Ie Palace Villa Garden

A Ryukyuan Garden on Palace Hill: The Ie Family's Secondary Villa in Shuri

About 1.3 kilometers northeast of the Shuri Castle ruins, a wooded knoll rises to 126.8 meters above sea level. Locals have long called it Goten-yama, "Palace Hill," a name that betrays its former tenant. On its summit lies a long, narrow garden of roughly 7,435 square meters (2,249 tsubo), shaped to the contour of the rise and measuring about 150 meters east to west by 70 meters north to south. This is Ie Udun Bettei Teien, the secondary villa garden of the Ie family, the most senior of the Ryukyuan prince-rank households outside the royal line itself. In February 2009 it was designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty (meishō), and that same year the family donated the property to Naha City for long-term conservation.

The Ie family belongs to the Second Shō dynasty by blood. Its founder, Shō Sōken (better known by his princely name Chōgi), was the seventh son of King Shō Sei, who took the throne in 1527. From Chōgi the line descended as aji (district lords) of Ie Island in the far north of Okinawa, and four of its heads went on to serve as Sanshikan, the three highest officials of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Four successive heads were also granted the prince (王子, ōji) title, the kingdom's highest rank of nobility below the king. That made the Ie one of the so-called fudai princely houses, and Goten-yama was their country retreat, set apart from their main residence within the Shuri precincts.

Why It Was Designated

The Agency for Cultural Affairs cited a single decisive reason for designating the site in 2009: its design, structure, and technique differ in character from the Japanese mainland tradition. Ryukyuan gardens grew out of a distinct horticultural culture that absorbed influences from Fujian and southern China alongside diplomatic exchange with Edo Japan, and Ie Udun Bettei retains those features unusually well. The lower stretch of the perimeter stonework, laid before the kingdom's fall in 1879, still curves with the soft, asymmetrical lines that distinguish Ryukyuan masonry from the straighter geometry favored in mainland feudal compounds. Of all the surviving residential gardens connected to the Ryukyu court, this one preserves the most legible record of how the upper aristocracy lived outside the walls of Shuri Castle itself.

The classification also rests on what is missing elsewhere. The Battle of Okinawa in 1945 destroyed nearly every aristocratic estate in Shuri. Surviving gardens of comparable rank can be counted on one hand: the royal villa Shikinaen, the small Shoin-Sasunoma garden inside Shuri Castle, and a handful of branch-family gardens such as Iedunchi-teien in Tōnokura. Among these, Ie Udun Bettei is the only example tied directly to a princely house at the senior fudai rank.

What Survives, and What to Look For

The gate opens at roughly the middle of the northern boundary, slightly west of center. The gate itself is a postwar reconstruction, the original having been lost in 1945, but the stone walls flanking it are not. Look closely at how the courses bow outward and back as they follow the slope; this curvilinear treatment is a signature of Ryukyuan stone craft, where masons preferred limestone blocks fitted to natural undulation rather than forced into rectilinear courses.

From the gate, a path leads through the garden to a stone bridge that arcs over the central pond before reaching the forecourt where the main residence once stood. The pond's edge is the most distinctive element of the garden. Rather than a smooth oval or kidney shape, the shoreline breaks into a complex sequence of inlets and projecting stone arrangements, with deeper recesses near the rear suggesting grottoes of layered, overlapping rock. Records also describe a feature stone carved in low relief with the character 鶴 (crane) — a motif that appears at several other Ryukyuan gardens and points to a shared symbolic vocabulary across the kingdom's aristocratic estates.

The vegetation, less rigorously studied than the stonework, includes subtropical species typical of old Okinawan gardens: fukugi (Garcinia subelliptica) windbreaks, banyan, and indigenous flowering trees that bloom from late winter through early summer.

Visiting: An Honest Note

The garden is not currently open to the public. Naha City has been carrying out conservation and archaeological survey work on the site since at least the mid-2010s, and as of 2024 it remained closed. Tender notices for further archaeological test-excavations have been issued, which suggests restoration is ongoing rather than complete. The site can be approached from the road that runs along its northern edge, and the reconstructed gate and outer stone walls are visible from outside; the interior, pond, and bridge are not viewable.

Travelers who hope to see a comparable Ryukyuan garden during their stay have one excellent alternative nearby: Shikinaen, the royal secondary villa about 3 kilometers south, which is open daily and shares both the curvilinear stonework and the pond-with-arched-bridge layout. The Shoin-Sasunoma garden inside the Shuri Castle complex is also accessible on regular castle tours. Together with a walk past the closed gate of Ie Udun Bettei, these three give a complete picture of how Ryukyu's elite shaped landscape on different scales.

The Wider Shuri Neighborhood

Goten-yama sits in a residential quarter of Ishimine that still preserves stone walls and narrow lanes from before the war. A short walk in any direction brings several sites worth combining into a half-day route. To the southwest, the Shuri Castle complex, under reconstruction following the 2019 fire, remains a working historical site with most of its outer enclosures open. South of the castle lies Tamaudun, the eighteenth-century mausoleum of the Second Shō kings, designated a National Treasure for its limestone architecture. Further south again is Shikinaen, the royal villa garden mentioned above.

Two minor but rewarding stops cluster nearby: Ryūtan, the artificial pond just north of the castle that once supplied Shuri's water, and Bezaitendō, a small temple beside Enkanchi Pond rebuilt after the war. The Yui Rail Gibo Station, about 12 minutes on foot from Goten-yama, links the area to central Naha and Naha Airport without changing lines.