Separatist movement in Japan
The is a separatist movement in Japan advocating the independence of the Ryukyu Islands (commonly referred to as Okinawa after the largest island). Some support the restoration of the Ryukyu Kingdom, while others advocate the establishment of a Republic of the Ryukyus (Japanese: , Kyūjitai: , Hepburn: ).
The current political manifestation of the movement emerged in 1945, after the end of the Pacific War. Some Ryukyuan people felt, as the Allied Occupation (USMGRI 1945–1950) began, that the Ryukyus should eventually become an independent state instead of being returned to Japan. However, the islands were returned to Japan on 15 May 1972 as the Okinawa Prefecture according to the 1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement. The US-Japan Security Treaty (ANPO) signed in 1952 provides for the continuation of the American military presence in Japan, and the United States continues to maintain a heavy military presence on Okinawa Island. This set the stage for renewed political activism for Ryukyuan independence. In 2022, public opinion polling in Okinawa put support for independence at 3% of the local population.
The Ryukyu independence movement maintains that both the 1609 invasion by Satsuma Domain and the Meiji construction of the Okinawa prefecture are colonial annexations of the Ryukyu Kingdom. It is highly critical of the abuses of Ryukyuan people and territory, both in the past and in the present day (such as the use of Okinawan land to host American military bases). Advocates for independence also emphasize the environmental and social impacts of the American bases in Okinawa.
Historical background.
The Ryukyuan people are indigenous people who live on the Ryukyu Islands, and are ethnically, culturally, and linguistically distinct from Japanese people. During the Sanzan period, Okinawa was divided into the three polities of Hokuzan, Chūzan and Nanzan. In 1429, Chūzan's chieftain Shō Hashi unified them and founded the autonomous Ryukyu Kingdom (1429–1879), with the capital at Shuri Castle. The kingdom continued to have tributary relations with Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty China, a practice that was started by Chūzan in 1372–1374 and lasted until the downfall of the kingdom in the late 19th century. This tributary relationship was greatly beneficial to the kingdom as the kings received political legitimacy, while the country as a whole gained access to economic, cultural and political opportunities in Southeast Asia without any interference by China in the internal political autonomy of Ryukyu.
In addition to Korea (1392), Thailand (1409) and other Southeast Asian polities, the kingdom maintained trade relations with Japan (1403), and during this period a unique political and cultural identity emerged. However, in 1609 the Japanese feudal domain of Satsuma invaded the kingdom on behalf of the first "shōgun" Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867) because the Ryukyu king Shō Nei refused to submit to the shogunate. The kingdom was forced to send a tribute to Satsuma, but was allowed to retain and continue its independence and relations and trade with China (a unique privilege, as Japan was prohibited from trading with China at the time). This arrangement was known as a "dual vassalage" status, and continued until the mid-19th century.
During the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Meiji government of the Empire of Japan (1868–1947) began a process later called "Ryukyu Shobun" ("Ryukyu Disposition") to formally annex the kingdom into the modern Japanese Empire. Firstly established as Ryukyu Domain (1872–1879), in 1879 the kingdom-domain was abolished, established as Okinawa Prefecture, while the last Ryukyu king Shō Tai was forcibly exiled to Tokyo. Previously in 1875, the kingdom was forced against its wishes to terminate its tribute relations with China, while U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant proposed a plan that would maintain an independent, sovereign Okinawa while partitioning other Ryukyuan islands between China and Japan. Japan offered China the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands in exchange for trading rights with China equal to those granted to Western states, de facto abandoning and divided the island chain for monetary profit. The treaty was rejected as the Chinese court decided to not ratify the agreement. The Ryukyu's aristocratic class resisted annexation for almost two decades but after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), factions pushing for Chinese and Ryukyuan sovereignty faded as China renounced its claims to the island. In the Meiji period, the government continuously and formally suppressed Ryukyuan ethnic identity, culture, tradition, and language while assimilating them as ethnic Japanese (Yamato).
Since the formation of the prefecture, its relationship with the Japanese nation-state has been continually contested and changed. There were significant movements for Okinawan independence in the period following its annexation, in the period prior to and during World War II, and after World War II through to the present day. In 1945, during the WWII Battle of Okinawa, approximately 150,000 civilians were killed, consisting roughly 1/3 of the island's population. Many civilians died in mass suicides forced by the Japanese military. After World War II, the Ryukyu Islands were occupied by the United States Military Government of the Ryukyu Islands (1945–1950), but the U.S. maintained control even after the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, and its former direct administration was replaced by the USCAR government. During this period, U.S. military forcibly requisitioned private land for the building of many military facilities, with the private owners put into refugee camps, and its personnel committed thousands of crimes against civilians.
Only twenty years later, on 15 May 1972, Okinawa and nearby islands were returned to Japan. As the Japanese had post-war political freedom and economic prosperity, the military facilities had a negative economical impact and the people felt cheated, used for the purpose of Japanese and regional security against the communist threat. Despite Okinawa having been formally returned to Japan, both Japan and the United States have continued to make agreements securing the maintenance and expansion of the U.S. military bases, despite protests from the local Ryukyuan population. Although Okinawa comprises just 0.6% of Japan's total land mass, currently 75% of all U.S. military installations stationed in Japan are assigned to bases in Okinawa.
Academic theories of Japanese colonialism.
Some philosophers, like Taira Katsuyasu, consider the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture as outright colonialism. Nomura Koya in his research argued that the Japanese mainland developed "an unconscious colonialism" in which Japanese people are not aware of how they continue to colonize Okinawa through the mainland's inclination to leave the vast majority of the United States' military presence and burden to Okinawa. Eiji Oguma noted that the typical practice of "othering" used in colonial domination produced the perception of a backward "Okinawa" and "Okinawans". Some like Tomiyama Ichiro suggest that for the Ryukyuans, being a member of the modern Japanese nation-state is "nothing other than the start of being on the receiving end of colonial domination".
In 1957, Kiyoshi Inoue argued that the "Ryukyu Shobun" was an annexation of an independent country over the opposition of its people, thus constituting an act of aggression and not a "natural ethnic unification". Gregory Smits noted that "many other works in Japanese come close to characterizing Ryukyu/Okinawa as Japan's first colony, but never explicitly do so". Alan Christy emphasized that Okinawa must be included in studies of Japanese colonialism.
Historians supporting the interpretation that the annexation of Ryukyu did not constitute colonialism make the following historiographical arguments
Some pre-war Okinawans also resisted the classification of Okinawa as a Japanese colony, as they did not want to consider their experience as colonial. This position originates in the prewar period when the Meiji suppression of Ryukyuan identity, culture and language resulted in self-criticism and inferiority complexes with respect to perceptions that Ryukyuan people were backward, primitive, ethnically and racially inferior, and insufficiently Japanese. They did not want to be lumped together with the Japanese colonies, as evidenced by protests against being included with six other "less developed" colonial people in the "Hall of the Peoples" in the 1903 Osaka Expo.
Okinawan historian Higashionna Kanjun in 1909 warned the Ryukyuans that if they forget their historical and cultural heritage then "their native place is no different from a country built on a desert or a new colony". Shimabukuro Genichiro in the 1930s described the Okinawa's pre-war position as "colonial-esque", and in the 1920s he spearheaded a movement that supported the alteration of personal name spellings to spare Okinawans from ethnic discrimination. The anxiety about the issue of Okinawa being part of Japan was so extreme that even attempts to discuss it were discredited and denounced from both mainland and Okinawan community itself, as a failure of being national subjects.
In Eugen Weber's theorization about the colonies, according to Tze May Loo, the question of Okinawa's status as a colony is a false choice which ignores the complexity of Okinawa's annexation, in which colonial practices were used to establish the Japanese nation-state. He asserts that Okinawa was both a colony and not, both a part of Japan and not, and that this dual status is the basis of the continued subordination of Okinawa. Despite its incorporation as a prefecture and not a colony, colonial policies of "un-forming" and "re-forming" Ryukyuan communities and the Okinawan's proximity to other Japanese colonial subjects were coupled with persistent mainland discrimination and exploitation which reminded them of their unequal status within the Japanese nation-state. They had no choice but to consider their inclusion in the Japanese nation-state as natural in hopes of attaining legitimacy and better treatment. According to Loo, Okinawa is in a vicious circle where Japan does not admit its discrimination against Okinawa, while Okinawans are forced to accept unfair conditions for membership in the country of Japan, becoming an internal colony without end.
Motives.
During the Meiji period there was a significant reimagining of the histories of Ryukyu and of Ezo, which was annexed at the same time, and an insistence that the non-Japonic Ainu of Hokkaidō and the Japonic Ryukyuan people were "Japanese", both racially/ethnically and linguistically/culturally, going back many centuries, despite the evidence they were a significantly different group of people. The primary institution for assimilation was the state education system, which by 1902 occupied over half of the prefectural revenue, and produced a collective identity as well as training Okinawan teachers and intellectuals who would become a front "Japanese" nationalistic Okinawan elite.
Maehira Bokei noted that this narrative considered Okinawa a colony and rejected Okinawa's characteristic culture, considering it barbaric and inferior. This resulted in the development of an inferiority complex amongst Okinawans, which motivated them to discriminate against their own cultural heritage. However, the state did valorize and protect some aspects like being "people of the sea", folk art (pottery, textiles) and architecture, although it defined these cultural elements as being Japonic in essence. The Okinawan's use of heritage as a basis for political identity in the post-war period was interesting to the occupying United States forces who decided to support the pre-1879 culture and claims to autonomy in hopes that their military rule would be embraced by the population.
Many Ryukyuan people see themselves as an ethnically separate and different people from the Japanese, with a unique and separate cultural heritage. They see a great difference between themselves and the mainland Japanese people, and many feel a strong connection to Ryukyuan traditional culture and the pre-1609 history of independence. There is strong criticism of the Meiji government's assimilation policies and ideological agenda. According to novelist Tatsuhiro Oshiro, the "Okinawa problem" is a problem of culture which produced uncertainty in the relations between Okinawans and mainland Japanese: Okinawans either want to be Japanese or distinct, mainland Japanese either recognize Okinawans as part of their cultural group or reject them, and Okinawa's culture is treated as both foreign and deserving of repression, as well as being formally considered as part of the same racial polity as Japan.
Ideology.
According to Yasukatsu Matsushima, Professor of Ryukoku University and the representative of the civil group "Yuimarle Ryukyu no Jichi" ("autonomy of Ryukyu"), the 1879 annexation was illegal and cannot be justified on either moral grounds or international law, as the Ryukyu government and people did not agree to join Japan and there is no existing treaty transferring sovereignty to Japan. He notes that the Kingdom of Hawaii was in a similar position, at least the U.S. admitted illegality and issued an apology in 1992, but Japan has never apologized or considered compensation. Japan and the United States are both responsible for the colonial status of Okinawa – used first as a trade negotiator with China, later as