Travis Seifman, PhD Candidate, History, UCSB, “Performing Ryukyu: Protocols for the Ryukyu Ambassador’s Ceremonial Audience at Edo Castle”「『琉球』を演じる：琉球使節の江戸城での謁見儀礼」
Over the course of the 17th to 19th centuries, the Okinawan kingdom of Ryūkyū sent some sixteen embassies to Edo, the seat of the Tokugawa shogun of Japan. These embassies were dispatched on the occasion of the accession of a new shogun in Japan, or of a new king in Ryūkyū, and were not “diplomatic” missions in the sense of involving any kind of policy discussions. Rather they were ceremonial reaffirmations of the ritual relationship between the kings of Ryūkyū and the Tokugawa shogun’s household.
The kingdom was simultaneously a loyal tributary to the Ming and Qing Empires from the 1370s onward, consistently sending missions every other year to Beijing, paying tribute to the Emperor, who then bestowed extensive gifts upon Ryūkyū in return. The Emperor of China also formally invested the king of Ryūkyū, recognizing his legitimacy and authority within a Sinocentric Confucian regional order.
Many scholars have noted the Japanese appropriation of the Chinese/Confucian rhetoric, replacing the Chinese Emperor with the Japanese shogun as the source of virtue and shining center of civilization to which foreign embassies (such as those from Ryūkyū) were inspired to pay tribute and respects. However, examination of audience rituals in Beijing and Edo reveals that while the rhetoric may be quite similar, the Japanese audiences reflect not an emulation of Chinese practice, but rather an adaptation of distinctively Japanese ritual practices to incorporate political meanings borrowed from Chinese models. In this presentation, I discuss the differences between Ming/Qing and Tokugawa audience ceremonies, and seek to complicate our assumptions about Tokugawa appropriation of Chinese court ritual.
琉球王国は中国の明初期からずっと大明・大清の朝廷へも進貢使節を派遣し、そして引き換えに、大明・大清が冊封使を派遣し、琉球国王を「国王」として認証した。それを通して、琉球が華夷秩序に組み込まれた。1609年の島津家の侵略からも、近世末期まで、琉球王国が将軍即位の際と琉球国王即位の際に、合わせて18回使節を江戸へも派遣させられた。
徳川幕府が中国のいわゆる中華思想、つまり華夷秩序思想、を我が物にし、皇帝の代わりに将軍を中央とするため、琉球使節・朝鮮通信使を用いたと学問によく言われる。が、儀礼の次第を見たら、『華夷』や『進貢』のレトリックが似ていると言えども、使節の謁見儀礼、つまり御目見え儀礼、の次第はかなり違う。要するに、江戸城での御目見え儀礼は中国の謁見儀礼の真似ではなくて、和様の儀礼でした。この発表では、大明・大清の謁見儀礼と徳川幕府の謁見儀礼の違いについて説明し、そして幕府の中華思想の我が物にすることについての思い込むことに論議を呼ぶ。