The answer is simple: the bombs missed.
At the Battle of Okinawa, or the “Typhoon of Steel” as it is also known, Shuri was waylaid by air raids and ship artillery fire. It is said that in the resulting hellscape “ruins from the bombardment remain in any given postcard-sized patch of land.” This stone road is the only area that miraculously avoided the bombings, keeping its original construction intact. The old, red-tiled samurai family homes and Utaki places of worship have also endured, leaving this street fragrant with Ryukyuan history.
For instance, the Nakagusuku Mura-ya building, where the king and his retinue would stop by Shikina-en Gardens for a break and a cup of tea on their way to his second home. It’s said that at the end of the 17th century, a Ryukyuan government official, who learned the art of papermaking in Satsuma, used the nearby Kanagusuku-Ufuhija spring waters to make paper for the first time in Okinawa.
Let’s continue past the Uchikanagusuku-Utaki placard. In Okinawa, there is a celebration called “Oni-muchi”. It is a day where one exorcises evil by eating mochi rice cakes, and that tradition is said to have originated here in this utaki. Folklore has it that long ago, a pair of siblings lived here, and when the older brother started cannibalizing people, his younger sister fed him mochi filled with iron and pushed him down a cliff in order to stop him.
Inside the utaki stands a towering bishop wood tree said to be between 200 and 300 years old. These trees are native to Southeast Asia and Polynesia, and are also commonly seen in Okinawa, but it is exceedingly rare to find one old enough to have survived the War inside Shuri’s residential district. Legend has it that God enters the great tree once a year to grant people’s wishes.
