Ryukyuan culture

The cultural elements of the Ryukyuans are far from a unified entity, with different islands having their own distinct subculture and practices.

[1] In the Amami Islands of Kagoshima, a musical style known as shima-uta has gained recent popularity in mainland Japan as a result of its usage by contemporary singers.

Conservatively, there are six Ryukyuan varieties in total: the Okinawan, Kunigami, Miyakoan, Yaeyama, Yonaguni and Amami languages.

[5] While the exact time frame is unknown, the Proto-Japonic language split into Old Japanese and Proto-Ryukyuan during the first millennium AD.

When the Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent nation, the Ryukyuan languages were widely spoken among its people.

[7] These policies were often aggressive, with dialect cards (方言札, hōgen-fuda) being issued to students who spoke Ryukyuan rather than Standard Japanese.

Thousands of Okinawan speakers were killed for "spying", as the Japanese soldiers were unable to understand them and thus were suspicious.

[9] The Ryukyuan languages continued to decline even after the Battle of Okinawa and into the American occupation period.

In the Ryukyuan religion, it's said that the Ryukyu Islands were formed by creation goddess Amamikyu,[14] who bore three children.