著者

福 寛美 吉成 直樹

出版者

法政大学国際日本学研究所

雑誌

国際日本学 = INTERNATIONAL JAPANESE STUDIES (ISSN:18838596)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.1-39, 2007-03-31

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The earliest written source material of the Ryūkyū kingdom, the collection of songs Omoro sōshi of 1623, includes a song text that cannot be interpreted in any other way than as describing the king and his noble companions committing thievery while sailing around the seas. Other omoro songs describe powerful male local rulers raking up tribute from harbor villages ruled by others. These are clearly songs of plunder and looting.There are other songs in which a sword named Tsukushi Chiyara (‘The Powerful One of Tsukushi’) appears. Tsukushi was a name for Kyushu, where the sword was purchased, and the name is known as another designation for the treasure-sword Teganemaru, owned by the rulers of the second Shō dynasty. Another song can be interpreted as saying that the great ruler of the southern Okinawan area (shimo no yo no nushi) prospered because of the rights he gained by possessing the sword Tsukushi Chiyara.Among songs associated with ruling dynasty, there are songs about gems, ‘Gems with Power of Tsukushi,’ which describe the gems surrounding the islands they rule. It seems reasonable to identify these gems with the three comma-shaped beads of the hidari-mitsudomoe used as the crest of the ruling dynasty, the sacred crest of Hachiman Daibosatsu, and the crest on the banner flown by Wakō Hachimansen pirate ships. This interpretation is supported by another song which describes the mitsudome pattern as three magatama (comma-shaped beads) in a circle. In short, it was thought that swords and beads deriving from Tsukushi (Kyushu) validated the rule of the Ryūkyū kingdom.Another omoro song sings of drinking alcohol in winter and summer, that is, all year round. Men’s liking for alcohol is a common theme in these songs, which imply that powerful men are especially fond of it. It is only natural that alcohol should have been appreciated in the world of the Wakō.In the omoro songs, several words appear with the prefix oni (‘devil’). This implies the possession of an unusually strong spiritual power. The founder of the second Shō dynasty, Kanamaru, is referred to as Onisanko, while a priestess who exhibited spiritual power in battle is called Oni no Kimihae. The places where high-ranking priestesses undertook rituals with swords are called Oni-gusuku, while the strong male ruler of Kumejima was “stronger than an oni.” Another omoro song describes an oniwashi (‘devil eagle’), powerful enough to rule the world, as extending its wings over Sashiki, the base of the earlier first Shō dynasty in the south of the island of Okinawa. The symbolic capture of this ‘devil eagle’ is what made the foundation of the dynasty possible. We believe that this oni is a symbol for the power of the Wakō pirates.The songs of Omoro sōshi are contemporaneous with medieval songs of mainland Japan, but do not fit into any of the frameworks of Japanese literature. This paper illustrates that research on the omoro songs from a new perspective may give us hints about the cultural distance between Yamato (mainland Japan) and Okinawa after the founding of the Ryūkyū kingdom.