Splendor of Okinawa Bonus: Nakijin Castle, World Heritage Site


Nakijin Castle Ruins



Among Okinawa’s several World Heritage sites is Nakijin Castle Ruins on the north side of Motobu Peninsula. In Ryukyuan it is called Nachijin Gusuku. A gusuku was originally a hilltop site for religious rites, but since the same hilltops often served as excellent forts, gusuku came to refer to castles as well.


(Nakijin Castle Front Wall)


Nakijin Castle was built over such an ancient site. The museum at Nakijin Castle contains artifacts from the origins of the site, including Chinese coins from prior to 110 BC, indicating trade in the area with China, well before the birth of Christ.


The castle was the seat of the Hokuzan (Northern Mountains) Kingdom, whose Lords ruled for 3 generations from the early 14th Century until its last lord, Hanaji, was defeated in 1416 by  Hashi (c.1370-1438), Lord of Chuzan (Central Mountains). The defeated Hanaji and his retainers committed suicide and are said to be interred in a cave on a bluff overlooking Unten Port, to the east of the Castle.


(Castle Main Gate)


During their 91 year reign, the Lords of Hokuzan commissioned 9 trade  missions to the Chinese Ming Dynasty. Lord Hanaji even went so far as to vie, successively but unsuccessfully in 1396 and 97,  with the much more powerful kingdoms of Chuzan and Nanzan (the Southern Mountains) to get recognition as the King of all the Ryukyus (with its attendant trade benefits) from Ming, 


Even after the defeat of Hanaji, Hashi realized that  Nakijin Castle could become a continuing threat to his ambition to unify Hokuzan and Nanzan under his rule from Chuzan. So, Hashi  set up his son as Warden (Kanshu) of Nakijin to consolidate his power. By 1429, Hashi had brought all of Okinawa under his control and accepted the family name Sho from Ming to signify his kingship  as Sho Hashi over his newly established Ryukyu Kingdom, gradually extending to all the Ryukyu Islands.


As the Sho Dynasty’s Ryukyu Kingdom flourished, Nakijin Castle’s influence declined. Its Hokuzan, formerly composed of the entire northern third of Okinawa, became Yanbaru (the Mountain Region) with its mountain people distant from the growing prosperity and sophistication of Shuri Castle (Ryukyuan: Shuri Gusku), the newly built capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom and center for trade with China and all of Asia, as far afield as India.



(Across the sea lies China)


Unfortunately, jealousy over that very wealth and influence of the Sho Dynasty led to the  invasion of the Ryukyu Kingdom by the Japanese fiefdom of Satsuma in1609. The Satsuma army landed at Unten Port and razed Nakijin Castle before overcoming Shuri and making the Ryukyu Kingdom its vassal.



Now, the Ryukyu Kingdom is gone and Okinawa Prefecture holds its place as part of Japan. But the ruins of Nakijin Castle, with its delicately winding limestone walls, fitted stone upon stone without a concrete binding, and first of spring cherry blossoms, remind us of its bygone glory. 


(The utaki is the tree, not the rock)


The Nakijin Castle site contains an excellent museum and local people still come, as in prior centuries, to pray at its utaki (simple prayer sites), hardly noticed by the crowds of tourists come from afar.


Note: Photos are my own.  The text used the following sources:


Okinawa Nakajin Board of Education pamphlet for visitors.

Wikipedia article on Nakijin Castle.

Kerr, George H., Okinawa: The History of an Island People, Charles . Tuttle Company Inc., Tokyo 1958

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