Nakagusuku Castle Ruins

This guide to Nakagusuku Castle Ruins in Okinawa opens with Lord Gosamaru's death in fourteen fifty-eight, then rewinds to fourteen forty, when the Ryukyuan king sent him from Zakimi to Nakagusuku to watch his rival Amawari across the valley. It traces the mortarless limestone walls Gosamaru raised, so precise that Commodore Perry's expedition marveled at them centuries later, and the accusation that turned the king against the man guarding his throne. You'll follow the six courtyards banked into the ridge above the coast, shaped by the lord who built them before his own king turned on him.