Driving around Okinawa, one can’t help noticing the many distinctively large tombs. They resemble small houses, with a porch and courtyard. Some are turtle shaped and nestle into the slope of the earth, as if wombs. The dead who … Read the rest
Category: World Heritage (Page 8 of 10)
Much of the Okinawan World Heritage registration has to do with castles dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Visiting them reveals how important a role the so-called ‘Ryukyu religion’ played, for sacred sites and altars abound. These were … Read the rest
Okinawa is special. It’s got a subtropical climate, its own distinctive culture, and the longest living people in the world. The hundreds of islands in the archipelago stretch for over 1000 kilometers, as if a bridge to Taiwan.
For … Read the rest
Yakushima is an island 60 kilometers south of Kyushu, most of which is registered as a World Heritage Site on account of its primeval forest featuring giant cedars, known as Yakusugi. These magnificent giants are literally thousands of years … Read the rest
Itsukushima Jinja is Japan’s premier World Heritage shrine. Inscribed by Unesco in 1996, it was cited for ‘setting traditional architecture of great artistic and technical merit against a dramatic natural background and thereby creating a work of art of incomparable … Read the rest
On a recent outing to Yoshino, south of Nara, I discovered that there were more World Heritage Sites than I had realised. Readers of the blog might remember that I had compiled a list of shrines recognised by Unesco’s … Read the rest
Shirakawa-go is a World Heritage Site in the Gifu mountains, notable for its gassho-zukuri (prayer-hands) housing, so-called because the tall roofs resemble hands at prayer. The architecture developed because of the heavy snowfalls, which could crush normal roofs and … Read the rest