Naha Kokan

• Japanese: 那覇公館 (Naha koukan)

The Naha Kôkan, or Naha Official Hall, was a Ryûkyû Kingdom administrative office and aristocratic children's school in the Wakasa-machi neighborhood of Naha used in the 1850s as a site for receiving Western dignitaries, in part in order to distance those foreigners from Shuri castle. The Ryûkyû Kingdom's Treaties of Amity with the United States, the Netherlands, and France were all signed there.

The Naha Kôkan was one of 21 local village schools in Naha, Shuri, and Tomari where children from aristocratic Ryukyuan families were educated from the age of 7 or 8 until the age of 14 or 15. The curriculum included the Confucian classics, the Three-Character Classic, and The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety, among other works. At the time of the fall of the kingdom in the 1870s, the school in Wakasa-machi had one head lecturer and 82 students. Each school doubled as a local administrative office; the Wakasa-machi school housed one nakadori and two hissha (secretaries).

The Tomari school was also used as a public office, and was sometimes known as the Tomari Kôkan.

References

• Plaque on-site at former site of the Wakasa-machi muragakkôjo.[1]