8. OKINAWA - EMPIRE’S EDGE, JAPAN’S BLIND SPOT

19 November 2025

OKINAWA - EMPIRE’S EDGE, JAPAN’S BLIND SPOT

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1. From Ryukyu Kingdom to Japanese Prefecture

• Ryukyu Kingdom - an independent island monarchy from 1429 to 1879.
• It had its own monarchy, Ryukyuan languages, and sea-trade network linking China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.
• In 1879, Meiji Japan annexed Ryukyu, exiled the king, and renamed it Okinawa Prefecture.
• This was not integration but classic colonisation - a small maritime kingdom absorbed by a modernising empire.

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2. Strategic Geography - Valuable But Expendable

• Okinawa lies between Japan, Taiwan, China, and the Philippines.
• Militarily it is Japan’s front line in the Western Pacific.
• Economically and politically it is tiny - roughly the size of Devon and less than 1 percent of Japan’s land area.
• This combination makes it ideal, from Tokyo’s viewpoint, as a place to park foreign bases and domestic problems.

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3. The Battle of Okinawa - A Sacrificed People

• In 1945, Okinawa became the last major battle of the Pacific War.
• For Japan, the strategy was attrition: make Okinawa so costly that the United States might hesitate to invade the main islands.
• Around 100,000 to 150,000 Okinawan civilians died - roughly one quarter to one third of the population in three months.
• Japanese forces treated Okinawans as expendable:
  • Executed those speaking Ryukyuan dialects as suspected spies.
  • Forced families into group suicides with grenades rather than surrender.
  • Drove civilians from caves to free space for wounded soldiers.
• Okinawans later called themselves as sute-ishi - “discarded stones” sacrificed to protect mainland Japan.

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4. American Occupation And The Base Archipelago

• After 1945, Okinawa was ruled directly by the United States, separate from Japan.
• Japan regained sovereignty in 1952. Okinawa did not. It sat in a limbo for 27 years as a US military colony with Japanese nationals but no Japanese government.
• Reversion to Japan came only in 1972. Many Okinawans expected the US bases to shrink.
• Instead, a new pattern was fixed:
  • Okinawa is less than 1 percent of Japan’s land area.
  • Yet it hosts roughly 70 percent of all US military facilities in Japan.
• The island became a dense base archipelago - airfields, ports, training grounds, storage depots.

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5. Why The Bases Stay - Security, Convenience, And Indifference

• Article 9 of Japan’s constitution renounces war and restricts offensive military capability.
• In practice, Japan relies on the US - Japan alliance for hard security, especially against China and North Korea.
• When Washington wants to move or expand facilities, for example Futenma to Henoko, Tokyo almost always agrees.
• Structural reasons:
  • The alliance is central to Japanese defence doctrine.
  • No other prefecture wants new bases - national level NIMBY.
  • Okinawa has only 4 seats in the 465-seat lower house meaning little electoral leverage.
• Tokyo presents this as the “least bad option” for national security. Okinawa pays the local price for a national calculation.

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6. Marginalisation Inside A Supposedly Homogeneous Nation

• Officially, Japan describes itself as ethnically uniform: one people, one culture.
• There is no comprehensive anti-discrimination law covering ethnicity or region.
• Ryukyuans are not recognised in law as a distinct indigenous people, despite UN criticism.
• This legal fiction allows the state to say “we are all Japanese, so no special protections are needed” whilst:
  • Concentrating bases in one peripheral region.
  • Allowing stereotypes of Okinawans as lazy or backward to circulate.
  • Overriding local opposition on “national security” grounds whenever necessary.
• It is not overt malice so much as structural indifference backed by centralised power.

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7. Why There Is No Strong Independence Movement

Compared with Catalonia or the Basque Country, the absence of a strong Okinawan independence movement is striking. Several reasons overlap.

• Demographic destruction

  • A quarter to a third of the population died in 1945.
  • Ryukyuan languages are now spoken fluently by very few under 40.
  • Language is the core of a durable political identity and Ryukyuan is disappearing.

• Economic dependency

  • Okinawa is Japan’s poorest prefecture.
  • Subsidies from Tokyo and money tied to bases and tourism are central to its economy.
  • Independence would mean losing those flows without any substitute sources of income.

• No external sponsor

  • Any Chinese support for independence would instantly be seen as a geopolitical move, discrediting the cause.
  • Unlike Catalonia in the EU, Okinawa has no friendly regional framework to fall back on.

• Trauma and realism

  • The Battle of Okinawa taught that resistance can equal annihilation.
  • Independence would mean: loss of Japanese citizenship, exposure to Chinese pressure, but continued US interest.
  • Most Okinawans therefore push for fairer treatment within Japan, not separation from it.

• Resistance does exist - in anti-base voting, legal challenges, cultural revival - but it is tactical, not secessionist.

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8. Parallels With Korea - Colonisation And Denial

There are clear echoes of how Japan treated Korea:

• Japan's denial of Okinawan civilian deaths mirrors its comfort women denial: 
• • Forced annexation of a previously independent kingdom.
  • Suppression of language and culture in favour of a standardised “Japanese” identity.
  • Economic exploitation and use of the population as expendable in wartime.
• The pattern of denial is similar too - minimising or sanitising war crimes, softening textbook accounts, framing coercion as “voluntary sacrifice”.
• The key difference is power: South Korea became a sovereign state able to demand recognition and reparations.
• Okinawa remains a Japanese prefecture without international voice. Its museums and memorials tell the story, but they rarely reach the mainland - let alone the wider world.

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9. Culture As Fusion - Champuru Identit

Champuru means “mix” - and Okinawan culture is exactly that.

• Ryukyuan layer

  • Eisa dance, sacred groves (utaki), yuta priestesses, awamori spirit, pork-heavy cuisine.

• Chinese influence

  • Shisa lion-dogs at gates, aspects of court culture, stir-fry techniques, early martial arts roots.

• Japanese overlay

  • Language dominance, schooling, bureaucracy, national media.

• American occupation legacy

  • English loanwords, car culture, base-side entertainment zones, “American Village”, A&W, spam and taco rice.

• Hawaiian marketing

  • A genuine diaspora link to Hawaii overlaps with a conscious branding strategy as “Japan’s Hawaii” for mainland tourists.

• The result is not a neat multicultural mosaic but a hybrid identity that is both global and distinctly local, yet increasingly packaged for visitor consumption.

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10. Karate - From Ryukyuan Art To Japanese Brand

• Karate emerged in Ryukyu from local fighting systems combined with Chinese martial arts, particularly after Satsuma’s 1609 invasion and ban on weapons.
• In the 1920s and 1930s, as karate was taken to mainland Japan, it was refashioned:
  • Characters changed from “Chinese hand” to “empty hand”.
  • Japanese ranking systems and terminology were imposed.
  • It was presented as a Japanese martial art from “southern Japan”.
• During the war, karate served nationalist mobilisation. After the war, Japanese organisations controlled its global spread.
• Today, most practitioners worldwide know karate as “Japanese”. Okinawa offers “authentic Okinawan karate” as a niche pilgrimage and tourism product - a low-key form of cultural reclamation after appropriation.

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11. Tourism, Exoticism, And The Double Game

• For mainland Japan, Okinawa is:
  • A tropical playground for domestic tourists.
  • An exotic “other” inside the nation with beaches, bright shirts, relaxed vibe.
• For the state, it is also:
  • A military buffer against China.
  • A convenient dumping ground for US bases that other prefectures will not accept.
• Officially, Okinawans are simply Japanese citizens like any others.
• Practically, they are treated as a peripheral people whose history, trauma, and objections can be overridden in the name of security and national unity.

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12. What Okinawa Means Today

• To Tokyo and Washington

  • A geostrategic asset anchoring the US - Japan alliance in the Western Pacific.
  • A place where the costs of deterrence can be discretely concentrated.

• To the outside world

  • Largely invisible, Okinawa is known, if at all, as “Japan’s islands near Taiwan” or as a generic diving destination.

• To Okinawans themselves

  • The memory of a kingdom annexed and a people sacrificed.
  • A present that is shaped by bases, tourism, and suffers from limited autonomy.
  • A culture that survives as both "lived identity" and "curated performance".
  • A constant sense of being Japanese enough to bear burdens, but not Japanese enough to be fully heard.

Okinawa sits at the intersection of empire, memory, and strategy ... as a place where Japan’s official story of homogeneity and pacifism breaks down, and where the unresolved tensions of the 20C remain very much alive.