Welcome to Okinawa and the Ryukyus - Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands - page 2

rounding Japan, but one group in particular runs along a more or less north-south line from
the southern end of the Japanese mainland to Taiwan. There are several hundreds of these
islands and they are known as the Ryukyus—the subject of this topic.
We use several names in English to describe these islands, and our use of some of the
terms differs from the meaning the Japanese ascribe to them. Most commonly we call the
group of islands between Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's big four islands, and the Re-
public of China, otherwise known as Taiwan and historically as Formosa, the Ryukyus ( 琉球 ;
Ryūkyū). We also refer to the entire chain as the Ryukyu Islands ( 琉球諸島 ; Ryūkyū-shotō)
and sometimes we say the Ryukyu Archipelago ( 琉球列島 ; Ryūkyū-Rettō).
However, the Japanese do not use these terms in the same sense as we do. They collect-
ively refer to the island chain as the Nansei Shoto ( 南西諸島 ; Nansei-shotō), literally “South-
west Islands.” Or sometimes they'll say Amami-Okinawa Chiho ( 奄美沖縛地方 ; Amami-Ok-
inawa Chihō), which means Amami-Okinawa Region and has the same meaning as South-
west Islands. A term almost never used in the sense that we use it is Ryukyu ( 琉球 ; Ryūkyū).
Rather, they say Okinawa ( 沖絹 ; Okinawa), which is considered a synonym, whereas we use
that word just for the one main island. Whichever term the Japanese may use, they in turn
divide the geographic term Ryukyu into two political subdivisions: Kagoshima Prefecture ( 鹿
児島県 ; Kagoshima-ken) for the northern half of this island chain and Okinawa Prefecture
( 沖縛県 ; Okinawa-ken) for the southern half.
In other words, in the West when we use the term Ryukyu, it's in a geographic sense for
the whole chain of islands. The Japanese equivalent of our sense of that term is Nansei Shoto.
When the Japanese say the Ryukyus, they mean only the southern half of the islands, the
modern political subdivision of Okinawa Prefecture. Occasionally, if they use the now histor-
ical term Ryukyu Retto, they are referring to what was once the territory of the former Ok-
inawan kingdom, which includes most, but not all, of the archipelago—the Amami Islands,
Okinawa Islands, Miyako Islands and Yaeyama Islands.
On the following pages, we use the terms Ryukyu Retto, Ryukyu Shoto, Ryukyu Islands,
Ryukyu Group, Ryukyu Archipelago, Nansei Shoto, Nansei Islands, Southwest Islands and
Southwest Group interchangeably. We'll start at the top, in the north, and work our way down
to the southernmost islands next to Taiwan. We'll visit the entire archipelago, going from one
group of islands to the next, exploring each island, one by one, as we go.
The Ryukyu chain starts just below Kyushu, the southernmost large island of mainland
Japan. Kyushu holds, among others, the cities of Fukuoka ( 福岡市 ; Fukuoka-shi), Nagasaki
( 長崎市 ; Nagasaki-shi) and Kagoshima ( 鹿児島市 ; Kagoshima-shi).