This is the script for my video posted on October 26, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.
Japan controls a 1200km chain of islands that sits across the Chinese navy’s main routes to the Pacific. In peacetime, Chinese warships sail through the gaps legally, but in a war, the Ryukyu Islands could become a giant wall. With China historically sensitive to being hemmed in by foreign powers, how has Japan managed to control the Ryukyus, and what impact does this have on geopolitical strategy?
Humans have lived in the Ryukyus for at least 32k years, but the first chiefdoms only formed on the island of Okinawa around the 12th century.
Over time, local clan leaders known as aji accumulated wealth and power and built stone fortifications, but rivalries between these led to three competing kingdoms on the island called Hokuzan, Chuzan, and Nanzan.
All three paid tribute to Ming Dynasty China. In 1406, a local lord named Sho Hashi seized the kingdom of Chuzan and installed his father as king, and by 1429 CE he had conquered the other two kingdoms and unified the island into the Ryukyu Kingdom.
In 1609, the Japanese feudal domain of Satsuma invaded the kingdom, annexing the northern Amami Islands and later stationing officials in the port of Naha to dictate foreign policy and levy taxes.
But the Japanese had to keep this secret, because Ryukyu’s tribute missions were Satsuma’s backdoor into Chinese trade. The Ming Dynasty had cut off trade with Japan completely, and even after the Qing Dynasty let Chinese merchants trade at Nagasaki in the 1680s, Japan had no formal relations with China.
Ryukyu had to appear independent, and when Chinese envoys visited, the Japanese went to extreme lengths to hide their presence, leaving port and mandating that Japanese clothing, names, and other signs of their control be hidden.
This dynamic of dual vassalage allowed Ryukyu to survive as a distinct political entity for over two and a half centuries while maintaining close ties with both China and Japan. It also made the kingdom one of the few tightly controlled gateways Japan kept open to the outside world.
But in 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry stopped at Naha, then sailed four US Navy warships into what’s now Tokyo Bay and presented a letter from President Millard Fillmore demanding that Japan open up to trade and diplomatic relations. Japan stalled, so he returned in 1854 with an even larger force, and the Tokugawa Shogunate signed the Treaty of Kanagawa.
On his way home, Perry stopped in the Ryukyu Kingdom again to sign a compact in English and Chinese establishing friendship, courtesy, and assistance for US vessels. Some perceive this as the US treating Ryukyu as an independent country of its own rather than a dependency.
Of course, as the Meiji government of Japan overhauled the country by replacing the shogun with the emperor again, Japan unilaterally declared the Ryukyu Kingdom to be a domain of the Japanese Empire in 1872. It reduced the king from a sovereign to the head of the domain.
After Paiwan villagers on Taiwan killed dozens of shipwrecked Ryukyuan sailors in 1871, Japan sent a punitive expedition there in 1874, and the settlement with China let Japan argue that Ryukyuans were Japanese subjects. Then in 1875, Japan forced Ryukyu to cut ties with Qing Dynasty China and host a Japanese military garrison.
Ryukyuan royals resisted and secretly appealed to China for intervention, and the Qing lodged diplomatic protests. But China was preoccupied with internal crises and was unwilling to risk a war with Japan.
In 1879, Japan sent a large police and military force to Shuri Castle, deposed the king and relocated him to Tokyo, and then created Okinawa Prefecture to finalize the annexation, which China refused to recognize.
US President Ulysses S. Grant, who had recently left office, was touring Asia in 1879 and urged both sides to compromise. In 1880, Japanese and Chinese negotiators agreed on a partition that would have given China the Miyako and Yaeyama islands in exchange for Western-style trading rights for Japan inside China. But the Qing court balked at the last minute, and it was never ratified.
In 1894, the First Sino-Japanese War began over supremacy and influence in Korea. In January 1895, with victory in sight, Japan quietly incorporated the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, about 170km northeast of Taiwan, and months later China ceded Taiwan itself. Japan says the islands were unclaimed. China calls them the Diaoyu Islands and says they were seized in the war. The dispute laid dormant until a UN report in the late 1960s suggested that the surrounding seabed might hold vast oil and gas reserves, and today China, Japan, and Taiwan all claim the islands.
The Ryukyus were hugely important during WWII, particularly near the end. Okinawa was the site of the last great battle of the Pacific War and a key military staging area thanks to its vital airfields and deep water anchorages. It was part of Japan’s inner ring of defense, and the US took about 50k combat casualties to capture it and several nearby islands, out of over half a million personnel committed.
The Japanese, meanwhile, lost between 94k and 110k soldiers, including about 28k Okinawans, and Okinawa Prefecture estimates that another 94k civilians were killed, with some estimates reaching 150k. The Battle of Okinawa was extremely costly, and its toll shaped US projections for invading the Japanese mainland. Many historians argue this strengthened the case for using nuclear weapons instead.
After the war, the US separated the Ryukyus from Japan and ran them through a military government, and later a military-led civil administration, transforming Okinawa into a permanent post-war base. Under the 1951 peace treaty, Japan kept only what the US called residual sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the war between Communist China and the Republic of China raged on. Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek had suggested joint Chinese and American administration of the Ryukyus to President Franklin Roosevelt back in 1943, but his government never pressed a claim.
After the Communists won, they denounced the US occupation and backed Okinawa’s return to Japanese control, and eventually this did happen. Okinawa reverted in 1972, and Japan’s hold on the islands has been bound up with the US alliance ever since.
But as of 2026, Okinawa still hosts over 25k US troops, or roughly half of the total US personnel in Japan, along with about 70% of the land used exclusively by US forces in the country. Despite deep local opposition thanks to continued abuses and memories of the war, the US operates 31 exclusive-use facilities across the prefecture under the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.
This includes Kadena Air Base, the largest and most active US Air Force base in the Pacific, and the III Marine Expeditionary Force, which can be used for rapid military response. Together, they serve as a key deterrent against Chinese military aggression.
Japan is fortifying the southwestern Ryukyus as China continues to exert pressure via near-daily coast guard patrols around the Senkakus, aircraft carrier operations, and propaganda. China is well aware that the US and Japan place heavy weight on Okinawa in particular, and that if war broke out, the island would be a key location.
This would be especially true during a Taiwan contingency. That’s why Japan has opened new military bases on Yonaguni, Amami, Miyako, and Ishigaki since 2016. In March 2026, it also stationed upgraded long-range anti-ship missiles at Camp Kengun on Kyushu, which can reach much of the East China Sea and parts of China’s coast. In October 2026, US Marines brought anti-ship missile launchers to Yonaguni, just 110km from Taiwan, for the first time during a joint exercise.
From the US perspective, the Ryukyus are a critical element of the so-called First Island Chain, which stretches from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines to Borneo and is intended to hold China in. Behind it runs the Second Island Chain, roughly from Japan through Guam to New Guinea. The idea is that Chinese warships can sail through the gaps between the Ryukyu Islands legally in peacetime. In a war, though, missiles, aircraft, and submarines along this line could make those passages deadly, keeping much of China’s navy bottled up close to home.
In the meantime, China is trying to coerce Japan economically. In November 2025, the Japanese prime minister said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could be grounds for Japan to use military force. China responded by reimposing its ban on Japanese seafood imports. In January 2026, it banned dual-use exports to Japanese military end-users, including critical minerals, and later widened the restrictions to dozens of Japanese defense-linked entities.
China is also capitalizing on the displeasure of Okinawans with the US military presence to influence the political environment in their favor. Chinese state media now argue that Ryukyu’s status is undetermined, and Chinese diplomats have raised Okinawans’ status as an Indigenous people at the UN. Yet only about 3% of Okinawans backed independence in a 2022 poll, so the aim is less to win Okinawa than to drive a wedge into the US-Japan alliance. It’s in their best interest to break the line and push the US away, particularly if they ever want an invasion of Taiwan to succeed.
Keep reading
- Why is the Yellow Sea so important?
- Why is Sri Lanka so important?
- Why has tiny Bhutan managed to stay independent between India and China?
I’m writing a book called Groundwork about the buried history beneath geopolitics. Join the waitlist to hear when it has a publisher, a cover, and a release date.