Kumemura, Okinawa
Coordinates: 26°13′03″N 127°40′33″E / 26.21744°N 127.675831°E Kumemura (久米村; Okinawan: Kuninda; Middle Chinese: Kjú-méi ts'won) 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 Ryukyu 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.
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.
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