Okinawa, mainland Japan's subtropical playground, is no paradise to Okinawans. Ryukyu, the archipelago's original name, means "circle of jewels." Lush appearance is one thing, gritty reality another. Life hasn't glittered here for centuries.
It did briefly, circa 1400-1550. This was the Ryukyu Kingdom's "Golden Age," its cultural and commercial peak, when "a highly developed merchant marine conducted a thriving import-export trade with China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia." Japan's unification around 1600 after centuries of civil war was Ryukyu's misfortune. A Japanese invasion in 1609 left the kingdom independent in name but a colony in fact. The last king was deposed, and annexation formalized, in 1879.
The "Okinawan Diaspora" began in earnest around 1900, with the development of a modern textile industry in Osaka. Factory work was hell — long hours for low pay in foul air amid endemic disease and rampant discrimination — and yet still, for many, it seemed better than hard labor in the sugar cane fields at home. Otherwise they wouldn't have migrated in droves. At least "you ate three meals a day," a woman who had been through the mill recalled many years later. "Even orphans," she added tellingly, "could make a living."