Entrance of Sanmonju Park located in Tsuji, Naha, Okinawa. (©Japan Forward/Kenji Yoshida)
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At first glance, Sanmonju Park in Okinawa does not look like the typical place that would tell you much about the island's past.
Located in a quiet residential part of Naha's Tsuji district, it is a small neighborhood park, easy to miss if you are not actively looking for it.
Apartment buildings and homes stand nearby. Cars come and go on narrow streets. There is little here that immediately signals historical importance.
Layers Beneath the Park
That is what makes the park, with little more than a couple of swings and benches, so interesting.
The name Sanmonju is said to derive from a local tale that three notable Ryukyuan sages gathered there in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to discuss the future of the kingdom. According to a sign at the park, the area was once a small hill at the seaward edge of old Tsuji village, in a rocky area known as Tsujibaru.
Parts of Naha's western side were gradually reclaimed over time, meaning Sanmonju Park stands on ground shaped by both natural change and human redevelopment.
Even now, the area can feel slightly set apart from the rest of the city, as if traces of the older landscape remain beneath the modern streets.
The Long Shadow of Tsuji
But it is impossible to introduce Sanmonju Park without mentioning Tsuji's significance. For much of modern Okinawan history, Tsuji was known as the city's red-light district. Before that, it was part of a very different social world tied to the old Ryukyu Kingdom.
It served as a place of entertainment and hospitality, especially for visiting officials and envoys from China and Satsuma. Women working there, known as juri, were associated not only with sex work but also with music, dance, and highly cultivated forms of dress and etiquette.
That world is gone, but not entirely. Though much of that world has faded, traces of Tsuji's red-light past linger in and around the neighborhood.
Some establishments preserve fragments of the older atmosphere, while the neighborhood itself retains a sense of continuity. It is now a lived-on residential area, but one built on a history that has not completely disappeared.
Where the History Still Lives
That contrast is what gives Sanmonju Park its peculiar character. It is not a major sightseeing spot. There are no dramatic ruins, famous views, or long lines of visitors. Instead, it offers something subtler. It is a place where old Naha can still be felt, if only faintly.
In Okinawa, where so much history has been lost, rebuilt, or paved over, such quiet remnants are easy to miss.
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Author: Kenji Yoshida
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