Paper short abstract:

I examine formal audience ceremonies held in Edo castle to show how the kings of Ryūkyū (via envoys as proxies) were ritually incorporated into the Tokugawa order not solely or primarily as rulers of a foreign "tributary" kingdom, but rather in a manner which reaffirmed them as akin to buke vassals.

Paper long abstract:

Envoys from the Kingdom of Ryūkyū traveled to Edo for audiences with the Tokugawa shoguns seventeen times in the 17th-19th centuries. The shogunate's rhetoric regarding its relations with Ryūkyū and Joseon Korea invoked Ming/Qing political and cosmological discourses of the ruler as the center and source of civilization, to whom even foreign courts pay tribute. An examination of the audience rituals performed at Edo castle, however, reveals little effort to replicate the tributary rituals of the Ming or Qing courts. To the contrary, consideration of the scheduling of these audiences, their location, and the gifts exchanged suggests that the Tokugawa employed ritual practices and ideas well-established within buke hierarchies to incorporate the kings of Ryūkyū (through their envoys as proxies) into a shogun-centered order that was distinctively Japanese and decidedly buke in character. Where the Ming & Qing emperors, in various ways, incorporated tributary envoys, their own court officials, and others into a single all-encompassing entity known as "All Under Heaven," the shoguns did as samurai elites had for centuries, receiving each group of vassals, envoys, or other elite guests in separate spaces, at separate times, each in accordance with their rank, status, and/or relation to the Tokugawa house. Further, while Ryukyuan envoys wore Ming-style robes and kowtowed before the shogun as their counterparts on tributary embassies to Beijing did before the Ming/Qing emperors, they presented to the shoguns not the raw commodities typical of tribute - e.g. tin, copper, and sulfur - but rather gifts akin to those which samurai regularly presented to their lords, including horses, textiles, liquor, and most importantly swords: items of particular importance in a warrior hierarchy. In return, they received silver coins and seasonal clothing, just as samurai vassals did, the shogun performing his magnanimity, and his benevolence by clothing those under his protection.

Political rhetoric tells part of the story, but it was in the performance of diplomatic ritual that political realities were actually enacted; to understand the character of the relationship between the kings of Ryūkyū and the Tokugawa house, we must look at the rituals themselves.