Arakaki Family Residence South Pond

A Small Pond Near the House Entrance

Arakaki Family Residence South Pond (新垣家住宅南池, Arakaki-ke Jūtaku Minami-ike) is a stone pond built around 1896 at a homestead in Shuri Sueyoshi, Naha City, Okinawa, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 31 July 2007. At 3.8 square metres it is the smallest of the six registered items.

It lies near the south-eastern entrance of the main house. Stone paving runs around the house, and the Arakaki Family Residence South Pond is built as part of it.

Placed right by a doorway and joined to the paving underfoot, it sits in the household's everyday path rather than tucked away in a garden.

How It Is Built

The plan is an irregular polygon, 2.5 metres on its longer side and 1.6 metres on its shorter. Neither the angles nor the lengths of the sides are regular.

It is ringed with natural Ryukyu limestone, and the inside is finished with lime plaster, presumably to seal a basin that bare stone would let leak.

Outside the rim runs a channel that acts as a drain. Basin and drain were built together as one piece of stonework.

Why It Was Registered

It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes how the Arakaki Family Residence South Pond merges with the paving around the house to create a distinctive yard.

Compare it with the East Pond on the same plot, a straight-edged basin let into a stone wall. The South Pond is soft and irregular. Two very different ponds, built at the same time for the same household.

What to Notice and Visiting

Look for the natural-stone rim, the plastered lining, the drainage channel around the outside and the way it all joins the paving. It is a small pond, but holding water and shedding it are both worked out in stone and plaster.

The pond is inside the grounds of a private home, close to the house entrance, and is not open to the public. We have not confirmed whether it can be seen from the road. Stay off the property, and keep residents and the inside of the grounds out of any photographs.