Ryūka

Concepts and classification#

The word ryūka ( ru:ka in archaic pronunciation ) was first attested in the Kon-kōken-shū (1711). The name came into use when Ryūkyū’s samurai class in Shuri and Naha embraced Japanese high culture including waka. It is analogous with Japanese custom of contrasting Japanese poetry (waka or yamato-uta) with Chinese poetry (kara-uta). There is abundant evidence that ryūka was simply referred to as uta (songs and/or poems) in colloquial use. In its original form, ryūka was songs to be sung with sanshin (shamisen), rather than poems to be read aloud. Thus it is more comparable with Japanese imayō, kinsei kouta and dodoitsu than with waka. The composers of ryūka were not only those in the upper class, but also included a girl who was sold to the red-light district called Yoshiya Chiru and a woman farmer of passion called Onna Nabe. However, the male members of the samurai class in Shuri and Naha started to read ryūka just like waka. They hold utakai, or a gathering for reading a collection of poems on a common theme, for both ryūka and waka. It is no wonder that famous ryūka poets like Heshikiya Chōbin and Motobu Chōkyū were also waka poets. Researchers disagree on the scope of ryūka. In the narrowest definition, it only refers to songs and poems with the 8-8-8-6 syllable structure. This standard form is specifically called . In a slightly broader definition, ryūka also covers , which typically has the 7-5-8-6 or 5-5-8-6 syllable patterns. It is a hybrid of waka (first two units) and ryūka (second two units). The invention of nakafū was traditionally attributed to the 18th century poet Heshikiya Chōbin, and it was mainly composed by the male members of the samurai class. Another form called is characterized by a series of 8-8 syllable patterns with a 6-syllable unit at the end. There are some 20 chōka in the records.

History#

Ryūka is an innovative form that emerged relatively recently. The earliest ryūka found in the literature is of the late 17th century. However, there remains a disagreement over exactly how it evolved. Hokama Shuzen considered that the earliest form of songs were incantations that were sometimes chanted rather than were sung. From such incantations, epic songs such as Okinawa’s umui and kwēna and Amami’s omori and nagare emerged. Epic songs then evolved into lyric songs (feelings of individuals) including Amami’s shima-uta and Okinawa’s ryūka. He claimed that the development of lyrical ryūka from epic omoro happened in the 15th to 16th centuries when Okinawan people were supposedly liberated from religious bondage and began to express personal feelings. He also considered that the introduction of sanshin helped the transition from the long, relatively free verse forms to the short, fixed verse form. There is a collection of smallpox poetry including 105 poems published in 1805. Ryūka as poems gained a wider audience after the formal abolishment of the kingdom. Losing income and status, the former samurai class moved from Shuri and Naha to Northern Okinawa, Miyako, Yaeyama, and other regions, and spread its high culture around Okinawa Prefecture. Newspapers, which first appeared in Okinawa Prefecture in the 1890s, had readers’ sections for ryūka and waka.

Writing and pronunciation#

While Modern South Okinawan is characterized by drastic sound changes that happened in the relatively recent past, the standard reading of ryūka reflects conservative literary forms based on the Shuri dialect. Ryūka is written with a mixture of kanji and hiragana, as in Written Japanese. Spellings are even more conservative than pronunciations. As a consequence, there are substantial disparities between spelling and pronunciation. For example, “today” is t͡ɕuː in the modern Shuri speech, which corresponds to kjoː in Japanese. However, it is pronounced kiju when people read ryūka. Its standard spelling is the same as that in pre-spelling-reform Written Japanese: “けふ” (transliterated as kefu).

See also#

• Writing in the Ryukyu Kingdom
• Tanka (poetry)

References#

• Kei Higa Okinawa Encyclopedia1983, Okinawa Times, Naha, jō, chū, ge.
• Yoji Aoyama Ryūka Omoshiro Tokuhon (Interesting Ryukas) 1998, Kyodo Shuppan, Naha
• Nihon Shodō Bijutukan Ryuka - the heart of the poems of the Southern Island 1992, Kyoiku Shodo Shuppan Kyokai, Tokyo
• Masanori Nakahodo Various aspects of Okinawan literature, Postwar literature, Dialect poems, Dramas, Ryūka, Tanka 2010, Borderink, Naha,