File talk:Flag of Ryukyu.svg

This phantom flag cannot be found in major books on the history of Okinawa. Wikipedia has not provided sources that prove that it was ever officially designated as a flag of any polity in history. However, it has been widely used in Wikipedia and websites influenced by Wikipedia. As of April, 2015, this flag was used in the following Wikipedias:

• this file: 64 Wikipedias, 1 Wikisource and Wikidata, or 1,289 pages in total,
• variant A: 1 Wikipedia, or 2 pages in total,
• variant B: none, and
• variant C: 1 Wikipedia, or 4 pages in total.

The influence of the Wikipedia hoax is not limited to the Web. In 2012, the Okinawa Graph, an Okinawa-based Japanese magazine showed this flag as "the flag of the Ryūkyū Kingdom (used from 1429 to 1875)," creating a risk of citogenesis.^[1] Although the Okinawa Graph did not cite Wikipedia (Wikimedia), it is obvious that the flag was taken from Wikipedia.

The fact that Wikipedia (to be precise, Wikimedia) has hosted the phantom flag for many years without providing any sources got media coverage on the Ryūkyū Shimpō. In 2012, a column by Kina Daisaku, a part-time curator at Naha City Museum of History, pointed to the fact that Wikipedia (Wikimedia) hosted this and another unsourced flag. He was unable to find contemporary sources in which the phantom flag is used as a national flag. He suspected that, as a pre-modern polity, Ryūkyū had no notion of national flag. He raised concern about the circulation of the hoax.^[2]

This flag can be found in a couple of mainland Japanese, not Okinawan, sources published from the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji period:

• Bankoku hakki zufu 萬國舶旗圖譜 by Matsui Nantai (1854),^[3]
• Naigai kishō chikyū kokumei 内外旗章地球國名 by Katayama Tsutomu (1873),^[4] and
• Naigai kishō binran 内外旗章便覧 by an unknown author (undated).^[5]

Only the last source is referred to by Kina.^[2] Note that many other illustrated catalogs of flags were published in mainland Japan around that time, without showing the flag in question.

Among the three sources, the Bankoku hakki zufu (1854) provides the most detailed information. The flag is listed right along with a weather vane-like textile and a windsock. The caption on its right reads "琉玖田摩鸞舶旗" (Ryūkyū __ maran hakki). A paper strip note is attached to the page, which states:

“	A flag of ship(s) that drifted to Chōshi (an Eastern Japanese port) in the 2nd month of 1798. Although Ryūkyū (琉玖) is a vassal state of Japan's Satsuma, it is said that since it has different ships, various stripes can be found in the flags flown by it.	”
—Bankoku hakki zufu (1854), Translated by Nanshu

What is interesting is that the Bankoku hakki zufu (1854) uses a rare, unofficial spelling for Ryūkyū "琉玖" (the official spelling is "琉球"). This spelling can be found in the two other sources, suggesting that they all derived from the same source. Although this kind of sloppiness was rather common in Edo-period literature, it is reasonable to believe that the authors of these catalogs were unable to have access to firsthand knowledge on Ryūkyū.

References:

1. ↑ Okinawa Gurafu オキナワグラフ, No. 602. May, 2012 (no page given).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Kina Daisaku 喜納大作 (12 June 2012). "Maboroshi no Ryūkyū ōkoku ki 幻の琉球王国旗". Ryūkyū Shimpō 琉球新報.
3. ↑ Matsui Nantai 松居南岱 (1854) (in japanese) Bankoku hakki zufu 万国舶旗図譜 Retrieved on 2 April 2015.
4. ↑ Katayama Tsutomu 片山勤 (1873) (in japanese) Naigai kishō chikyū kokumei 内外旗章地球国名 Retrieved on 2 April 2015.
5. ↑ University of the Ryukyus Library. Shin shūzō Okinawa kankei shiryō no shōkai 新収蔵沖縄関係資料の紹介 (in Japanese). Retrieved on 2 April 2015.