Okinawa

Okinawa Prefecture stretches over roughly 1,000 kilometres of ocean between Kagoshima's Amami Islands and Taiwan. Around fifty of its islands are inhabited, grouped into the Okinawa Islands around the main island, the Miyako Islands, the Yaeyama Islands – including Ishigaki, Iriomote and Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost point – and the remote Daitō Islands to the east. It is the only Japanese prefecture lying wholly in the subtropics and the only one with no land border and no ancient ritsuryō province.

For some four and a half centuries the islands formed the Ryukyu Kingdom, a maritime trading state tied to China through the tribute system and, from 1609, controlled by Satsuma. The kingdom left a distinctive heritage: Ryukyuan languages, court music and dance, stone gusuku castles, the royal capital of Shuri and a religion centred on sacred groves (utaki) and priestesses. Annexed by Japan in 1879, Okinawa was devastated in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, governed by the United States for 27 years and returned to Japan on 15 May 1972.

Okinawa today is defined by several things at once: a major tourist destination known for beaches, coral reefs and food; the prefecture that hosts most of the facilities used exclusively by US forces in Japan; one of the famous longevity regions of the world; and a place where Ryukyuan identity and the memory of the war shape politics and everyday life.

Okinawa (沖縄) is the Japanese form of the islanders' own name for the main island, Uchinaa. The characters, meaning roughly 'rope in the offing', were applied later and do not explain the name; its origin is debated. Ryukyu (琉球), the name used for the kingdom and the island chain, comes from Chinese records.

Unlike every other prefecture, Okinawa was never part of the ancient ritsuryō province system, because the islands lay outside the Japanese state when the provinces were drawn up; Pre-modern Okinawa was instead divided into magiri districts under the Ryukyu Kingdom. In 1872 the Meiji government made the kingdom a domain (Ryūkyū-han), and in 1879 it abolished the domain and created Okinawa Prefecture. The Amami Islands, taken by Satsuma in 1609, stayed with Kagoshima; Okinawa's northern border therefore runs at sea between Yoronjima and the northern tip of Okinawa Island. The prefecture has no land neighbours.

The islands are the southern part of the Ryukyu arc, formed where the Philippine Sea Plate dives beneath the Eurasian Plate along the Ryukyu Trench to the east. Many are low islands built of uplifted coral limestone, ringed by fringing reefs; others, like northern Okinawa Island and Iriomote, are older, mountainous and forested. Limestone caves such as Gyokusendō riddle the south of the main island.

Okinawa Island is long and narrow. Its densely populated south, around Naha, is gentle limestone upland; the north, called Yanbaru, is steep and covered in subtropical evergreen broadleaf forest with endemic species such as the Okinawa rail. The Kerama Islands just west of Naha are known for exceptionally clear water. Far to the south-west, the Yaeyama Islands hold Iriomote's mangrove rivers and jungle and the extensive coral lagoon of Sekisei-shōko.

Okinawa has a humid subtropical climate: warm winters rarely below 10 °C, long hot and humid summers, and a rainy season from about May to June, a month earlier than on the main islands. Typhoons pass frequently from summer to autumn and can halt flights and ferries for days. The sea keeps temperatures even, and the prefecture has never recorded snow in the lowlands apart from a rare sleet report on Kumejima.

From about the twelfth century local chieftains (aji) built stone castles called gusuku, and in the fourteenth century three kingdoms – Hokuzan, Chūzan and Nanzan – emerged on Okinawa Island and opened tribute relations with Ming China. Shō Hashi of Chūzan unified them around 1429, founding the Ryukyu Kingdom with its capital at Shuri. The kingdom prospered as an intermediary in trade between China, Japan, Korea and South-East Asia.

In 1609 Satsuma invaded, annexed the Amami Islands and made Ryukyu a vassal while allowing it to continue as a kingdom paying tribute to China – a dual subordination that lasted until the Meiji era. Japan turned the kingdom into a domain in 1872 and, in the Ryukyu Disposition of 1879, deposed the last king, Shō Tai, and created Okinawa Prefecture. Assimilation policies discouraged Ryukyuan languages and customs.

The Battle of Okinawa, from late March to June 1945, was the only large-scale ground battle fought on Japanese home territory in the Second World War. It claimed well over 200,000 lives, including a very large share of the civilian population, among them people forced into mass suicides and killed by both armies. After the war the islands were administered by the United States, which built extensive military bases; the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952 confirmed US control. A reversion movement grew in the 1960s, and Okinawa returned to Japanese administration on 15 May 1972. The concentration of US bases, including the long-disputed plan to relocate Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko in Nago, remains a central political issue.

Okinawan culture grew from the Ryukyu Kingdom's position between China and Japan and from its own island traditions. Court arts such as kumi odori (a musical dance-drama) and classical Ryukyuan dance developed at Shuri; the three-stringed sanshin, covered with snakeskin, accompanies folk and classical song alike. Karate evolved in Okinawa from local fighting arts and Chinese boxing. Indigenous religion honours ancestors and deities at utaki (sacred groves) and was led by noro priestesses, while the Ryukyuan languages – Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, Yonaguni and others – are recognised by UNESCO as endangered. Each island group keeps its own songs, festivals and dialect.

Okinawan food draws on Chinese, South-East Asian, Japanese and American influences and on the islands' own produce: pork in every form, bitter melon, sweet potato, seaweed, tofu and brown sugar. The traditional diet has been widely studied in connection with the islands' longevity. The local spirit is awamori, distilled from long-grain rice with black kōji mould.

Tourism is the largest industry, drawing visitors from mainland Japan and East Asia to the beaches, reefs and historic sites. Public spending, construction and income linked to the US bases have long been important, while manufacturing is small. Agriculture focuses on sugar cane, pineapples, mangoes, flowers and beef calves, many of which are raised to become premium beef elsewhere. Naha Airport is an air-cargo hub for East Asia, and IT services and call centres have grown under special economic zones.