Zakimi Castle

The man who built it had just helped take a castle

Zakimi was built by Gosamaru, the aji (lord) of Yomitanzan, a man the village’s official history describes as famous in his own time as a castle builder. He did not start here. He was living at Yamada Gusuku, about four kilometres to the north-east.

Then, in 1416 — some accounts say 1422 — he joined Shō Hashi’s attack on Nakijin, the stronghold of the northern kingdom of Hokuzan. The official account says that immediately afterwards, weighing up the advantage of the ground, he built at Zakimi.

That is an unusual origin for a castle. A man who had just seen a great fortress fall picked new ground and built his own, and what he built is still standing well enough to walk on six hundred years later.

The oldest stone arch on the island

The Okinawa Prefectural Board of Education says the gate here, an arch assembled from cut stone, is thought to be the oldest surviving stone gate on Okinawa Island. Note the wording: not the oldest in Okinawa Prefecture, and not proven — thought to be, on Okinawa Island.

The same source gives the reason the castle exists at all: Gosamaru built it in the first half of the fifteenth century to keep watch on Hokuzan, the kingdom whose castle he had just helped to take.

Small, and precisely measured

The village records the size exactly: the outer wall runs 365 metres around, and the area enclosed is 7,385 square metres — which it calls medium-sized for a castle of the early fifteenth century.

Zakimi is not a big site and does not pretend to be. What it has is the stonework. The walls curve rather than run straight, and they are doubled — an outer and an inner enclosure, each with its own arched gate.

Its legal protection was issued by a country that no longer exists

This is the detail most visitors miss. Zakimi was first protected in 1956, as an Important Cultural Property of the Government of the Ryukyu Islands — the administration that governed Okinawa while it was under American control after the war.

When Okinawa returned to Japan in 1972, the site was designated a National Historic Site under Japanese law. Between 1973 and 1985, with support from the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the prefecture, the site was excavated and the walls repaired.

On 2 December 2000 it was inscribed as one component of Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu, Japan’s eleventh World Heritage property.

Free, and open whenever you get there

There is no ticket office and no closing day. The village’s own page says simply that you may enter freely. The adjoining Yuntanza Museum is the paid part, at ¥500 for adults, and it is where the excavated finds and the explanation of the site are kept.

If you are planning a day around it: no gate means no opening hour to work around, which is rarer than it sounds among Japan’s World Heritage sites.

The other eight

Zakimi is one of nine components in the inscription. The others are Shuri Castle Site, the Sonohyan-utaki Stone Gate, Tamaudun, Shikinaen, Nakijin Castle Site — the castle Gosamaru helped attack — Katsuren Castle Site, Nakagusuku Castle Site, and Sefa-utaki.

Three of them belong to one connected story, and the prefecture’s own descriptions join it up. Nakijin is the castle Gosamaru helped attack. Nakagusuku, it says, was built by Gosamaru, lord of Zakimi, on the king’s orders, to hold in check Amawari, the lord of Katsuren. And Katsuren, it says, was where Amawari lived — the aji who went on to attack Shuri for the throne, and was defeated and destroyed.

So four of the nine World Heritage sites are stops in a single fifteenth-century quarrel, and Zakimi is where its builder started.

Details checked on the Yomitan Village and Okinawa Prefecture official sites on 13 September 2026.