On 5-6 March 2021, Kyushu University hosted a workshop devoted to examining the ongoing memorial contestation over Shuri Castle in Okinawa, and its place within regional, national, and global narratives of meaning making.

Shuri Castle is both a site of Japanese cultural heritage and of Ryukyuan remembrance and identity, and thus sits at the intersection of different heritage communities. Materially, it consists of the former palace of the Ryukyuan state reconstructed atop the ruins of the Japanese Imperial Army’s headquarters on the island. Prior to the rebuilding of the castle, the site housed the University of the Ryukyus – built by the US as a symbol of Okinawa’s revival. Shuri Castle is cut through by borders of memory.

Keynote Discussion - Shuri Castle as a Global Heritage Site

A Discussion between

Kono Toshiyuki (Kyushu University, ICOMOS)

Simon Kaner (Sainsbury Institute and the University of East Anglia)

Moderated by

Ellen Van Goethem (Kyushu University)

Panel 1 – Situating Shuri

Speakers

Ginoza Ayano (University of the Ryukyus)

Maetakenishi Kazuma (Nihon University)

Ra Mason (University of East Anglia)

Sakuma Sayaka (Osaka City University)

Tomochi Masaki (Okinawa International University)

Moderated by Victoria Young (University of Cambridge)

Panel 2 – Shuri Castle in Historical and Regional Perspectives

Speakers

Justin Aukema (Kyoto Women's University)

Oleg Benesch (University of York)

Matsuda Hiroko (Kobe Gakuin University)

Travis Seifman (University of Tokyo)

Eriko Tomizawa-Kay (University of East Anglia)

Moderated by Ran Zwigenberg (Pennsylvania State University)

Panel 3 – Shuri Castle and the Margins of Okinawa and Japan

Speakers

Gerald Figal (Vanderbilt University)

Tze M. Loo (University of Richmond)

Wendy Matsumura (University of California San Diego)

Chris Nelson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Gregory Smits (Pennsylvania State University)

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum (Independent Scholar)

Moderated by Edward Boyle (Kyushu University)

Recent debates concerning the castle’s reconstruction following a fire in late 2019 provided an opportunity to re-examine its history, and the multiple meanings invested in the site by local residents, the prefectural administration of Okinawa, the Japanese government, international bodies, and other stakeholders.

The workshop brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from institutions in Okinawa, Japan, and worldwide in order to discuss the history and politics surrounding Shuri Castle and its status as heritage. In a number of interrelated conversations, our distinguished speakers approached Shuri Castle from a variety of chronological and disciplinary perspectives, and addressed such questions as:

• the significance of material sites of memory becoming affective symbols for communities;

• why the creation of sites as heritage produces material and symbolic spaces able to stand at the intersection of various memory collectives, and;

• how the various scales at which the multiple, complex meanings of these sites are narrated impact the material site itself.