NAHA -- Details about the main hall of Shuri Castle in Naha during the Ryukyu Kingdom period (1429-1879) have been confirmed for the first time thanks to a photo taken in 1877 -- during the final days of the kingdom and before World War II.
Shuri Castle, the royal palace and political and administrative center of the Ryukyu Kingdom, was completely destroyed by fire during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. The main hall was reconstructed in 1992, and again destroyed by a massive fire on Oct. 31, 2019.
The project to reconstruct the Seiden main hall building is underway -- with new questions raised over the direction of the Great Dragon Pillars faced in front of the hall.
Although the dragon pillars sitting beside the grand staircase of the building faced each other before the 2019 fire, the 1877 photo shows that they faced forward.
This finding could affect the government's plan, in which it was intended to restore Shuri Castle with the pillars facing each other.
Prof. Atsushi Shiitada of Kanagawa University, who specializes in Ryukyu history, said at an academic conference last year that the photo was taken by a crew member of a French naval cruiser that stopped at Naha in 1877, and a descendant of its commandant owned the negative plate of the photo.
The main hall was the building where the king conducted government affairs and was lost in the Battle of Okinawa. The Great Dragon Pillars are a pair of 3.1-meter-high stone pillars in the shape of dragons, which symbolized the king.
It had been well recognized that there are separate photos taken before early 20th century that also showed the dragon pillars facing forward. In the previous restoration that was completed in 1992, however, the pillars were rebuilt with the dragons facing each other -- on the grounds that they were depicted as such in several drawings from the Ryukyu Kingdom era.
It has been believed that the reason why the dragons face forward in the old photos was because the Japanese military stationed at Shuri Castle changed their directions after the Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed by Japan as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879.
Given that the newly confirmed photo was taken two years before the annexation of Ryukyu, it is clear that these pillars were facing forward during the kingdom period.
"Now that we have lost support for the argument that the pillars were changed to face forward after the establishment of Okinawa Prefecture," Shiitada said. "It is presumed they were depicted facing each other in the drawings in order to show the shape of the dragons more clearly."
The government had planned to complete the reconstruction of the main hall by 2026, with the dragon pillars facing each other. But now the government's technological examination committee is reconsidering the initial plan following the discovery of the 1877 photo.
The committee is studying experts' opinions and sorting out the value of the drawings used as the basis for the restoration. It will decide on a policy by the end of next March.
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