Ishigaki City

A garden of five limestone mounds.

Former Miyara Dunchi, garden

Photo by 663highland (CC BY 2.5)

01 ／ Gongendo

Founded in 1614 with the neighboring Torinji,said to mark the start of temple building in Yaeyama.

The city says that after the Satsuma domain surveyed Yaeyama's land in 1611 and urged King Sho Nei to build temples and shrines, Gongendo was founded in 1614 together with the neighboring Torinji. The main hall is a three-bay nagare-zukuri hall, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs says its carved peonies and dragons are rarely seen in mainland shrine architecture.

Founded in 1614 (present main hall: around 1786)
1981: national Important Cultural Property (building)
Main hall: three-bay nagare-zukuri, main tile roof

02 ／ Sketches by the Yaeyama Kuramoto Painters

The Kuramoto painters copied tribute-cloth patternsand drew sketches to assign to each village.

The Yaeyama Kuramoto was the Ryukyu Kingdom's office governing the outer islands. The city says its painters were in charge of copying the tribute-cloth patterns sent from the royal government into sketches assigned to each village, of land drawings for newly cleared fields, and of records of foreign ships that drifted ashore. The sketches belonged to Miyara Ansen, the last painter, and became a national Important Cultural Property in 2019.

2019: national Important Cultural Property (historical material)
Sketches of processions, banners, weaving and cloth bleaching (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
Held by the Yaeyama Museum

03 ／ Yonehara Yaeyama Palm Grove

Only Yaeyama palms riseabove the tall-tree layer of this grove.

On a mountainside in Yonehara there is a grove of Yaeyama palms, a national Natural Monument. The city describes the Yaeyama palm as the only species of its genus, growing wild only on Ishigaki Island and Iriomote Island in the whole world. The Ishigaki cicada, a nationally designated rare species, lives in the grove, which has a restricted-entry zone.

1972: national Natural Monument
Grows wild only on Ishigaki and Iriomote (the city)
Ishigaki cicada: designated a rare species in 2002

Living here

From Naha, about 1 hour by air to an island city.

about 50,000 people

Ishigaki is a city on Ishigaki Island in Yaeyama, and has no railway. Its gateway is Painushima Ishigaki Airport. The tourism guide says the island is currently reached only by air: about 1 hour from Naha and about 3 hours 10 minutes by direct flight from Haneda.

People living here: 47,637people
Area: 229.15km²
Households: 22,033households
Rent (average for rentals): 51,075yen
Healthcare: 3 hospitals ／ 30 clinics

Area and habitable land at the same scalee-Stat B1101 / B1103

Children waiting for childcare: —19 nurseries and similar
Home purchase subsidy: —
Average annual temperature: —

These 3 items are waiting on a nationwide data source. We do not fill them with estimates.

Shape

Borders 0 municipalities.

Ishigaki City in Japan24.345°N 124.185°E

Territory of Ishigaki City

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

37.2km

Travel times per leg are not published by the municipality, so they are not shown.

Ishigaki City isthis kind of town.

01Former Miyara Dunchi in Okawa is a national Important Cultural Property residence said to have been built in 1819, with a garden that is a national Place of Scenic Beauty, and the city explains that it did not readily comply when the royal government ordered it rebuilt several times
02The northwest shore of Kabira Bay was known as the cloth-bleaching beach, where Yaeyama jofu, cloth levied as tribute to the royal government, was bleached, according to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and the bay is part of a national Place of Scenic Beauty
03In the four villages of Tonoshiro, Okawa, Ishigaki and Arakawa, banner books that pair festival banner pictures with notes on size and color survive for the years 1780 to 1926, and are a prefectural Tangible Folk Cultural Property

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Ishigaki City official site ↗Wikipedia ↗