Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost prefecture of Japan. It encompasses two thirds of the Ryukyu Islands in a chain over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long. The Ryukyu Islands extend southwest from Kagoshima Prefecture in Kyushu to Taiwan. Naha, Okinawa's capital, is located in the southern part of Okinawa Island.
The Ryukyuan people; also Lewchewan or Uchinaanchu are the indigenous peoples of the Ryukyu Islands between the islands of Kyushu and Taiwan. Politically, they live in either Okinawa Prefecture or Kagoshima Prefecture. Their languages make up the Ryukyuan languages, considered to be one of the two branches of the Japonic language family, the other being Japanese and its dialects.
The spider family Liphistiidae, recognized by Tamerlan Thorell in 1869, comprises 8 genera and about 100 species of medium-sized spiders from Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. They are among the most basal living spiders, belonging to the suborder Mesothelae. In Japan, the Kimura spider is well known.
This article is about the history of the Ryukyu Islands southwest of the main islands of Japan.
The Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent kingdom that ruled most of the Ryukyu Islands from the 15th to the 19th century. The kings of Ryukyu unified Okinawa Island and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands in modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture, and the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan. Despite its small size, the kingdom played a central role in the maritime trade networks of medieval East and Southeast Asia, especially the Malacca Sultanate.
Okinawa Island is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu (Nansei) Islands of Japan. The island is approximately 70 miles (110 km) long and an average 7 miles (11 km) wide, and has an area of 1,206.98 square kilometers (466.02 sq mi). It is roughly 640 kilometres (400 mi) south of the rest of Japan and 500 km (300 mi) north of Taiwan. The Greater Naha area, home to the prefectural seat of Okinawa Prefecture on the southwestern part of Okinawa Island, has roughly 800,000 of the island's 1.423 million residents, while the city itself is home to about 320,000.
Tree rat or tree-rat may refer to the following rodents:
Apodemus is the genus of Muridae which contains the Eurasian field mice.
The Amami Islands is an archipelago in the Satsunan Islands, which is part of the Ryukyu Islands, and is southwest of Kyushu. Administratively, the group belongs to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan and the Japan Coast Guard agreed on February 15, 2010, to use the name of Amami-guntō(奄美群島) for the Amami Islands. Prior to that, Amami-shotō(奄美諸島) was also used. The name of Amami is probably cognate with Amamikyu (阿摩美久), the goddess of creation in the Ryukyuan Shinto creation myth.
The Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan in 1874, referred to in Japan as the Taiwan Expedition and in Taiwan and mainland China as the Mudan incident, was a punitive expedition launched by the Japanese in retaliation for the murder of 54 Ryukyuan sailors by Paiwan aborigines near the southwestern tip of Taiwan in December 1871. The success of the expedition, which marked the first overseas deployment of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy, revealed the fragility of the Qing dynasty's hold on Taiwan and encouraged further Japanese adventurism. Diplomatically, Japan's embroilment with China in 1874 was eventually resolved by a British arbitration under which Qing China agreed to compensate Japan for property damage. Some ambiguous wording in the agreed terms were later argued by Japan to be confirmation of Chinese renunciation of suzerainty over the Ryukyu Islands, paving the way for de facto Japanese incorporation of Ryukyu in 1879.
Naha is the capital city of the Okinawa Prefecture, the southernmost prefecture of Japan.
The Ryukyu independence movement or Republic of the Ryukyus is a political movement for the independence of Ryukyu Islands from Japan.
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 Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands, with Yonaguni the westernmost. The larger are mostly high islands and the smaller mostly coral. The largest is Okinawa Island.
The Ryukyu long-tailed giant rat or Ryukyu rat is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is the only extant species in the genus Diplothrix. It is found only in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan. Its natural habitat is temperate forests. It is threatened by habitat loss.
The Ryukyu mouse is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The Ryukyu spiny rat is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. Endemic to Amami Ōshima island in the Amami Islands of the Ryukyu archipelago of Japan, its natural habitat is subtropical moist broadleaf forest. The karyotype has an odd diploid number, 2n = 25. Like its relative T. tokunoshimensis, it has lost its Y chromosome and SRY gene.
Shō Hō, also known as Shengfeng, was a king of the Ryukyu Kingdom. He succeeded Shō Nei, whose reign saw the invasion of Ryukyu by Japanese forces in 1609 and the subjugation of the kingdom to Satsuma Domain, and ruled from 1621 until 1640.
The Senkaku Islands dispute, or Diaoyu Islands dispute, concerns a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, the Diaoyu Islands in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Tiaoyutai Islands in the Republic of China. Aside from a 1945 to 1972 period of administration by the United States as part of the Ryukyu Islands, the archipelago has been controlled by Japan since 1895. According to Lee Seokwoo, the People's Republic of China (PRC) started taking up the question of sovereignty over the islands in the latter half of 1970 when evidence relating to the existence of oil reserves surfaced. Taiwan also claims the islands. The territory is close to key shipping lanes and rich fishing grounds, and there may be oil reserves in the area.
Shiraho Saonetabaru Cave Ruins is a paleoanthropological site located on Ishigaki Island of the Yaeyama Islands in Japan. Shiraho Saonetabaru is a limestone cave.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of the Ryukyu Islands.
