OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Sonohyan Utaki Stone Gate
Shaped as a gate but never walked through - a structure built purely so the king could pray at it before leaving the castle.
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OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArchitecture
OkinawaArt & CraftsNaha
Tsuboya Pottery Street
The quarter where the kingdom gathered all its kilns; it escaped the war, and workshops still line the paved street.
OkinawaMuseumsNaha
Tsuboya Pottery Museum
A kiln found during construction was left in place and built around, shown underground beneath the galleries.
OkinawaArchitectureNaha
Kinjocho Stone Path
Part of a royal highway; 238 metres survived the war, walled in stone between great trees.
OkinawaArchitectureKitanakagusuku
Nakamura Family Residence
One of the few gentry houses to survive the war intact, its walls and windbreak trees complete against the typhoons.
OkinawaArchitectureNakagusuku
Nakagusuku Castle Ruins
Three different masonry techniques stand in one castle; Perry's expedition surveyed it and recorded their astonishment at the fit.
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.
OkinawaArchitectureNanjo
Sefa Utaki
A sacred site with no building: two fallen rocks lean into a triangular passage, and the sacred island appears at its end.
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.
OkinawaMuseumsIshigaki
Yaeyama Museum
Yaeyama's everyday objects, including a sabani boat - built not with nails but sewn together.
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.
Okinawa
Koza and the American Era
A shopping district built under US administration; its English signage and American forms remain as a visible layer.
OkinawaArt & CraftsItoman
Sabani Boats
Planks sewn together with cord and bamboo pegs; because it can be re-sewn when it splits, it went far out to sea.
Nakijin
Villages of Nakijin
A screen wall stands just inside each gate to block sight and wind - a Chinese device that took its own form here.