In 1879 when Okinawa Prefecture was established, Naoyoshi Nabeshima, dispatched from the central government, was made governor of the prefecture. After that all the important posts in the Okinawa Prefecture government were entrusted not to Okinawans, but to mainland Japanese. This was the shift to the Yamatoyu, or Japanese world.
The major policy of the Meiji government toward Okinawa was that while changes such as the abolishment of the court bureaucracy and monarchial social positions were carried out, many of the systems were allowed to remain. This was the "Ancient Customs Preservation Policy" and it meant that older systems such as the land allocation, taxation, and local governmental would remain as they had been. This was an attempt to avoid sudden drastic reforms and it was a direction policy took for some time .
There are a number of reasons for this policy including not wanting to invite revolt by the old ruling class in the Ryukyus, the turmoil of the domestic government in the midst of change, and the enormous profit gained by just taking over the existing tax system.
However, the policy was one of the great causes for delays in the modernization of Okinawa.
While the Meiji government offered some guaranteed stipends to the samurai, they were extended only to those registered as descendants of samurai, a small portion of the warrior class. Stipends were not extended to the large majority of low-level unregistered samurai who received very little in the way of economic support during these changes. Many of them were forced to begin new occupations as merchants and farmers. Numerous accounts described the pitiful conditions of the ruined samurai.
