It effectively started in 1372 when Satto greeted a Chinese envoy from the newly established Ming dynasty although his son Bunei was the first to be officially recognized as the King of Chūzan.

However, the official Okinawan narrative traces the line of succession further back to the legendary ruler Shunten, who supposedly ascended to the throne in 1187.

Another peculiar feature of the official Okinawan narrative is the notion of the single line of succession, instead of Chinese-style dynastic changes, even though they clearly recognized that several unrelated lineages had taken over the position.

His son King Shō Sei expressed the line of succession in a slightly more elaborate form.

Similarly, another stone monument dated 1597 states that Shō Nei is the 24th king since Sonton [Shunten] (しやうねいハそんとんよりこのかた二十四たいのわうの御くらゐ...).

The numbers of kings mentioned in these monuments agree with those of the official history books compiled much later although it is not clear whether the individual members were fixed at this stage.

[10] Historian Dana Masayuki relates the notion of the line of succession to Buddhist temples where ancestral tablets of the deceased kings were stored.

[11] According to the Ryūkyū-koku yuraiki (1713), Ryūfuku-ji in Urasoe, in addition to the above-mentioned temples, served as the royal mausoleum.

This temple stored inkstone tablets representing the deceased kings from Shunten to Shō Hashi.

According to the Chūzan Seifu, Ryūfuku-ji was originally founded by Eiso under the name of Gokuraku-ji and was re-established by Shō En.

He moved all ancestral tablets, starting from Shunten, to Sōgen-ji and thereby visualized the single line of succession based on Okinawa's own narrative.

According to a tale which Gesshū attributed to Kakuō, Tametomo moved to Ryūkyū, used demons as servants, and became the founder of the state, which the Minamoto clan had ruled since then.

Although at this stage, Tametomo was not explicitly associated with Shunten, the tale apparently circulated in the network of Zen Buddhists connecting Kyoto to Okinawa.

In 1691, for example, the king ordered all the male members of the royal family to use the kanji Chō (朝) as the first of their two-character given names, presumably to indicate an affinity to Minamoto no Tametomo (源為朝).