The Journal of Japanese Studies

The sources detailing the history of Ryukyu between 1372 and 1609 pay great attention to links with China. Ties to Japan, by contrast, have either gone unrecorded or else the documents describing them have been lost. The aim of this essay is to redress the balance by drawing on scattered Korean and Japanese records to demonstrate that Japan both exerted an important cultural and economic influence on Ryukyu and dominated the northward leg of Ryukyu's foreign trade.