Chinen Castle Ruins

Two castles side by side: rough stones in one, squared blocks in the other.

The two enclosures stand side by side and you can see the difference by eye. To the east is the old castle, with walls of natural, unworked stones laid as they came; to the west the new one, with two arched gates and squared blocks. Inside is the Tomori-no-utaki, where the king and the high priestess stopped during the Agari-umāi pilgrimage, and this is the eighth stop on that route. Until the Meiji era the district office stood here, then the elementary school: traces of the kitchens remain.

Gusuku of the lord of Chinen, sung in the anthology Omoro Sōshi. The eastern enclosure is dated to the end of the twelfth century, the western one to the second half of the fifteenth; the excavations begun in 2002 have yielded pottery, imported porcelain and metal objects concentrated between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was restored in the eighteenth century under King Shō Kei. It has been a National Historic Site since 15 May 1972.

ℹ️ Outdoors, always open and free. ⚠️ No official source lists a car park, and people who have been there advise setting the satnav to the Chinen-gusuku car park and not to the site.

🚉 久美山 · 7 min walk

Sources: online.bunka.go.jp · kankou-nanjo.okinawa · okinawa.stripes.com

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