Yachimun no Sato

photo by N · Public domain

photo by B.Wisp · CC BY-SA 4.0

Its wood-fired kiln, built in 1980, has nine chambers in a row along the slope.

Yachimun, in the Okinawan dialect, simply means ‘something baked in the fire’: the local pottery. Nineteen workshops gathered in this part of Yomitan after the expansion of Naha had made it hard to keep firing in the city, and in 1980 four masters (Ōmine Jissei, Kinjō Akimitsu, Tamamoto Terumasa and Yamada Shinman) together built the shared kiln that gives the place its name: nine chambers lined up along the slope, still lit at intervals today. When it is firing, you can see the fire through the little doors.

The village brings together some of the more than seventy pottery workshops scattered across the municipality of Yomitan. Many workshops also serve as galleries, and you can touch the pieces and buy them directly from the people who made them.

ℹ️ The area is freely accessible and can be walked around at any time. The cooperative shop of the shared kiln (読谷山焼共同売店) is open 9:30–18:00 (17:30 in winter), closed on Tuesdays; the individual workshops keep their own hours, mostly during the day.

🚉 Oyashi Iriguchi · 13 min walk

Sources: orionbeer.co.jp · nippon.com

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