- This topic is not unique to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and its in-story notability may be too oblique for it to have its own complete article on Turtlepedia. For more information on this topic, see its corresponding article on Wikipedia:
â Okinawa
- This page may contain a small amount of trivia describing what significance it does have to TMNT. If this topic gains enough in-story significance, it may be converted into a normal article.
Okinawa (properly, Okinawa-hontÅ, or Okinawa main island), is the largest of the islands in the Okinawa archipelago and RyÅ«kyÅ« Islands. In 1314, Okinawa was made up of three separate kingdoms - Hokuzan, Nanzan, and ChÅ«zan, until its reunification in 1429 as the RyÅ«kyÅ« Kingdom. The Tokugawa shogunate invaded the RyÅ«kyÅ« Kingdom in 1609, and it remained a tributary of both Japan and China until the RyÅ«kyÅ« Islands' complete annexation by Japan's Meji government in 1879, establishing it as the Okinawa Prefecture.
Trivia and TMNT involvement[]
- Upon annexation, much of the Ryūkyū/Okinawa customs and culture were absorbed into Japanese, including many martial arts such as karate, and many weapons known in the TMNT franchise such as the sai and nunchaku were previously Okinawan farming implements.
- Eric Sacks, the secondary antagonist of the 2014 film, was born on a US military base in Okinawa as his father was deployed to Vietnam. When his father didn't return (either captured indefinitely or killed in action), Sacks was adopted by Oroku Saki. This is much in line with Oroku being an Okinawan name; a real life Oroku clan was a family of Okinawan bureaucrats, and Oroku is a current district in Okinawa. Saki's actor from the second film in this continuity, Brian Tee, is also from Okinawa.