Хитрий Хохол

My hetalia OC!!

Oto Sho — Ryukyu Kingdom

Biography:

A small island nation forever seeking a balance between her two giant neighbors, Japan and China. For a long time, she was a vassal of China, and after 1609, she became a servant to Japan as well. When the Land of the Rising Sun was in isolation, Oto Sho acted as a mediator between Japan, China, and Southeast Asia.

After the Meiji Restoration, she lost even her formal independence and began to undergo Japanization, eventually becoming Okinawa Prefecture. In the 21st century, she has largely lost her identity: she forgot her native languages and history, and removed her hajichi (traditional female hand tattoos of the Ryukyu people) because Japan deemed them "barbaric."

Fun Facts:

Despite her precarious position, she is a cheerful, optimistic, and outgoing girl. She is an excellent trader who can easily charm anyone and talk her way into a discount. On top of that, she is a terrible gossip!

She is a highly creative soul: she adores dancing and playing musical instruments, though she completely fails to understand drawing...

Her motto in life is: “If you want to survive, you've got to learn how to spin!”

Relationships:

Japan: She used to have feelings for him because their religion and languages are similar. Due to this, she believed for a long time that they were related (despite having different phenotypes), but at the same time, she has always been afraid of him.

China: She genuinely admires him, adores him, and saw him as her protector until 1609. When he failed to help her break free from the Satsuma Clan's control (as he was tied up in conflicts with Manchuria at the time), she realized she had never truly been safe.

Korea: She feels neutral towards him—they rarely interacted.

I didn’t think I would draw my original character (the Ryukyu Kingdom) in Ryusou (in the Okinawan dialect, Uchinaaguchi), because it has a very complex and rich pattern...

I only drew a simplified version of that pattern...

Also, looking at the hanagasa (hat), it feels too small… definitely smaller than it should be(⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

I drew her with Hello Kitty, because in Japan there are regional Hello Kitty versions. I recently found one like that on a Japanese second-hand market—very cute, from 2005, but way too expensive…

HETALIA

Japan and Ryukyu Kingdom (OC)

(NO, IT'S NOT A YUMESHIP)

The Ryukyu Kingdom really existed and flourished in the Japanese archipelago

I'm trying to learn how to draw like the old Himarui's style...

A meme about the Organization of Turkic States. The full members of this organization are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Hungary and Turkmenistan are observers.

Ukraine also wants to join as an observer, because there is a Turkic people living in Ukraine — the Crimean Tatars.

Also, for a while last autumn, I kept getting tons of TikTok videos about how Japan supposedly wants to join this “sect” lol. And there were all these memes, like countryball Japan saying: “I’m Turkic!!” with a whole series of drawings explaining why 😭

I even found some super cringe website while trying to look into this topic...

⬇️

My Hetalia OC!!

I will try to explain this.

In Japan, there are two indigenous peoples: the Ainu and the Ryukyuans.

Ryukyuans and Japanese share common roots. They communicated with each other frequently, and their languages developed from Proto-Japonic.

The Ryukyu Kingdom existed from 1429 to 1879.

In reality, Ryukyu was not fully independent for most of its history. It was a tributary state of China, and after the Satsuma invasion in 1609, it also became a vassal of Japan. This created a strange situation: formally an independent kingdom, but in practice under control.

After the Meiji Restoration, Emperor Meiji began a strict centralization policy. Japan was rapidly modernizing and trying to transform itself into a full-fledged European-style nation-state. Semi-dependent territories like Ryukyu were a potential problem.

The islands had a strategic position between Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. In the 19th century, European powers were actively expanding their influence in the region. Theoretically, Ryukyu could have become a weak point — either through China or through European intervention. For Japan, this was a risk.

So in 1872, Ryukyu was turned into a domain within Japan, and in 1879 it was officially abolished and Okinawa Prefecture was created. The last king, Shō Tai, was effectively removed from power and relocated to Tokyo.

After that, a policy of Japanization began. Japanese education was introduced, the use of local languages was restricted, and the population was gradually integrated into the Japanese system. So yes, cultural autonomy began to disappear.

As for the Ainu, they are a people who lived in Hokkaido, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. Their language is absolutely unique. It developed in isolation and has no known linguistic relatives.

They did not have a written language, because writing systems usually develop together with state structures, and the Ainu lived in community-based societies. They had their own religion and culture.

In 1869, Ezo was renamed Hokkaido, and Japanese settlers began moving there and colonizing the island. There were very harsh restrictions: bans on the traditional way of life (hunting and fishing in traditional forms), land confiscation, prohibition of the Ainu language in education, compulsory schooling in Japanese, and pressure to change identity.

It reached the point where many Ainu were forced to change their names. Many abandoned their culture. Some who initially resisted eventually gave up, adopted Japanese names, and married Japanese partners because society would accept them more easily that way.

Only in 2019 did Japan officially recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people of Japan.

By the way, there are almost no Ainu left in Russia. In 1945, Ainu with Japanese names in their documents were recognized as subjects of the Japanese Empire and were deported to Japan.

This is my original Hetalia character!! This is a personification of the Ainu people who live in Hokkaido, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. This people is considered the indigenous people of Japan...

Meme about the Ukrainian Revolution 1917-1921