Talk:Gusuku

Nice page

This is a really nice page. It goes far beyond the lists that are so common. A pat on the back for the original author! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.117.21.50 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 23 June 2004 (UTC)

Tamaudun?

I am going to remove the link to Tamaudun. I don't think it is a gusuku. I will link to Tamaudun from Ryukyu Kingdom and Ryukyuan religion. Turly-burly 00:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The Content

...of this article is largely not about gusuku, but instead about various historical sites that were in use simultaneously with gusuku. I'm going to begin a major overhall of this page. Turly-burly 06:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Not representative of the whole island chain

I reverted Sturmgewehr88 (talk · contribs)'s edit[1]. Gusuku is yet another example that demonstrates Okinawa is just Okinawa and does not represent the whole island chain. To be precise, we can hardly see Okinawa as a monolithic entity. There is, and probably was, no single concept associated with gusuku. Yes, this is also a gusuku! There is no shared "Ryukyuan culture" in the real world. It's only a theoretical reconstruction, a product of comparative studies. --Nanshu (talk) 10:41, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Nanshu, what are you talking about? There are castle gusuku in the Amami, Miyako, and Yaeyama Islands as well. And as for your argument that some utaki are also called "gusuku", that's even more of a reason to say that they occur throughout the Ryūkyū Islands and aren't just limited to the Okinawa Islands, as utaki that are called "gusuku" are found in the Amami, Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama Islands. I never said anything about a "shared Ryūkyūan culture", just that what are called gusuku occur throughout, and only in, the Ryūkyū Islands. I'm readding "Ryukyu Islands", and you can revert me once you prove without a doubt that gusuku do not exist outside the Okinawa Islands. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 16:55, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

What are you talking about? What you did is the fill-in-the-blank question:

Gusuku ... often refers to castles or fortresses in ______ that feature stone walls.

And your answer is "the Ryukyu Islands." That's wrong in the sense that we wouldn't say, "We speak Germanic" when we actually speak English. Castles or fortresses that feature stone walls are typical of Okinawa. Applying the term to other island groups is highly problematic to say the least.

Narratives about gusuku are truly chaotic. No wonder you don't understand the situation correctly. No one can define the meaning of gusuku, which reminds me of family resemblance. What's why I avoided the "A is B" definition and used "A often refers to B" in the article. Explaining many conflicting theories as I did in the article is confusing. So I present just one hypothesis which I personally support:

1. The word gusuku originally meant stone walls that, say, partitioned agricultural fields. In other words, the word gusuku was not associated with castles. This meaning survives in Yaeyama.
2. There has been a long tradition of mountain cult. At first, the word gusuku was not associated with mountain cult.
3. In Amami, medieval mountain fortifications, that are typical of mainland Japan, were constructed, probably in response to Ryūkyū's repeated invasions. At this stage, the word gusuku was not associated with these mountain fortifications.
4. In Okinawa, some sacred mountains were later fortified with stone walls. One consequence of the fusion of mountain cult and fortification was the association of the word gusuku with mountain cult and/or fortification. The association of gusuku with stonework was weakened, but anyway Okinawa's castles and fortresses had stone walls.
5. Ryūkyū finally conquered Amami and introduced the noro ritual system to Amami. The new meanings of gusuku (1. related to mountain cult, 2. fortification) were also introduced to Amami. Most of the former medieval mountain fortifications were abandoned, but some were transformed into sacred places and given the name of gusuku even though they lacked stone walls. Some people of Amami might have interpreted the word gusuku as fortifications regardless of whether they had stone walls. Others reinterpreted the word as a sacred place regardless of whether it had stone walls. For this reason, some gusuku are on sand dunes, on cliff edges, and in caves.
6. Archaeologists of Okinawa Prefecture re-used the word gusuku as a technical term (yet another meaning). This was the source of confusion. They referred to Okinawa's castles and fortresses that feature stone walls as gusuku. They met fierce oppositions from folklorists because their use of gusuku was not grounded in people's actual usages.
7. Some archaeologists of Okinawa Prefecture attempted to extend the gusuku-as-fortifications framework to Amami, Miyako and Yaeyama, regardless of whether local people referred to the target as gusuku (The remains of human settlements of Yaeyama are not called gusuku by local people either). They met fierce oppositions not only from folklorists but also from fellow archaeologists.

It is convenient to consider a dichotomy between inductive and deductive reasoning. Linguists, folklorists and ethnologists base their arguments on people's actual usages and try to infer a generalized conclusion from them. By contrast, archaeologists often define a term, independently of people's actual usages, and apply it to those which meet the definition. Due to lack of written materials, archaeologists need to name archaeological findings by themselves. So they naturally clash with scholars from other disciplines.

It is important to note that the gusuku-as-fortifications framework (that's what the lead sentence says) is no longer supported in the archaeology of the Amami Islands. The renaming of so-called "Uragami Gusuku" was a symbolic event. A gusuku is a gusuku only because people refer to it as such. It's not because the referent meets some definition. In Amami, gusuku (as a technical term) is dead, long live gusuku (as to people's actual usages)! --Nanshu (talk) 07:32, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Well you make a good argument, and I'm mostly in agreement with you. My problem is that the term "gusuku" occurs throughout the Ryūkyū Islands, be it a castle or not, and the introduction sounds like gusuku only occur in the Okinawa Islands. Maybe we can compromise and draft a sentence that mentions the other definitions of "gusuku" and their uses throughout the archipelago? ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 10:36, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

And what on Earth is "gusuku is dead, long live gusuku" supposed to mean? ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 16:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Ah, it's just some nationalist banter. Anyhow, I noticed that the references rely almost exclusively on Japanese sources from before this century. You should read Richard Pearson's Ancient Ryukyu for the most up-to-date source on gusuku archaeology in the Ryukyu Islands, to include Amami. ミーラー強斗武 (StG88ぬ会話) 22:05, 29 November 2016 (UTC)