un-Ryukyuan) word aroused exoticism. Modernization offered opportunities for mainland Japanese tourists to visit Okinawa Island. Shimabukuro Gen'ichirō (1885–1942), an educator from Northern Okinawa, took a key role as a tour guide for mainland Japanese intelligentsia while simultaneously enlightening fellow Okinawans. His narrative reflected the duality of Ryūkyū. On the one hand, Shimabukuro went along with the tourist gaze, exploiting the exotic notion of Ryūkyū. On the other hand, Shimabukuro urged mainland tourists not to use Ryūkyū because people felt insulted to be referred to by the exonym of Chinese origin. He recommended the autonym Okinawa instead.Ryūkyū was given a new role after the U.S. returned Okinawa Prefecture to Japan in 1972. The reversion triggered an economic boom, but the end of Expo '75 was followed by a recession on Okinawa Island. To reactivate tourism, Dentsu, the largest public relations agency in Japan, proposed, among others, to exploit the unique history of Okinawa as a new tourism resource. Dentsu stressed a need to relativize the tragic Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Because soldiers from across mainland Japan perished on Okinawa Island, bereaved family members had accounted for a substantial portion of Japanese tourists. To overcome the negative image about Okinawa, Dentsu proposed to promote a positive image of the long history of Ryūkyū. Dentsu also urged to raise awareness about the positive view of Okinawan history and culture among people of Okinawa Prefecture because it worried about possible discord between the tourism sector and the rest of the population. Okinawa Prefecture has followed the plan orchestrated by the PR agency. The historian Takara Kurayoshi (b. 1947) played an important role in promoting a romanticized view of the Ryukyu Kingdom. He supervised a historical drama television series titled Ryūkyū no Kaze (1993), which was broadcast nationwide by NHK. With decades of promotion, Okinawan people have internalized the mainland Japanese gaze to some degree. The Okinawan punk rock band Mongol800 released a song titled Ryūkyū aika (琉球愛歌) in 2001, where Ryūkyū was used as an apparatus of dissimilation. It was associated with a new stereotypical view of Okinawa: living in peace and in good harmony with nature. UrumaUruma is a poetic name for Okinawa Island. A city in central Okinawa took this name when it was formed by merging several municipalities in 2005. Some try to interpret the word as an Okinawan compound (uru (fine sand or coral) and -ma (a common suffix