Originally published on July 9, 2019.
Using the writings of Iha Fuyū as a point of departure, this passage introduces the argument that Okinawa and mainland Japan belong to the same linguistic, ethnic, cultural, and social lineage, and that this recognition became a foundation of modern Okinawan studies.
At the same time, it develops a sharp critique of Japan’s massive assistance to South Korea and China, the large-scale local allocation tax grants directed to Okinawa, and the media posture of outlets such as Asahi Shimbun and NHK, which, in the author’s view, failed to convey these historical facts.
It is a highly provocative piece for considering postwar Japanese discourse, debates on Okinawa, and Japan’s perceptions of South Korea and China.

2019-07-09
Iha, who specialized in linguistics at Tokyo Imperial University, demonstrated that in language, ethnicity, culture, and customs alike, Okinawa and the Japanese mainland are of the same lineage.
These studies form the foundation of Okinawan studies today.
At the same time, I am appalled by the ingratitude of the Koreans, who continue to repay such enormous beneficence with hostility, and so I am republishing a chapter I originally posted on 2018-07-25 under that title.
Just like the government of China, the government of South Korea has informed its people of absolutely none of these unmistakable facts, so almost none of its citizens can possibly know them.
Above all, I myself, a citizen of Japan, knew absolutely nothing of this until I discovered this article online, so it follows that most Japanese citizens must not have known it either.
And yet, under such conditions, politicians and the mass media led by Asahi have continued to speak glibly of Japan-China friendship and future-oriented Japan-Korea relations…
I can state this with certainty, because until August four years ago I had subscribed to and read the Asahi Shimbun with close attention for an extraordinarily long time.
Not once did I ever read an article like this in Asahi’s pages, and needless to say I never saw it on the commercial broadcasters that are effectively its subsidiaries, nor on NHK.
Yet I have been made to watch anti-Japan narratives and anti-Japanese-army narratives to the point of disgust.
Rather than merely being dumbfounded by this fact, there must be countless Japanese who would like to hurl at Japan’s foolish politicians, who have continued such vast assistance,
and at the Asahi Shimbun and others, the so-called human-rights lawyers and so-called scholars who drove them in that direction,
the words of one of their representative figures, Jiro Yamaguchi:
“…I’ll beat them down.”
At the same time, while I am appalled by the ingratitude of the Koreans, who continue to repay such enormous beneficence with hostility,
I recall that among the words of the great man born in Okinawa in the Meiji era that I mentioned recently,
there was, if I remember correctly, a point made by the great predecessor Iha,
that one defect of Okinawans was “ingratitude.”
There is an essay by Iha Fuyū, the father of “Okinawan studies,” entitled “The Greatest Defect of Okinawans” (Meiji 42, included in Old Ryukyu, Iwanami Bunko, 2000).
There Iha points out that “it is that they easily forget favors,” and says that “this was probably caused by the circumstances of several hundred years.”
What is meant here by “easily forgetting favors” is that they follow whichever power is strongest at the time, and easily betray the one they had previously followed.
Omitted in the middle.
Iha, who specialized in linguistics at Tokyo Imperial University, demonstrated that in language, ethnicity, culture, and customs alike, Okinawa and the Japanese mainland are of the same lineage.
These studies form the foundation of Okinawan studies today.
People of Okinawa must, by no means, allow themselves to become human beings equivalent to Koreans of the kind described below.
After all, Okinawa has continued to receive the largest local allocation tax grants among all forty-seven prefectures.
If these astronomical sums of assistance to China and South Korea had instead been directed toward strengthening Japan’s national land,
not a single Japanese citizen would have had to die in disasters.
The same can also be said with respect to the people of Okinawa,
and the people of Okinawa ought, at least once, to reflect deeply and understand this.
Japan’s ODA to South Korea.
*Excluding the 500 million dollars paid by Japan to South Korea under the 1965 Basic Treaty between Japan and South Korea.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.