Ryukyu Islands

But if you look at Taiwan specifically as well, too, if you let's say there was some sort of conflict, Chinese ships would have to go south through the Strait of Luzon or north around the Miyako Strait.

the Ryukyu Islands and so forth.

And it would just make it very easy for other countries to see where their ships are going and potentially hit them or surveil them.

It's a huge problem for them in some sense.

And the Dutch turn up on Taiwan and they build a base there.

And they then get involved in this massive trade that's going on up and down the Ryukyu Islands to Japan, into China, down into Southeast Asia.

All kinds of stuff is being traded here.

I mean, to give you some examples, there's sulfur from Taiwan, which is very valuable in the manufacture of this gunpowder stuff.

We went to Iki-jima instead for the film shoot.

And then finally a year later, the third attempt, I made it to Amami, made some wonderful friends there, spent eight months, then sailed down the Ryukyu Islands to Okinawa, where I spent 15 months sailing those islands.

And then last year I was gonna use my sailboat to do what I had done by bicycle 25 years previously, followed the cherry blossom front, the length of Japan.

But I was waylaid on one of the islands, Ie Jima, with norovirus, which put me behind.

Just a small island of maybe 1,700 people, cattle grazing near cliffside pastures, and some of the strongest ocean currents in the entire Pacific.

This part of the world is called the Ryukyu Islands, a long curving chain that stretches from Japan's mainland almost all the way down to Taiwan.

Geologically, culturally, historically, it's a crossroads.

For centuries, this chain was its own kingdom, the Ryukyu Kingdom, trading with China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, absorbing influences from all directions before eventually being folded into Japan in the 1800s.

If you were going to hide a monument anywhere in the Pacific, purely by accident of geology, this would be a strangely perfect place to do it.

Now, here's where the human imagination comes in, because this region already had a head start when it comes to mysterious ruins and lost civilisation stories.

Sailors and fishermen in the Ryukyu Islands have swapped tales for generations about strange shapes glimpsed beneath the waves, sunken villages, drowned shrines, cities swallowed by the sea after some ancient catastrophe.

Some of these stories almost certainly trace back to real events, tsunamis, earthquakes, and typhoons that genuinely have reshaped coastlines and submerged, low-lying settlements over the centuries.

Flamethrowers are being used to burn the Nazis out of homes that have been turned into small fortresses.

The American Third Army to the south has resumed its attack on the 20-mile front between Nansei and Metz.

On the basis of available dispatches, Lieutenant General Patton's new assault appears designed to pave the way for a possible encirclement of Metz, the gateway to the industrial Tsar Basin.

That region is less than 30 miles from Patton's tanks and infantry.

So anti-base sentiment has run deep in Okinawa, and that echoes a longer history of Okinawans facing discrimination from the mainland.

Okinawa used to be a separate kingdom called Ryukyu.

It was then annexed by Japan in the 19th century.

It then suffered the deadly Battle of Okinawa during World War II.

Bushido Formed from the two words bushi, meaning warrior, and do, meaning the way or path, describes a moral code of conduct encompassing frugality, loyalty to one's lord and the emperor, martial skill in battle and honor until death, that was used by those who we today refer to as samurai, although in Japan itself these legendary warriors are simply known as bushi.

Immediately after the Meiji Restoration, Japan's new centralized government, as well as its military, had no need of the customs of the past, and over the next decade the country embarked on a period of territorial expansion as it occupied the Ryukyu Islands south of Japan in 1879, which included Okinawa, and then in the 1890s seized control over Korea.

as well as Taiwan following the First Sino-Japanese War, in which the modern Japanese army soundly defeated the Chinese on the Korean peninsula.

This expansion marked the beginning of an increase in the Japanese sphere of influence in East Asia that would in time bring it into direct competition with the Western powers who, ironically, had helped the country to modernize over the preceding decade.

Security implications.

Government officials also see positive implications from the election for security policy in the Nansei island chain, including Okinawa.

One aide to Takaichi said efforts to strengthen defense capabilities in the region could advance further with Kōja than under now defeated Governor Denny Tamaki.

The designation of specified use airports and ports, which allows the Self-Defense Forces to make smoother use of civilian airports and ports in peacetime, requires the consent of airport and port administrators.