Urasoe Yodore Mausoleum

This guide to Urasoe Yodore in Okinawa follows two Ryukyu kings sealed into the same limestone cliff three centuries apart: Eiso, one of the earliest rulers to hold the kingdom together in the twelve sixties, and Sho Nei, who took the throne in 1589 and chose to rebuild this older tomb rather than lie among his own ancestors at Shuri Castle. It traces the 1609 invasion by Satsuma forces that captured Sho Nei and marched him off as a prisoner, and how he came home still called a king but ruling in another lord's shadow. The tombs sit cut straight into the cliff above where you stand.