Timizi nu in (The Bond of Water in Hands): An Early Modern Ryūkyūan Kumi Odori, as Staged by the National Theatre Okinawa

The early modern Ryūkyūan play Timizi nu in (The Bond of Water in Hands) is commonly attributed to Heshikiya Chōbin (1700–1734), an aristocrat whose views on love and human nature clashed with the Ryūkyūan royal state’s Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. As a proto-Romantic outlier in the otherwise ideologically narrow early modern Ryūkyūan repertory, Timizi nu in helped shape the development of modern Okinawan theatre and remains quite popular today. This article connects Timizi nu in to its intellectual historical context and sheds light on its aesthetic characteristics, paying particular attention to its use of allusion to establish links with the Ryūkyūan and mainland Japanese literary traditions.