Okinogū, in Onoyama Park

photo by nnh · Public domain

photo by nnh · Public domain

The shrine lists eight stops to make in order, and the fifth is a hill.

It stands inside the stadium park, and from the torii onwards the noise of the city falls away. The shrine prints its own visiting route and numbers it: you start from the main hall, pass the Sumiyoshi and Yasaka shrines, and at the fifth stop you climb the Tentōzan. At the end is the Gongendō. The park around it was an island in the lagoon, and Hokusai drew it among his eight views of the Ryūkyū.

It is one of the eight historic shrines of the Ryūkyū. The chronicles of the kingdom compiled in 1713 record that something luminous appeared in the port of Naha, and that the king had a sacred piece of wood recovered, later worshipped as the deity of safety at sea. Around 1710 the monk Shinkai founded a temple here, and in 1901 the hill became Okinawa's first public park; since 1959 it has also been the prefecture's first sports park, with the baseball stadium and the martial arts hall.

ℹ️ You can walk freely through the shrine and the park. Three minutes on foot from the first torii to Ōnoyama-kōen Station on the monorail; by car, ten minutes from the airport. The park has almost five hundred parking spaces across its three car parks.

🚉 Onoyama Park · in front of the station

Sources: okinogu.or.jp · ounoyama.jp

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