OkinawaArchitectureNakagusuku
Nakagusuku Castle Ruins
Three different masonry techniques stand in one castle; Perry's expedition surveyed it and recorded their astonishment at the fit.
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OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitectureUruma
Katsuren Castle Ruins
Terraced up a headland; excavation turned up Roman and Ottoman coins, reopening the question of how far its trade reached.
OkinawaArchitectureYomitan
Zakimi Castle Ruins
It holds Okinawa's oldest stone arch, and its walls curve continuously - almost no straight line anywhere.
OkinawaArchitectureNakijin
Nakijin Castle Ruins
A kilometre and a half of wall following the limestone terrain rather than correcting it, so the whole line undulates.
Yomitan
Yomitanzan Ware and the Pottery Village
Potters left Naha for this village over smoke restrictions; a Living National Treasure built the first kiln, and nineteen studios are now gathered here, with shared climbing kilns and more.
Yomitan
Yomitanzan Hanaui
Geometric flowers raised by floating threads; the craft died out and was reconstructed in 1964 from old cloth and older memories.
OkinawaArt & CraftsŌgimi
Kijoka Banana Fibre Cloth
The village grows the plants, strips the fibre, splits it, spins and weaves - two hundred stems for a single bolt of cloth.
OkinawaArt & CraftsItoman
Ryukyu Glass
It began with melting down bottles the US military threw away; the bubbles the impurities caused were kept as the point.
OkinawaMuseumsItoman
Himeyuri Peace Museum
Founded by the surviving students themselves, who gathered the testimony and wrote the wall texts in their own words.
OkinawaArt & CraftsItoman
Cornerstone of Peace
Over 240,000 names cut into folding stone walls - carved without dividing by nationality, uniform, or side.
OkinawaArchitectureNago
Nago City Hall
Built to work by wind rather than air-conditioning, with 56 shisa on its walls - each named by a citizen.
OkinawaArchitectureTaketomi
Taketomi Island Village
Red-tiled houses inside coral walls on sand lanes, kept by a charter the islanders wrote: do not sell, spoil, disturb or destroy - use it.
OkinawaArchitectureTonaki
Tonaki Island Village
House plots are dug a metre below the lane to duck the typhoons - the whole village sunk into the ground.
Motobu
Bise Fukugi Windbreak
Three centuries of planting windbreak trees around every house has left twenty thousand of them, roofing the lanes in green.
Miyakojima
Miyako Jofu Ramie Cloth
Ramie split by fingernail into thread finer than hair, woven and then beaten with mallets to a sheen; over a year for one bolt.
Kumejima
Kumejima Tsumugi
One person carries the whole process from silkworm to finished cloth, dyeing with island plants and fixing in mud.
OkinawaArt & CraftsIshigaki
Yaeyama Minsa
Five dots and four, read as a pun meaning 'for ever and ever' - the pattern a woman wove into a sash for the man she chose.
OkinawaMuseumsIshigaki
Yaeyama Museum
Yaeyama's everyday objects, including a sabani boat - built not with nails but sewn together.
OkinawaArt & Crafts
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Turtleback Tombs
Said to be shaped as a womb - the idea of returning to where one came from, built directly as architecture.
Naha
Red Tile Roofs
Plaster packed between the tiles to stop the typhoons lifting them - and that necessity produced the island's red-and-white roofs.
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Markets of Naha
Markets and alleys descended from the postwar black market - unplanned, endlessly extended, and still trading.
OkinawaArchitectureNanjo
Utaki Sacred Groves
No buildings: a grove or a rock is the sacred place, marked by nothing but a stone incense holder - hundreds of them across the islands.
OkinawaArt & CraftsNaha
Arayachi and Jouyachi
Storage jars are left unglazed and tableware glazed - the use deciding the firing, with nothing in between.
Hakodate Hachimangu · Shrine
Koryuji · Temple