Ryūkyū peoples

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Ryūkyū people in traditional clothing

The Ryūkyū peoples are the largest minority in Japan with around 2 million people . They settle in southern Japan, on the entire Ryūkyū Islands and in parts of Kagoshima Prefecture . Like Japanese, its six languages belong to the Japanese-Ryūkyū language family .

Okinawans are often used as a synonym, as Okinawa Island is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands. In addition, the capital Naha was the political and economic center of the Ryūkyū kingdom .

history

origin

The origin of today's population of the Ryukyu Islands has not been conclusively clarified, but linguistic, archaeological and genetically diverse conclusions can be drawn. The oldest finds are attributed to the ethnically imprecise term Jōmon culture and thus speak for a first population of the islands in the course of the same migration movements that also populated the Japanese islands. The southern population of the Jōmon has more East Asian type features and possibly comes from the Austronesian peoples of Taiwan , while the Jōmon in the north (see: Ainu ) were genetically closer to the Northeast Siberian and North American populations . In addition, genetic studies indicate that there was little genetic intermingling with the carriers of the Yayoi cultures , which immigrated to Japan about 2000 years ago and had a lasting impact on the population there. Comparative studies of the Y chromosomes , HLA systems and the SNPs in Ainu, Japanese and Okinawans suggest that the Ryukyu peoples were genetically isolated for a long time (" These data suggest Okinawa has been a population isolate for a long period ").

From a linguistic point of view, however, the Ryukyu languages derive from the same proto -language from which modern Japanese also originates (see Japanese Ryūkyū .). Furthermore, it is assumed that there were also numerous influences, since the northern Ryukyu languages, which are closer to the Japanese islands, show greater similarity to modern Japanese, but there is between the northernmost Ryukyu language ( Amami ) and the southernmost Japanese Dialect (Kagoshima / Satsuma-ben) a clear break.

Kingdom of Ryukyu

The Ryūkyū peoples formed the Ryūkyū Kingdom , an independent state that ruled most of the Ryūkyū Islands between the 15th century and the 19th century . The kings of Ryūkyū unified Okinawa and conquered the Amami Islands in what is now the Japanese prefecture of Kagoshima and the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan .

religion

The indigenous religion of the Ryūkyū people is practiced to this day and has parallels to and influences from other Southeast and East Asian religions, for example in the strong emphasis on ancestor cult , as in the (清明, " Shiimii "), a version of the Chinese Qingming- Solid . In contrast to the Japanese Shinto women, bearers of spiritual authority are women, who lead the spiritual ceremonies of families as priestesses (祝 女, " Nuuru ") and in their institutionalized role as high priestess (聞 得 大君, " Chifi-ufujin ") at court accompanied the highest spiritual office in the Shuri . To this day, many women work as shamanistic seers (ユ タ, " Yuta "), a tradition that is also found in the Philippines as Babaylan (see Philippine shamans ).

Buddhism and Shinto only established themselves after the annexation of Okinawa by Japan and exist today alongside the indigenous religion. Today, for example, the deceased are burned according to the Buddhist rite, but then buried in one of the Okinawean graves (see Turtleback tomb ). The classification of the so far not coherently named religion as a form of Shinto is more due to the origin and school of thought of the history of research than to a scientifically based discussion.

Influence on the history of East and Southeast Asia

The people of the Ryūkyū Kingdom were skilled traders and seafarers and, despite the kingdom's small size, had a great influence on trade in East and Southeast Asia. They traded with Japan, Korea and China as well as with Vietnam , the Philippines , Indonesia , Thailand and the Bamar empires of today's Myanmar .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James B. Minahan: Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO, 2014, ISBN 978-1-61069-018-8 .
  2. ^ A b Masami Ito: Between a rock and a hard place . In: The Japan Times Online . May 12, 2009, ISSN  0447-5763 ( japantimes.co.jp [accessed July 27, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Nasrine Bendjilali, Wen-Chi Hsueh, Qimei He, D. Craig Willcox, Caroline M. Nievergelt: Who Are the Okinawans? Ancestry, Genome Diversity, and Implications for the Genetic Study of Human Longevity From a Geographically Isolated Population . In: The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences . tape 69 , no. December 12 , 2014, ISSN  1079-5006 , p. 1474-1484 , doi : 10.1093 / gerona / glt203 , PMID 24444611 , PMC 4271021 (free full text).
  4. ↑ 日本人 は る か な 旅 展. April 21, 2015, accessed July 27, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Kumar, Ann. (2009). Globalizing the Prehistory of Japan: Language, Genes and Civilization. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Page 79 & 88. Retrieved January 23, 2018, from link.
  6. ↑ Nasrine Bendjilali, Wen-Chi Hsueh, Qimei He, D. Craig Willcox, Caroline M. Nievergelt: Who Are the Okinawans? Ancestry, Genome Diversity, and Implications for the Genetic Study of Human Longevity From a Geographically Isolated Population . In: The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences . tape 69 , no. December 12 , 2014, ISSN  1079-5006 , p. 1474-1484 , doi : 10.1093 / gerona / glt203 , PMID 24444611 , PMC 4271021 (free full text).
  7. ↑ Nasrine Bendjilali, Wen-Chi Hsueh, Qimei He, D. Craig Willcox, Caroline M. Nievergelt: Who Are the Okinawans? Ancestry, Genome Diversity, and Implications for the Genetic Study of Human Longevity From a Geographically Isolated Population . In: The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences . tape 69 , no. December 12 , 2014, ISSN  1079-5006 , p. 1474-1484 , doi : 10.1093 / gerona / glt203 , PMID 24444611 , PMC 4271021 (free full text).
  8. ↑ Noriko Kawahashi: Embodied Divinity and the Gift: The Case of Okinawan Kaminchu . In: Morny Joy (Ed.): Women, Religion, and the Gift: An Abundance of Riches . 1st edition. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures Book, No. 17 . Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-3-319-43188-8 , pp. 87-97 .
  9. ↑ Mayumi Negishi: Animistic rituals run deep in Okinawa. July 17, 2000, Retrieved June 19, 2020 (American English).
  10. ↑ Okinawa's “shrine problem”: Reconfigurations of Okinawa's religious landscape, 1879–1945. Retrieved June 19, 2020 (American English).
  11. ↑ Aike P. Rots: Strangers in the Sacred Grove: The Changing Meanings of Okinawan Utaki . In: Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo (Ed.): Religions . tape 10 . Oslo April 2019, p. 6-9 .
  12. ↑ Patrick Beillevaire: The Ethnology of Okinawa: Between Folklore Studies and Social Anthropology. (PDF) French National Center for Scientific Research - Japan Research Center, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, accessed on June 20, 2020 (eng).