Nakijin Chōfu

Prince Gushikawa, later known as , also known by the Chinese-style name , was a Ryukyuan prince and founder of the Nakijin cadet branch as the son of

Shō Iku was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1835 to 1847. Life 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 ...

king of Ryukyu , also known as King of Lew Chew, , or more officially , was the title held by several lineages in Okinawa Island from 1372 until the monarchy's dissolution in 1879. According to the traditional official Okinawan narrative, the legendary ruler ...

, and the

regent In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been dete ...

for his older brother

Shō Tai was the final King of Ryukyu, initially as Second Shō dynasty, hereditary king of the Tributary system of China#Ryukyu Kingdom, Qing tributary Ryukyu Kingdom from 8 June 1848 until 10 October 1872 and finally as the Empire of Japan, Japanese a ...

, the final king, from 1875 to 1879. He was created a in the ''kazoku'' (peerage) of the

Japanese Empire The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From 1910 to ...

following the annexation of Ryukyu into

Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan. It consists of three main island groups—the Okinawa Islands, the Sakishima Islands, and the Daitō Islands—spread across a maritime zone approximately 1,000 kilometers east to west an ...

. Sometimes he was called for short. Prince Nakijin was the third son of King

, and he was also a younger brother of King

. In 1879, the Meiji Japanese government decided to abolish the

Ryukyu Domain The was a short-lived domain of the Empire of Japan, lasting from 1872 to 1879, and simultaneously a tributary state of the Qing Empire, until 1875, before being fully incorporated into Japan as the current Okinawa Prefecture and other islan ...

, and sent

Matsuda Michiyuki was a Japanese bureaucrat and statesman, active in the Meiji period of Imperial Japan. Matsuda was governor of Shiga Prefecture from 1871 to 1875, and governor of Tokyo from 1879 to 1882. Matsuda was sent to Ryukyu in 1879. He abolished the ...

Shuri Shuri may refer to: People *, ring name of Syuri Kondo, a Japanese professional wrestler, shoot boxer and kickboxer *, Japanese footballer *, Japanese professional wrestler Characters * Shuri (character), a Marvel Comics superhero ** Shuri (Marv ...

. At this time, Shō Tai claimed illness and let him to handle government affairs. Prince Nakijin tried to prevent Ryukyu from annexation by Japan but failed. After Ryukyu was annexed by Japan in 1879, Prince Nakijin was incorporated into the newly established ''

kazoku The was the hereditary peerage of the Empire of Japan, which existed between 1869 and 1947. It was formed by merging the feudal lords (''Daimyo, daimyō'') and court nobles (''kuge'') into one system modelled after the British peerage. Distin ...

'' peerage; and in 1890, he was granted the title of . Nakijin Chofu 1914

, - 1847 births 1915 deaths Princes of Ryūkyū 19th-century Ryukyuan people People of the Meiji era People from Okinawa Prefecture Kazoku {{RyukyuKingdom-stub