Any national history project faces the dilemma of what to include when current national boundaries do not coincide with historical ones. In Japan, the identity of the nation with its dominant ethnic group in the modern period has turned every discussion of “Japanese” history into an implicit comment on what and who is meant by “Japanese.” This chapter surveys the histories of Ryukyu and Hokkaido through the premodern and early modern periods. It discusses both regions’ close ties to the Japanese polity, while also highlighting their autonomous histories. At the same time, it reveals how situating places like Ryukyu and Hokkaido inside or outside the early modern polity shapes our understanding of their status during the modern era as colonial possessions or integral parts of the Japanese nation. This situating in turn affects understandings of the Indigeneity of the Ainu people and the status of Okinawan language and culture.

In 2013 China Central Television aired a news bulletin with a provocative headline: ‘Japan is snatching our islands using the pretext of environmental protection!’ This fiery denunciation was a reaction to the announcement by the Yamashina Institute that a new variant of Steller’s albatross had been discovered nesting on the disputed Senkaku (Ch: Diaoyu) Islands. Might this accusation by Chinese state media might have a kernel of truth to it? This chapter begins by exploring the politics of heritage preservation in Okinawa under US occupation, before showing how nature conservation on the Senkaku became tangled up in the sovereignty dispute over the islands in the 1960s. Shortly before Okinawan reversion to Japan, the naturalist Takara Tetsuo helped stoke a nationwide panic about Taiwanese fishermen ‘poaching’ seabird eggs on the Senkakus. Later, in the early 2010s, Japanese nationalists led by Tokyo Mayor Ishihara Shintarō used nature conservation as a pretext to lobby the central government to take harder line on the dispute.

This chapter considers motivations for engaging in language revitalization efforts. These encompass a range of physical, social and psychological factors, including connecting with ancestors, the past, and cultural heritage; healing from personal or historical trauma; building community; knowledge and culture; well-being; and the cognitive benefits of mother-tongue education and multilingualism. Case studies explore the impact of revitalization on physical health and well-being in Okinawa, Japan; the community benefits of a participatory action research project in the Black Tai (Lao Song) community in Thailand; language revitalization benefits in Wymysiöeryś (Wilamowice, Poland). In this case older people, who had been persecuted, were able to connect with young people through rehabilitation activities and community events, improving well-being and leading to positive language attitudes. Finally, Nahuatl identity and prestige have been strengthened through a series of workshops in which native speakers and new speakers could read and discuss colonial Nahuatl documents written by their ancestors.