page_title: Okinawa Prefecture
section_title: Major islands
hierarchical_section_title: Okinawa Prefecture / Geography / Major islands
caption_attribution_description: The location of islands in Okinawa.
context_page_description: Okinawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the Ryukyu Islands. Okinawa Prefecture has a population of 1,457,162 and has a geographic area of 2,280 km².
  Naha is the capital and largest city of Okinawa Prefecture, with other major cities including Okinawa, Uruma, and Urasoe. Okinawa Prefecture encompasses two thirds of the Ryukyu Islands, including the Okinawa, Daitō and Sakishima groups, extending 1,000 kilometres southwest from the Satsunan Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture to Taiwan. Okinawa Prefecture's largest island, Okinawa Island, is the fifth-largest, smallest, and southernmost of the Japan's main islands and home to a majority of the population. Okinawa Prefecture's indigenous people is the Ryukyuan people, comprising the Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni subgroups, and another Ryukyuan subgroup, the Amami people, live in the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture.
  Okinawa Prefecture was ruled by the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1429 and unofficially annexed by Japan after the Invasion of Ryukyu in 1609. Okinawa Prefecture was officially founded in 1879 by the Empire of Japan after seven years as the Ryukyu Domain, the last domain of the Han system.
context_section_description: The islands comprising the prefecture are the southern two thirds of the archipelago of the Ryūkyū Islands (琉球諸島, Ryūkyū-shotō). Okinawa's inhabited islands are typically divided into three geographical archipelagos. From northeast to southwest:
  Okinawa Islands (沖縄諸島, Okinawa Shotō)
  Ie-jima
  Kume-jima
  Okinawa Island
  Kerama Islands
  Miyako Islands
  Miyako-jima
  Yaeyama Islands
  Iriomote-jima
  Ishigaki Island
  Yonaguni
  Senkaku Islands
  Daitō Islands
  Minamidaitōjima
  Kitadaitōjima
  Okidaitōjima
caption: The islands of Okinawa Prefecture
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