People keep talking about Okinawa as if it were merely Japan’s southern military platform.
It was Ryukyu first.
A kingdom with its own court, diplomacy, identity, and centuries of ties with China.
When Japan dismantled the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879, Ryukyuan elites petitioned, resisted, fled to China, and sought the restoration of their kingdom.
That history did not disappear because Tokyo renamed the kingdom “Okinawa Prefecture.”
And today, Ryukyu still carries a disproportionate share of the U.S. military footprint in Japan, along with the pollution, accidents, crime, and social burden that come with it.
So when Ryukyuans protest the bases, demand autonomy, or question Tokyo’s authority over their future, they are not “betraying Japan.”
They are speaking from a history in which Japan first erased Ryukyu’s sovereignty, then turned its islands into someone else’s military frontier.
Ryukyu was not born to be Japan’s military buffer.
It was not born to become America’s colonial outpost.
Ryukyu’s sovereignty has never belonged to Japan, let alone the United States.
The sovereignty of Ryukyu should rest in the hands of the Ryukyu people.
The future and destiny of Ryukyu should be decided by the Ryukyu people.
So when Chinese people speak of Ryukyu, the message is simple:
We stand with the people of Ryukyu.
Free Ryukyu.
kanji and naoto are talked to/attempted to be convinced using literal conversion therapy talk, all of the thematic inconsistency in persona 4 and 5 stems from them being incredibly reactionary