Chinese study tracing Okinawan roots to home of Confucius hits a nerve in Japan

Research implying most Okinawans have Shandong ancestry risks further straining relations between Tokyo and Beijing

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Okinawa’s governor pays a visit to a site of former graves of people from the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was annexed by Japan in 1879 to form Okinawa prefecture. A new study suggests that most of the ancestry of Ryukyu islanders originated from China’s Shandong province. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 3:03pm, 13 Feb 2025Updated: 4:11pm, 13 Feb 2025

A Chinese-led genetic study has offered a new piece to the ancestral puzzle of where modern East Asians came from, but it has also threatened to deepen political fault lines in Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan, and long home to an American military presence.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on February 3, suggests that the origins of the ancestors of Okinawans can be traced mainly to China’s eastern province of Shandong, the birthplace of Confucius.

The findings have been played up in Chinese state media, but they risk exacerbating already strained relations between Tokyo and Beijing.

The research, spearheaded by Professor Fu Qiaomei with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, analysed nuclear genomes from 85 individuals at 11 archaeological sites in Shandong, dated from 6,000 to 1,500 years ago.

The study revealed that 75 per cent of the ancestry of Ryukyu Islanders – distant relatives of present-day Okinawans – originated from Shandong during the Longshan period, from 4,600 to 4,000 years ago, and mixed with the region’s indigenous Jomon-related lineages.

Genetic admixtures occurred mainly during or after China’s Sui and Tang dynasties, 1,600 to 1,400 years ago, though the earliest ancestral links stretch further back to the time of Confucius.

Such admixtures occur when previously isolated populations interbreed resulting in a population that is descended from multiple sources.