Shuri castle 首里城
(Sui gusuku)

A project examining the cultural character and significance of Shuri castle - the former royal palace of the Lūchū Kingdom, restored in 1992 after its destruction in WWII, and severely damaged in a 2019 fire but now under reconstruction - as a historical and cultural site, and as a castle museum and public history site.

For several hundred years, from at least the early 16th century until the 1870s, the royal palace at Sui (Japanese: Shuri) was not only the political and administrative center of the Okinawan kingdom of Lūchū (Japanese: Ryūkyū), and primary residence of the king - it was also a major cultural and spiritual center of the kingdom.

Destroyed in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the central structures of the palace complex were finally restored and opened to the public as “Shurijo Castle Park” in 1992. The site quickly became the most-visited tourist site in the prefecture, but also an important center for the revival of court culture - including musical, dance, theatrical, and ritual traditions - not only as reenacted displays of something lost, something belonging to the past, but as meaningful revivals and re-continuations of traditions vital to Okinawan culture, identity, and pride.

The fact of the restoration of the site, the fact of its existence up on the hill overlooking the historical royal capital, became for many Okinawans a powerful symbol of the greatness of their history and culture - proof that they had had an independent kingdom with vibrant and refined culture of its own.

Additional areas of the palace complex continued to be restored and opened to the public regularly over the course of the 1990s-2010s, with one of the final areas in the original restoration plan, the Ouchibaru, being completed and opened in Jan 2019.

In the early morning hours of Oct 31, 2019, however, an accidental fire broke out inside the Main Hall (Japanese: Seiden; Okinawan: Umundasui udun), destroying seven of the most central buildings in the complex; more than 400 of the 1500 artifacts onsite (most historical originals; some one-of-a-kind, expensive, handmade replicas) were also lost.

I had the privilege and pleasure of visiting the gusuku site (today, Shurijo Castle Park) many times over the years, seeing many temporary exhibits, newly-restored areas, music and dance performances, and court ritual reenactments in 2008 and 2013-2020.

Since the fire, I have dived into both scholarship about the history of the palace, and into reading newspapers, magazines, exhibit catalogs, and other publications from across the 1980s to 2010s, as well as speaking with friends and colleagues, watching videos, and listening to news reports and podcasts to attempt to get a deeper sense of what the restoration of the palace meant to people both in the 1980s-90s and today, before and after the fire. I have tried to do what I can to contribute monetarily to the restoration (again) of the site and to otherwise engage with and support the community.

I am keenly interested in the character of Shurijo Castle Park as a historical site and museum. While many may see the 1992 restoration as somehow false, erzatz, being a “mere reproduction” of an authentic palace which is no more, and as (re)constructed for cynical political and economic (tourism) purposes, for many others the term “restoration” 復元 means the bringing back into existence of a new iteration of the authentic, historical, actual palace. What does the palace site mean for people in Okinawa, and in Okinawan diaspora communities, emotionally or spiritually, that goes beyond its role as a tourist site, as a museum, as a site of education or entertainment? What role has the restored palace played since 1992 as a site for the revival, re-invigoration, and (re-)continuation of traditional Okinawan arts and culture? What might be said meaningfully about Shurijo Castle Park that helps illuminate the ways in which other Public History sites around the world might function similarly, or about how these aspects set Shurijo Castle Park aside as a particularly distinctive case?

As I continue to explore these questions, I have been grateful for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts and discoveries on the Japan on the Record podcast hosted by Dr. Tristan Grunow; in an article for the international art magazine Apollo, as well in a number of posts on my own blog; and in a roundtable discussing the history of the site as part of the event Heritage from the margins? Shuri Castle and the Politics of Memory held online in March 2021 by Kyushu University. I discuss some of my thoughts and findings in a chapter entitled “Shurijo Castle Park as a site for the revival, continuation, and development of traditional arts” in the volume Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century East Asia, edited by Alison J. Miller and Eunyoung Park and published in Feb 2024.

I continue to explore the subject further, and look forward to further future opportunities to discuss, share, and otherwise engage in the discourses surrounding this powerful and important site.