琉球民族
Some pre-war Okinawans also resisted the classification of Okinawa as a Japanese colony, as they did not want to consider their experience as colonial. This position originates in the prewar period when the Meiji suppression of Ryukyuan identity, culture and language resulted in self-criticism and inferiority complexes with respect to perceptions that Ryukyuan people were backward, primitive, ethnically and racially inferior, and insufficiently Japanese. They did not want to be lumped together with the Japanese colonies, as evidenced by protests against being included with six other "less developed" colonial people in the "Hall of the Peoples" in the 1903 Osaka Expo.