 Some like Tomiyama Ichiro suggest that for the Ryukyuans, being a member of the modern Japanese nation-state is "nothing other than the start of being on the receiving end of colonial domination".In 1957, Kiyoshi Inoue argued that the "Ryukyu Shobun" was an annexation of an independent country over the opposition of its people, thus constituting an act of aggression and not a "natural ethnic unification".Gregory Smits noted that "many other works in Japanese come close to characterizing Ryukyu/Okinawa as Japan's first colony, but never explicitly do so".