Ryukyu Islands


The Ryukyu Islands, also known as the Nansei Islands or the Ryukyu Arc, are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ryukyu Islands are divided into the Satsunan Islands and Okinawa Prefecture. The larger ones are mostly volcanic islands and the smaller mostly coral. The largest is Okinawa Island.
The climate of the islands ranges from humid subtropical climate in the north to tropical rainforest climate in the south. Precipitation is very high and is affected by the rainy season and typhoons. Except the outlying Daitō Islands, the island chain has two major geologic boundaries, the Tokara Strait and the Kerama Gap. The islands beyond the Tokara Strait are characterized by their coral reefs.
The Ōsumi and Tokara Islands, the northernmost of the islands, fall under the cultural sphere of the Kyushu region of Japan; local inhabitants speak a variation of the Kagoshima dialect of Japanese. The Amami, Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama Islands have a native population collectively called the Ryukyuan people, named for the former Ryukyu Kingdom that ruled them. The varied Ryukyuan languages are traditionally spoken on these islands, and the major islands have their own distinct languages. In modern times, the Japanese language has been the primary language of the islands, with the Okinawan Japanese dialect prevalently spoken. The outlying Daitō Islands were uninhabited until the Meiji period, when their development was started mainly by people from the Izu Islands south of Tokyo, with the people there speaking the Hachijō language.
The islands were held by the United States after the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco concluded the Pacific War. They were returned to Japan under the 1971 Okinawa reversion agreement, with China disputing the Senkaku Islands.
Administratively, the islands are divided between two prefectures: the northern islands, collectively called the Satsunan Islands, are part of Kagoshima Prefecture, while the southern part of the chain makes up Okinawa Prefecture. The divide is between the Amami and Okinawa Islands, with the Daitō Islands part of Okinawa Prefecture.

Geography

Island subgroups

The Ryukyu islands are commonly divided into two or three primary groups:
  • either administratively, with the Northern Ryukyus being the islands in Kagoshima Prefecture and the Southern Ryukyus being the islands in Okinawa Prefecture,
  • or geographically, with the islands north of the Tokara Strait being the Northern Ryukyus, those between the Tokara Strait and Kerama Gap being the Central Ryukyus, and those south of the Kerama Gap being the Southern Ryukyus.
The following are the grouping and names used by the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department of the Japan Coast Guard. The islands are listed from north to south where possible.
The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, another government organization that is responsible for standardization of place names, disagrees with the Japan Coast Guard over some names and their extent, but the two are working on standardization. They agreed on 15 February 2010, to use for the Amami Islands; prior to that, had also been used.

Climate

The climate of the Ryukyu islands is sub-tropical. It is significantly warmer than the main islands Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu. There are occasional typhoons during the summer. Winter temperature is mild with optimal clearness of the ocean water.

Names and extents

The English and Japanese uses of the term "Ryukyu" differ. In English, the term Ryukyu may apply to the entire chain of islands, while in Japanese Ryukyu usually refers only to the islands that were previously part of the Ryūkyū Kingdom after 1624.

Nansei Islands

is the official name for the whole island chain in Japanese. Japan has used the name on nautical charts since 1907. Based on the Japanese charts, the international chart series uses Nansei Shoto.
Nansei literally means "southwest", the direction of the island chain relative to mainland Japan. Some humanities scholars prefer the uncommon term for the entire island chain. In geology, however, the Ryukyu Arc includes subsurface structures such as the Okinawa Trough and extends to Kyushu.
During the American occupation of Amami, the Japanese government objected to the islands being included under the name "Ryukyu" in English because they worried that this might mean that the return of the Amami Islands to Japanese control would be delayed until the return of Okinawa. However, the American occupational government on Amami continued to be called the "Provisional Government for the Northern Ryukyu Islands" in English, though it was translated as in Japanese.

Ryukyu

The name of is strongly associated with the Ryukyu Kingdom, a kingdom that originated from the Okinawa Islands and subjugated the Sakishima and Amami Islands. The name is generally considered outdated in Japanese although some entities of Okinawa still bear the name, such as the local national university. FC Ryukyu is the maximum football representative of the prefecture in the Japanese football league system and has played as high as the second-tier J2 League.
In Japanese, the "Ryukyu Islands" cover only the Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama Islands, while in English it includes the Amami and Daitō Islands. The northern half of the island chain is referred to as the Satsunan Islands in Japanese, as opposed to Northern Ryukyu Islands in English.
Humanities scholars generally agree that the Amami, Okinawa, Miyako, and Yaeyama Islands share much cultural heritage, though they are characterized by a great degree of internal diversity as well. There is, however, no good name for the group. The native population do not have their own name, since they do not recognize themselves as a group this size. Ryukyu is the principal candidate because it roughly corresponds to the maximum extent of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. However, it is not necessarily considered neutral by the people of Amami, Miyako, and Yaeyama, who were marginalized under the Okinawa-centered kingdom. The Ōsumi Islands are not included because they are culturally part of Kyushu. There is a high degree of confusion in use of Ryukyu in English literature. For example, Encyclopædia Britannica equates the Ryukyu Islands with Japanese Ryūkyū-shotō or Nansei-shotō in the definition but limits its scope to the Amami, Okinawa and Sakishima in the content.

Historical usage

"Ryūkyū" is an exonym and is not a self-designation. The word first appeared in the Book of Sui. Its obscure description of Liuqiu is the source of a never-ending scholarly debate about whether the name referred to Taiwan, Okinawa or both. Nevertheless, the Book of Sui shaped perceptions of Ryūkyū for a long time. Ryūkyū was considered a land of cannibals and aroused a feeling of dread among surrounding people, from Buddhist monk Enchin who traveled to Tang China in 858 to an informant of the Hyōtō Ryūkyū-koku ki who traveled to Song China in 1243. Later, some Chinese sources used "Great Ryukyu" for Okinawa and "Lesser Ryukyu" for Taiwan. Okinawan forms of "Ryūkyū" are or in Okinawan and in the Kunigami language. An Okinawan man was recorded as having referred to himself as a "Doo Choo man" during Commodore Matthew C. Perry's visit to the Ryūkyū Kingdom in 1852.
From about 1829 until the mid-20th century, the islands' English name was spelled Luchu, Loochoo, Loo-choo, or Lewchew, all pronounced. These spellings were based on the Okinawan form, as well as the Chinese pronunciation of the characters "", which in Mandarin is Liúqiú.

Okinawa

, Okinawa in Okinawan, is originally a native name for the largest island in the island chain. The island was referred to as in the 8th century biography of Jianzhen. It is also specified as in hiragana in the collection of, known as Ryukyu's official poetry book. It was not until the 18th century that Okinawa was specified in its own script as 沖縄.
The Japanese map series known as the Ryukyu Kuniezu lists the island as in 1644 and after 1702. The name Okinawa Shima was chosen by the Meiji government for the new prefecture when they annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879.
Outside of Okinawa Prefecture, the word "Okinawa" is used to refer to Okinawa Prefecture and does not include Kagoshima Prefecture. Inside Okinawa Prefecture, "Okinawa" is used to refer to Okinawa Island, and does not include the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands. People in the Yaeyama Islands use the expression "go to Okinawa" when they visit Okinawa Island.
Some scholars group the Amami and Okinawa Islands together because in some respects Amami is closer to Okinawa than to Miyako and Yaeyama, but there is no established single-word term for the group since the native population had not felt the need for such a concept. Japanese scholars use "Amami–Okinawa" while American and European scholars use "Northern Ryukyuan".