Ryukyu independence movement

Based on Wikipedia: Ryukyu independence movement

Only three percent. That's how many people in Okinawa today say they want independence from Japan, according to a 2022 poll. It seems like a trivially small number—until you consider that this represents tens of thousands of people who believe their islands should become a separate nation. And until you understand the centuries of history that brought this question to the table in the first place.

The Ryukyu Islands stretch like a scattered necklace across the sea between Japan and Taiwan. Most Americans know them only for their largest island, Okinawa, where the United States maintains an enormous military presence. But these islands were once a kingdom—independent, prosperous, and caught between empires.

A Kingdom Between Giants

In 1429, a chieftain named Shō Hashi accomplished something remarkable. He unified three warring polities on Okinawa—Hokuzan in the north, Chūzan in the center, and Nanzan in the south—into a single Ryukyu Kingdom. The capital rose at Shuri Castle, and for the next four and a half centuries, the kingdom charted its own course through dangerous waters.

The Ryukyus survived by being useful to everyone and threatening to no one. Starting in the 1370s, the kingdom maintained tributary relations with Ming dynasty China—a system that sounds subservient but was actually quite advantageous. In exchange for symbolic acknowledgment of Chinese supremacy, the Ryukyuan kings received political legitimacy and access to lucrative trade networks stretching across Southeast Asia. China never interfered in how Ryukyu governed itself.

The kingdom also traded with Japan, Korea, Thailand, and others. Ryukyuan ships became familiar sights in ports from Malacca to Kyoto. A distinct culture emerged—related to Japan's but unmistakably its own, with unique languages, music, religion, and political traditions.

Then came 1609.

The First Invasion

The Satsuma domain, a powerful feudal territory on the southern tip of Japan's main islands, launched an invasion of Ryukyu. They acted on behalf of the new Tokugawa shogunate, which had recently unified Japan after a century of civil war. The Ryukyuan king, Shō Nei, had refused to submit to the shogunate's authority.

The invasion succeeded. But what followed was peculiar—an arrangement historians call "dual vassalage." The kingdom was forced to pay tribute to Satsuma, but it was allowed to continue its independence in most matters. Crucially, it maintained its relationship with China.

Why preserve this fiction of independence? Because Japan at the time was prohibited from trading with China, and the Ryukyus provided a valuable back door. The kingdom became a conduit for Chinese goods flowing into Japan—profitable for Satsuma, convenient for the shogunate, and survivable for Ryukyu. This strange arrangement lasted for over two hundred and fifty years.

The Meiji Annexation

Everything changed with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan began its rapid transformation from a feudal society into a modern nation-state. The new government had no patience for ambiguous vassalages and tributary relationships. It wanted clear borders, clear sovereignty, and complete control.

The process Japan used to absorb Ryukyu is often called the Ryukyu Shobun—sometimes translated as "the Ryukyu Disposition," a term so bureaucratically neutral it almost hides what actually happened.

First, in 1872, the government converted the Kingdom of Ryukyu into the Ryukyu Domain—still nominally semi-autonomous, but now formally part of Japan. In 1875, Japan forced the kingdom to terminate its centuries-old tributary relationship with China, severing Ryukyu's most important external tie. Finally, in 1879, Japanese authorities abolished the domain entirely, established Okinawa Prefecture, and forcibly exiled the last king, Shō Tai, to Tokyo.

The Ryukyuan aristocracy resisted. For almost two decades, factions pushed for Chinese intervention or some form of preserved sovereignty. At one point, United States President Ulysses S. Grant proposed a compromise that would have kept an independent Okinawa while dividing other Ryukyuan islands between China and Japan. The plan went nowhere.

An even stranger proposal emerged from Japan itself: offering China the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands in exchange for trading rights equal to those enjoyed by Western powers. This would have literally partitioned the island chain for commercial gain. China declined to ratify the agreement—and then lost the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, after which it renounced any remaining claims to the islands.

The kingdom was gone.

The Assimilation Machine

What followed was not merely political absorption but cultural transformation. The Meiji government set out to make the Ryukyuan people Japanese—not just legally, but ethnically, culturally, and linguistically.

The primary tool was education. By 1902, schools consumed over half of the prefectural budget. Students learned that they were Japanese, that their ancestors had always been Japanese, and that their distinctive languages and customs were embarrassing provincial holdovers to be abandoned as quickly as possible.

This campaign created what historians describe as a collective inferiority complex. Ryukyuan people came to see their own heritage as backward and primitive. In the 1920s, a movement arose to change the spelling of Okinawan personal names to spare people from ethnic discrimination—a telling indicator of how stigmatized Okinawan identity had become.

The situation grew so sensitive that even attempting to discuss whether Okinawa was truly part of Japan could bring condemnation from both mainland Japanese and Okinawans themselves. At the 1903 Osaka Exposition, an exhibition called "Hall of the Peoples" displayed representatives from various colonial territories. Okinawans protested their inclusion alongside other "less developed" peoples—not because they objected to colonialism, but because they desperately wanted to be seen as authentically Japanese, not colonial subjects.

Colony or Prefecture?

This brings us to a question that historians still debate: Was the annexation of Ryukyu an act of colonialism?

Some scholars argue definitively yes. Kiyoshi Inoue contended in 1957 that the Ryukyu Shobun was the annexation of an independent country over the opposition of its people—by any reasonable definition, an act of aggression, not "natural ethnic unification." Philosopher Taira Katsuyasu considers the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture "outright colonialism." Researcher Nomura Koya describes what he calls Japan's "unconscious colonialism"—a situation where mainland Japanese remain unaware of how they continue to colonize Okinawa, particularly through the concentration of American military bases there.

Others dispute this characterization. They argue that after 1609, Ryukyu was already part of Japan's political sphere, making the 1879 transition merely administrative. They point out that Japan's formal colonial empire—Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria—began in 1895, after Okinawa had already been integrated as a prefecture. And they invoke the concept of nihonjinron, the idea of a unified Japanese racial society that made Ryukyuan incorporation natural and inevitable.

The scholar Tze May Loo argues that this is a false choice. Okinawa, he suggests, was both a colony and not a colony, both part of Japan and not part of Japan—and this dual status is precisely what enables its continued subordination. Despite being technically a prefecture rather than a colony, Okinawa experienced colonial policies of cultural destruction and reconstruction. Its people faced persistent discrimination that constantly reminded them of their unequal status.

According to Loo, Okinawa is trapped in a vicious circle: Japan refuses to acknowledge discrimination against Okinawa, while Okinawans are forced to accept unfair conditions to maintain membership in the Japanese nation. The result is what he calls "an internal colony without end."

The Battle of Okinawa

Then came the bloodiest chapter of all.

In the spring of 1945, American forces invaded Okinawa in what would become the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War. The battle lasted nearly three months. When it ended, approximately 150,000 Okinawan civilians were dead—roughly one-third of the island's entire population.

Many of these civilians died by their own hands. The Japanese military, determined to prevent surrender, forced mass suicides. Soldiers distributed grenades to civilian families with instructions to kill themselves rather than be captured. They told civilians that Americans would commit unspeakable atrocities—propaganda so effective that mothers murdered their own children before taking their own lives.

For many Ryukyuans, the Battle of Okinawa crystallized a bitter truth: they had been sacrificed. The Japanese military had used their islands as a buffer zone, a place to delay the American advance toward the main islands at any cost. Okinawans paid that cost in blood.

American Occupation

After the war, the United States took control. From 1945 to 1950, Okinawa was administered by the United States Military Government of the Ryukyu Islands. Even after the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco restored Japanese sovereignty over most of the country, America retained control of Okinawa.

The occupation was not gentle. The American military forcibly requisitioned private land to build bases, placing the original owners in what were effectively refugee camps. Military personnel committed thousands of crimes against Okinawan civilians—crimes that often went unpunished under the legal status protecting American servicemembers.

Some independence advocates actually hoped during this period that the United States might support Ryukyuan sovereignty. American authorities, interested in maintaining their military installations, even showed some interest in promoting pre-1879 Ryukyuan culture and claims to autonomy. If Okinawans saw themselves as separate from Japan, the thinking went, they might be more accepting of continued American presence.

It didn't work. By the 1960s and 1970s, most Okinawans wanted to be part of Japan again—in large part because they wanted the constitutional protections, economic prosperity, and political freedoms that post-war Japan enjoyed. The American bases had become an economic burden and a source of constant social friction.

The Return—and What Didn't Change

On May 15, 1972, Okinawa was returned to Japan. Many Okinawans celebrated.

Their joy would prove complicated.

The American military never left. Under the mutual security treaty between the United States and Japan, signed in 1952, American forces could maintain bases throughout the country. What this meant in practice was staggering: although Okinawa comprises just 0.6 percent of Japan's total land area, it hosts 75 percent of all United States military installations in Japan.

Read that again. Less than one percent of the land. Three-quarters of the bases.

The concentration of American military power on Okinawa is not an accident of geography or logistics. It is, according to many Okinawans, a continuation of their subordinate status. The mainland Japanese have effectively outsourced the burden of the security alliance to people they still treat as second-class citizens.

The Case for Independence

Today's independence movement rests on several interconnected arguments.

First, historical illegality. Yasukatsu Matsushima, a professor at Ryukoku University and a prominent independence advocate, argues that the 1879 annexation violated international law. The Ryukyuan government never agreed to join Japan. No treaty exists transferring sovereignty. The annexation was accomplished through military force and the threat of violence—which, under any reasonable interpretation of law, makes it invalid.

Matsushima draws a comparison to Hawaii, another island kingdom absorbed by an expanding power. At least the United States eventually admitted the illegality of its annexation and issued a formal apology in 1993. Japan has never apologized, never acknowledged wrongdoing, never considered compensation.

Second, the base burden. The concentration of American military installations on Okinawa imposes environmental damage, noise pollution, crime, and the constant risk of accidents. In 2004, a U.S. military helicopter crashed into a university campus. Periodic crimes by service members—including rapes and murders—inflame local anger. Proposed base expansions, particularly the construction of a new facility at Henoko despite overwhelming local opposition, demonstrate that neither Tokyo nor Washington treats Okinawan democracy seriously.

Third, cultural erasure. The Ryukyuan people have distinct languages—not dialects of Japanese, but separate Japonic languages, as different from standard Japanese as Portuguese is from Spanish. They have their own religious traditions, musical forms, and historical memory. The Meiji assimilation campaign tried to destroy all of this. Modern independence advocates argue that only sovereignty can truly protect Ryukyuan culture from continued erosion.

The Case Against

Independence remains a minority position for practical reasons.

Economic viability is the most obvious concern. Okinawa is significantly poorer than mainland Japan, with lower wages, higher unemployment, and an economy heavily dependent on military-related employment and tourism. An independent Ryukyu would need to develop new industries, negotiate its own trade relationships, and fund all the services currently provided by the Japanese central government.

Security is equally daunting. The Ryukyu Islands sit in one of the world's most strategically contested waters, between a rising China and an established alliance between Japan and the United States. An independent Ryukyu would have to develop its own defense policy—or accept some form of protection arrangement that might look uncomfortably similar to the current situation.

Perhaps most importantly, identity has shifted over a century and a half. Many Okinawans today consider themselves Japanese. The Meiji assimilation campaign, however traumatic, succeeded in transforming how people see themselves. Even those who feel a strong Ryukyuan cultural identity may also feel Japanese—or may simply not feel strongly enough about independence to upend their lives for it.

Living in Dual Status

What does it mean to be Ryukyuan today?

Novelist Tatsuhiro Oshiro describes it as a problem of culture producing uncertainty. Okinawans sometimes want to be Japanese and sometimes want to be distinct. Mainland Japanese sometimes recognize Okinawans as part of their cultural group and sometimes reject them. Okinawan culture is treated as both foreign and deserving of suppression, yet simultaneously celebrated as a colorful regional tradition—exotic enough to be interesting, but never threatening enough to be taken seriously.

This ambivalence runs deep in both directions. After the war, when American occupation authorities promoted Ryukyuan heritage as distinct from Japanese identity, some Okinawans embraced it while others resented the manipulation. When Okinawa was returned to Japan, some celebrated reunion while others felt they had merely exchanged one distant master for another.

The independence movement keeps this tension alive. Even if only three percent actively support sovereignty, the movement forces a question that many would prefer to avoid: What is Okinawa's true relationship to Japan? Equal partner or subordinate territory? Voluntary member or conquered kingdom? The question has no comfortable answer.

The View from Beijing

One factor complicates the independence movement in ways its advocates find frustrating: China.

The People's Republic of China has occasionally made statements suggesting that Okinawa's status is somehow unsettled, or that the Ryukyuan people should have the right to self-determination. Some Chinese scholars have argued that the 1879 annexation was illegitimate—an argument that happens to align with Ryukyuan independence claims.

This attention from Beijing puts independence advocates in an awkward position. Most do not want Chinese intervention, Chinese protection, or any form of Chinese influence over an independent Ryukyu. They are seeking self-determination, not a new overlord. But the Chinese statements allow Japanese critics to paint the independence movement as a stalking horse for Beijing's regional ambitions.

The history is genuinely complicated. Ryukyu maintained tribute relations with China for five centuries. China never ratified the 1879 annexation. From a strictly legalistic standpoint, Chinese officials have material they could use to question Okinawa's status if they chose to press the issue.

But for most Ryukyuans, this is irrelevant to their actual concerns. They are not nostalgic for Ming dynasty trade relations. They are angry about American military bases, frustrated with Tokyo's indifference, and mourning a cultural heritage that was nearly destroyed. These are domestic Japanese issues, not geopolitical chess moves.

An Unfinished Question

The Ryukyu independence movement will likely remain marginal for the foreseeable future. The numbers simply aren't there. Most Okinawans prefer to work within the Japanese political system—protesting base construction, electing anti-base governors, filing lawsuits, and appealing to national and international opinion.

But the movement matters beyond its electoral prospects. It keeps alive a historical memory that official Japanese narratives would prefer to smooth over. It forces uncomfortable questions about how Japan became the nation it is today—not just through peaceful unification of kindred peoples, but through military conquest and forced assimilation of a distinct people who never asked to be absorbed.

And it reminds us that borders are not natural features of the landscape. They are human creations, often imposed by force, and the people living within them sometimes remember when things were different.

In the Ryukyu Islands, some still remember. They remember Shuri Castle before it was burned in the Battle of Okinawa and again in a 2019 fire. They remember the kingdom's maritime trading networks. They remember the language their grandparents spoke, which their parents were punished for using in school. They remember a time when these islands belonged to themselves.

Three percent may not sound like many. But they are keeping a question alive that empires would prefer to close forever: To whom do these islands truly belong?