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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In May 1972, following twenty-seven years of direct American military rule, the Ryukyu Islands reverted to being a Japanese prefecture under the name “Okinawa.” The year 2012 therefore marks its fortieth anniversary. These islands have a complex history and every year is punctuated by anniversaries, many with painful associations. Okinawa today looks back upon a history as an independent kingdom, enjoying close affiliation with Ming and then Qing dynasty China (1372–1874); a semi-independent kingdom affiliated with both China and Japan but effectively ruled from Satsuma in southern Japan (1609–1874); a modern Japanese prefecture (1872–1945); a US military colony, first as conquered territory and from 1952 subject to the determination of the San Francisco treaty (1945-1972); and then, from 1972 to today, once again as a Japanese prefecture but still occupied by US forces. Before the recent and contemporary disputes that are at the center of the US-Japan relationship can be understood, something of this checkered history as a region alternately in and out of “Japan” has to be recounted.
1 Kunigami, Miyako, Okinawa, Yaeyama, and Yonaguni. Christopher Moseley (ed.), Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. 3rd ed. (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2010), link.
2 United Nations Human Rights Committee, “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (Geneva: United Nations, 2008).
3 The Ryukyu resistance was overwhelmed by superior force, especially forearms. Gregory Smits, “Examining the Myth of Ryukyuan Pacifism,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (September 13, 2010), http://japanfocus.org/-Gregory-Smits/3409. After the initial hostilities and surrender, resistance ceased, but one prominent member of the Ryukyu nobility, Jana Teido (a.k.a. Jana Uekata Rizan) (1549-1611), was summarily executed in Kagoshima because of his refusal to swear allegiance to the new Satsuma overlord.
4 Nishizato Kiko, “Higashi Ajia shi ni okeru Ryukyu shobun,” Keizaishi Kenkyu, no. 13 (February 2010): 74.
5 J. Morrow, “Observations on the Agriculture, Etc, of Lew Chew,” in Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, Performed in the Years 1852, 1853, and 1854, under the Command of Commodore M. C. Perry, United States Navy (Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson, 1856), 15; and D. S. Green, “Report on the Medical Topography and Agriculture of the Island of Great Lew Chew,” in Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, Performed in the Years 1852, 1853, and 1854, under the Command of Commodore M. C. Perry, United States Navy (Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson, 1856), 26, 36.
6 Li Hongzhang, quoted in Nishizato, “Higashi Ajia,” 99.
7 One Ryukyuan scholar-official, Rin Seiko (1842-1880), who had been active in the “Salvation Movement,” sought refuge in Beijing in 1876 and committed suicide there in despair and protest at the new order in 1880.
8 Hideaki Uemura, “The Colonial Annexation of Okinawa and the Logic of International Law: The Formation of an Indigenous People,” Japanese Studies 23, no. 2 (September 2003): 107-124: 122.
9 Nishizato, “Higashi Ajia,” 107-8.
10 Ishii Akira, “Chugoku no Ryukyu/Okinawa seisaku: Ryukyu/Okinawa no kizoku mondai o chushin ni,” Kyokai Kenkyu no. 1 (2010): 73.
11 Ueki, a prominent figure in the “Liberty and People's Rights Movement” in Japan of the 1880s, and Guo Songtao, an official and prominent member of the Chinese “SelfStrengthening Movement” in the 1870s, both favored independence for Ryukyu/Okinawa.
12 Hawaiian king, King Kalakaua, visiting China in 1880 or 1881, expressed a desire to mediate a Sino-Japanese agreement on Ryukyu/Okinawa, in the context of promoting Asian unity, resisting European-American pressure and promoting Asia's rise (Nishizato, “Higashi Ajia,” 120).
13 Nishizato, “Higashi Ajia,” 120.
14 “Proclamation No. 1 (The Nimitz Proclamation), 5 April 1945,” Gekkan Okinawa Sha, Laws and Regulations during the U.S. Administration of Okinawa, 1945-1972 (Naha: Ikemiya Shokai, 1983), 38.
15 “Navy Military Government Proclamation No. 1-A, 26 November 1945,” Gekkan Okinawa Sha, Laws and Regulations, 41-42.
16 For the former, the emperor's view as stated just three days after the new constitution came into force on May 3, 1947, Toyoshita Narahiko, Anpo joyaku no seiritsu: Yoshida gaiko to tenno Gaiko (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), 144, and Toyoshita interviewed in Narusawa Muneo, “Showa tenno to Anpo joyaku,” Shukan Kinyobi (May 1, 2009): 11-17; for the latter, Shindo Eiichi, “Bunkatsu sareta ryodo,” Sekai (April 1979): 45-50. (The “emperor's letter” discussed in the latter was penned by Hirohito's aide, Terasaki Hidenari, but emanated from the emperor.)
17 Arasaki Moriteru, Okinawa gendaishi, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2005), 34.
18 See Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (New York: Verso, 2007).
19 For further discussion, see Gavan McCormack, “Okinawa and the Structure of Dependence,” in Japan and Okinawa: Structure and Subjectivity, ed. Glenn D. Hook and Richard Siddle (London, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).
20 According to Okinawa University's Sakurai Kunitoshi, Okinawa has thirty-eight artificial beaches and is planning ten more while its natural ones shrink. Sakurai Kunitoshi, “COP 10 igo no Okinawa,” in Okinawa wa doko e mukau no ka (Okinawa University, December 19, 2010).
21 Editorial, “Okinawa no min-i—Kennai isetsu ‘No’ ga senmei da shusho wa omoku uketome eidan o,” Ryukyu Shimpo, November 3, 2009.
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