The history of the Okinawa Islands does not match their rainbow atmosphere at all. The islanders only switched from fishing to an agricultural economy in the 12th century. In 1429, the commander Sehashi united the fragmented small principalities and created the first united kingdom of Ryukyu, which flourished in the 15th-16th centuries through sea trade with China, the countries of Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand) and Japan. In 1603, a united state system of the Tokugawa shogunate emerged in Japan.
The shogunate decides on direct sea trade with China through the islands of Okinawa and gives the order to the samurai clan Shimazu, which at that time controlled the southern part of the central island of Honshu, namely the province of Satsuma (today Kagoshima Prefecture), to begin the military seizure of the Okinawa archipelago. The Shimazu clan introduced troops to the territory of the islands in March 1609 and literally in a month captured almost the entire territory of Okinawa, thereby subordinating the government of the Ryukyu Kingdom to the shogunate of Japan.
The gate of the Japanese Shuri Castle, which is located in Okinawa.
Since that time, the kingdom was in a strange position of "double" subordination - on the one hand, the islands were subordinate to Japan, on the other, the kingdom had to formally submit to China, since without the recognition of the Celestial Empire, the kingdom did not receive permission for sea trade in Chinese goods. This dual system was brought to an end by the government of Emperor Meiji in 1872, when, during an administrative reform, all provinces in Japan were redistributed and renamed prefectures. The most remote of Japan's 47 prefectures, consisting of 160 islands stretching over a thousand kilometers, Okinawa was the independent kingdom of Ryukyu until the second half of the 19th century. It maintained closer ties with imperial China than with Japan's isolationist policies. It was at this time (in 1879) that the Okinawa Islands were forcibly incorporated into the territory of Kagoshima Prefecture.
Despite the fact that the islands now officially belonged to Japan, all the "blessings of civilization" - the industrial revolution, the introduction of a modern legal system, etc. - came to Okinawa with a great delay, as a rule, only 10-30 years after all they appeared in the main territory of the country.
The American M4 Sherman flamethrower tank firing during the battle in Okinawa.
And, finally, the Okinawa Islands are the only place where fierce ground military operations were carried out during the final period of World War II. Starting from April 1, 1945, the day of the landing of the US amphibious assault on the Okinawa Islands, the Japanese army offered fierce resistance for three months, resulting in the death of a large number of civilians. The battles were so hard that many cities and even mountains completely changed their appearance. In addition, at the end of the war, the islands were under US jurisdiction until 1972. Today, more than 75% of US military bases located in Japan are located on the Okinawa islands.
Japan annexed Okinawa in 1879, but lost it after defeat in World War II. From 1945 it was under US control and was returned to Japan in 1973. However, Okinawa never became 100% Japanese. Today, it is Japan's least developed province with the lowest per capita income in the country and the highest unemployment rate. Anti-American sentiment is strong in Okinawa due to the long-term presence of the US contingent, which creates numerous problems for the residents of the prefecture.
Promotional video:
Despite this sad story, the inhabitants of the islands are cheerful and cheerful people. One of the Okinawan dishes is called teampuru, a kind of vegetable mash where a wide variety of ingredients - vegetables, tofu, pork, etc. - are fried together. Locals sometimes call their environment "teampuru culture", as everything that can be mixed is mixed in it: the medieval religion of the island gods, the traditions of the Ryukyu Kingdom, the distant "ingredients" of Chinese and East Asian cultures that took root during the sea trade, the culture of Japan plus modern US culture, brought by the military of this country in the middle of the twentieth century.
Buddhism, which became widespread in Japan, practically did not touch the archipelago, so the ban on meat dishes, which was observed in Japan until the middle of the 19th century, did not affect Okinawa, and the culture of the islands is replete with national dishes using pork. Okinawa is also famous for its specific alcoholic drink "avamori" - infusion of rice and sugar cane. Avamori is not a drink for the weak. The usual alcohol content is 30%, and on the southernmost islands they drink even stronger things - the drink "hanazake" on the island of Yenaguni contains at least 60% alcohol. These drinks, combined with local cuisine, have recently enjoyed great popularity throughout Japan, fueled by the boom in the specific rhythmic traditional music of these islands and the excitement around popular pop artists, many of whom hail from the islands of Okinawa.
Until now, the main irritant in relations between Tokyo and Beijing has been the PRC's claims to Senkaku. "None of the arguments put forward by the Chinese government as so-called historical, geographical, geological and other grounds, from the point of view of international law, cannot be called a legitimate argument confirming the PRC's claims to the right to own the Senkaku Islands," the Japanese Foreign Ministry explained to Kommersant … Nevertheless, Beijing continues to stand its ground.
The tougher tone of the Chinese "hawks" calling on the PRC authorities to expand the dispute with Tokyo by including the issue of Okinawa's status in it threatens to bring the confrontation in the Asia-Pacific region to a new level. Under a strategic defense agreement between Washington and Tokyo, the largest US naval bases in the Pacific are deployed in Okinawa. Three-quarters of all American bases stationed in Japan are located here (the territory of Okinawa is slightly more than half a percent of the country's area, its population is 1.4 million people).
These features of Okinawa are what Chinese radicals are trying to exploit, calling on Beijing to play the territorial card in its dispute with Tokyo. They expect to stir up separatism in Okinawa itself. However, despite the claims against Tokyo, the idea of separating Okinawa from Japan is not yet popular - the candidate for governor there, who ran in 2006 under the slogan of independence, received only about 6,000 votes. However, the hawks in Beijing seem to assume that as the PRC grows in power, there will be more supporters of independence in favor of transforming Okinawa from a remote Japanese province into a dynamic Pacific crossroads between China and Southeast Asia.
Author: Sergey Strokan