Before the 19th century, with its strong comprehensive national strength and advanced political culture, China established a huge tributary system. The number of tributary states (vassals) recorded in the History of the Ming Dynasty once reached 148, and at the height of the Qing Dynasty, more than ten surrounding countries were included in the tributary system.
In the turmoil of the modern century, the tributary system of the Celestial Empire collapsed, and most tributary states became independent nation-states. There were also some tributary states that perished in the invasion and expansion of the great powers, including the Ryukyu Kingdom, which sat at the end of the East China Sea.
▲ The tributary system in the early 19th century
Ryukyu (present-day Hon Okinawa Prefecture), like Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost region, was only completely incorporated into Japan after the Meiji Restoration in modern times. Compared with the backward Ainu people in Hokkaido, the Ryukyu Kingdom developed into a culturally prosperous and economically developed country due to its superior geographical location and convenient tributary trade.
Ryukyu is geographically close to the Japanese island of Kyushu and the island of Taiwan of China, and its culture is a fusion of China and Japan. As early as the 17th century, Japan began its invasion of Ryukyu, controlled it under the noses of the Qing Dynasty, and by the end of the 19th century it was completely swallowed and gradually assimilated.
How exactly was the Ryukyu Kingdom, known as the "Mankoku Tsuryō", conquered by Japan? From the end of the 19th century to the present, how did Japan digest Ryukyu step by step?
▲Naha, the capital of Ryukyu (Okinawa).
I. Bankoku Shinryo
In the northwestern Pacific Ocean, the Ryukyu Islands are like a string of pearls, scattered in an arc on the warm sea with a north-south span of more than 1,000 kilometers.
There are different opinions on the birth of the Ryukyu nation, one is that the Baiyue group, which was unwilling to accept the rule of the Central Plains Dynasty during the Qin and Han dynasties, crossed the sea to Ryukyu; It is also said that the ancestors of Ryukyu came from the Japanese island of Kyushu, the so-called "Ryukyu Tongzu Theory"; It is also said that the Ryukyu people have the blood of Indonesian and other Austronesian peoples.
▲ Ryukyuan people wear Japanese-style knives, but the clothing is closer to Hanfu
In Ryukyu mythology and legend, the Ryukyuan people are descendants of the god Amomiku, whose descendants established the earliest Tensun dynasty in Ryukyu.
This national narrative comes from the official history of the Ryukyu Kingdom, "Nakayama Shijian", and is almost the same as the legendary Japanese brothers and sisters Izanagi and Izanami who created Japan.
There are rough records of Ryukyu ("liuqiu" in the book) during the Sui Dynasty in China, but it was not until the 12th century that Ryukyu took off the skin of the gods and appeared in the history books of the Southern Song Dynasty as mortals.
The Ryukyu Islands can be roughly divided into three archipelagos from north to south: Amami, Okinawa, and Shima Islands, and the early Ryukyu monarchs could only control the Okinawa Islands in the central part. The local "jishi" (local rich families) were powerful, and the dynasties changed several times. By the 14th century, it was divided into three countries, the "Three Mountains Period" in Ryukyu history.
▲Three mountains period
In 1372, the Ryukyu Zhongshan state sent envoys to the Ming Dynasty, and was recognized by Zhu Yuanzhang as a vassal state of the Daming clan, and the monarch was given the surname "Shang" (previously the Ryukyuan people had no surname). Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty gave shipwrights and other "thirty-six surnames of the Min people" to Zhongshan, and Chinese clothing and etiquette deeply influenced Ryukyu.
Through tribute, China gained the central position of the world and used it to conduct official trade with the tributary states. The enthronement of the new monarch of the tributary state required the canonization of the Chinese emperor and thus the legitimacy of his rule. Through tribute, he entered the Chinese-dominated political and economic order of East Asia.
▲Tributary system
By 1429, King Shangbazhi of Zhongshan unified the three mountains and established the first Shang dynasty, entering a golden period of development under the tributary system of the Ming dynasty.
In line with the principle of "Huairou and distant countries, thick and thin", the Ming Dynasty always gave back the tribute of the vassals at several times or even ten times the price. The Ming knew that this was a loss-making transaction, so they limited the number of tributes paid by the vassals, and Ryukyu was allowed to "pay one offering for two years". In fact, Ryukyu paid tribute in a variety of ways, with 171 times in the History of the Ming Dynasty alone, compared with 30 times in Korea and 89 times in Annam (Vietnam).
▲Fuzhou Juyuanyi (Ryukyu Hall) that receives Ryukyu tribute envoys
Due to the Ming Dynasty's policies such as sea bans, Ryukyu undertook part of the entrepot trade between Southeast Asia and East Asia, and the ports of Ryukyu were connected to each other, and the cultures of various countries also came with merchant ships, and Ryukyu won the reputation of the Wanguo Jinliang.
In 1469, King Shangdeok of Ryukyu died, and the ministers supported the prestigious Shangyuan as king, establishing the second Shang dynasty.
During the Second Shang Dynasty, Ryukyu continued to maintain close vassal relations with the Ming Dynasty, earning a lot of money in the tributary trade, and sufficient financial resources provided the Ryukyu king with the confidence to expand. At the beginning of the 16th century, the Ryukyu army made an expedition to the islands of Amami and Yaeyama, expanding its rule from the Okinawa Islands to the entire Ryukyu Islands, covering an area of about 3,500 square kilometers.
▲ Conquer the entire archipelago
Outside of China, Japan is the country with which it has the closest ties to Ryukyu. In 645 AD, Japan followed the Tang Dynasty system and implemented Dahua reform, establishing a feudal centralized state with the emperor as the core. The Nihon Shoki, written at the end of the 8th century, records the earliest official interactions between the Japanese Ryū.
In the 11th century, the Japanese samurai class rose and the shogunate was established to rule Japan, and the public power represented by the emperor was elevated, and Ryukyu maintained contact with the two Japanese samurai regimes, Kamakura and Muromachi.
The shogunate sometimes unilaterally referred to Ryukyu trade goods as "tribute", but in fact there was no canonization relationship between the Ryukyu. In 1467, the Onin Rebellion broke out in Japan, and the archipelago fell into the Warring States Period, which lasted for more than 100 years, and the ties between Japan and Ryu weakened.
Japan in 1582
At the end of the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan. He launched the War of Invasion of Korea in 1592 and planned to invade the Ming Dynasty. Japan asked Ryukyu to provide Yanghe ships, but the king of Ryukyu refused.
In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate, the last samurai regime in Japanese history. Within the Tokugawa shogunate, the daimyo who ruled the region were divided into three types: kin, lineage, and foreign according to the degree of trust. Across the sea from Ryukyu, Satsuma Domain was a daimyo who could not be trusted by the Tokugawa shogun.
Satsuma was economically backward but fierce, and in order to achieve better development, the Shimazu clan, the lord of Satsuma clan, invaded Ryukyu. The long-lost Ryukyu army was quickly routed, and within a month, the army captured the Ryukyu capital, Shurijo Castle.
▲ Satsuma invasion
The king of Ryukyu was taken to Edo (present-day Tokyo) to meet the shogun, the northern Amami Islands were ceded to Satsuma, Ryukyu lost 35% of its territory and 25% of its grain production capacity, and Ryukyu officials were appointed and dismissed, and foreign trade was controlled by Satsuma.
In order to conduct tributary trade with China under the guise of Ryukyu, Japan tried to conceal its control of Ryukyu. Daming, who was nearing the end of the dynasty, heard the news, but was unable to take care of it. The Tokugawa shogunate asked the Ryukyu king to send an envoy to visit the shogun on time and accept the canonization, that is, to go to Edo.
A large number of Japanese goods arrived in China under the name of "Ryukyu tribute", and the tributary trade that once fattened Ryukyu has now become a cash cow for Japan. The father of modern Ryukyu studies, Qiao Pop Xian, compared Ryukyu to "Japan's cormorant", and all the "fish" that he had worked hard to catch was taken away by Japan.
▲ The Ryukyu tributes mainly pass through Fujian City
Second, the death of the country and hatred
After the death of the Ming dynasty, Ryukyu was canonized by the Great Qing Dynasty, and the actual state affairs were still controlled by Satsuma. The Qing emperor was unaware of the situation of the "two generas" of Ryukyu, and even praised Ryukyu for not selling sulfur to Geng Jingzhong during the San Francisco Rebellion (in fact, Geng Jingzhong was captured, and Ryukyu urgently destroyed the goods).
The Qing emperor's reward for Ryukyu was second only to that of Joseon, and Ryukyu was the only vassal state that did not levy taxes on all goods of the mission.
▲ The Ryukyu Palace reenacted the Qing Dynasty to canonize the King of Ryukyu
In order to be listed on the backdoor, whenever Qing dynasty envoys arrived in Ryukyu, the Japanese would always take the trouble to collect Japanese copper coins circulating in the Ryukyu market, and the Japanese samurai in the Ryukyu port would temporarily evacuate to erase all traces of Japan as much as possible. Japan also compiled a set of "Articles and Mandarins" for the Ryukyuan people to memorize in response to various questions from Qing envoys.
After the 19th century, the decaying Qing dynasty suffered a crushing defeat in the two Opium Wars, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian tributary states were annexed by Russia, and South Asian tributary states such as Nepal and Bhutan were also controlled by Britain, and the tributary system began to collapse.
Deeply warned, Japanese visionaries planned to unite the lower class samurai and some foreign daimyo to overthrow the shogunate. The Choshu, Satsuma and other domains in southwestern Japan had early contact with Western countries, and in addition to being suppressed by the Tokugawa shogunate for a long time, the earliest rebel faction appeared.
▲ The Fallen Curtain faction unites four external daimyos
In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate was destroyed, and Japan established a modern constitutional monarchy with the emperor as the core. Japan carried out the Meiji Restoration and sought to enrich the country and strengthen the army. Ryukyu is close to the South Seas and bordered by Samhan to the north, and is an important springboard for Japanese expansion. Against the backdrop of the initial achievements of the Restoration and the existence of tributary trade in name only, Japan decided to annex Ryukyu.
Centralization was strengthened, and in 1871, Japan abolished the domain, and Satsuma Domain became Kagoshima Prefecture.
At the same time, Japan changed Ryukyu from a nominally independent country to a Japanese Ryukyu domain, and handed over its administration to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was the first Ryukyu punishment.
▲Meiji Restoration
Japan understood that annexation would take steps at a time, after all, Ryukyu was still nominally a vassal of the Qing Dynasty, and soon the Qing court blindly showed the bottom line of the Ryukyu issue.
In 1874, two Ryukyu tribute ships were shipwrecked on the east coast of Taiwan Island. At this time, the island of Taiwan was under the jurisdiction of China's Fujian Province, but the mountains in the eastern part of the island were still the territory of the indigenous people.
Of the 66 Ryukyu crew members, 54 were killed by the natives. Japan saw the right time to send troops to invade eastern Taiwan, and at the same time sent Secretary of Internal Affairs Okubo Toshidori to contact the Qing court.
▲ Li Hongzhang and Okubo Litsu
In order to clear himself of responsibility, Li Hongzhang, a representative of the Qing Dynasty, said during the negotiations that the incident was the work of a foreigner. Okubo Toshi-dori grabbed the conversation and took the opportunity to deny the Qing dynasty's sovereignty over the Fanren territories in eastern Taiwan.
The Qing court naturally refused to accept the blackmail of the fledgling Japan, and with the news of the Qing army's increase, the Japanese side was forced to withdraw. However, in the "Sino-Japanese Beijing Special Treaty", the Qing court paid Japan 500,000 taels of silver, admitting that Japan's military dispatch was a "righteous act to protect the people", and the decline of the Qing court was clearly seen by Japan.
▲ Japanese tombstones for the Ryukyuan people who died (define them as Japanese)
After the Opium War, the crisis of Qing Dynasty's rule was further intensified, and a large amount of land was ceded to the outside world for reparations, and uprisings were everywhere from the northwest to the southeast, and the Qing Dynasty was too busy to take care of itself.
In 1875, Japan and Russia temporarily resolved the territorial dispute in the north through the Treaty of Exchange between Birch and the Northern Kuril Islands, and Japan decided to go all out to annex Ryukyu south.
▲ The territorial dispute between Japan and Russia continues to this day
In 1875, Japanese Minister of Internal Affairs Michiyuki Matsuda came to Ryukyu and conveyed Japan's "Five Orders" to Ryukyu, forcing Ryukyu to abolish its vassal relations with the Qing court and adopt the Japanese era name... Until it was incorporated into the territory of Japan.
In 1877, under Japanese pressure, the compilation of the "Zhongshan Shijian" and "Qiuyang", which officially recorded the historical facts of the independent kingdom in Ryukyu, was stopped, and Japanese police and patrol teams were stationed in Ryukyu; In 1877, Japan forced Ryukyu to surrender its jurisdiction to the Osaka High Court.
▲ The Qing Dynasty was worried about internal and external troubles
In January 1879, Japan issued the "Ryukyu Punishment Case", requiring Ryukyu to accept the abolition of the domain and the inclusion of the prefecture in Japan. After being rejected by Ryukyu, Matsuda Michiyuki came to Ryukyu with 160 police officers in March, and the Japanese army sent more than 600 people to set up a branch in Ryukyu (the predecessor of the Sixth Division and the main perpetrator of the Nanjing Massacre).
The Ryukyu king Shotai and other nobles were sent to Tokyo and were made Chinese by Emperor Meiji. The Ryukyu Kingdom was changed to Okinawa Prefecture for the second Ryukyu disposition, and the centuries-old Ryukyu Kingdom was destroyed.
▲ Meiji Emperor VS King Shang Thai King
III. On the side of the empire
Japan's annexation was not approved by the Qing Dynasty, the suzerainty of Ryukyu, and Ryukyu people such as Xiang Zhili and Lin Shigong crossed the sea to China (Escape the Qing people) to pray that the Qing Dynasty would send troops to help restore the country.
The Qing dynasty was worried about how to recover Ili from Russia, so it decided to resolve the Ryukyu issue peacefully. Japan was not strong enough to ignore the Qing Dynasty's demands, so the two countries began negotiations, known as the Ryukyu Case.
Former US President Grant came to mediate and proposed the "island theory." According to this, the Qing Dynasty believed that the Ryukyu Kingdom could be divided into three parts, with the northern part belonging to Japan, the southern part being returned to the Qing Dynasty, and the central part restoring the Ryukyu Kingdom.
▲Sino-Japanese plan
Japan, on the other hand, believed that the northern central part should be returned to Japan, and the southern part should be returned to Japan. The Qing Dynasty did not want to provoke Japan, lest Japan join forces with Russia to put pressure on China, so it agreed to Japan's plan.
The opposition believed that this move would provide a pretext for Russia and France and other countries to occupy Korea, Vietnam and other Qing vassals, and China and Japan never signed the treaty, and the Ryukyu case became an unsolved case.
In 1895, Japan, which had accumulated many years, defeated the Qing Dynasty in the Sino-Japanese War and ceded Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, and the Ryukyu case was no longer mentioned, and Japan took full control of the area.
▲Sino-Japanese War
In order to consolidate its rule, Japan implements a policy of "old habits and warmth". That is, the old Ryukyu practice was used to weaken the Ryukyuan people's sense of resistance.
In 1880, the population of Ryukyu was about 280,000, and the literacy rate was only 3%. Japan built a large-scale primary education school in Ryukyu, and by 1888 66 elementary schools had been built, and Ryukyu children could enroll for free and receive food subsidies. The Ryukyuan people were required to pledge allegiance to the emperor, Nikryu and Zurun were indoctrinated, and Shinto beliefs entered Ryukyu.
By 1907, there were hundreds of elementary schools throughout Ryukyu, and the literacy rate had risen to 97%, but behind the change was the strong entry of the Japanese language.
Ryukyuan is known in Japan as a Japanese dialect, and if students speak Ryukyuan, they are forced to carry dialect cards with insulting words written on them and accept ruthless accusations from the teacher. Let the Ryukyuan people be ashamed of speaking Ryukyuan.
▲ Japan regards Ryukyuan as a dialect of Japanese and does not recognize its status as an independent language
By 1910, there were fewer than 10 middle and high schools in Ryukyu, compared to more than 100 elementary schools, after all, the Japanese wanted to assimilate the Ryukyuan people with language and religion, and higher education could produce a local Ryukyuan elite who resisted Japanese rule.
In the 20th century, Japan, which had increased its national strength, began to expand vigorously. After the Korean Peninsula and the island of Taiwan were invaded, Japan classified them as "foreign places" and sent governors to govern them, with special local laws and financial systems. Japan's old territory was called the hinterland, and Ryukyu was included in the hinterland.
▲Japanese troops in front of the Ryukyu Palace
In fact, Ryukyu's status is a "domestic colony". After 1898, the Japanese Military Service Law was implemented in Ryukyu, and a large number of Ryukyuan people became cannon fodder for Japanese aggression and expansion. In order to make up for the shortage of Japan's sugar industry, Japan promoted sugarcane cultivation in Ryukyu and developed sugar production, and a large number of Ryukyu farmers were tied to the land.
In order to prevent the Ryukyuan people from taking the opportunity to resist, Japan did not grant the Ryukyuan people the right to vote until 1912. In 1924, for example, Ryukyu paid 5.52 million yen in taxes, 2.1 and 2.4 times that of Miyazaki and Tottori prefectures, which were similar in population and size. In the same year, Japan's fiscal expenditure on Ryukyu was only 1.8 million yuan.
▲ Most Japanese laws are not implemented simultaneously in Ryukyu
Under Japan's assimilation policy, the national consciousness of the Ryukyuan people gradually faded, and with the outbreak of World War II, Ryukyuan was deeply bound to Japanese chariots.
In April 1945, the U.S. military, which practiced the frog jump tactic, launched an offensive on the Ryukyu Islands, known as the Battle of Okinawa. A large number of Ryukyu youths were forcibly conscripted, and 95,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the battle, including 30,000 Ryukyu recruits.
▲Battle of Okinawa
In order to prevent the locals from assisting the American army, 100,000 Ryukyuan committed suicide under the coercion of the Japanese army, and Ryukyu lost 20% of its total population. A large number of classics and archives were destroyed by the war, and the cultural treasures of the past 800 years were reduced to powder.
After World War II, all of Japan was occupied by the United States, and according to the Potsdam Proclamation, Japanese territory was limited to Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Hokkaido. In addition to spitting out Korea and occupying Chinese territory, the Kuril Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin were also seized by the USSR.
Ryukyu was close to China and Japan, and the United States, fearing that independent Ryukyu would once again be controlled by neighboring countries, decided to exercise direct rule over Ryukyu as the strategic fulcrum of U.S. hegemony after the war.
▲Old shadow of the Ryukyu Palace
4. There is no more Ryukyu
After the beginning of the Cold War, in order to weaken the influence of the Soviet Union in the Far East, the blockade of China's coast was increased. The United States abandoned its policy of deindustrializing Japan and allowed it to rearm.
In 1948, U.S. relief for the occupied territories of Ryukyu was $14 million, and by 1950 it had soared to $58 million. In order to strengthen the role of Ryukyu's military fulcrum, the US military forcibly acquired land and expanded the scale of the original Japanese military base.
▲ The US military base occupying a prime location
A large number of Japanese companies undertook U.S. military engineering projects, and the Ryukyuan people protested against the encroachment of the U.S. military on land, but the construction of the base also brought special economic vitality to Ryukyu to a certain extent.
After the Korean War, by undertaking orders from the US military, a large number of Japanese companies, including Toyota, came back from the dead, and Japan gained a relatively stable external environment with the support of the United States and embarked on the fast lane of economic development.
Tokyo in the 60s
Before World War II, a large number of Ryukyuan people had been Japaneseized, and the criminal past of Japan's conquest was regarded by some Ryukyuan people as a "proud past", and Japan's economic boom once again awakened the "dream of returning" of the Ryukyuan pro-Japanese faction.
In the 60s, Japan, which had sufficient national treasury, increased its economic assistance to Ryukyu, surpassing the United States in 1956 to become the largest donor to Ryukyu. Japanese money goes mainly to the education sector, providing free Japanese textbooks to Ryukyu students, and half of the salaries of local teachers are subsidized by the Japanese treasury. Organizations such as the Okinawa Rehabilitation Association have emerged in Ryukyu, and the educational community is shouting for "returning to Japan."
▲Okinawa occupied by the US military
In an effort to win over Japan, U.S. President John F. Kennedy said in 1962: "I recognize Ryukyu as part of Japan."
This was the first time that U.S. officials considered Ryukyu to be Japanese territory. With Japan overtaking West Germany as the world's second-largest economy in 1968 and the U.S. military being frustrated in Vietnam in the 70s, a strategic contraction began. The United States increasingly needed Japan's support, and the United States made major changes in the governance of Ryukyu.
In 1972, Japan and the United States signed the Okinawa Return Agreement, and Ryukyu was handed over to Japan in May of that year, and Japan re-established Okinawa Prefecture. Western countries have been silent about this violation of the Potsdam Declaration. The United States has vaguely defined the concept of Diaoyu Dao and other Chinese territories in the "scope of return," which is the initiator of today's dispute over Diaoyu Dao, and the Soviet Union has also greatly criticized the return case.
▲The United States and Japan signed a treaty
During the American administration, the Japanese flag was regarded as a symbol of alien rule, and until 1985, at the graduation ceremony of the local elementary and junior high school in Ryukyu, the Japanese flag was raised only 6.7%, compared with 91.3% in mainland Japan.
Japan's national anthem "Kimiyo" has a lower sense of existence, and even more than 10 years after returning to Japan, the Ryukyu school has never played the song on campus.
Familiar history played out again, and the Japanese government began to promote a policy of assimilation. Japan mandated Ryukyu schools to raise the rising sun flag and sing "Kimi-no-yo". Kimono is used instead of Ryukimono, and meals distributed by schools and factories are Japanese-style.
The disappeared dialect cards were revived, but the teacher no longer abused Ryukyuan-speaking students as he did in the early 20th century, and the student wearing the dialect cards was left to clean after school until he "reported" the next Ryukyuan-speaking student.
▲Dialect cards
In addition to the contradictory relationship with the Japanese government, the large number of US military bases in Ryukyu also caused great trouble to the local residents. In 1974, the population of Ryukyu exceeded 1 million, and since then the population of Ryukyu has maintained rapid growth, reaching nearly 1.5 million to date. The contradictions between people and land have become more tense, and calls for the US military to move the base out of Ryukyu have become more and more intense.
Today, Ryukyu occupies 0.6% of Japan's area, carries 70.4% of the total number of U.S. troops stationed in Japan (about 36,000 people), 70.6% of the total area of military bases, and 15% of the entire territory of Okinawa is allocated to U.S. military bases.
U.S. military base on the main island of Okinawa (red)
The incessant drills seriously affected the lives of the Ryukyuan people, and incidents of US military aggression against local people continued to occur, but the US military always escaped trial by virtue of extraterritoriality.
The Japanese government also controls corporate investment in Ryukyu, resulting in a single industrial structure in Ryukyu, fishing and tourism as the pillars of the economy, a serious shortage of output value in the secondary industry, and a large number of daily necessities must be obtained from Japan, deepening Ryukyu's dependence on Japan.
Under the impetus of the Japanese government, the native attributes of the Ryukyuan people were replaced by Japanese attributes, and the proportion of people who consider themselves Japanese, both Japanese and Okinawans, has remained at more than 70% for a long time.
▲Okinawan artists: Yui Aragaki, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Yukie Nakama, Namie Amuro
The proportion of people who consider themselves just Okinawans is decreasing year by year, while less than 1% consider themselves Ryukyuanians.
Even so, there were civil society groups in Ryukyu who were committed to promoting Ryukyu independence, hoping to revive Ryukyu culture and free itself from Japanese alien rule. The most famous is the Garriji Club (formerly known as the Ryukyu Independence Party).
Flying the envisioned national flag, the three-star Sky Ocean Flag, they actively participated in local politics in Ryukyu and called for Ryukyu autonomy and eventual independence. The troubles caused by the U.S. military in Japan to the Ryukyuan people gave the independence faction some support, but it was not the mainstream public opinion in Ryukyu in general.
▲ Independents put up signs in front of the Japanese Diet
Japan's first annexation of Ryukyu in 1879 was a brutal expansion of imperialism; In 1972, he took control of Ryukyu again, which was privately acquired by the United States and Japan. Both annexations were not legitimate, because the Potsdam Proclamation, as the legal basis for underpinning the post-World War II international system, had long stripped Japan of its authority over Ryukyu.
Today, Japan is following the United States and frequently stirring up the situation in East Asia. Whether it's the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands or reaching into the Taiwan Strait, Japan is based in Ryukyu. As everyone knows, Japan, as a defeated country in World War II, cannot obtain any legal support for Ryukyu sovereignty.
▲In 2022, Japan will hold "Okinawa 50th Anniversary of the Restoration of Okinawa"