Pan Japan, the Ryukyu problem is the best grasp!

The Ryukyu Islands are located in the eastern periphery of the East China Sea, about 700 kilometers away from Shanghai, Ningbo and Wenzhou off the coast of China, with a total length of more than 1,000 kilometers from north to south, in a northeast-southwest direction, the Osumi Islands, the Tokara Islands, the Amami Islands, the Oshima Islands, the Okinawa Islands, the Daito Islands and the Shojima Islands, with a total of more than 60 named inhabited islands and more than 400 unnamed islets, with a total of 1.2 million people, including 1.1 million Japanese and about 100,000 indigenous Ryukyu people.

(This article is 3,500 words and divided into 4 parts: 1. The relationship between Ryukyu and the Chinese clan; 2. Japan annexed Ryukyu and slaughtered the people; Third, the embarrassment of Ryukyu's status; 4. Can Ryukyu be independent? ）

1. Ryukyu's relationship with the Chinese clan

Ryukyu is made up of a number of islands, which were inhabited very early, and for a long time, the inhabitants of the islands were in a primitive society, each living as a "tribe". With the continuous development of society, it slowly entered the slave society and feudal society. The earliest written record of Ryukyu is found in ancient Chinese history, the Legend of Ryukyu in the Book of Sui. During the Sui Dynasty (581-617), Ryukyu was called Ryukyu, and the Book of Sui was changed to "Liuqiu"; After that, the "Yuan History" was written as "Liuqiu", and in some books it was also called "Liuqiu", in short, it was homophonic; In the fifth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1372), Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty sent an envoy Yang Zai to Ryukyu with an edict, which was called Ryukyu. The official name of Ryukyu began here. According to the history of the Ryukyu Kingdom and various historical records, from the 16th year of Hongwu (1383), successive Ryukyu kings asked the Chinese emperor for canonization, formally confirming the relationship between monarchs and vassals, which lasted for five centuries until after the Meiji Restoration in Japan. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Ryukyu Kingdom sent international students to study the Chinese language at the Guozijian in Nanjing and Beijing, as well as the Ryukyu Hall in Fuzhou, so the Ryukyu language was influenced by Chinese Min dialect, especially Fuzhou dialect, and the official script of the Ryukyu Kingdom was Chinese. The history of the Ryukyu Kingdom, Zhongshan Shijian, written in 1650, was also written in Chinese.

Second, Japan annexed Ryukyu and slaughtered the people like crazy

After the Meiji Restoration, Japan quickly embarked on the militaristic road of foreign aggression and expansion. In the early Meiji period, the "Treatise on Conquering Korea" mentioned the invasion of Ryukyu. In the fifth year of Meiji (1872), when Japan visited Japan through the Ryukyu emissary, it suddenly forcibly "canonized" the Ryukyu king as a clan king and included it in the so-called "Chinese family". This was the first step in the Restoration government's forced change in Japanese-Ryuk relations. And these acts were all carried out in secret at that time, and they were concealed from the Great Qing. Since then, Ryukyu has become the so-called "two genera of Qinghi". Subsequently, the Japanese government continued to exert political and military pressure to further coerce Ryukyu to sever its clan ties with China, but each time it was rejected by Ryukyu. In the face of all kinds of persecution by the Japanese government, the Ryukyu Kingdom constantly petitioned Japan, demanding that Qing-Ryukyu relations be maintained and that the Ryukyu national system of government remain unchanged, and also sent diplomatic letters of assistance to Western ministers. Angered by Japan, in March 1879, Japan secretly sent military and police personnel to Ryukyu and took a surprise action, ordering Shurijo Castle to hand over power to Prince Imanhihino, the deputy of the Ryukyu king. On April 4, Japan brazenly announced the "abolition of Ryukyu Prefecture", that is, the Ryukyu Kingdom was changed to Okinawa Prefecture, and then wantonly looted documents, cultural relics and treasure seals exchanged between China and Ryukyu, as well as the government archives of the Ryukyu Kingdom, in an attempt to destroy and conceal historical witnesses, and forced King Shangtai and others to go to Japan. At this time, the Ryukyu Kingdom was still desperately resisting, issuing bloody and tearful protests, and secretly sent officials to Tianjin to see Li Hongzhang and ask China to "leave the country with all its troops in Japan." The Qing government also argued with Japan, but it failed to send troops to aid the Ryukyus. This, of course, is also related to the corruption and decline of the Qing government. At that time, Lin Shigong, the general of the Ryukyu state, committed suicide in Beijing, protesting Japanese aggression with his death and asking China to send troops with his death. However, the Ryukyu that is a country was still exterminated by Japan! However, the Ryukyu revolt continued until the end of the Sino-Japanese War. In 1919, Xu Shichang, then president of the Republic of China, included the poems of the Ryukyu poets as "vassal works" in the last volume when he organized a collection of Qing poetry, "Evening Qing Poetry Collection" (compiled in 1929). In 1925, the famous poet Wen Yiduo published "The Song of the Seven Sons", and in the section "Taiwan" he wrote about Ryukyu:

We are a string of pearls from the East China Sea, Ryukyu is my group brother, and I am Taiwan. I still have the heroic soul of the Zheng family in my chest, and the red blood of my loyalty stains my family tradition. Mother, the hot summer day is going to kill me, give me an order, and I can still fight against the city. Mother! I'm coming back, Mother!.

In April 1945, the Potsdam Declaration demanded that the Government of Japan return all occupied territories. At this time, Japan, afraid of losing Ryukyu, went so far as to frantically issue the so-called "Jade Crushing Order", asking the local garrison to kill all the Ryukyu people. Mitsuru Ushijima, the notorious commander of the Ryukyu garrison who implemented the "Three Lights Policy" in China, repeated his old trick and launched a frenzied massacre of the Ryukyu people. According to incomplete statistics, before the US troops landed on the Ryukyu, the Japanese army slaughtered more than 260,000 Ryukyu people, the scale of the massacre was second only to the Nanjing Massacre. At the same time, the Japanese army also forced the Ryukyu people to commit suicide. At the end of the Pacific War, the Okinawa landing on the Ryukyu Battle broke out. Seeing that their positions were not secure, some Japanese troops declared that they would rather be broken than destroyed, forcing the people to "group self-determination" on a village-by-village basis. They herd civilians into caves and provided them with weapons such as grenades to kill each other; In more tragic places, innocent people do not even have guns and ammunition, and can only end the lives of their loved ones with kitchen knives and axes under coercion: fathers kill their children, husbands kill wives, sons kill mothers... The massacre had a deeper anti-humanity character, yet in holding war accountable, the page was turned and buried deep in history, never publicly reckoning.

Third, the embarrassment of Ryukyu's status

After Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945, the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation stipulated that Japan must give up the land acquired by its aggression, including the Korean Peninsula, Ryukyu, and Taiwan, and could only retain the four mainland islands, namely Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku. This leaves Japan with two more places: the South Kuril Islands and the Ryukyu Islands. The South Kuril Islands (formerly the "four northern islands" belonging to Japan) were eventually divided to the USSR (Trusteeship). So how did Ryukyu dispose of it? According to normal logic, Ryukyu has two options: first, to hand over Ryukyu to China (trusteeship), after all, China was the victor in World War II, and Ryukyu was also a vassal state of China before; Second, allow Ryukyu to become independent, after all, Ryukyu was formerly an independent country before it was annexed by Japan. However, what Japan feared most was the independence of the Ryukyu, so at the end of World War II, the Ryukyu people were basically killed, making the Ryukyu independence impossible in the short term. As for the reason why Ryukyu was not handed over to China, it was mainly because of the corruption and short-sightedness of Chiang Kai-shek's government at that time. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek was anxious to fight a civil war and was unwilling to send troops to occupy Ryukyu, and finally reached an agreement with the United States: to hand over Ryukyu to the United States in exchange for the United States providing some weapons to Chiang Kai-shek's government and supporting Chiang Kai-shek's government in fighting the civil war. In this way, the United States took advantage of the situation and caught the Ryukyu into its own hands. In April 1947, the United States pushed the United Nations to issue the Agreement on the Former Japanese Mandate Islands, and the United States formally administered the Ryukyu Islands. After the United States took over the Ryukyu itself, it had to face the resistance of the Ryukyu people all day long, so the United States made a decision: to hand over the administration of the Ryukyu (not territorial sovereignty) to Japan. In 1970, the United States and Japan signed the Treaty of San Francisco, transferring the administration of the Ryukyu Islands and the Diaoyu Islands to Japan, and Japan resumed the exercise of administrative authority over the Ryukyu Islands. The Chinese Government holds that the US-Japan San Francisco Peace Treaty violates the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation, violates the UN Charter, and is illegal.

The "US-Japan San Francisco Peace Treaty" is very insidious: first, it transfers contradictions. Surrender the administrative power of Ryukyu to Japan, and the "trouble" of the Ryukyu people to make trouble again will be thrown to the Japanese government, and the United States will "get out" - in this way, the contradiction between Ryukyu and the United States becomes a contradiction between Ryukyu and Japan (if Japan wants to take back Ryukyu, it must first accept the "administration" thrown by the United States);

Second, control of Japan. Surrendering the administrative power of Ryukyu to Japan is equivalent to giving Japan a "hope", and in the future, Ryukyu may no longer be in a "trusteeship" state, and the United States will "return" it to Japan, forcing Japan to obediently obey;

Third, check and balance China. Ryukyu is very close to China, and the United States forced Japan to deploy military troops in Ryukyu, which posed a relatively great threat to China's national security, and the contradictions between China and Japan will be further deepened.

Therefore, from the perspective of international law, Ryukyu has ceased to belong to Japan since World War II, but Japan is still exercising administrative jurisdiction; The future Ryukyu will have an independent legal foundation of international law.

4. Can Ryukyu be independent?

After World War II, Ryukyu has always had organizations related to the "Ryukyu Restoration Movement", declaring the independence of Ryukyu and the necessity of national restoration. In June 1970, Toshikatsu Sakima and Takehiko Nochi organized the establishment of the Ryukyu Independence Party; On March 3, 2008, the Ryukyu Independence Party held a press conference, officially changed the party's name to the Kaliji Club, and determined that the party flag would be the "Sanxing Sky Ocean Flag" and serve as the national flag of the envisaged future Ryukyu Republic. On May 15, 2013, the Ryukyu National Independence Comprehensive Research Society, composed of Ryukyu social activists and scholars, was publicly announced, hoping to promote a referendum on Ryukyu independence by appealing to the United Nations, which is also the long-term goal pursued by the organization.

We can say with certainty: Ryukyu cannot be independent in the short term!

First, there are too few indigenous people in Ryukyu. According to incomplete statistics, the Ryukyu Islands are currently home to about 1.2 million people, of which more than 1.1 million are Japanese and less than 100,000 are Ryukyu aborigines. At present, most of the Ryukyuan people have been "replaced" by the Japanese government to the main island, in order to prevent the Ryukyuan people from seeking independence through a referendum.

Second, the Japanese government will never easily agree to Ryukyu independence. At around 2 a.m. on October 31, 2019, Shuri Castle, a World Heritage Site in Naha City, Ryukyu, burst into flames, destroying almost all of the main hall, south hall, and north hall. The cause of the fire is very strange, and it cannot be ruled out that the Japanese right-wing forces deliberately set the fire, the purpose of which is to destroy the Ryukyu culture and undermine the sense of belonging of the Ryukyuan people.

Third, the United States will not easily agree to Ryukyu independence. Because of the current state of Ryukyu, it is most beneficial to the United States.

Fourth, will China help Ryukyu become independent? In 2014, People's Daily published an article called "Japan's territory is decided by the victorious powers, and the ownership of Ryukyu should be reconsidered", which can be said to support Ryukyu independence from international legal principles.

In the long run, the early independence of Ryukyu will be good for Ryukyu, Japan, and China. Once Ryukyu is independent, then the United States must withdraw its troops from Ryukyu, and there is no reason to station troops in Ryukyu, so that the US army will be pushed farther, which is conducive to ensuring China's national security, and at the same time, it is also conducive to Japan gradually getting rid of American control; At the same time, there is a strategic buffer zone between China and Japan, which will not lead to direct conflict, after all, the strategic buffer zone is very important and necessary for major countries and between major powers. In short, Japan's strategic choice is the key to solving the Ryukyu problem. Unable to see the benefits of Ryukyu independence, Japan would not only continue to be controlled by the United States, but also controlled by China.