(14 July 1787 – 5 July 1834) was a king of the

Ryukyu Kingdom The Ryukyu Kingdom, Middle Chinese: , , Classical Chinese: (), Historical English names: ''Lew Chew'', ''Lewchew'', ''Luchu'', and ''Loochoo'', Historical French name: ''Liou-tchou'', Historical Dutch name: ''Lioe-kioe'' was a kingdom in the ...

, who held the throne from 1804 to 1828, when he was forced to abdicate in favor of his son,

Shō Iku was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1835 to 1847. He was the eldest son of Shō Kō. According to ''Chūzan Seifu'', he was appointed regent in 1828, in place of his ailing father who was supposedly afflicted by a mental illness. Shō Kō die ...

. This was only the second time in the history of the kingdom that a king abdicated;Kerr, George H. ''Okinawa: The History of an Island People''. (revised ed.) Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2003. p244. the 1477 abdication of Shō Sen'i was the first. It is said that towards the end of his reign, Shō Kō's "behavior became strange, unbalanced, and unpredictable." The ''

Sanshikan The ''Sanshikan'' (), or Council of Three, was a government body of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, which originally developed out of a council of regents. It emerged in 1556, when the young Shō Gen, who was mute, ascended to the throne of Ryūkyū. The c ...

'' (the council of the top three elder royal advisors) appealed to the government of Japan's

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, l ...

and, with Satsuma's approval, forced Shō Kō to abdicate in 1828 and to retire to the countryside. An envoy mission was prepared to formally inform Beijing of the change in rulership, and a second royal manor was established in the countryside, to maintain the prestige and dignities appropriate to Shō Kō's status. Historian George H. Kerr suggests the possibility that Shō Kō did not in fact suffer from any mental illness, but rather contemplated radical actions such as seeking the kingdom's full independence from Satsuma, to which it was a vassal

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

, in the hopes that this would alleviate the intense economic difficulties faced by the kingdom.Kerr. p245. If this were the case, perhaps the ''Sanshikan'' feared that such action was too radical, and too risky, and felt the need to prevent the king from going through with it.

References

Kings of Ryūkyū Second Shō dynasty 1787 births 1839 deaths {{RyukyuKingdom-stub