Tomari Gyokō

Japan is known for its history, art, karate, poetry, bonsai, fung shui, origami, calligraphy and so much more as learned about their culture, ethnicities and religions. We will get to experience all of these during our 12-day visit. Note: you will see many photos and there is no disrespect intended, only awe, in the photos of us with buddhas. When visiting a buddha, the spirit of buddha is with everyone there and some feel that taking a photo, takes away from the buddhas spirit.

Our first stop in Japan is Naha (only 15 square miles but over 300,000 people), the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, which is made up of more than 150 islands with 1.5 million people in 880 sq miles. An independent kingdom and tributary state to China for centuries, the Ryukyu Islands came under control of the Satsuma feudal fief in the 17th century and were made a Japanese prefecture in 1879.

In World War II, in 1945, the U.S. invaded Okinawa and sadly when faced with fanatic resistance from the Japanese, ended in major deaths and casualties. Okinawa remained under U.S. occupation until 1972 (note: between 1965 and 1972, it was a key staging point for U.S. operations in Vietnam).

Okinawa is now known for a few interesting things. Awamori (like sake made from rice) but distilled, not brewed, giving it an alcoholic content of up to 43 percent. Okinawa is where karate comes from before being brought to by Japan in 1879. Led by Becky, a friend of ours that speaks fluent Japanese from living for the past 20 years in Japan, Malaysia and Missouri, we did “traditional” coral stenciling.

The coral reef dyeing experience at Shuri Ryusen was an afternoon of education and a chance to make a piece of artwork to take home. There were also examples of Ryukyu handicraft traditions distinctly Okinawan. This concept of blending, or champuru, can be seen in many different aspects of Okinawan life and culture, especially its traditional arts and crafts. These centuries-old artforms have stood the test of time including yachimun -pottery, ryukyu- glass, kijoka bashofu- textiles, bingata- printing, and sanshin snakeshin banjos.

The background of our coral painting comes from Koto Yamaoka, the former president of Ryusen company, an artist of Kyoto-Yuzen dyeing and researcher of plant dyeing. When Bingata dyeing was restored after WWII, he was trying to solve a problem of the color fading and established a research institute of plant dyeing in 1973 and he created a dyeing technique with gentle textures peculiar to Okinawa creating coral dyeing was created derived from the blessing of nature that brings happiness and the blessing of the blue, bountiful Okinawan sea. A coral reef basked in the sun gives a shining rainbow color to the Okinawan sea. The beautiful sea variegated with blue, green, violet and other colors is considered to be a gift from nature dyed by a coral reef. Coral is said to bring us good luck and happiness from ancient days. The coral dyeing method represents the attractiveness of coral itself. Coral dyeing, only offered here, is a method of dyeing fabrics using the valued coral fossils.

Eight of us visited Shuri Ryusen and learned how to use coral stenciling. Using special dyes and rubbing the ink onto the coral and then onto a tee shirt (Bruce) and a tote bag (Karen). A lot of fun!

We then took a taxi (passing the Shuri Castle residence of the Ryukyu kings for centuries)to the Makishi Public Market and walked around there. We saw lots of varieties of Amawori in lots of price ranges as well as Habushu (ハブ) which is awamori-based liqueur named after the venomous habu snake included in the bottle (which belongs to the pit viper family related to the rattlesnake and copperhead). No purchases here!!!Read more