Flags of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

Who & why: Japan's Meiji government formally abolishes the Ryukyu Kingdom on 27 March 1879, deposing King Shō Tai and annexing the islands outright as Okinawa Prefecture — ending the dual-tributary arrangement for good, since Qing China never accepted the annexation but had no practical means to contest it. Ryukyuan language and culture face decades of suppression under Japanese assimilation policy, and the islands endure the brutal Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and 27 years of US military administration (1945–1972) before reverting to Japanese sovereignty.

What it represents: Japan's Hinomaru, the plain red disc on white, flown as the prefecture's flag; Okinawa Prefecture adopts its own distinct prefectural emblem only in 1972, on reversion from US administration.

Ryukyu Han (Domain)

Who & why: in 1872, Japan's new Meiji government unilaterally declares the Ryukyu Kingdom a "han" (domain) of Japan and King Shō Tai a Japanese noble, a deliberate intermediate step that keeps the kingdom's own institutions nominally intact while asserting Japanese sovereignty and cutting China out of the relationship. China refuses to recognize the change, but Japan presses ahead, using an 1871 incident in which shipwrecked Ryukyuan sailors were killed in Taiwan as a pretext for an 1874 punitive expedition that further cemented Japan's claim.

What it represents: the han period is a Japanese legal fiction rather than a genuinely separate flag era; Japan's own Hinomaru is shown here, dashed to mark this as a transitional, contested status rather than settled Japanese territory.

Kingdom of Ryukyu (dual tributary)

Who & why: in 1609, the Japanese Satsuma Domain invades and defeats the kingdom, forcing it into vassalage and extracting tribute and trade concessions — but Satsuma, and the shogunate behind it, deliberately keep the kingdom's outward independence intact, since Ryukyu's continued status as a separate Chinese tributary state is exactly what makes it valuable as Japan's only legal channel into Chinese trade during Japan's own era of restricted foreign contact. The kingdom continues paying tribute to the Ming, then Qing, court throughout, answering to both overlords at once for two and a half centuries.

What it represents: no single fixed civil ensign is well documented for this era; the royal Shō dynasty's hidari mitsudomoe crest, attested on ships, banners, and palace regalia, is shown here on a red field as the closest approximation of a kingdom-wide symbol — an informed reconstruction, not a rigorously specified flag.

Kingdom of Ryukyu (Chinese tributary)

Who & why: Shō Hashi completes the unification of the three rival Sanzan polities (Hokuzan, Chûzan, and Nanzan) in 1429, founding the first Shō dynasty and establishing the kingdom's capital at Shuri. The kingdom becomes a formal tributary state of Ming China, exchanging tribute missions for trading rights, and grows wealthy as a middleman in maritime trade linking China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia — a role sometimes called the kingdom's own "Great Trading Age."

What it represents: as with the following era, no fixed civil ensign is documented this early; the Shō royal crest is shown here as the kingdom's closest identifying emblem, an informed reconstruction rather than a specified flag.

Gusuku Chiefdoms and the Three Kingdoms (Sanzan) Period

Who & why: from around 1187, local Okinawan lords fortify hilltop strongholds called gusuku and consolidate small chiefdoms across the islands; by the early 14th century this competition has sorted into three rival kingdoms — Hokuzan, Chûzan, and Nanzan, the Sanzan or "Three Mountains" — each with its own castle capital and, from 1372, its own separate tribute mission to Ming China. Chûzan's king Shō Hashi conquers Chûzan's throne in 1406, then Hokuzan in 1416, and finally Nanzan in 1429, unifying the islands under one crown for the first time.

What it represents: no flag in the modern sense is documented for the Gusuku chiefdoms or for any of the three Sanzan kingdoms individually; authority was expressed through castle architecture, regalia, and tribute missions rather than a woven banner. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

World context: this span runs alongside Kamakura- and early Muromachi-era Japan, the Mongol Empire's rise under Genghis Khan and his successors' two failed seaborne invasions of Japan (1274 and 1281), the completion of Angkor Wat in Cambodia (early 12th century), the Black Death's sweep across Eurasia (1347–1351), and the Ming dynasty's founding in China in 1368 — the same Ming court that each of the three Sanzan kings raced to send tribute missions to.