Former Sogenji Temple Stone Gate

This guide to the Former Sogenji Temple Stone Gate in Okinawa starts at a stone slab carved in 1527, ordering both officials and commoners to dismount their horses before entering, the front door to the Ryukyu kingdom's royal mausoleum where every king from Shunten to Sho Tai was honored and a Chinese envoy had to perform a memorial rite before a new ruler could take the throne. It traces the arch itself, one of three set so precisely in a row that Okinawan builders still call it a benchmark of their craft, through to the temple's destruction in 1945. Stand under the banyan tree beside the gate, where the shade now falls right where the horses once had to stop.