(war tales) and extensively copied the Tale of the Heike, the Tale of Hōgen, and the Tale of Heiji. The unprecedented event was hardly explained with Okinawa's own words. The style of war tales was adopted in a more sophisticated way by the Chūzan Seikan, Ryūkyū's first official history book written by Haneji Chōshū. Haneji Chōshū issued a set of directives known as the Haneji shioki in 1667, where young samurai were instructed to study an array of subjects including Japanese arts and literature. Haneji's directives remained in effect for long periods of time. The testament of Aka Chokushiki (1778 and 1783), which was written in sōrō-style Japanese by a samurai of Naha, enumerated a wide range of subjects to be mastered by his young son. He was instructed to follow the Nijō school of waka by studying introductory books published in mainland Japan. He was also expected to master the classical writing style by reading the Tales of Ise, the Tale of Genji, and the Tsurezuregusa among others. Haneji Chōshū's policy resulted in a flood of literary works from the end of the 17th century to the early 18th century. The Omoidegusa (1700) by Shikina Seimei was a poetic diary, a genre of Japanese literature with the Tosa Nikki as a representative work. In this work, Shikina Seimei detailed his official trip to Satsuma, intermixed with waka poems. Another major genre of Japanese literature, monogatari (narrative tales), was pursued by Heshikiya Chōbin (1701–1734). He left four short tales, the Manzai, the Koke no shita, the Wakakusa monogatari, and the Hinkaki. The sole form of literary writing the Okinawan elites acquired in the end was Written Japanese. Kanbun kundoku Since the reign of King Satto in the 14th century, the king of Ryūkyū maintained tributary relations with the emperor of China. Diplomatic duties were performed by technocrats of Kumemura, who were believed to have their roots in Fujian. Their duties covered writing of diplomatic documents in Classical Chinese and interpretation of Spoken Chinese as well as sea navigation. Since the reign of Shō Shin, however, Ryūkyū's sea trade under the disguise of tributary missions had shown a steady decline, which devastated the community of Kumemura. The population dropped and the remaining population had limited command of Chinese. In addition, Kumemura was largely isolated from the rest of the Okinawan society during the Old Ryūkyū period. In fact, most Classical Chinese