone of undefined extent.
Historically, therefore, Ryukyu formed part of Japan, but its rulers maintained a tributary attitude towards China until recent times, as will presently be seen. Throughout the Muromachi period of two and a half centuries a group of military men held the administration and reaped all rewards and emoluments of office so that literary pursuits ranked in comparatively small esteem.
But it was on clear record that Ryukyu had been subdued by Satsuma without any attempt whatever on China's part to save the islands from that fate; that thereafter, during two centuries, they had been included in the Satsuma fief, and that China, in the settlement of the Formosan complication, had constructively acknowledged Japan's title to the group.
A letter addressed by him in the year 1591 to the King of Ryukyu stated clearly his intention of extending Japanese sovereignty throughout the whole Orient, and the ruler of Ryukyu had lost no time in making this fact known to Peking.* Yet it does not appear that the Chinese had any just appreciation of the situation.
In this same year, 1846, a French ship touched at the Ryukyu archipelago, and attempted to persuade the islanders that if they wished for security against British aggression, they must place themselves under the protection of France.
In 1416, however, an ambassador from the islands presented himself at the Muromachi shogunate, and twenty-five years later , the shogun Yoshinori, just before his death, bestowed Ryukyu on Shimazu Tadakuni, lord of Satsuma, in recognition of meritorious services.
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