On May 27, a Japanese media outlet angrily said that at a meeting between China and Japan after the G7 summit, the Chinese spokesman said the following sentence - "Ryukyu belongs to the Chinese cultural circle, do you say it will be independent?" Seeing that the other party did not react, he asked flatly, "Then let me change the example, what if Hokkaido is independent?" ”。
These two sentences caused an uproar on the Japanese Internet, causing many netizens to vent their emotions with the most fierce words, but what is special about Ryukyu and Hokkaido that makes Japan's reaction so radical?
Ryukyu's bloody history
Located on the Ryukyu Ridge and separated from Diaoyutai from China by an Okinawa Trough, the Ryukyu Islands are a golden shipping route connecting East Asia and Southeast Asia, and because of its excellent geographical location, the various biological resources around Ryukyu are also extremely rich.
Thanks to the superior natural environment, this land has nurtured a native country, the Ryukyu Kingdom, and they have also produced their own language, and during the Sui Dynasty, the Yu Cavalry Lieutenant under the Sui Emperor's throne came here and gave the land the name "Ryukyu" according to the scenery they saw.
During the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang sent an envoy to the island with an edict to give the name "Ryukyu", and the Ryukyu King also submitted to the Ming Dynasty, after which the Ryukyu Kingdom became a vassal state of the Central Plains Dynasty. In the 19th century, due to the backwardness of the Qing Dynasty, he still refused to send troops to help in the face of the bitter pleas of the Ryukyu king, resulting in the Ryukyu Islands falling into the hands of Japan.
After Japan occupied the Ryukyu Islands, Japan renamed it "Okinawa" and demanded that Ryukyu pay tribute to Japan thereafter. After the anti-fascist victory of the people of the world in 1945, Japan, as a defeated country, also had to surrender all the land it had invaded, but before giving up Ryukyu, Japan ordered the Ryukyu people to "crush jade".
Thus began a bloody tragedy in the Ryukyu Islands, where the Ryukyu people were forced to end the lives of their parents, wives, children, or brothers under the crosshairs of the Japanese. Previously, official figures showed that Ryukyu had a population of 470,000, but by the time U.S. troops landed on Ryukyu, the island's population was only 110,000, and the number of supporters killed in the tragedy was 270,000.
Why Ryukyu has always sought independence
According to the treaty established by the victors in World War II, Japan's territory was limited to the four main islands of Honshu, Shikoku, Hokkaido, and Kyushu and the surrounding islands, while the Ryukyu Islands were handed over to China, although Chiang, who was in power at the time, allegedly handed over sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands to international administration in order to obtain assistance from the United States.
In 1970, in order to ease relations with Japan, the United States handed over the "administrative power" of the Ryukyu Islands to Japan, but the sovereignty of the Ryukyu Islands remained ambiguous.
Due to Japan's bloody history in Ryukyu during World War II, Ryukyu has always been on the fringes of Japanese circles, even under Japanese jurisdiction. And because Ryukyu has developed a set of customs and habits that are completely different from Japan's after a long period of Chinese culture, the relationship between Ryukyu and Japan has become more rigid.
Although Ryukyu later lost its own language due to Japan's coercive policy, this pushed the Ryukyu people farther and farther away, so there are still many Ryukyu people who still do not have much sense of belonging to Japan.
At the same time, because of Japan's high-profile strategy against China recently, the voice of independence of the Ryukyu Islands, as the closest to China's territory, has risen again, after all, the Ryukyu people do not want their homeland to become scorched earth.
Protests in Hokkaido abounded
Compared with the cruel history of Ryukyu, Hokkaido's past is also not far behind, the indigenous people of Hokkaido call themselves "Ainu", and unlike the Yamato people, the Ainu not only have more vigorous hair, but also have a higher nose, and after the arrival of the Yamato, they were driven to the harsh northern region, which is now Hokkaido.
During the Meiji Restoration, Japan sent a large number of Yamato people to assimilate the Ainu people, and forced the Ainu people to accept Japanese culture and language in all aspects, and also took away a lot of their land with unequal trade contracts, according to folk statistics, there are less than 200,000 Ainu today.
However, after the Ainu people entered modern times, they began to rebel against unequal trade agreements, and Ainu revival societies appeared all over Hokkaido, although they were not too threatening to Japan, but they always kept them in their throats.
Chinese and Japanese netizens reacted mixed
Although there are undercurrents in Japan on the sovereignty issue, when dealing with foreign affairs, Japan does not care about trying to interfere in the Taiwan Strait of China, and at the G7 loudly declares that it wants to "confirm the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait", perhaps in response to such ridiculous remarks, the Chinese spokesman mentioned "Ryukyu" and "Hokkaido" at the meeting.
However, what makes people laugh is that as a country that previously declared that "something happens in Taiwan is something happens in Japan", it seems extremely extreme on these two topics.
Some Japanese netizens "impassionedly" said in the comment area: China is declaring war under the pretext of "supporting independence", but the first to say such words was Japan, and the Chinese side only verbally returned this sentence intact.
In addition, Japanese netizens mysteriously said that China has been "eyeing" Ryukyu and Hokkaido for a long time, and described China as if some earth-shattering conspiracy was brewing. But in fact, China does not need to focus on Ryukyu at all, as early as the Taiwan chapter in "Song of the Seven Sons" wrote: Ryukyu is my group brother, so compared to Japan, Ryukyu is essentially closer to China.
In the face of the fierce reaction of Japanese netizens, Chinese netizens laughed and said that "this is the art of offense", and some netizens ridiculed that "something in Ryukyu is something in China", and of course, some netizens who watched the excitement did not feel big complained, "Now I understand how happy the United States is doing things outside."
Of course, despite the sharp rhetoric, China has made no substantive moves, just used it as an example. After that, Japan should be able to understand the anger of the Chinese people when it prepares to interfere in China's internal affairs.
Moreover, compared to Taiwan, which belongs to China, Ryukyu has always had only jurisdiction over the Ryukyu Islands, not sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, both de jure and historically.
The Chinese spokesman used Ryukyu and Hokkaido as examples to warn Japan not to provoke China in the Taiwan Strait, because China is no longer just a problem solver who sees tricks and tricks, but also a question maker with enough say in the world.