Who are the people of the Ryukyu Islands? How could they survive and prosper on small, isolated islands? How did the independent Ryukyu Kingdom become a major p

Why do Ryukyu’s official histories locate the origins of its early dynastic founders in Iheya and Izena, small islands located northwest of Okinawa? Why did t

"[Okinawa: The History of an Island People is] a book that answers the questions of the curious layman, satisfies the standards of critical scholarship, and is

The Ryukyu islands have been inhabited by humans for over 30,000 years. Their modern population, however, did not come from stone-age ancestors, nor did distinc

The UNESCO atlas on endangered languages recognizes the Ryukyuan languages as constituting languages in their own right. This represents a dramatic shift in the