Okinawa, “Japan’s Hawaii”

Several places in the world function as a meeting point between sometimes rival cultures. Alsace Lorraine is one such place, a buffer between France and Germany. Trieste on the Adriatic sits athwart the Italian and Slavic worlds, while Singapore successfully juggles Chinese, Hindu and Malaysian cultures.

The subtropical island of Okinawa, Japan’s furthest-flung prefecture, is another such place. Here, northeast of Taiwan and situated as far east of China as it is south of Japan, the almost 500-square-mile linchpin of the Ryukyu Islands early on became a meeting point between an expanding Chinese Empire and an ardently independent Japan.

Okinawa’s native peoples, ethnically related to the Japanese and the Melanesians, spoke a variant of Japanese that left the main root 1,500 years ago. Like their cousins to the north, they were also protective of their independence. They established a series of dynastic kingdoms through the middle ages that adroitly resisted direct rule by either the Chinese or Japanese, even as they incorporated elements from both cultures.

Eventually, as Japan began striding onto the world stage after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Okinawa surrendered its independence and became a Japanese prefecture. The only interruption to that status was when the island existed as a U.S. military protectorate from 1945 to 1972.

For it was in the spring of 1945 that Okinawa became a bloody rehearsal for the American invasion of the Japanese home islands, an assault slated for later that November. Over the space of six weeks, 12,000 U.S. soldiers and 100,000 Japanese soldiers died in to-the-death struggles before the Americans finally seized control of the island.

Based on the ferocious bravery shown by the Japanese, the Americans were left to ponder the possibility of sustaining 1 million casualties if they invaded Japan. That bleak prospect contributed to President Truman’s subsequent decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, 57 years after the horrendous battles that sealed its image in older Americans’ minds, Okinawa functions in many ways as Japan’s Hawaii or Key West. Located at a fairly southerly latitude, the Ryukyu Islands are pleasantly subtropical most months of the year. Winter temperatures rarely drop below 50 degrees F, while spring and fall temperatures hover in the 70s and 80s. The summers can be hot and sticky, with temperatures well into the 90s, with humidity to match. But in the halcyon months, Okinawa’s white-sand beaches, turquoise waters and abundant coral reefs become a huge draw for Japanese vacationers, divers and sun worshippers.

The island is also a golfing center, with 40 courses on the island – about one course for every 12 square miles of land. For visitors looking for a taste of tropical remoteness, the island of Iriomote, second largest in the Ryukyu archipelago, whose mostly mountainous terrain is swathed in almost totally virgin tropical and subtropical forest, is a beckoning retreat. It, too, is ringed by coral reefs.

Okinawa is accessible by sea and air, with two-and-one-half-hour flight time from Tokyo and two hours from Osaka. Flight time from Hong Kong is the same as from Tokyo.

Total population of the prefecture’s islands is 1.3 million, with 1.15 million concentrated on Okinawa proper, including 300,000 in Naha, the island’s main city. It is an easy drive from Naha to take in the west coast beaches and reefs or explore the legacy of the Ryukyu Kingdom at Shuri Castle or the ruin of Enkakuji Temple and Iyedonchi Garden.

An interesting sidebar to Okinawa is its inhabitants’ longevity. Even as Japan boasts the world’s highest life expectancy among large nations—the island’s 85.08-year life expectancy for women is the highest in the country—and its ratio of 18.5 people per 100,000 at over 100 years of age is more than four times the nation’s average.