In the minds of many Japanese people, Yonaguni is a sleepy paradise of crystal-clear sea and pristine beaches, where miniature horses graze on clifftops and empty roads dissect fields of sugar cane; where tourists dive with hammerhead sharks and marvel at the Ayamihabiru – the world’s largest Atlas moth.
But this tiny island, located far closer to Taipei than Tokyo, now finds itself at the centre of regional tensions triggered by a new round of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan.
On a clear day, it is possible to make out the coastline of Taiwan, located 110km (68 miles) from the westernmost tip of Yonaguni. And the prospect of a conflict across the narrow stretch of water looms large. There are plans to expand a Japanese self-defence (SDF) base on Yonaguni, and to extend the airport and port. In April, the government announced it would build underground evacuation shelters here and on other “frontline” islands.
This creeping militarisation has placed the island’s civilian population of 1,500 on the frontline of new and growing threats to Japan’s security and left many residents fearful for their safety – and their future.
With a cautious eye on tensions across the water, residents talk of their unease over a Taiwan yūji (Taiwan emergency) – a scenario in which China attempts to annex Taiwan by force, sparking a wider conflict that ensnares both the US and its key ally, Japan, and leads to an exodus of refugees to Yonaguni.
“Of course I’m worried about something happening with Taiwan,” says Shoko Komine, who runs a restaurant serving local delicacies such as marlin sashimi and goya champurū. “If something happens between China and Taiwan, I think there’s a chance Yonaguni will get dragged into it.
“I don’t think there is going to be a conflict any time soon, but even the risk of something happening will stop tourists from coming. The town government should put more effort into promoting tourism, but at the moment it is obsessed with defence.”
Yonaguni’s location, as the westernmost of several islands making up the Nansei chain, has given it a strategic importance that belies its modest proportions, as Japan’s government shifts its focus from the cold war threat of the former Soviet Union in the far north to challenges posed by China at the opposite end of the archipelago.
In 2015, Yonaguni’s residents voted in favour of hosting a Japanese self-defence force base by 632 votes to 445. Around 160 personnel keep a watch on Chinese naval movements around the clock via radar sites positioned on the peak of nearby Mount Inbi. Local concern, though, centres on plans to expand the base and deploy surface-to-air missiles as a deterrent to any Chinese designs on Japan’s vulnerable outlying islands.
Yonaguni’s rising profile in Japan’s security calculations was underlined on Friday when Rahm Emanuel became the first US ambassador to Japan to visit the island along with Ishigaki, where the self-defence forces opened a base in 2023. “The fact that he is coming here all the way from Tokyo is very symbolic,” says Yonaguni’s mayor, Kenichi Itokazu.
There are also plans to extend the runway at Yonaguni’s tiny airport and build a port on its remote south coast capable of accommodating large vessels.
It is a far cry from Yonaguni’s traditional last line of defence, jokingly nicknamed “two guns” by residents in reference to the pair of police officers who double as a lollipop men for children as they make their way to school. “Even those who voted in favour of the base are scared about missiles being based here,” says Toshio Sakimoto, a local councillor and head of the island’s only awamori distillery.
“I worry whenever something is happening in Taiwan, such as an election or Chinese military drills,” he says.
Missile units have also been deployed on the nearby islands of Miyako and Ishigaki amid what one defence official has described as “the most severe and complex” security environment since the war. The deployments have added to the military burden shouldered by Okinawa – the prefecture that administers Yonaguni and other remote islands – home to the vast majority of US troops stationed in Japan.
The base expansion is an opportunity for Yonaguni to enhance its security and seize its share of a record ¥43tn ($276bn) in defence spending in the five years to 2028, says Itokazu. “China broke its promises on the future of Hong Kong after the 1997 handover, so why should we believe Xi Jinping when he talks about the peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the Chinese mainland?”
He dismisses criticism that the base expansion will turn Yonaguni into a target should China attempt to take Taiwan by force. “If we didn’t have troops here what is to stop the People’s Liberation Army from coming here and helping themselves?”
While Chinese vessels turn their water cannon on Filipino fishing boats near disputed territories in the South China Sea, Beijing and Tokyo continue to play cat-and-mouse in waters around the Senkakus – uninhabited islets in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but claimed by China, where they are known as the Diaoyu.
Some experts believe that Yonaguni, too, could fall to Chinese troops eager to establish a base to continue their assault on Taiwan – a prospect that horrifies residents who accuse local politicians of caving in to US demands that Japan play a bigger role in its own defence.
Mizuho Chida, who moved to Yonaguni from north-eastern Japan 20 years ago, believes the island is already testing its preparedness for an emergency in the Taiwan strait. “We had a disaster drill last year to prepare for an earthquake and tsunami, but it was obviously a dress-rehearsal for an evacuation in case war breaks out,” she says.
Far from acting as a deterrent, boosting the military presence on Yonaguni will only increase the risk of conflict on Japanese territory for the first time in almost 80 years, says Chiyoki Tasato, an independent town assembly member and vocal critic of the military build-up on the island of his birth.
“Yonaguni will face danger if something happens between Taiwan and China,” he says. “For one thing, we are geographically close, and Japan’s security treaty with the US mean we will inevitably become involved.”
Tasato believes the island’s future lies in closer commercial and people-to-people ties with Taiwan, which has no direct travel links with Yonaguni despite its proximity. There are, though, plans to trial sea crossings later this year after a visit by Taiwanese officials who made the two-hour voyage in 2023.
“We think of Taiwanese and Chinese people as family, both historically and culturally,” says Tasato, referring to a time when Yonaguni, as part of the Ryukyu kingdom, had close commercial ties with China and south-east Asia before it was formally annexed by Japan in the late 1800s.
Like many other remote parts of Japan, Yonaguni – located 2,000km (1,240 miles) south-west of Tokyo – is in the grip of depopulation. In 1947, it was home to 12,000 people; its civilian population has since shrunk to just 1,500, including a large number of older people.
The wider community now includes 160 SDF personnel and 90 family members who have reportedly tried to build bridges with their host community. Soldiers and their families use local shops and restaurants and send their children to the island’s primary and middle schools, while the garrison helps organise sports and cultural activities.
At some point, however, the SDF contingent and their dependents will match and then overtake the civilian population, according to Tetsu Inomata, a cafe owner who believes his home of 20 years has become a pawn in a wider geopolitical struggle between China and the US.
Using publicly available data, Inomata forecasts that the “base population”, now 22% of the total, will rise to just over 31% by 2025, and to almost 40% the following year. “I think the plan has been to have long-range missiles here that are capable of reaching the coast of China,” he says. “We’re being used by the Americans, and Japanese leaders like Fumio Kishida and Shinzō Abe have been willing participants. For them, everything is about defence.”
Critics of Yonaguni’s security role are convinced that their island’s transformation is happening at the behest of the White House.
Under their bilateral security treaty, the US must defend its ally if it is attacked, but Japan, too, has military responsibilities – laid out in a controversial law passed under Abe in 2015 – to exercise collective self-defence if an ally, namely the US, is attacked. “We have become the Japan that can’t say no to America,” Tasato says.
Takako Ueno, who regularly serves SDF personnel at her general store in Higawa village in the island’s remote south, says her stance on the base has hardened. “It feels like we are part of a grand plan to turn the island into a military installation, even if it means most or all of the civilians move away,” she says. “That would be disastrous. Yonaguni is such a special place … it’s like no other island.”
