NOTES OX LIU-KIU. 957 



exact situation is apparently nnkno-\^ai. Neither Perry nor Beecliey make 

 any allusion to the subject, and while at Napha we forgot to obtain 

 particulars from the Japanese Vice-Governor, as we had intended. On the 

 whole, the existence of this metal on the islands would seem probable, 

 although in a petition presented to Captain Cracroft of H.M.S. Reynard, who 

 visited Napha in 1850, the fact is denied. ^ Caution, however, has ever been 

 a leading characteristic of the Liu-kiuans, and the statement is as likely to be 

 incorrect as others which have been furnished with equal readiness by the 

 authorities in such documents. 



The population of Okinawa-sima, if not of all the islands, is very dense. 

 Mr. Brunton states it to be 1 50,000, ^ which, suj^posing the island to have an 

 area of between four and five hundred square miles, would give an 

 average of three hundred to the square mile ; a thickness of population 

 which, as he states, is so great as to be hardly conceivable. The latest 

 Japanese census (1874) gives the entire population as 167,073. During our 

 stay at Napha we were informed that the inhabitants of that town nunibered 

 nearly 35,000 (of whom 2000 were prostitutes), and those of Shiuri 20,000. 

 Of these the greater part are of the poorer class, but it seems that, preWous 

 to the Japanese annexation, if not now, large numbers of those of a higher 

 rank, almost corresponding to the now extinct samurai of Japan, lived in a 

 condition of absolute idleness, supported indirectly by the Government. 

 Besides the practical condition of slavery of the field labourer resulting from 

 this arrangement, there was, at the time of Bishop Smith's visit in 1850, an 

 actual class of public slaves — the Oo-hang — who possessed no civil rights of 

 any kind, and were under the absolute control of their masters. Japanese 

 rule, as far as we could discover, has modified a good many of these conditions, 

 and will probably in time completely change them ; but at the date I have 

 just mentioned an indi-^ddual of the Oo-hang class was a marketable commodity, 

 at prices ranging from two to ten dollars. 



We obtained no information as to the condition of the agricultural class 

 during our visit, but if Commodore Perry's account be correct, their lot is 

 anything but an enviable one. The land belongs to the Govermuent, who 

 sub-let it to the literati — the higher classes to which I have already alluded. 

 The peasants employed in its cultivation get but one-fifth of the produce ; 

 one-half to three-fifths goes to the landlord, while the remainder is expended 

 in paying for the cost of collection and other items. Should the labourer 

 work for daily wages, the rate varies from three to eight cents per diem, — a 

 remuneration so scanty as entirely to obviate the possibility of rest from 

 year's end to year's end,^ The peasant is thus bound to a life of poverty, 



' "Lew-chew and the Lew-chewans," George Smith, D.D. , p. 33. 

 2 " Trans. Asiat. Soc. of Japan," vol. iv. p. 77. ^ Perry, op. cit. vol. i. p. 226. 



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