Ryūka

The name came into use when Ryūkyū's samurai class in Shuri and Naha embraced mainland Japanese high culture including waka.

[2] In its original form, ryūka was songs to be sung with sanshin (shamisen), rather than poems to be read aloud.

They hold utakai, or a gathering for reading a collection of poems on a common theme, for both ryūka and waka.

In a slightly broader definition, ryūka also covers nakafū (仲風), which typically has the 7-5-8-6 or 5-5-8-6 syllable patterns.

The invention of nakafū was traditionally attributed to the 18th century poet Heshikiya Chōbin, and it was mainly composed by the male members of the samurai class.

[2] In the broadest definition, ryūka includes tsurane (つらね), kiyari (木遣り) and kuduchi (口説).

[2] Okinawa shares its 8-8-8-6 syllable structure with its northern neighbor Amami, where the songs in this form are known as shima-uta and are considered a separate genre.

Miyako developed its own lyric songs named tōgani and shunkani while Yaeyama has tubarāma and sunkani.

He claimed that the development of lyrical ryūka from epic omoro happened in the 15th to 16th centuries when Okinawan people were supposedly liberated from religious bondage and began to express personal feelings.

He dismissed the hypothesis that the first stanza of omoro of the later stage partly showed the 8-8-8-6 pattern, which he reanalyzed as kwēna-like 5-3, 5-3, and 5-5-3.

He dated the formation of ryūka to the first half of the 17th century, shortly after kinsei kouta became common in mainland Japan.

While it was originally songs to be sung, the samurai class in Shuri and Naha treated them as poems to be read aloud, under the heavy influence from mainland Japanese high culture.

[7] While Modern South Okinawan is characterized by drastic sound changes that happened in the relatively recent past, the standard reading of ryūka reflects conservative literary forms based on the Shuri dialect.