Former Miyara Palace (Okawa, Ishigaki City, Okinawa

Former Miyara Dunchi: An Upper-Samurai Residence of the Ryukyu Kingdom

On a quiet residential lane in central Ishigaki City, a few hundred metres north of the island's ferry port, a wall of coral limestone encloses a single-storey house roofed in red tile. This is the Miyara Dunchi, once the home of the Miyara family, who governed one of the three administrative districts of the Yaeyama Islands during the age of the Ryukyu Kingdom. The word dunchi (殿内) referred to the private residence of a kashirashoku, the head official of a magiri, a regional unit roughly comparable to a modern municipality. Of the grand samurai-class houses that once stood across the Ryukyu domain, this is the most complete to survive.

The national cultural-property record dates the building broadly to the late Edo period, between 1751 and 1829. Local accounts are more specific. They place its construction in 1819, the year Miyara Pēchin Tōen, eighth-generation head of the family, was appointed head official of the Miyara district and raised the house to mark the honour. Because the result was judged grander than a man of his rank was entitled to, the royal court at Shuri is said to have ordered it pulled down on five separate occasions. The family held out. In 1874 they reluctantly stripped the tiles and re-roofed in thatch; the tiles returned in 1899.

Why the House Matters

Japan protects its built heritage through two parallel systems. National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties are actively designated (shitei) for their exceptional value, while a lighter category of registered (tōroku) properties, introduced in 1996, applies a looser form of protection. The Miyara Dunchi sits in the first group. It was named an Important Cultural Property on 15 May 1972, having already been recognised by the postwar Government of the Ryukyu Islands in 1956, and it remains the only example of Ryukyu samurai-class architecture to hold national designation.

That singular status owes much to geography. Ground fighting in 1945 destroyed nearly every samurai residence on the main island of Okinawa. Ishigaki, far to the south, was spared that battle, and the house came through largely as it had stood for over a century. The designation reaches beyond the main building to three attached structures recorded as part of it: the limestone perimeter wall, the screen wall inside the gate, and the eastern mud-plaster wall.

What to Look For

The approach itself rewards attention. The compound is ringed by a wall of Ryukyu limestone, the porous coral stone quarried across the islands, fitted without mortar. At the south stands a yakuimon, a formal gate type whose roof here wears the red tiles that Ryukyu custom reserved for households of rank.

Step through the gate and a free-standing screen wall blocks the way ahead. This is a hinpun, a feature found across Okinawan homes. It shields the interior from passing eyes and, by older belief, turns away malign spirits, which were thought to move only in straight lines. Visitors pass to its left; a formal guest in earlier times would have rounded it to the right toward the entrance hall.

The house is timber-framed and built mainly of inumaki (Podocarpus), a wood prized in the subtropics for its resistance to damp and insects. Measuring about 15 metres along the front and 13 metres in depth, it carries a hipped roof of heavy tile, with a porch and kitchen attached.

On the east side, beside the principal reception room, lies a dry-landscape garden that carries its own national designation as a Place of Scenic Beauty, separate from the building's status. In place of the raked white sand familiar from Kyoto, it works in Ryukyu limestone, massed into five low hills and crossed by a stone bridge. It was laid out under the direction of Gusukuma Pēchin, a garden master from Shuri who also shaped the private Ishigaki-shi garden elsewhere on the island. The interior of the house is closed to visitors, so the building is admired from outside and the garden walked at the side.

Around the Site

The Miyara Dunchi sits within easy reach of central Ishigaki on foot, about fifteen minutes from the ferry terminal that links the island to the smaller isles of the Yaeyama group. A short walk south brings you to Euglena Mall, a covered shopping arcade lined with food stalls, craft shops and produce vendors, useful for a meal or a rest. The terminal itself is the departure point for day trips to Taketomi, Iriomote and the other islands, which makes the house a natural stop on a walk through town before or after a crossing.