Kaidā glyphs

Sudō (1944) hypothesized that the etymology of kaidā was kariya (仮屋), which meant "government office" in Satsuma Domain.

Although sōrō-style Written Japanese had the status of administrative language, the remote islands had to rely on pictograms to notify illiterate peasants.

[3] 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.

[2] According to Ikema (1959), Kaidā glyphs and warazan were evidently accurate enough to make corrections to official announcements.

They were used until the introduction of the nationwide primary education system rapidly lowered the illiteracy rate during the Meiji period.

[5] 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 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 in 1887.