This paper overviews the social thought of the Ryukyu-Okinawa Islands from prehistoric times to the present, and offers a clue to reconstruct the study of Asian social thought from the European and state-centered paradigm to the global-balanced perspective.
In the Ryukyu-Okinawa Islands, people had maintained a small-scale, egalitarian, nomadic society for a long time from about seven thousand years ago, and had inhibited excessive development that would be destructive to the island’s survival environment. From the 7th century, village communities cooperated in trade, and from about thousand years ago, they began to operate small states. Since that time, they have adapted to several civilizations developed on continent area in each era, such as the shellfish trade network between ancient royal powers, the international trade system of the Chinese Empire, the modern nation state of Japan, the international human rights movement, and sought to maintain life in their limited environment through that continuing interact with the outside diverse world.
Unlike the civil society in Europe, people of the islands have avoided identifying themselves as the subjects who form or oppose the centralized state, and have survived by transferring states to one after another. In the maritime history of the Ryukyu-Okinawa islands, it can be said that states are only vehicles for the community. From the viewpoint of modern thought, they have formed a trinity formation; basically the society is founded on community autonomy fulfilled with the anarchism and its spirit of mutual aid, on one hand, it defends the archipelago against the destructive effects from outside through Okinawan nationalism, on the other hand, opens new avenues through cosmopolitanism that transcended the ocean.
Such an open maritime way of dealing with state powers points us to the historical existence of an intermediate world between the state-centered society and the “Society against the State” (Pierre Clastres). Either unlike tribal societies in South America and the outback of Asia that have rejected the centralization of coercive power, the society in the Ryukyu-Okinawa islands has been trying to pursue the autonomy and prosperity of the community regardless of holding its own state or not.
Based on these discussions, this paper poses a clue to rebuild the study of social thought in Asia on truly global value and cultural basis.
