Dynastic History | Shuri Castle 首里城, the Seiden — The Fifth Rebuilding, and Where the Timber Comes From

The alarm went off at Shuri Castle 首里城 at about half past two on the morning of 31 October 2019. By early afternoon the seiden 正殿 and the halls flanking it had burned. It was the fifth time the hall had been lost: fire took it in 1453 during a fight over the succession, again in 1660, again in 1709, and the naval shelling and ground fighting of 1945 left the hill bare.

What burned in 2019 was itself a reconstruction, completed in 1992 as part of the national park on the site. The distinction is load-bearing here. When UNESCO inscribed the Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu in 2000, what it listed at Shuri were the stone walls and foundations surviving from before 1950 — not the timber hall standing on them.

The Shō kings who held court here ran a state that paid in two directions. It sent tribute to Ming and then Qing China, which returned twenty-two investiture missions between 1404 and 1866; after the Satsuma invasion of 1609 it owed a Japanese domain as well. In 1879 the Meiji government abolished the kingdom, and the last king, Shō Tai, gave up the castle and went to Tokyo.

The present rebuilding has a materials problem the 1992 one did not. That hall was framed in Taiwanese cypress, which Taiwan now bars from logging and export. The working papers of the Okinawa General Bureau's reconstruction committee are accordingly taken up with sourcing large-diameter Japanese hinoki instead, some of it bought through the donated recovery fund. Roof tiling began in July 2024. The seiden is due to open to visitors on 23 November 2026; until then the route runs past a working site.

📸 Cover: The seiden under reconstruction, 23 December 2025, scaffolding still standing, Jun, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons