The geographical location of the "Ryukyu" and the history before modern times

In the study of regional history, due to historical and political factors, the political title of a country or region is often different from the name of geography, so it is easy to cause ambiguity in the scope of research. Therefore, at the beginning of this article, it is necessary to compare the geographical scope of the Ryukyu Islands, the ancient Ryukyu Kingdom, and the Okinawa Prefecture of present-day Japan, so that the "Ryukyu Question" discussed in this article has an accurate extension.

The Ryukyu Islands are located between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and are geologically connected to the Japanese archipelago and the island of Taiwan, both of which belong to the edge of the continental shelf in eastern Asia. In terms of geographical latitude and longitude, the Ryukyu Islands extend from 31 degrees north latitude to 24 degrees north latitude in the south, with the eastern end starting at 123 degrees east longitude and the western end reaching 131 degrees east longitude. The archipelago is arranged in an arc and stretches for more than 1,000 kilometers, covering a vast area from the Sanan Islands south of Kyushu in Japan to the Okinawa Islands and the Diaoyu Islands (known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan) north of Taiwan.

Geographically, the Ryukyu Islands can be roughly divided into three parts: the Sanan Islands, the Okinawa Islands, and the Diaoyu Islands. Historically, the capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom was the Okinawa Islands. Originally, the Sanan Islands were also under the jurisdiction of the Ryukyu Kingdom, but in 1609, Satsuma invaded the Ryukyus, and the Sanan Islands were ceded to the Satsuma Domain of Japan, becoming a dependency of the Satsuma Domain. The Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed by the rising Japan during the Meiji Restoration and became Okinawa Prefecture, but after World War II, it was occupied by the U.S. military and returned to Japan. The southernmost island of the Ryukyu Islands, the Diaoyu Islands, is close to the island of Taiwan and has been owned by China since ancient times. The dispute over the ownership of the Diaoyu Islands arose due to the gradual development of modern Japan and the urgent need to expand its territory, and Japan had always recognized the Diaoyu Islands as Chinese territory before modern times. In the "Map of the Three Provinces and Thirty-six Islands" attached to the "Map of the Three Provinces and Thirty-six Islands" compiled by the famous Japanese orchid scholar Lin Ziping, who inscribed "The Autumn of the 5th Year of the Dawn of Japan (1785) in the Autumn of the Eastern Metropolis of Suharaya City, the Diaoyu Islands are clearly marked as Chinese territories. In view of the theory that the Diaoyu Islands belong to the Japanese that has emerged in modern times, Professor Kiyoshi Inoue of Kyoto University has refuted it in his monograph "Senkaku Islands -- A Historical Analysis of the Diaoyu Islands."

Throughout history, sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands has not been the exclusive property of one country. This pattern of two or even three countries dividing a region has made the Ryukyu Islands a buffer zone for political, economic, and cultural integration between China, Ryukyu, and Japan. The growing and changing power of the surrounding countries made Ryukyu destined to become an eventful place.

Historically, Ryukyu has always had close relations with China, and some scholars believe that the Japanese name for Ryukyu is derived from the Chinese "LIUCHIU", but there is no corresponding "L" pronunciation in Japanese, so it becomes "RYUKYU". Formal diplomatic exchanges between China and the Ryukyus began in the Ming Dynasty, "At the beginning of the Hongwu Dynasty, its country had three kings, Zhongshan, Shannan, and Shanbei, all with Shang as their surname, and Zhongshan was the strongest." In the first month of the fifth year (1372), the pedestrian Yang Zai was ordered to enthrone the Jianyuan edict to inform his country, among which the mountain king Chadu sent his younger brother Tai period and other people to the dynasty and pay tribute. Subsequently, "the king of Shannan, Chengchadu, also sent tribute, such as Zhongshan." "When the two kings and the kings of Shanbei competed for power, they attacked each other. Ordered the edict given by the people of Liang Min, the governor of the internal history, and ordered the soldiers to be dismissed and the people to be stopped, and the three kings were ordered. The king of Shanbei was afraid of Nizhi, so he sent an envoy to pay tribute with the two kings. The three kings of the Ryukyus sent envoys to the court, marking the inclusion of the Ryukyus in China's tributary system and becoming a vassal state of China.

In ancient China, the so-called vassal system reflected the political ritual between the states with China as the Celestial Empire and the four seas as the subordinate countries, and there was absolutely no political power of the modern suzerainty over the colonial countries. China's internal disputes against the Ryukyus were only "ordered by the internal historian Cheng Liang Min, and ordered the troops to be dismissed and the people to be stopped", rather than taking sides with strong coercion, let alone using a single soldier. Moreover, China gave the same gifts to the three kings of the Ryukyus, and did not favor one over the other in order to support its own power, which shows that China respects the sovereignty of the Ryukyu State that is a vassal of the Ryukyus. For overseas tribute, the Ming government also proclaimed the power of heaven, and the purpose of Huairou Yuanren doubled the return, and overseas countries often used this as a means of trade and competed for tribute, even to the point of repeated prohibitions. The tribute paid by the Ryukyus to the Ming was only a form of trade in which the tributary states unilaterally benefited under an unequal system of etiquette, and it was not appropriate to judge it from the perspective of political subordination. The "vassals" were a form of understanding of the world that China had with the ideal of a "heavenly kingdom," and the vassals of the Ryukyus reflected China's recognition of its status as an independent state.

Japan recognized the status of an independent state of the Ryukyus until the end of the Muromachi period. In 1590, "Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the national customs of Japan", also wrote to His Excellency the King of the Ryukyus, saying: "I am pleased to get the strange things of your envoys first." The debate over whether the Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent state began with the invasion of the Ryukyus by the Satsuma Shimazu clan of Japan. On March 4, 1609, the Satsuma army set out from Yamakawa Port and attacked Amami Oshima, Tokunoshima, and Okiarabu Island, which belonged to the Ryukyus. On March 25, the Satsuma Army landed at Yuntenko Port in the northern part of the main island of Okinawa, and on April 3, began attacking Shuri, the capital of the Ryukyus. Faced with the Satsuma army, which used "sticks that will fire from the front", the Okinawan army, which was still in the era of cold weapons, was helpless, and on the 5th, Shuri fell to the castle. In May, the Satsuma army carried more than 100 captives, including the king of the Ryukyus and the chief of the three divisions, from Shanchuan Port in triumph. In 1611, on the premise of ceding the Sanan Islands, including Amami Oshima, the Ryukyu lord Shonei was released and returned to Japan.

The warp and weft of the second generation of Japan's "Ryukyu Disposition".

After the Meiji Restoration, Japan stepped up its expansion. As a small country, it was difficult for the Ryukyus to control their own destiny in the face of Japanese expansion. Historically, the collapse of the Ryukyus was not directly related to its internal affairs, but rather to a domestic political revolution that began in neighboring Japan. In May 1869, the Japanese feudal domains, led by Satsuma, submitted a request to the government to return their fiefs and subjects to the imperial court. In June of the same year, the "return of the copyright" was approved, and the vast majority of feudal lords were appointed as governors. The "return of copyrights" was originally a political measure to strengthen the centralization of power by the central government, but in the process of redistributing power in Japan, the Ryukyus, as a neighboring country, were explicitly placed under the jurisdiction of the governor of the Satsuma domain. On July 14, 1871, in order to further strengthen the power of the central government, Japan implemented the "abolition of feudal domains and prefectures", and a total of 261 feudal domains were converted into prefectures, and a total of 302 prefectures were established in addition to the previously established prefectures. In November of the same year, it was consolidated into 3 prefectures and 72 counties. With the abolition of the Satsuma Domain, Ryukyu became the jurisdiction of the newly established Kagoshima Prefecture.

On September 14, 1872, a Ryukyu delegation led by Prince Ue, Shoken, arrived in Tokyo. In the process of meeting with the emperor, the emperor issued an edict: "I have the destiny of heaven and heaven, and the emperor of the Shao Wan dynasty is the emperor of the lineage, and there are four seas and eight wildernesses." Today, Ryukyu is close to the south, the gas is the same, the language is the same, and it is a vassal of Satsuma. Ershantai can be diligent and sincere, and should be given a lordship, promoted to the king of the Ryukyu domain, and the Chinese family. Shier Shangtai, when the responsibility of the screen, stands on the top of the people, considerately, and always assists the royal family, admiring this. On the surface, this edict seems to be just a humble gesture of gratitude to the envoys, but the sentence "Ershantai can be diligent and sincere, and it is appropriate to be a nobleman, and he will be promoted to the king of the Ryukyu domain, and the Chinese clan will be listed" has a hidden mystery. The so-called Chinese clan is a title that was abolished by the ministers and princes after the "return of the copyright" in 1869, and it is the title of the Japanese nobility after the imperial family, and it is not applicable to Shoyasumoto as a foreign king. Now that the king of the Ryukyus has been crowned as a Japanese nobleman, it is logical that the Ryukyu Kingdom should belong to the territory of Japan, and the citizens of the Ryukyus are also the subjects of Japan.

In fact, as early as June 2 of that year, the Japanese Left Court had already replied to the proposal on the Ryukyu issue from the domestic date, clearly stating: "It is not possible to declare the Chinese nationality in Syria. Due to the evolution of the domestic situation, people are different from each other. The names of the royal family, the Chinese family, and the scholar family are based on the people in the country, and they are naturally set up as such. Now it is not permissible to declare the lord of the Ryukyus to be of the Chinese nationality, because the lord of the Ryukyus is a man of the Ryukyus, and he is not to be confused with the people of the country. He can be named the King of the Ryukyus or the King of Nakayama. The title of Ryukyu Domain King is also inappropriate, because the Ryukyu Domain has been abolished in the mainland, and the Ryukyu Domain is re-awarded, which is not in accordance with the previous decree in terms of name. Moreover, the Ryukyu army is weak, and it is known to the world that it is not a feudal screen of the imperial state. In practical terms, there is no reason to confer a feudal title. Therefore, the feudal title can be removed and proclaimed the king of the Ryukyus. Three months later, the Emperor issued an edict that was completely contrary to the opinion of the Left Yuan, an unusual move that showed that the Japanese government had made a final decision on the Ryukyu issue after a long period of controversy. The Emperor's edict kicked off the plan to annex the Ryukyus.

On October 20, 1872, the U.S. ambassador to Japan wrote to the Japanese Foreign Minister Tanetomi Shojima: "I have learned from your Excellency that Japan urged the King of the Ryukyus to resign and cede his land in order to incorporate the Ryukyus into part of Japan, but the United States signed a treaty with the Ryukyu Kingdom on July 11, 1854. Sokushima immediately replied: "Even if the Ryukyus become a part of Japan, the government will maintain and abide by the treaty between your country and the Ryukyus." "The United States, upon learning that Japan would defend its vested interests in the Ryukyus, acquiesced in Japan's annexation, and Japan's ambitions were initially internationally recognized.

However, in view of the fact that the Ryukyus were an independent country and had long been subordinate to China, Japan's annexation of the Ryukyus still lacked a basis in international law. However, such an unreasonable move, because of the Qing government's ignorance of international law, made it easy for Japan to gain the pretext of annexing the Ryukyus.

After the Meiji Restoration, Japan's territorial ambitions grew as its national power grew. Not only the Ryukyus, but also Taiwan and Korea were included in Japan's plans for foreign expansion. In 1873, the Japanese government made representations to the Qing Dynasty on the pretext that two years earlier the drifting boat people of the Ryukyu Kingdom had been killed by Taiwanese indigenous peony society. The Qing government argued that "the Ryukyus were not a subject country of Japan, and the indigenous people of Taiwan did not have close ties with the government, so the responsibility for the incident should not be borne by the Qing government." "When the Japanese Foreign Minister Soetomi Soejima, who was in charge of the negotiations, returned to Japan with the Qing court's reply, the controversy of the Korean conquest was rife and the political system of the three heroes with Saigo Takamori, Kido Takayoshi, and Okubo Toshitsu at the core collapsed." In order for the military to reconcile with the Kagoshima clan, it was necessary to have a foreign war. On February 6, 1874, the Japanese Cabinet made a decision to invade Taiwan on the basis of the proposal of Okubo Toshitsu and Shigenobu Okuma. On 4 April, the Japanese Government openly set up the "Taiwan Bureau of Tibetan Affairs" named after Chinese territory in the Nagasaki Customs, and appointed Daisuke of the Saigo Congdo Army as the governor of Taiwan's Tibetan affairs. The expeditionary force led by Saixiang landed at Langqiao (now Hengchun) in Taiwan on May 22, and attacked the Peony Society on the 15th, killing more than 30 people and burning down the houses in the society. The gradual development of the war deepened the concern between Britain and the United States that the full-scale war between Japan and the United States would have an adverse impact on the trade in the Far East, and Britain and the United States put pressure on both sides to negotiate peace between Japan and the United States. Under the mediation of the British Minister to China Wittuma and the US Minister to China Xin Min, the two sides reached an agreement: "The Qing Government recognizes Japan's conquest of Taiwan as a 'righteous act' and pays Japan a pension of 100,000 taels of silver and 400,000 taels of construction costs in Taiwan, totaling 500,000 taels of silver." Of these, 100,000 taels were to be paid in advance, and the remaining 400,000 taels were to be paid after the Japanese withdrew on December 20."

As a vassal of China, the murder of its subjects in China was a matter between China and the Ryukyus, and the Ryukyus did not seek help from Japan for help, so Japan's dispatch of troops to Taiwan was completely unknown from the perspective of international law. In a letter to his colleagues in Peking, Parks, the British minister to Japan at the time, wrote: "Japan has been blessed with a blessing, but it is not entitled to receive it. I deeply regret that the ancient powers, which were supposed to be reasonable, have to give in to this milky country. There is nothing to be thankful for, and even if Japan has nothing to do, it welcomes a peaceful solution. The Japanese themselves know perfectly well that they have no right to claim it. However, the "Beijing Article" rationalized Japan's conquest of Taiwan and expressed the matter as follows: "Taiwan's citizens will be killed in vain, and Japan will only ask what it should be, so it will send troops to the other side to rebuke ...... others." This was seized by Japan as evidence that Okinawans are Japanese nationals under international law. At this point, the obstacles in international law to Japan's implementation of its policy of "abolishing feudal domains and establishing prefectures" in the Ryukyus have been completely removed, and the implementation of Japan's plan to annex the Ryukyus is imminent.

In 1877, the Southwest War broke out in Japan, and the Japanese government was busy quelling the rebellion, and the annexation of the Ryukyus was slowed down. On May 14 of the following year, Ritsu Okubo, the concoctor of the "Ryukyu Disposal", was assassinated in connection with the Battle of the Southwest. However, the "Ryukyu Disposal" had become a national policy in Japan, and Okubo's death only changed the executors of the plan. On December 4, 1878, the successor Interior Secretary, Hirobumi Ito, presented the 14-article "Method of Disposition of the Ryukyu Domain" to Minister of the Interior of Sanjo, and in January of the following year, he again dispatched Michiyuki Matsuda to announce Japan's decision to the Ryukyus. The Ryukyus side also expressed its disagreement with this. In March, Matsuda, who had just returned from the Ryukyus, was sent to the Ryukyus for the third time, and unlike the previous two times, Matsuda was accompanied by more than 160 people from the Sonoda Yasuken Police Department and the Police Department, with Hatano Shosa of Kumamoto Zhentai as the detachment leader, and Captain Masuda Mitsuru of the General Staff Headquarters as the special staff officer to lead 400 infantry escorts. In fact, before his second mission to the Ryukyus, Michiyuki Matsuda said when discussing the specific method of "Ryukyu disposition": "If you send troops at the same time as issuing an order to abolish the feudal prefectures, you will be mistaken for a crusade and will be unnecessarily shaken." Two months later, the Japanese Government went against the grain and brazenly dispatched troops to the Ryukyus, which shows that the Japanese Government has left behind its past desire to lure the Ryukyus to surrender and achieve the goal of annexation through "legal" means, and has shown that it will do whatever it wants to achieve "Ryukyu disposition" even by force. March 27, 1879 was the end of the history of the Ryukyu Kingdom. On this day, Michiyuki Matsuda announced the decision to "abolish the feudal domain" in Shuri, the royal castle of the Ryukyus. Although the Ryukyus insisted on their usual resistance to Japan's unilateral decision, it pale in the face of Japan's military repression. On April 4, "the old Ryukyu Domain was abolished and placed in Okinawa Prefecture; The prefectural government was placed in Morisato Castle", and the next day Naobin Nabeshima was appointed as the first prefectural governor of Okinawa Prefecture.

The Qing Dynasty did not agree to Japan's unilateral "Ryukyu Disposition", and although it reluctantly agreed to the "Ryukyu Treaty" drafted by Japan under the mediation of former US President Grant, it was not formally signed. "In this way, for the Qing government, the Ryukyu issue was not officially concluded until the Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to Japan, and the Ryukyu issue was naturally eliminated."

At that time, there were also people of insight in Japan who objected to the "Ryukyu Punishment", arguing: "The forcible punishment of the Ryukyus is no different from the Western brutal colonial policy. However, the Japanese government not only did not accept the words, but instead stepped up its efforts and embarked on the road of no return to foreign expansion. It can be said that "the abolition of the Ryukyu Imperial Domain" was not only a test for the Meiji government to pursue its policy of foreign expansion, but also the first step taken by the Japanese government to encroach on Asia. ”

At the end of World War II, the Japanese militarists, seeing that it was impossible to escape the fate of defeat, instructed the defenders of Okinawa to use the lives of ordinary people as bargaining chips in an attempt to slow down the US offensive and gain precious time for the Japanese mainland.

The best place to learn more about the war is the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Park, located at the southern tip of Okinawa Island. The park was built in the 70s and has a memorial tower and a lantern, but the main attraction for me was the tomb of the dead in the Battle of Okinawa, which is made of black marble and arranged in a fan-shaped shape, with the names of all those who died in that war, totaling 240,000. In addition to the Japanese, the park also has special sections for fallen soldiers from the United States, North Korea, and China. Shockingly, at least half of the 240,000 people were civilians on the island of Okinawa, and the death toll was about one-quarter of the total population of Okinawa Prefecture at the time. What is even more shocking is that many of these civilians committed suicide under the pressure of the Japanese army. Not far from here is Cape Kiyatake, which is located at the junction of the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It was here that many Japanese soldiers and Okinawan people committed suicide by jumping into the sea, and since then this beautiful beach has become a nightmare for the Okinawan people.

If you want to truly appreciate the cruelty of this war, you must visit the Tower of Himeyuri. The taxi driver who took me there was a 60-year-old Okinawan native. He said to me: "I hate the United States, but I don't hate the Americans, I hate the Japanese even more, they treat the Okinawans as second-class citizens, and they hid in the tunnels during World War II and drove the Okinawan people out as cannon fodder." ”

After visiting the Himeyuri Tower and the Himeyuri Peace Memorial Museum, I finally understood the meaning of Toshiaki Nakaji's words. The so-called "Himeyuri" is the nickname of the female students of the Okinawa Women's Normal School and the Daiichi Girls' High School, but they were brainwashed by Japanese militarism and indirectly participated in the Battle of Okinawa, and they are also called "militaristic girls". Judging from the photos on display in the museum, they were a group of cute little girls before the war, with beautiful long hair, who liked to learn English. But during World War II, they were forced to cut off their long hair and walk out of the classroom to help farmers farm to supplement their military rations, and they were even forbidden to learn English. At that time, there was a slogan throughout Japan, called "100 million one-hearted Yamato souls", and the Japanese army called on the people of Okinawa to "break the jade", which means to die gracefully in order to protect the honor of the country and never surrender.

On March 22, 1945, 222 female students and 18 teachers were requisitioned by the Okinawa garrison to form the "Himeyuri Nurse Team" to participate in field ambulance. Most of these students are 15~18 years old, real flower girls. They didn't seem to take the matter too seriously at first, and many of them reported with combs, stationery and textbooks, ready to study while working. But what they didn't expect was that the contrast in strength between the two sides of the war was too great, and the Japanese army did not want to keep Okinawa at all, but positioned the defense of Okinawa as a "war of attrition", with the sole purpose of buying more time for the Japanese mainland. Therefore, the war was fought extremely fiercely, and the Japanese suffered heavy casualties.

The female students served as nurses at the Okinawa Army Hospital in Minamikazehara, helping doctors care for the wounded. Less than a month into the war, the Japanese had to withdraw to the mountains south of Okinawa to carry out guerrilla warfare, and the army hospital was hidden in caves. In front of the tower of Himeyuri is the entrance of a cave, the diameter is only 2~3 meters, but the bottom is very wide, up to more than ten meters deep, so the cave looks black and mushy. Not only did the female students endure the damp working conditions inside the cave, but they were also forced to take on the task of transporting food and delivering information, and nine of them were killed by artillery fire while leaving the cave.

According to their recollections, the medical conditions in the cave were extremely poor, and sometimes the doctors would force the female students to serve milk containing ** to the wounded. The wounded were in great pain after drinking, and when they knew that they had been poisoned, they yelled at the students: "Are you still human? ”

All this ** and mental torture did not pay for victory. As the war dragged on, on June 18, the Japanese army suddenly announced that the nurses' corps was disbanded, leaving the female students to "fend for themselves". The girls had no idea what to do about the ferocious artillery fire outside the cave, and more than 100 people died in the first two days after the disbandment. A significant number of them are self-killing. It must be admitted that the Japanese soldiers did not run away at that time, and the commander-in-chief of Okinawa, Mitsuru Ushijima, also committed suicide, asking the soldiers not to surrender before he died, and fought to the last moment to defend the emperor. It is precisely for this reason that the US military did not show any mercy when searching the mountains, and was ruthless at the slightest resistance.

The worst scene occurred in the Army's No. 2 Surgical Trench, where there were nearly 100 people in the cave, including 45 members of the "Himeyuri Nurse Team" and 5 teachers. The U.S. military did not respond to its request for surrender, so they sealed the hole with a flamethrower, causing 80 people to suffocate to death on the spot, only one teacher and seven students escaped, and two more students were shot dead on the spot after exiting the cave. There is a 1:1 mock-up of the Second Surgical Trench in the museum, and visitors can experience the scene firsthand.

The Jiyulies are not the only examples. At that time, the male students of Okinawa also formed the "Iron and Blood Imperial Army" and directly participated in the battle. According to statistics, a total of 1,489 male and 414 female students died in the three-month battle for the defense of Okinawa, and the people of Okinawa paid a heavy price for Japanese militarism. I saw a lot of student visitors at the scene, and at first they were chirping and taking pictures in front of the Himeyuri Tower, but when they walked into the exhibition hall, they immediately looked solemn, obviously stunned by the stories of these female students. May they grow up to remember the lesson of the blood.

I later learned that the story of Himeyuri had been written in several books and made into a movie, and that the Japanese rock band TheBoom had written the famous "Island Song" after visiting Himeyuri's Tower. The song became a household name in Japan and has almost become a symbol of Okinawan culture. During my days on the island, I heard this "Island Song" accompanied by the shamisen, a traditional Ryukyu instrument, from a street shop almost every day.

Although 65 years have passed since the Battle of Okinawa, Okinawa is still home to a large number of U.S. troops, and an "American Village" has even been built near the U.S. military base to keep American soldiers from being too homesick. The night before I left Okinawa, I drove to visit the American Village and found it to look like the empty cities of the western United States, full of huge shopping malls and movie theaters. Among the many American fast food restaurants, I found an Okinawan noodle restaurant, and as soon as the waiter asked me where I parked my car, I said that it was parked in front of a convenience store, and he immediately said with a difficult face, hoping that I would park my car in the parking lot of the noodle restaurant and not cause trouble to others.

After parking the car, I went in and asked for a bowl of noodles. While eating, I talked to the more serious waiter. He didn't speak English very well, but fortunately there was a translator on hand to help. He said his name was Kazuhiko Matsuo, who was born on August 15, 1976, and was a native of Hiroshima. "It's armistice day!" He made a point of emphasis.

"Don't you hate the Americans when they dropped atomic bombs that killed so many Hiroshima people? Why are you still working in American Village? I asked curiously.

"Young Japanese people are fine, not as disgusted by the older generation as the Americans." Kazuhiko Matsuo replied, "In addition, the disaster in Hiroshima was not the worst, as the atomic bomb killed 70,000 Hiroshima people, Nagasaki killed 30,000, and the main island of Japan did not directly experience the war. So it's more troublesome to say that the Okinawans are still more troublesome, and they have killed 140,000 people. ”

On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito of Japan made a radio speech announcing his acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation of unconditional surrender. The Potsdam Proclamation stipulated: "The conditions of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out, and Japan's sovereignty shall be limited to Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such other islands as we may determine." "On April 24, 1946, the Ryukyu Islands and the Diaoyu Islands, south of the 29th parallel, were placed under the trusteeship of the United States by a United Nations resolution.

Shortly after the end of World War II, the Iron Curtain gradually rose between the former allies who fought side by side, and the Cold War began. On September 8, 1951, with the exception of the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, representatives of the remaining 48 countries signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which placed the Ryukyu Islands under the jurisdiction of the United States and recognized Japan's potential sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands.

The year before, the Soviet Union, realizing that it could not make peace with Japan, had sent a memorandum to the United States, questioning the legitimacy of the U.S. trusteeship of the Ryukyus. The Soviet Union, out of the need for anti-American ideological tactics, while opposing the U.S. trusteeship of the Ryukyus, stated that the sovereignty of the Ryukyus had not been separated from Japan. The stance of the "big brother" of the socialist camp has affected the program of struggle of the Japanese people, as well as the position of the newly ruling country. Against this historical background, the hostile Eastern and Western camps reached a consensus that Japan would have sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands.

The newly founded People's Republic of China, while supporting the Soviet Union's proposals, has put more emphasis on opposing the solution of the Ryukyu issue led by the United States alone, and the government has repeatedly stated on different occasions that it should respect the wishes of the Ryukyu people and return the Ryukyu Islands to Japan. For example, when Liao Chengzhi visited Hokkaido, Japan in 1957, he expressed his support for the struggle of the Ryukyu people to return to their motherland, Japan (People's Daily, March 26, 1958, editorial, "Shameless Fabrication").

Xu Yong, a professor at Peking University who was the first to publish the view that "the status of the Ryukyus is undecided" in mainland historiography, said: "The post-war settlement of the [Ryukyus] issue was dominated and constrained by the opportunistic policies and tactics of the US government, such as excluding China and the Soviet Union and supporting Japan. From the perspective of the excluded China and the Soviet Union, both opposed the "Peace Treaty with Japan" of the United States. However, the combined effect of these factors has enabled Japan to reap great benefits in the end. ”

Due to the numerous war crimes committed by the Japanese army in the Battle of Okinawa, the American forces occupying Okinawa were not initially hostile to the Ryukyu people, and the United States also propagated the takeover of Okinawa as "liberating the minorities from imperialist tyranny." In particular, during the tenure of Lieutenant General Callaway, the third supreme chief, the government documents deliberately used the term "Ryukyu" instead of "Okinawa" to stimulate nationalist sentiment among the Ryukyuan people and try to promote the idea of separation from Japan.

Although the construction and garrison of U.S. military bases and garrisons led to the development of the Ryukyus' construction, transportation, catering, and red-light districts, thereby improving the incomes of the local population, the U.S. military was not well governed in the Ryukyus. The flip side of the construction of military bases is the forcible purchase or even forced takeover of civilian farmland. The Japanese media, sympathetic to left-wing ideology, used "land expropriation by guns, swords, and bulldozers" as a metaphor for the power behavior of the US military. The constant occurrence of disciplinary violations has also greatly diminished the impression of the U.S. military in the Ryukyus.

The memory of the war that has not yet cooled down and the many problems caused by the US military bases have caused the mainstream of thought in Okinawan society to gradually shift towards the left-wing "anti-war" and "anti-American" for a long time after the war. The people of Okinawa believe that a "return to Japan" will address their most pressing needs.

In 1960, the Okinawa Prefecture Council for the Return of the Motherland was established. The Society's advocacy for the return of the Ryukyus to Japanese rule coincided with the growing opposition of the Ryukyus to American rule, and from 1965 to 1971, there were four large-scale riots in the Ryukyu Islands. Against this background, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer proposed for the first time that the U.S. plan to return the entire Ryukyu Islands to Japan. After repeated consultations with the Japanese cabinet of Eisaku Sato, the United States finally returned Okinawa to Japan on May 15, 1972.

The problems caused by the U.S. military bases have not been alleviated with the return to Japan, where about 70 percent of the U.S. military is still in Okinawa and occupies 20 percent of the main island of Okinawa. Anti-American sentiment in Okinawa reached its peak in 1995 with the outbreak of a massive anti-U.S. military base movement that erupted in the rape of an Okinawan girl.

Since then, Okinawa Prefecture Governor Masahide Ota has refused to sign a lease extension for some of the land occupied by the US military, which has even led to extremely tense relations between Okinawa Prefecture and the central government. Japan's system of local self-government determines the existence of this political tension. The governor of Okinawa Prefecture is elected by the local people, and the central government has no control over local governments in terms of personnel and finances. And the political pressure from the United States could not get the prime minister to obey the will of the people.

The unsatisfactory status quo after the restoration of the country led to the emergence of a trend of "self-reliance" among the general public and intellectuals of Okinawa, and various versions of the constitution were proposed, such as Okinawa autonomous prefectures and autonomous prefectures. The self-reliance movement affected the identity of the Ryukyuan people.