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Kumemura (久米村; Okinawan: ''Kuninda''; Middle Chinese: ''Kjú-méi ts'won'')〔Uezato, Takashi. "The Formation of the Port City of Naha in Ryukyu and the World of Maritime Asia: From the Perspective of a Japanese Network." ''Acta Asiatica''. vol 95. Tokyo: The Tōhō Gakkai, 2008. p57.〕 was an Okinawan community of scholars, bureaucrats, and diplomats in the port city of Naha near the royal capital of Shuri, which was a center of culture and learning during the time of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. The people of Kumemura, traditionally believed to all be descendants of the Chinese immigrants who first settled there in 1392, came to form an important and aristocratic class of scholar-bureaucrats, the ''yukatchu'', who dominated the royal bureaucracy, and served as government officials at home, and as diplomats in relations with China, Japan, and others. The community's special function came to an end in 1879, with Okinawa's formal annexation to Japan, and it has since been geographically absorbed into the prefectural capital of Naha; the area is now known simply as Kume. However, its association with scholarship and culture, or at least with China, remains. It is said that there remains an expectation among Okinawans that people from Kume remain more Chinese, or at least different, from the other people of the islands.〔Kerr. p76.〕 ==History== According to traditional accounts, the community was founded in 1392 when a number of Chinese bureaucrats and craftsmen, under orders from the Ming Chinese Imperial government, traveled to Okinawa from Fujian and settled there. Historian Takashi Uezato, however, writes that it is unknown exactly when the community was established. He points out that, in any case, Chinese communities in Ryukyu would have grown in the 14th-15th centuries as communities along the south China coast moved southward, and trade expanded between that region and Ryukyu.〔Uezato. p59.〕 The three kingdoms of Ryukyu, which would be united within the next thirty years after the traditional date of Kumemura's founding, like many other states in the region at the time, were tributary states in the Chinese world order; Chinese culture, and its political and economic structures, were seen as the very definition of civilization and modernity, a view cultivated by the Chinese imperial government throughout much of its history. Thus, even though these Chinese immigrants were hardly more than ordinary citizens back home in Fujian, they were regarded by their government which sent them, and by the Ryukyuans who welcomed them, as cultural envoys, bringing civilization to a lesser nation. The immigrants were given tax-free lands on which to build their homes, the community was granted a rice stipend from the government to help support it, and the people of Kumemura soon came to bear great status and prestige in the royal government, though the community as a whole functioned somewhat independently of any of the three kingdoms. All three kingdoms cultivated diplomatic and trade relationships with members of Kumemura's intercultural and maritime oriented community.〔Uezato. p60.〕 These conditions would remain unchanged for several centuries, as Kumemura grew more established in its importance and influence. On Okinawa, as in most pre-modern societies, literacy was rare; the people of Kumemura, literate and fluent in the Chinese language and educated in the Chinese classics, thus represented a close community of most of the country's most educated people. The original immigrants, and later their descendants, taught the Chinese language and administrative methods and structures, to Ryukyuan officials and others. Many were also considered experts in a variety of skills, such as astronomy, navigation, geomancy, shipbuilding, and the production of ink and paper. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the community was enclosed within earthen walls, and consisted of over one hundred homes, inhabited by not only Chinese immigrants (and their descendants) but Koreans as well.〔 No remains of the earthen walls have been found, however.〔Uezato. p62.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kumemura」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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