Yonaguni
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A town and island of Yaeyama district, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan; the westmost inhabited island of Japan.
"Yonaguni, with three tiny villages and a small airport, is Japan’s westernmost point, a place from which Taiwan is visible on a clear day. It is also the closest spot of inhabited land to the Senkakus, a small group of uninhabited islets controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan, which call them the Diaoyu Islands. This put Yonaguni and its 1,600 mostly aging residents uncomfortably close to a bruising diplomatic showdown with Beijing last September over a Chinese trawler detained near the Senkakus, which resulted in Tokyo’s backing down. The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has since vowed to beef up defenses for Japan’s “outlying islands,” and it appears close to a decision on the small Yonaguni garrison, a plan that has been under discussion for years."
- 2 A Ryukyuan language spoken on the island of Yonaguni.
Example
More examples"Yonaguni, with three tiny villages and a small airport, is Japan’s westernmost point, a place from which Taiwan is visible on a clear day. It is also the closest spot of inhabited land to the Senkakus, a small group of uninhabited islets controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan, which call them the Diaoyu Islands. This put Yonaguni and its 1,600 mostly aging residents uncomfortably close to a bruising diplomatic showdown with Beijing last September over a Chinese trawler detained near the Senkakus, which resulted in Tokyo’s backing down. The government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has since vowed to beef up defenses for Japan’s “outlying islands,” and it appears close to a decision on the small Yonaguni garrison, a plan that has been under discussion for years."
Etymology
From Japanese 与那国島(よなぐにじま) (yonagunijima).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.