[VILLAGE Report vol.9] 16 Nationally Designated Items, 4th in Japan | Okinawa Prefecture

We leave Kyushu and cross the sea.

16 out of 244

There are 244 traditional craft items designated by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry nationwide (as of October 2025).

Of these, Okinawa Prefecture has 16 items, ranking 4th nationwide by number of items (as of October 2025).

Think back to the prefectures we have looked at so far in this series. Oita has 1 item, Miyazaki has 2, and Kagoshima has 3. Okinawa has 16.

Why does one of the smallest prefectures, located farthest from the mainland, hold so many techniques?

The fact that it was a kingdom

One answer is that this place was once an independent kingdom in its own right.

Ryukyu Bingata developed a uniquely Ryukyuan dyeing and weaving culture under the protection of the Ryukyu kings. It is the only dyed textile in Okinawa of its kind. Its national designation under the Act on the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries was in fiscal 1984.

Tsuboya ware is the same. In 1682, the Ryukyu Kingdom gathered kilns from across Okinawa in Tsuboya, Naha City, in an effort to establish a center for the ceramics industry. This policy gave rise to one of the representative forms of Yachimun. National designation came in fiscal 1976.

From Ogimi Village, bashofu has also been passed down to the present as one of Okinawa’s representative dyed and woven textiles.

They did not protect it; they gathered it

What I want to focus on is how Tsuboya ware began.

It did not remain there by chance. Kilns that had been scattered across different areas were gathered into one place.

When gathered, techniques intersect. How to read the clay, how to blend glazes, how to build kilns. What a single potter might take a lifetime to reach can be shortened by a group.

Tradition is not something that remains if left alone. It remains because people who wanted it to remain created systems for that purpose.

The strength of a small place

Okinawa holds 16 items not because it is large, but because it was distinctive in its own right in total.

The fact that trends from the mainland did not come in unchanged ultimately preserved forms found nowhere else.

Smallness is often spoken of as weakness. But looking at these islands, I can only think that it survived precisely because it was small That is the only way it seems to me.

From the next issue, we move to the Chugoku region. First, we head to Hiroshima.

References: Okinawa Prefectural Government, “Okinawa Traditional Crafts” and “Overview of Craft Production Areas”; Okinawa Official Tourism Site “Okinawa Story”; Association for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries

—The Value Village Editorial Team

Photo: Bruno Cordioli / CC BY 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons)