Iedonai Garden

A Ryukyu Garden Carved Straight into Coral Limestone

Walk south from the front gate of Shuri Castle, take a side lane through the old Tōnokura district, and after a few minutes a stone-walled compound appears between modern houses. Look through the iron fence and the ground falls away into a hollow of pale, porous Ryukyu limestone: stepped pools cut directly into the bedrock, small arched bridges built of the same coral stone, and standing rocks bearing two Chinese characters carved in low relief — 巣雲, "cloud-nesting."

This is Ie-dunchi Garden (伊江殿内庭園, Iedunchi Teien), also known by its literary name Sōunen (巣雲園, the Cloud-Nesting Garden). It occupies the former residential compound of one of the Ryukyu Kingdom's most powerful noble houses, and it has been a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty since 1986. The garden is currently closed for long-term restoration, but the lane outside gives a long, uninterrupted view in.

The Ie Family and the Banquets for Chinese Envoys

The Ie line (伊江家, Ie-ke) descended from the Second Shō royal dynasty. Its progenitor was Prince Shō Sōken (尚宗賢, Ie Ōji Chōgi), the seventh son of King Shō Sei, fourth ruler of the line in the mid-sixteenth century. The Ie became hereditary aji jitō of Ie Island, were ranked among the foremost noble households of the kingdom, and produced four members of the Sanshikan — the three-member council of regents that effectively ran the state under the king. The branch family that built this compound at Tōnokura in Shuri established itself here in the early eighteenth century.

Diplomatic protocol explains why a garden of this ambition stood at a private residence. When envoys arrived from the Qing court to formally invest a new Ryukyuan king (the rite called sappō, 冊封), they were entertained at a small, carefully chosen circle of mansions in Shuri. Ie-dunchi was one of them. During the 1800 (Jiaqing 5) investiture of King Shō On, the chief envoy Zhao Wenkai (趙文楷) and the vice envoy Li Dingyuan (李鼎元) were received in the main hall, the reception room and the garden of this house. Zhao is said to have left behind the two characters 巣雲 that gave the garden its alternate name, while another inscription cut into a nearby rock, 漱石山房 ("Stone-Rinsing Studio"), is also attributed to the same delegation. Together these tell us that by 1800 the garden was already complete and considered worth a Qing court official's calligraphy.

Why It Was Designated a Place of Scenic Beauty

Several Ryukyu gardens survive in or near Shuri — the Shoin and Sasunoma gardens at Shuri Castle, the royal villa at Shikinaen, the Ie-Udun annex garden a short distance away. Ie-dunchi was singled out in 1986 for a particular combination of qualities, summed up in the Agency for Cultural Affairs citation as "Ryukyuan in design and technique, distinct in atmosphere from Japanese tradition."

Three things in particular set it apart. First, the construction is subtractive rather than additive. Instead of piling earth into mounds and importing rocks, the makers carved straight down into the limestone hillside, hollowing out basin-shaped pools and shaping bridges from the matrix itself. Second, the inscriptions are cut in raised relief (yōkoku, 陽刻) rather than scratched in negative — a calligraphic mode much closer to Chinese garden stelae than to Japanese practice. Third, the rocks themselves were selected for jagged, pock-marked silhouettes that recall the celebrated Taihu stones of the great Jiangnan scholar gardens such as Suzhou's Humble Administrator's Garden.

An additional designation in September 2025 expanded the protected boundary. For Naha — a city that lost most of its premodern Ryukyuan fabric in 1945 — the timing, at the eighty-year mark since the Battle of Okinawa, was not incidental.

What to Look For Through the Fence

The most photogenic elements are the three stone arch bridges. They are built of the same Ryukyu limestone as the bedrock they span, and at first glance the constructed work and the carved earth read as a single weathered mass. The largest of the three is currently supported by a wooden brace while restoration continues; the joinery of the others repays a close look.

Below the bridges, the pools step down in tiers. They are referred to in older descriptions as unkei (雲形, "cloud-shaped"), and they once held water. A stone-carved dragon's head emerged from between two of the basins, facing a tiger-shaped natural rock standing in the pool — a yin–yang opposition straight from Chinese cosmology. Both still survive on site, though heavy vegetation can make them hard to make out from the lane.

The inscriptions are the garden's quiet signature. 巣雲 (Sōun) and 漱石山房 (Sōsekisanbō) are the two best known, both cut in low relief and both attributed to the 1800 Qing envoys. The Stone-Rinsing Studio phrase has long literary associations in Chinese tradition — a scholar's affectation of living roughly amid clear water and rocks — and its presence here, carved outdoors on a Naha hillside, is the kind of small physical survival that quietly justifies the designation.

Older accounts also describe features that have faded or disappeared: a camellia hedge along the eastern boundary; old kuroki (Okinawan ebony, Diospyros) leaning over the pool; behind the back rocks, a tall stone lantern whose fire chamber was pierced with crescent, half-moon and full-moon openings, so that lit at dusk it appeared to set a moon rising above the eastern trees. An archery range called Uiba (御弓場) once lay in the wooded ground further back.

Visiting the Site

Ie-dunchi has been under restoration for more than a decade and is not open to visitors. There are no information panels at the site. What you can do is walk the public lane along its northern frontage and look down into the garden over the original limestone retaining walls and through the perimeter fence — a view that gives a remarkably clear sense of the layout, if not of every detail.

Mid- to late afternoon on a clear day works best, when low side-light catches the relief inscriptions and the moss on the bedrock. After heavy rain the carved basins will briefly pool water again, hinting at how the garden looked when the system was active. A ten-minute stop is enough for a glance; gardeners and architecture travelers tend to linger longer.

In the Neighborhood

Ie-dunchi sits in the Tōnokura district of Shuri, immediately east of Shuri Castle, with several other sites within easy walking distance.

• Shuri Castle (首里城) — the rebuilt seat of the Ryukyu Kingdom, a World Heritage component. The main hall is in active reconstruction after the 2019 fire.
• The former Enkakuji main gate and Benzaitendō — about five minutes on foot. The arched Tennyo-bashi over the small pond is one of the older Chinese-influenced stone bridges in Naha.
• Tama-udun (玉陵) — the royal mausoleum of the Second Shō Dynasty, another World Heritage component, a short walk from the castle.
• Shikinaen Garden (識名園) — the royal detached villa, also a Place of Scenic Beauty. Larger and more open than Ie-dunchi; useful for comparison.
• Sōgenji ruins (崇元寺跡) — the foundations of the royal mortuary temple, included alongside Ie-dunchi in the 2025 designation expansion.