are a set of
pictogram
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
s once used in the
Yaeyama Islands
The Yaeyama Islands (八重山列島 ''Yaeyama-rettō'', also 八重山諸島 ''Yaeyama-shotō'', Yaeyama: ''Yaima'', Yonaguni: ''Daama'', Okinawan: ''Yeema'', Northern Ryukyuan: ''Yapema'') are an archipelago in the southwest of Okinawa ...
of southwestern
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. The word ''kaidā'' was taken from
Yonaguni
, one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan, lying from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper. The island is administered as the Towns of Japan, town of Yonaguni, Okina ...
, and most studies on the pictographs focused on
Yonaguni Island
, one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan, lying from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper. The island is administered as the town of Yonaguni, Yaeyama Gun, Okinawa ...
. However, there is evidence for their use in Yaeyama's other islands, most notably on
Taketomi Island
is an island in the town of Taketomi, within Yaeyama District of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Taketomi is one of the Yaeyama Islands. The population of Taketomi Island was 323 as of January 2012.
Geography
Taketomi Island is located south of I ...
.
They were used primarily for tax notices, thus were closely associated with the
poll tax
A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources.
Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...
imposed on Yaeyama by
Ryūkyū
The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yonaguni ...
on
Okinawa Island
is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five main islands of Japan. The island is approximately long, an average wide, and has an ...
, which was in turn dominated by
Satsuma Domain
The , briefly known as the , was a domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1602 to 1871.
The Satsuma Domain was based at Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Province, the core of the modern city of Kagoshima, ...
on Southern Kyushu.
Etymology
Sudō (1944) hypothesized that the etymology of ''kaidā'' was , which meant "government office" in Satsuma Domain. This term was borrowed by Ryūkyū on Okinawa and also by the bureaucrats of Yaeyama (''karja:'' in Modern Ishigaki). Standard Japanese /j/ regularly corresponds to /d/ in
Yonaguni
, one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan, lying from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper. The island is administered as the Towns of Japan, town of Yonaguni, Okina ...
, and /r/ is often dropped when surrounded by vowels. This theory is in line with the primary impetus for Kaidā glyphs, taxation.
History
Immediately after conquering Ryūkyū, Satsuma conducted a land survey in Okinawa in 1609 and in Yaeyama in 1611. By doing so, Satsuma decided the amount of tribute to be paid annually by Ryūkyū. Following that, Ryūkyū imposed a poll tax on Yaeyama in 1640. A fixed quota was allocated to each island and then was broken up into each community. Finally, quotas were set for the individual islanders, adjusted only by age and gender. Community leaders were notified of quotas in the government office on Ishigaki. They checked the calculation using ''
warazan'' (''barazan'' in Yaeyama), a straw-based method of calculation and recording numerals that was reminiscent of
Incan
The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...
Quipu
''Quipu'' (also spelled ''khipu'') are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.
A ''quipu'' usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people u ...
. After that, the quota for each household was written on a wooden plate called . That was where Kaidā glyphs were used. Although ''sōrō''-style Written Japanese had the status of administrative language, the remote islands had to rely on pictograms to notify illiterate peasants. According to a 19th-century document cited by the ''Yaeyama rekishi'' (1954), an official named Ōhama Seiki designed "perfect ideographs" for ''itafuda'' in the early 19th century although it suggests the existence of earlier, "imperfect" ideographs.
Sudō (1944) recorded an oral history on Yonaguni: 9 generations ago, an ancestor of the Kedagusuku lineage named Mase taught Kaidā glyphs and ''warazan'' to the public. Sudō dated the event to the second half of the 17th century.
According to Ikema (1959), Kaidā glyphs and ''warazan'' were evidently accurate enough to make corrections to official announcements. The poll tax was finally abolished in 1903. They were used until the introduction of the nationwide primary education system rapidly lowered the illiteracy rate during the
Meiji period
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
.
They are currently used on Yonaguni and Taketomi for folk art, T-shirts, and other products, more for their artistic value than as a record-keeping system.
Repertoire
Kaidā glyphs consist of
*references to animals, plants and their byproducts such as rice, millet, bean, bull, sheep, goat, fish and textile, and
*numerals, or basic units such as a bag of rice (俵), a bag of millet, a dipper of rice (斗), a box of rice (升), half a bag of rice, and
*household symbols called ''dāhan''.
As for numerals, similar systems called ''sūchūma'' can be found in
Okinawa
is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi).
Naha is the capital and largest city ...
and
Miyako and appear to have their roots in the
Suzhou numerals
The Suzhou numerals, also known as ' (), is a numeral system used in China before the introduction of Arabic numerals. The Suzhou numerals are also known as ' (), ' (), ' (), ' () and ' ().
History
The Suzhou numeral system is the only survivin ...
.
Research history
The first non-Yaeyama author to comment on kaidā glyphs was
Gisuke Sasamori, who left copies of many short kaidā texts in his ''Nantō Tanken'' (南島探検, ''Exploration of the Southern Islands''), a record of his 1893 visit to
Okinawa Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi).
Naha is the capital and largest city o ...
which also mentions the hard labor imposed on the islanders by the regime.
Yasusada Tashiro collected various numeral systems found in Okinawa and Miyako and donated them to the
Tokyo National Museum
The or TNM is an art museum in Ueno Park in the Taitō ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the four museums operated by the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage ( :ja:国立文化財機構), is considered the oldest national museum in Japan, ...
in 1887. A paper on ''sūchūma'' by British Japanologist
Basil Chamberlain (1898)
appears to have been based on Tashiro's collection.
In 1915 the mathematics teacher Kiichi Yamuro (矢袋喜一) included many more examples of kaidā glyphs, ''barazan'' knotted counting ropes, and local number words (along with a reproduction of Sasamori's records) in his book on Old Ryukyuan Mathematics (琉球古来の数学). Although Yamuro did not visit Yonaguni by himself, his records suggest that kaidā glyphs were still in daily use in the 1880s. Anthropologist
Tadao Kawamura
Tadao (written: 忠雄, 忠夫, 忠男, 忠生, 忠郎 or 理男) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include:
*, Japanese architect
*, Japanese ''daimyō''
*Tadao Baba (born 1944), Japanese motorcycle engineer
*, Jap ...
, who made his anthropological study of the islands in the 1930s, noted "they were in use until recently." He showed how kaidā glyphs were used in sending packages.
Sudō (1944) showed how business transactions were recorded on leaves using kaidā glyphs. He also proposed an etymology for kaidā.
References
See also
*
Writing in the Ryukyu Kingdom
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaida glyphs
Japanese writing system
Mathematical notation
Pictograms
Yaeyama culture