Gregory Smits, "The Ryukyu Islands: A New History from the Stone Age to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

**Nicholas Gordon** (1:35)
I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast done in partnership with the New Books Network. In this podcast, we interview fiction and nonfiction authors working in or around and about the Asia Pacific region. Most people only know one of the Ryukyu Islands, the island of Okinawa, home to sandy beaches and one of the US's most important bases in Asia. Now, there are a lot of myths about this island chain, which stretch from southern Japan down to the island of Taiwan, that had owed loyalty to China, given its place in the imperial tribute trade, that it was a pacifist kingdom, that it was quasi-sovereign even within Japan. Gregory Smith tackles a lot of these myths in his expansive history of the islands, titled The Ryukyu Islands, A New History from the Stone Age to the Present. His book, and today's conversation, dive into all the ways that the Ryukyu Islands frustrate anyone trying to fit this place into an easy historical or political narrative. Gregory is a history and Asian Studies at Penn State University. He is the author of several books, including Early Ryukyuan History, A New Mode, Maritime Ryukyu, 1050 to 1650, and Visions of Ryukyu Identity and Ideology in Early Modern Thought and Politics. So Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about your book on the Ryukyu Islands.
You know, I feel like kind of the most famous one of these islands is Okinawa, and that's probably the only island that people know kind of in this region. So what exactly are these islands? You know, what's the climate like? What's the terrain like?
You know, like you talk about it not being great for agriculture, but like, what exactly are these islands like kind of that sit between Japan stretching all the way down to Taiwan?

**Gregory Smits** (3:15)
All right. Yes. Thank you for that. That's the perfect place to start because even the basic geography is subject to either misunderstanding or just most people just don't really have a clear idea. If we start with the geological definition and this the term would typically be the Ryukyu arc, that goes all the way from the islands of Tanegashima and Yakushima, which are just below the Kyushu, and then in an arc that extends all the way to within the site of Taiwan. So and all this is the Ryukyu arc. Now, if we have a little bit more narrow definition of the Ryukyu Islands based on islands that were at least at one point in time part of a centralized state that was located in Okinawa, then we would go from the northern Ryukyu Islands of Amami-Oshima and Kitai-jima in the northern edge, and then again in an arc all the way down to Yonaguni, which is within sight of Taiwan. In other words, you can on a clear day with good eyesight in a high point from Yonaguni, you can barely see Taiwan, but it doesn't work in the reverse direction because the isle is too small.