Take a moment to open up the guide map. If you’d like, open the “destinations” section which corresponds to your favorite artifact. After visiting the museum and learning about these objects you will be able to see these places in a new light and gain a new perspective you wouldn’t have had without that experience. Now, get ready to set off on another journey!
Museums are places that give you the story behind an object.
This guide is centered around the Okinawan Prefectural Museum & Art Museum’s standing collection and was created hand in hand with the curators at the museum. Each curator is passionate about their specific fields and continues to research different topics on a daily basis.
This is what makes the Okinawan Prefectural Museum & Art Museum so unique.
The origins of the museum itself are very unique. Following the war, the American army created a museum to introduce the history and culture of Okinawa, which was entitled, the Okinawa Exhibition Hall. In the same vein, the locals who returned to Shuri following the war collected the remains of the city and preserved them in the Shuri Municipal Folk Museum. These two museums were taken over by the Okinawan Municipal Government and combined to create the Okinawa Municipal History Museum. This was further combined with the Ryukyuan Municipal History Museum and the Okinawan Prefectural Museum to become the modern-day Okinawan Prefectural Museum & Art Museum. The museum has moved from place to place migrating from Ishikawa to Shuri, and now to Omuro-machi. There is no other modern museum in Japan which has moved and changed its name quite so frequently.
The objects which can now be found on display have also gone on quite a journey before arriving here. There are objects which were presented by Chinese envoys during the days of the Ryukyu Kingdom, objects which traveled to America following the war, and objects which were carried by migrants who moved to Hawaii and Central/South America as well. Many artifacts have been restored thanks to careful research and documentation and now sit in the museum having traveled around Japan and the world before finding their way back to Okinawa.
The fact that this museum holds artifacts that have been gathered by the people of the prefecture is also unique. Why would people go out of their way to protect artifacts in a time when they didn’t even know what tomorrow would bring? They were the only ones left. They were the ones who survived. That is why they gathered these things, as a way to preserve the culture of the Ryukyu Kingdom and its lavish history, to convey their pride, and to give the next generation courage as they moved forward. One of the missions of the Museum is to carry on their hopes. One curator commented that they wanted to take the testimony of the people who lived during these times and resurrect them here while they were still alive.
More than anything, this museum has become a museum that covers all fields from geology to anthropology, biology to archaeology, industrial arts to folk art, natural sciences to social sciences. This museum has become a collection of Okinawan centric objects and carries the information they can provide. There are documents here which have been gathered over the 75 years, since the war, by the people of Okinawa and by the curators at the museum. These documents and objects are representative of the whole Okinawa prefecture which spans over 1000 km wide and 400 km long and is made up of over 160 islands, inhabited and uninhabited.
This is where the appeal of the Okinawan Prefectural Museum & Art Museum truly lies.
The purpose of this museum is not that of a normal museum. As we introduced earlier in the guide, the excavations at the Sakitari Cave ruins continue to provide insights into the prehistoric era in Okinawa. There have also been efforts to create remastered versions of the folk song cassette tapes of the 1970s.
This ongoing research aims to tackle the magnificent history of Okinawa and preserve the memories of its people. That is another key role that the Okinawan Prefectural Museum & Art Museum plays.
“Once I start talking about it, I’ll go on for hours, no days!” “There are just too many treasures” “The history of each island in Okinawa is so different, so there is no way to lump it all together.”
These are the kinds of comments curators gave as we were creating this guide.
Listening to their stories, these objects which had been hidden behind the glass suddenly brilliantly come to life. It may be hard to catch the curators, who are usually busy with research and lectures, but when you visit the museum, you may have a chance to sit in on one of these lectures. You wouldn’t want to miss it, as there is even more to learn than what we have included in this guide.
ON THE TRIP Editorial Staff
Writer：Akiko Terai
Translator: Jean-Paul Souki and Autumn Smith
Voiceover：Kate Beck
※This guide is based on different materials and documents but is also based partially on our interpretation here at ON THE TRIP. The information may vary among experts, so we hope you will discover your own version on your travels.