Draft:Chatan Castle

Chatan Castle 北谷城
Chatan, Okinawa
Chatan Gusuku
Chatan Castle 北谷城 Chatan Castle 北谷城
Coordinates	26.30947°N 127.76698°E / 26.30947; 127.76698
Type	Gusuku
Site information
Controlled by	Kaniman (13th century-14th century) Ūkā Aji / Ōkawa Aji Tancha Aji Ūkā Aji / Ōkawa Aji Chatan Aji / Chatan Ōkawa Aji Ryūkyū Kingdom (15th century–1609)
Open to the public	No
Condition	Ruins
Website	Chatan Town cultural properties
Site history
Built	13th century
Built by	Kaniman Aji, Ōkawa Aji
In use	13th century-17th century
Materials	Ryukyuan limestone, wood
Battles/wars	Ōkawa tekiuchi Satsuma Invasion

Chatan Castle (Japanese: 北谷城跡, romanized: Chatan jōato) or Chatan Gusuku (Japanese: 北谷城, romanized: Chatan gusuku) is a Ryūkyūan gusuku located in Chatan, Okinawa.

It was built on a Ryūkyū limestone hill topping at an altitude of 44.7 metres, and consists in five enclosures for a total area of 15,000 square metres. It is naturally protected by a cliff 10 to 20 metres high on the north and a two-stepped cliff on the south, with the Shirahi-gawa River running westward at the foot of the northern cliff.

It was an important fortress of the Chūzan kingdom between the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 16th century. It is the fifth largest gusuku on Okinawa Island, after Shuri, Nakijin, Itokazu and Nanzan.
After the war, it was included in the land seized for Camp Zukeran. It was only returned to Chatan Town on 31 March 2020. Access is still strictly controlled by the Japanese Defense Bureau. Since the destruction of Ichi Gusuku, Chatan Gusuku is the only gusuku in Chatan Town.
It has been designated as a National Historic Site in 2020.

Location

Address: 904-0107 Okinawa, Chatan, Ōmura, Gusukubaru. Coordinates: 26.30947°N 127.76698°E / 26.30947; 127.76698

Chatan Gusuku is located in Chatan, a town on the western coast of Okinawa Island. It is located slightly south of the centre of the town, facing the coast, on a limestone hill extending east-west by the estuary of the Shirahi-gawa River. The hill is about 500 m long, 150 m wide and 44 m high. The surrounding landscape has been heavily modified by the installation of Camp Zukeran. It is currently bordered on the north by the Shirahi-gawa River, on the west by National Route 58 and on the south by National Route 130.

Before the war it was surrounded by the settlements of Kuwae (on the north), Chatan, Rindō and Tamēshi (on the south). The western tip of the hill was graded in order to build National Route 58.

The closest gusuku (at the exception of Ichi Gusuku, that was an outpost of Chatan Gusuku) is Hini Gusuku located 3 kilometres eastward in Kitanakagusuku. Hini Gusuku also yielded material of the transition between the Late Kaizuka Period and the beginning of the Gusuku Period and its development seems contemporaneous of Chatan Gusuku.

History

Outline

Chatan Gusuku was a fortress of Chūzan that was in use between the second half of the 13th century during the Gusuku period and the first half of the 17th century in the Kingdom period. Unlike most of the gusukus, it continued being used even after the unification of the Ryūkyū Kingdom. It was also called Ūkā Gusuku / Ōkawa Gusuku (Japanese: 大川グスク) and functioned with an outpost on the other side of the Shirahi-gawa River, Ichi Gusuku (Japanese: 池グスク). It seems to have lost its function as regional administrative centre when Chatan Banju Guards House (Japanese: 北谷番所) was built at the foot of the hill at the end of the 15th century.
The gusuku was abandoned a few decades later in the 16th century but kept a defensive aspect that was used in the resistance of the kingdom against the Satsuma invasion in 1609. The gusuku afterwards kept its role as a religious centre, and became a location seeked for funerary purposes as can be seen by the eighty-two tombs identified in its cliffs.

Gusuku period

There is no historical document related to the construction of Chatan Gusuku, but several oral traditions compiled at a later stage exist.

The first lord of Chatan Gusuku is remembered as Kaniman Aji (Japanese: 金満按司), which is a common name attributed to people related to iron smithing at the beginning of the Gusuku period on Okinawa Island. The Ryūkyū-sosen hōkan (Japanese: 琉球祖先寳鑑), published in 1933 by Chitoku Keruma (Japanese: 慶留間知徳) mentions that during the reign of King Eiso (1229-1299), the eldest son of the household of Chatan Noro was named Kaniman Aji.
A tomb that is traditionally attributed to Kaniman Aji exists in a cave on the northern cliff, facing Shirahi-gawa River. People who took refuge into the tomb during WWII report that there was a large quantity of human bones inside, suggesting it was a collective tomb. The inscription on the stele in front of the tomb said “The generations of the historical lords of Chatan Gusuku, Kaniman Aji’s Sacred Tomb”, suggesting that several generations of lords referred to as Kaniman Aji were buried there.

Tradition says that (the last) Kaniman Aji was defeated by Ūkā Aji (Ōkawa Aji) (Japanese: 大川按司), who was in turn defeated by Tancha Ufunushi (lit. “the great lord of Tancha”)(Japanese: 谷茶大主), before Ūkā Aji’s son came to power again when Tancha Ufunushi was defeated by his father’s former followers. Those conflicts are the subject of the famous kumiodori play The revenge of Ōkawa (Japanese: 大川敵討, romanized: Ōkawa tekiuchi/Ūkā tichiuchi).

Since all those names are titles transmitted from father to son, it is not clear how many generations of Kaniman Aji or Ūkā Aji actually dwelt in Chatan gusuku. Moreover, the genealogical documents of several old houses of Chatan claim that they are descendants of both Kaniman Aji and Ūkā Aji, so that there is a theory that they were in fact related, if not the same person.

Ūkā Aji is at the origin of the other name of Chatan gusuku, Ūkā gusuku (Ūkā, lit. “large river”, is another name of Shirahi-gawa River). This family seems to have been the main builders of Chatan gusuku during the 14th and 15th century.　Given the size of the gusuku, it is thought the Ūkā Aji family was particularly powerful.
It is not clear what happened after this period of struggle for the dominance of the area, but during the reign of Shō Shin (around 1500), the lord of Chatan Magiri was known under the name of Chatan Aji (sometimes Chatan Ōkawa Aji). It is not clear if the persons referred to as Chatan Aji are direct descendants of the Ūkā Aji family.

The fifteenth volume of the Omoro Sōshi (compiled in 1623) mentions the lords of Chatan Gusuku as “kitatan-no-teda” (15/55, 56) and “kitatan-no-yo-no-nushi” (15/57, 58), meaning respectively “the sun of Chatan” and “the world-lord of Chatan”. Those terms are commonly applied to kings in the same book, showing that the lords of Chatan were probably particularly powerful.
It is not possible to know of which of the ajis the Omoro Sōshi refers to.

Kingdom period

During the Satsuma invasion of 1609, Chatan gusuku was held by Yō Chōhō Sashiki Chikudun Kōdō who opposed a strong resistance to the invader. He was still fighting and holding his position when he heard that Shuri had fallen, and he committed suicide out of sorrow. His tomb is also located on the northern cliff of Chatan gusuku.During this resistance, the outpost of Chatan gusuku, located on the other bank of the Shirahi-gawa River, Ichi Gusuku, also played a large role.

After the invasion, the fortress was completely abandoned and part of its lands inside the enclosures were used as fields. When Ichi-gusuku-bashi Bridge (Japanese: 池城橋, romanized: Ichi-gusuku-bashi) was rebuilt in stone in 1821, the stones of Chatan Gusuku walls were used. It is also said that those stones had been used for the construction of Machinato-bashi Bridge (Japanese: 牧港橋, romanized: Machinato-bashi).

Reversion and designation

After the war, the area of Chatan Gusuku was seized by the U.S. Forces and became part of Camp Zukeran (later renamed Camp Foster). On 5 April 2013, the Consolidation Plan for Facilities and Areas in Okinawa decided that Camp Foster would be comprised in the seized lands that should be returned to Okinawa “after 2019”. This reversion was to take place gradually and the area comprising Chatan Gusuku was planned to be returned to Japan in 2020.

The area was finally reverted to Japan on 31 March 2020, but access is still strictly controlled by the Japanese Defense Bureau. Chatan Gusuku was designated a National Historic Site on 20 Novembre 2020.

Chatan Town is currently pushing for the creation of an historical park that would showcase the archaeological remains.

Archaeological remains

Before the construction of the fortress

There was a village located on the hill of Chatan Gusuku before it became a fortress at the transition between the pre-agricultural Late Kaizuka Period and the agricultural Gusuku Period, before and during the 12th century. The site has yielded number of postholes and artefacts of this period, starting with locally produced flat constricted bottom pottery.
Only a few other gusukus are known with an occupation of the Late Kaizuka Period preceding their transformation into a fortress: Gushikawa Gusuku (Japanese: 具志川城)and Katsuren Gusuku (Japanese: 勝連城) in central Okinawa and Gushichan Gusuku (Japanese: 具志頭城) in southern Okinawa.

As seen from the representative artefacts, the chronology at the transition between the Late Kaizuka and the Early Gusuku periods in Okinawa Island generally goes from the locally produced flat constricted bottom pottery at the beginning of the 12th century to the “early Gusuku set” in the 12th to 13th centuries (fragments of talc pots, Chinese white porcelain and Kamuiyaki ware), before it shifts to imported celadon in the 13th century. The remains on the hill of Chatan gusuku go directly from the Late Kaizuka Period local pottery to imported celadon.
A few 13th century celadon sherds have been found in Chatan Gusuku, but most are dated of the 14th and 15th century. The quantity of imported material of the 12th and 13th century in the lowland sites such as Kumuibaru and Kushikanikubaru is on the over hand overwhelming, leaving no doubt that the power centre had not been established yet on the hill at that time.