Agena Castle Ruins

Uruma, Japan, Japan

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Agena Castle Ruins are the remains of a historic Ryukyuan gusuku (fortress) located in the north of the Agena district of Uruma City on Okinawa Island, Japan, in what was formerly the area of Gushikawa.

The site was built in the 14th century on a natural Ryukyuan limestone outcrop at an altitude of about 49 meters and is protected as a National Historic Site, designated in 1987. Unlike most Okinawan castles that follow a linear “renkaku” layout with a series of enclosures leading to a main one, Agena Castle has a rare “kakushiki” plan, with a central enclosure surrounded by additional enclosures on the hillside, giving it a distinctive concentric appearance.

The castle’s stone walls are made of cut Ryukyuan limestone and range from about two meters to over ten meters in height, with an arched stone gate carved into the natural rock separating the outer and inner baileys, and the area is naturally defended by the Tengan River to the north. The ruins were occupied for several generations by the Ōgawa Aji, male descendants of King Eiso who ruled central Okinawa during the Sanzan period and later, and because of this the site is also known as Ōgawa Castle.

Today, much of the former castle grounds is used as Agena Park, which includes an abandoned bullring (a bullfighting site) within the site, and the area contains several utaki sacred worship places of the Ryukyuan religion, while archaeological finds on the grounds include fragments of Chinese ceramics from the 14th to 15th centuries.