At the Henoko base construction site in Nago, a banner calls for diplomacy with China over military escalation on December 24, 2025. (©JAPAN Forward by Kenji Yoshida)
As Japan welcomes the new year, cautious optimism hangs in the air. Beneath it all, tensions with China, sharpened by the specter of a Taiwan contingency, show little sign of easing.
In the Diet last November, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, responding to a question from the opposition, remarked that a potential conflict involving the self-governing island of Taiwan could pose a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan. That phrase immediately reverberated beyond Tokyo.
Beijing responded swiftly. Import ban on Japanese seafood was reimposed, diplomatic rhetoric hardened, and early this year, China tightened export controls on dual-use items bound for Japan — measures that may include critical rare earths.
Then, on December 29 and 30, the People's Liberation Army conducted large-scale live-fire drills simulating a blockade surrounding Taiwan, further stoking anxiety across the region.
A Cabinet Office survey released on January 9 captured the shift in public mood. Nearly 70% of respondents cited China's military modernization and its activities near Japan as their primary security concern, a sharp increase from the previous year.
The Front Line
Amid worsening regional geopolitics, much of the debate in Tokyo has focused on defense budgets, counterstrike capabilities, and coordination with its ally, Washington.
Far less attention, however, has been paid to Okinawa.
Stretching across the East China Sea in a long arc toward Taiwan, Okinawa Prefecture forms the southern anchor of what strategists call the First Island Chain. This geographic barrier would shape any military confrontation involving China, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States.
If armed conflict were to erupt over Taiwan or the disputed Senkaku Islands, Okinawa's outlying islands would almost certainly be among the first affected.
Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited island, lies just 60 nautical miles from Taiwan. The Sakishima Islands, including Miyakojima and Ishigaki, sit astride vital sea lanes and increasingly host new deployments by the Self-Defense Forces.
Caught in the Crosshairs
For residents there, a Taiwan contingency is not an abstract policy debate but an intimate, looming question.
"You don't need to imagine what a frontline looks like," says Akihide Nishiura, gesturing toward the horizon in Nago, Okinawa. "We're already standing on it."
A retired high school teacher of 35 years, Nishiura says the tightening tensions with China have revived a familiar fear that Okinawa is once again being positioned as a buffer for decisions made afar.
That sense of exposure helps explain the deep ambivalence many Okinawans feel toward Japan's growing military posture. Nowhere is this more evident than in Henoko, a coastal district of Nago City, where the Japanese government is pressing ahead with construction of a replacement facility for the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.
Each morning and afternoon, a small group of protesters gathers near the construction site, as they have for years. Many are elderly. Some lean on canes. Others hold hand-painted signs calling for peace.
"The politicians in Tokyo don't hear us," laments a woman in her eighties who has joined the daily rally for years. "They talk about defense and alliances, but for us, it's about whether our home becomes a target. We need to think about how to avoid escalation, not provoke it."
Okinawa hosts more than 70% of American military facilities in the Japanese archipelago, despite accounting for just 0.6% of the country's land area and roughly 1% of its population. This imbalance has long fueled resentment, rooted not only in noise, crime, and pollution, but in history.
A War That Never Left
During World War II, Okinawa was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War. An estimated 120,000 civilians — roughly a quarter of the population at the time on the island — were killed.
For older residents, the memory remains visceral. For younger generations, it's carried vicariously through family stories and school lessons.
"People here bear the war in their bodies," says Yasukatsu Matsushima, an economist at Ryukoku University. "I believe the Japanese government's strategy is to delay a decisive battle on the mainland for as long as possible, while plunging Okinawa into yet another war with China."
Matsushima, a leading scholar of the Ryukyu separatist movement, contends that politicians' failure to engage Okinawan sentiment exacerbates local anxiety and deepens calls for independence from the mainland.
That sentiment resonates within the prefectural government. Governor Denny Tamaki, now in his second term and the central figure of the so-called All Okinawa movement, has repeatedly invoked the island's wartime legacy.
"Eighty years ago, Okinawa experienced unimaginable suffering," he says in a recent interview. "We must never allow Okinawa to meet the same fate again."
Despite China's and increasingly Russia's growing naval and air presence, Tamaki cautions that bilateral training with US forces could exert "undue influence on the wider region" and contribute to rising tensions.
"Training must be just that — only training," he adds. "It must be made clear that joint exercises are not being carried out in anticipation of certain developments or specific situations."
The Battle Over Narrative
Yet in Okinawa, anxiety cuts both ways, and there is hardly consensus. Others argue that the prefecture's vulnerability is precisely why Beijing has renewed its attention there — not only militarily, but cognitively.
"From China's perspective, the hardest challenge of unifying Taiwan is the question of US and Japanese military intervention," says Junjiro Shida, a senior associate professor at Meio University in Okinawa. "And the focal point of that intervention is Okinawa."
To that end, Shida argues, China has intensified an information campaign aimed at weakening support for the Japan-US alliance within the prefecture. The strategy blends historical narratives, legal arguments, and emotional appeals designed to amplify existing grievances.
Kyodo News reported that since late 2025, Chinese-language media have published a surge of articles referencing Okinawa's history as the Ryukyu Kingdom, often invoking phrases such as "Ryukyu independence" and questioning Japan's sovereignty over the islands.
An analysis by Meltwater, a US-based media analytics firm, found that similar content increased roughly twentyfold compared with the same period a year earlier.
Turning History Into Leverage
Those narratives have, in turn, been reinforced by China's growing support for so‑called Ryukyu studies through local academic initiatives and joint seminars held between Chinese and Japanese scholars.
Research emerging from these programs often emphasizes the Ryukyu Kingdom's tributary ties with the Ming dynasty and, in some cases, interprets Japan's incorporation of the islands as forceful rather than a lawful integration.
Satoru Nakamura, an Okinawa-native journalist, says the pattern is deliberate and unmistakable. "This is no longer just about bilateral diplomacy," he says. "It's about who gets to define the narrative."
In Nakamura's view, Beijing is pressing on two fronts. One draws on international norms. By invoking the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, he says, "Beijing seeks to recast Okinawa as a lingering case of Japanese colonialism and, by extension, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of American forces stationed there."
The other front is legal and historical. Beijing has revived references to the Potsdam Declaration to argue that Japan remains obligated to return territories it claims were taken from the Qing dynasty, and that its postwar sovereignty does not extend to certain lands currently under its control.
"It's a legal framing intended to normalize the idea that the Senkaku Islands are contested," Nakamura explains. "This would then extend to Okinawa's political status itself."
Between Autonomy and Anxiety
Matsushima, for his part, maintains that Okinawa's incorporation into Japan was never consensual. "The Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent state until 1879, and even after the Satsuma invasion in 1609, it retained internal autonomy and monarchical rule," he notes.
Referring to a September 2023 Osaka High Court ruling that recognized Ryukyuans as an indigenous people and Japan's colonial rule over the islands, Matsushima estimates that about 5% of Okinawans now support full independence.
That backing, according to the professor, could widen to some 40% under a model of limited sovereignty, similar to that of the Republic of Palau.
Matsushima's views are still marginal. A 2022 poll found little appetite among Okinawans for outright independence from the mainland, with most residents favoring more autonomy within the existing constitutional framework rather than separation.
Still, Shida warns that these sentiments, when coupled with Beijing's growing efforts to sow division, could deepen hesitation and fear across the frontline islands.
He points to the cautious posture of Okinawa's prefectural government as an illustration of that vulnerability. "Governor Tamaki and his advisors have repeatedly declined to use the phrase Free and Open Indo-Pacific, despite its central role in Japan's and the region's security strategy," he says.
Though China's information campaign remains modest in scope and reach, Shida says that without a proper response from both local and central governments, these narratives could eventually take firmer root in the international community.
So far, the Okinawa governor has avoided directly acknowledging China's disinformation efforts, describing them as "nothing official," and has refrained from clearly affirming Okinawa's sovereign status within Japan.
A Precarious Balance
For Okinawans, the dilemma is personal. Some resist both new and existing military facilities while conceding the strategic reality of China's rise. Others support deterrence but fear becoming collateral damage in decisions made far away.
As Japan braces for an increasingly unstable future, Okinawa stands at the intersection of history and geopolitics, caught between memories of devastation and the pressures of a new great-power rivalry.
Whether the rest of the country is willing to listen to voices from its southern reaches may shape not only Okinawa's fate, but Japan's path through the storm.
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- Okinawa, the Island Bulwark in China's Shadow
- Now Okinawa, like Taiwan, is On the Frontline
Author: Kenji Yoshida
