[Originally published in: Quast, Andreas: Karate 1.0 – Parameter of an Ancient Martial Art. 2013.]
The decisions made by the community meetings and semiofficial groups of regional authority were made under extensive use of so-called customary laws. On the basis of these customary laws the enforcement of monitoring and maintaining peace and order in the districts was conducted and young people were assigned to check and arrest anyone violating these laws. According to this it appears that these customary laws were closely related to the implementation of semiofficial security-related functions in the Ryūkyū kingdom.
As these customary laws were a tradition cumulated from times immemorial it can be deduced that semiofficial authority for security-related functions for the purpose of keeping peace and order had long been established and were only officially authorized in 1730, and later in 1786 in the Ryūkyū Penal Code, as already noted. The customary laws were widely used as a tool for local self-government in all urban and rural districts, villages, and islands of the Ryūkyū kingdom and were highly valued by the central government. More precisely, the customary laws, among others, stipulated rules for guarding and monitoring peace and order within the local communities.
It is not known when exactly they were created, but it might be safe to assume that they developed from ancient times as a primitive kind of early societal code of conduct, a set of rules, and a penal code. Neither the Satsuma domain nor the royal government of Ryūkyū strove for complete administrative control, but rather granted a certain amount of autonomy within in the different hierarchical layers. The continued use of the customary laws is a manifestation of this autonomy.
The customary laws were also adjusted as necessities arose and into some of them were included administrative instructions issued to the local districts by the central government, with an increase of these instructions from about the middle of the eighteenth century. This seems to have been pretty necessary. The practical usage of the customary laws was notorious and even sometimes referred to as lynch law. Human rights violations were numerous. In community meetings carried out in Miyako and Yaeyama during the first decade of the eighteenth century it was decided to hang the lawbreakers on trees, and in many cases they were beaten to death. The royal government, considering such actions inexcusable, issued guidelines, which, to all intents and purposes, were by no means obeyed (See, Okuno Hikorokurō: Nantō-son Naihō). The existence of an actual lynch law, regardless of whether the accused were guilty or not and although if one might consider its magnitude as comparatively marginal, is an unambiguous indicator for the existence of remorseless violence within Ryūkyūan society under the guise of official jurisprudence.
Within the policy of Preservation of Old Customs (kyūkan onzon) the customary laws even prima facie survived the final abolition of the Ryūkyū kingdom in 1879, however, since 1880 its usage required the permission of the new prefectural government. Still in 1907 a lynch law case occurred in Gushiken district (today’s Yaese), known as the Deadly Incident of Coercion in Gushiken: Following a theft the offender was hung on a banyan tree by his victim and beaten to death by villagers. In the trial the principal offender was sentenced to prison with hard labor for twelve years, and the other three offenders were imprisoned with hard labor for nine years.
Many details of the customary laws also did not legally comply with the Meiji Constitution, which was one more reason for a strong criticism. For instance, in 1916 a married couple from Urasoe village levied a fine from a man from another section of the village. In the same year the majority of the villagers in Ginowan voted to resolve the village mayor’s faction and levied fines from them. These cases constituted violations of article 22 and 23, respectively, of the Meiji Constitution. Only after the police authorities started a campaign the customary laws were almost eradicated by the early Shōwa era.
The above examples reveal that the customary laws were in extreme cases arbitrarily interpreted, bordering to tyranny. Besides, the survival of these customary laws during the Ryūkyū kingdom era is a strong indicator of the extent of de facto autonomy Ryūkyū enjoyed under Shimazu sovereignty. The existence and practical implementation of the customary laws in connection with the semiofficial groups of regional authority provide reason for a series of questions related to armed and unarmed acts of physical violence, concepts like Vim vi repellere licet–Violence may be answered by violence–, alter ego defense, and temporary detainment of offenders until the arrival of vigilantes or official police and the like. Some of the ethical guidelines of modern Okinawan martial arts might even be interpreted as survivals of some age-old customary laws; Think of Miyagi Chōjun’s “Don’t strike others; don’t get struck,“ or even “Karate ni sente nashi,” with karate thus describing the feudal law enforcement and its techniques.
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