Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ryūkyū Province

Ryūkyū Province

Ryūkyū Province (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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See WP talk:WikiProject Japan#Ryūkyū province and domain in which some argue that the article about the province should not exist. In other words, some argue in effect that Ryūkyū Province should not be in Template:Japan Old Province and Category:Provinces of Japan despite cited sources in the article here Maybe this venue can generate a wider discussion which leads to consensus? --Ansei (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. Ansei (talk) 16:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Ansei (talk) 16:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• Keep -- I think the page should not be deleted, but this AfD venue may be needed in order to parse the relevant issues.

  In a conventional AfD discussion, it would not be off-topic to cite US Department of State. (1906). A digest of international law as embodied in diplomatic discussions, treaties and other international agreements (John Bassett Moore, ed.), Vol. 5, p. 759. --Ansei (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

This is a good article subject. The fact that Ryūkyū Province is in an 1899 revision to 1894 Japan-US and Japan-UK treaties shows a need for this article. In other words, the article is needed to answer the questions "What and where is Ryukyu Province?"

Cited sources show that noteworthy scholars have written about this subject. For example,

• George H. Kerr thought the subject was important enough to include it in the title of his 1953 book Ryukyu Kingdom and Province before 1945.
• Ronald Toby thought the subject was important enough to mention it in his 1991 book State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia and the development of the Tokugawa bakufu (citing research at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo); excerpt, "Ieyasu granted the Shimazu clan the right to "rule" over Ryukyu ... [and] contemporary Japanese even referred to the Shimazu clan as 'lords of four provinces', which could only mean that they were including the Ryukyuan kingdom in their calculations".

The notability of this small subject and the need for an article about Ryūkyū Province is proven by these cited sources. The fact that this also the subject of a current dispute among scholars here is another reason for keeping and improving this article -- not deleting it or marginalizing the subject in a merge.

If I am mistaken in this, I hope this AfD thread will help me understand. Unless this AfD thread shows me how to reason through this problem differently, I can't know why or how this cite-based reasoning process is flawed. --Ansei (talk) 18:47, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Merge- Ryūkyū Province into Ryūkyū Kingdom or Delete and possibly even Salt.
• Strong Delete and Salt. Article is fiction and historical revisionism. Regardless of other controversies about status of Ryukyu islands, no Ryukyu Province existed from 1609 to 1872, and no verifiable source will demonstrate it ever had this de jure status during time period in question.

- Ryūkyū Kingdom retained limited diplomatic autonomy and a sovereign head of state in Shō Nei even under subservience to Satsuma [1].

- Any document after 1871 referencing it as province in then-contemporary affairs is a reflection of the Abolition of the han system and not de jure existence of Ryūkyū Province from 1609.

- Main EN language source supporting Ryūkyū Province here [2] states on page 47 the Bakufu regarded Ryukyu as a foreign country and status was not 国 under Satsuma.

- Other EN language source from article [3] on page 31 describes Ryukyu continued to function as a quasi-independent country throughout the Tokugawa Period and not as 令制国.

- It is not even on List of provinces of ancient Japan as 令制国.

Content of Ryūkyū Province is thin and not properly supported by JA language sources. Even the EN language sources do not support it. Ryūkyū Province is fiction. There is no good reason for this article to exist as historical reference. Jun Kayama 06:27, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

@ JunKayama --Yes, thank you for helping to sharpen the focus. Your bullet points are clear, but there are problems in the summary conclusions of the first sentence and the last paragraph.

Yes, according to The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, "[t]he status of Ryukyu is ambiguous when looked at from the perspective of modern European international law, although there appears to have been no serious issues concerning the status of Ryukyu at that time." Please notice that the word "ambiguous" plus cite support has been added in the opening sentence here. Also please notice that the cited excerpt from Ernest Satow in the Geography section highlights the ambiguity by naming specific islands and also explaining that "[t]he ordinary maps of Japan do not include any of the islands south of Yaku no Shima".

Yes, because of its fuzzy logic, this subject and this article are difficult to parse using a pigeonholing process . --Ansei (talk) 14:40, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - de jure status of Ryukyu from Ming or Qing Chinese perspective was that of independent kingdom. Likewise, de jure status of Ryukyu from Tokugawa Bakufu and Satsuma perspective was that of quasi-independent kingdom under control of Satsuma for reasons of prestige. There is no issue of Ryukyu being a province to then-contemporary Japanese in 1609, regardless of de facto control by Satsuma. Retroactively branding Ryukyu a 令制国 is historical fiction.

Page 482 of your last quoted source [4]: (C)oncepts of modern European international law such as the sovereign State, territorial sovereignty, the sovereign States system, or the State boundary cannot be directly applied to East Asia in early modern times. None of the EN sources in Ryūkyū Province support consideration of Ryukyu to be other than a tributary foreign vassal state of Satsuma with its own hereditary non-Japanese monarchy until 1879. I will not change my vote. Jun Kayama 13:33, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

@ JunKayama -- Yes, it is very much on-point to highlight the "Ming or Qing Chinese perspective". I would guess that the post-Qing Chinese perspective is also implied by what you write.

The understandable attention given to the term "de facto" is not wrong. This distracting word has been removed from the article here.

It is helpful to me that you continue to focus on what the cited sources support. It may be constructive to highlight the sentence which follows the excerpt you cite from the Oxford handbook above,

" [C]oncepts of modern European international law such as the sovereign State, territorial sovereignty, the sovereign States system, or the State boundary cannot be directly applied to East Asia in early modern times. That is definitely one reason why Ryukyu's status seems to be puzzling.

The word "puzzling" is useful in the context of this AfD thread. In part, this article needs to exist precisely because the subject is puzzling. It is the subject of likely questions. In part, the article needs to exist because it is a subject of dispute as mentioned in the Oxford handbook,

"This issue is still now under much heated discussion. In the report of the Joint Japan-China History Committee (31 January 2010), the Japanese insisted that Ryukyu was under effective control of the Satsuma domain from the 17th century and that this fact was known to China, while the Chinese persevered that Ryukyu was an independent state until 1879, when Ryukyu was annexed by Japan."

The purpose of our encyclopedia article is not to resolve anything, but instead, can we agree that the purpose of Ryūkyū Province is to provide an overview of a verifiable subject which is ambiguous and puzzling and disputed? --Ansei (talk) 15:13, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - My answer is no. Article is misleading, it implies that Ryukyu Kingdom was 令制国, which is the foundation for stating it was a 'province'. It never held such status. Tokugawa Bakufu and Satsuma never gave it such status. How could Shogunate ever rationalize having two hereditary monarchies in Japan, with one on a 'province'?

Post-Qing is not important. Issue ends at 1879 on creation of Okinawa Prefecture. JA Wikipedia AfD was not wrong. Cited EN sources also do not support Ryukyu as 令制国. There was vested interest for Tokugawa Bakufu and Satsuma to maintain structure of semi-autonomous Ryukyu Kingdom. EN sources do not support this article. No serious JA source would ever support this article. I will only change my position if there is historical document in JA from Tokugawa Bakufu which recognizes Ryukyu as 令制国 while stating without equivocation Sho Dynasty has no status as the ruling hereditary monarchy of the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1609-1872. Such document does not exist. Jun Kayama 15:46, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to learn that you think the article is misleading. Please edit any sentence which is written in a misleading way. I hope to learn how to write better as I think carefully about any changes you make. If there is no specific problem with any specific sentence, then I'm a uncertain about the point you're trying to make. --Ansei (talk) 17:10, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - Specific problem is with entire article. It is historical fiction. None of the EN sources can demonstrate Ryukyu Province ever existed from 1609 - 1872 because it did not actually exist. This is not personal vendetta. I don't care about admonish, censure, or edit war. This article is historical fiction, JA Wikipedia killed it in AfD for that reason, and selective quoting of obscure academic text in EN does not change historical reality. From 1609 to 1872, Ryukyu Kingdom existed as tributary vassal state of Satsuma with distinct head of state for convenience of all parties, until façade was no longer necessary in 1872 and it became Ryukyu Domain, and then in 1879 Okinawa Prefecture. How is this unclear? This is not "agree to disagree" situation. Length of this AfD discussion is ridiculous. I now want to see this article if deleted become Salted. Jun Kayama 22:08, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Delete and admonish Ansei: Ansei has been edit warring over the difference between the Ryukyu Domain and the Ryukyu Province ever since we had two articles on the subject made by another editor, but then he changed his mind about it. It would seem that the Japanese Wikipedia has discovered that the "令制国" version never existed according to any records they could find. There was no need to bring this to AFD when the page could have just been left as a damn redirect instead of restoring the content fork of Ryukyu Domain, but you just kept edit warring.—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

  Ugh, Ansei, you didn't even put this on the AFD log.—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:31, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

  At 19:31, 14 May 2013 (UTC), I added this AFD to the May 14, 2013, AFD log as it was never listed.—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:32, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: Once this debate ends, make sure you alert the Chinese Wikipedians about zh:琉球國 (令制), depending on how it goes here WhisperToMe (talk) 06:30, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - I guess the important thing for me is that 令制国 provinces were formal government divisions. So we can point to the specific date on which Iwaki Province was established in 1868, for example, and the government act that did it. It's clear (to me, at least) that there was no de jure Ryukyu Province in existence prior to the Meiji Period since, whatever its de facto status, everyone was at least pretending it was an independent state. And if Ryukyu Province was established during the Meiji Period, there would be a easily found paper trail. The term "琉球国" does appear in some Meiji period government documents post-dating the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture, primarily in a geographical sense. But my guess would be that that is read "Ryukyu-koku" rather than "Ryukyu-no-kuni". Cckerberos (talk) 07:22, 15 May 2013 (UTC)