Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 33.

Japan and Okinawa, Part 1.

For our third multi-part series, I want to delve into a part of Japanese history that's often somewhat overlooked.

Japan's relationship with a series of islands almost 1,000 kilometers to the south

of Kyushu.

Okinawa is today viewed as an integral part of Japan, though China is now beginning to challenge that to a certain degree,

but 200 years ago it was its own independent state. How did Okinawa become part of Japan, and what

did that process entail for the Okinawan people?

To start us off, it's time for some basic geography.

Modern Okinawa Prefecture is synonymous with the Ryukyu Islands, an island chain stretching

in a long line between Kyushu and Taiwan.

The whole area of the Ryukyu's is around 1,000 square kilometers.

It's a vast distance, comprised mostly of open sea with a few small islands here and there.

We know there's been a settled human presence there for a long time.

Chinese records first mentioned the existence of independent political kingdoms in Ryukyu around 600 CE.

These early kingdoms were fragmentary, there was no unified Ryukyu in government,

and instead powerful families ruled over individual islands or parts of islands.

However, all that began to change on the main island of the Ryukyu chain, called Okinawa,

during the late 1300s.

The central island of the Ryukyu and chain, Okinawa, is dominated by three mountains.

The mountains are called Hokuzan, the northern mountain,

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