ryukyuan

Updated: June 9, 2025

Lying a little south of Japan, these islands had for some centuries been regarded as an appanage of the Satsuma fief, and the language spoken by their inhabitants showed unmistakable traces of affinity with the Japanese tongue. Therefore when, in 1873, the crew of a wrecked Ryukyuan junk was barbarously treated by the Formosan aborigines, the Yedo Government at once sought redress from Peking.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era