Unlike the other stone gates we have seen up until this point, this gate is made of wood. Painted red all over, we could say that Koufukumon is one giant lacquered piece of art.

Inside of Koufukumon you should be able to see the ticket counter, but originally during the Ryukyu Kingdom Era this was “Taiyo-za.” Here was the office where you could take care of matters regarding family registry such as registering births and deaths. At one point, Taiyo-za was even a courthouse., So, what kind of issues arose during this time period? For example, there were disputes surrounding property, in which someone would sell a grave without permission and get sued by their relatives. Or in other cases people would pretend to be descendants of samurai to gain those privileges. There were many issues during the Ryukyu Era surrounding family registry.

The place that is currently being used for the public bathrooms used to be the Jisha-za which served as a place for managing the temples and shrines. Where the information booth currently is used to be “Keizu-za” where the family trees for the descendants of samurai were managed. Koufukumon included, this used to be a space where many government officials would work.

So why were Taiyo-za and Jisha-za not restored?

In actuality, the team that was in charge of restoring Shuri Castle had a rule surrounding the project:

We will only restore parts that we clearly understand the appearance of.

Using the available documents that depict the castle, they would completely restore that which they had a clear picture of the interior and exterior. If they knew what the outside looked like but not the inside, they would only restore the outside. If they had no idea what the outside or inside looked like, then it would not be rebuilt.

In regards to Koufukumon, there were photos of the outside that had been preserved. However, there was no documentation in regards to what the inside looked like.

There are still efforts to this day to uncover more documents of these buildings.