Tomari

• Japanese/Okinawan: 泊 (Tomari / Tumai)

Tomari was a district of the city of Naha, the chief port of the Kingdom of Ryûkyû, and a major port in its own right. The port district sits at the mouth of the Azato-gawa (Azato River), and served as a key transport point, connecting water routes to land routes (roads).

A one-kilometer-long, narrow earthen embankment called the Chôkôtei connected the tiny off-shore island of Ukishima, where most of the other districts of Naha were located, to the Okinawan "mainland," ending at the temple of Sôgenji in Tomari.

Tomari was an active and busy port as early as the 13th-14th centuries. While the port of Naha was the chief site for receiving foreign ships, ships from Yaeyama, Miyako, Amami, and other outlying islands within the kingdom, including those bringing tribute, made port at Tomari. The Tomari satonushi, the chief administrator for the district, was also in charge of receiving and managing the tribute from Amami. His office was known as Tumai udun; the district also contained warehouses for storing the tribute goods, known as Ôshimakura.

In the 19th century, when European and American ships began to call at Ryûkyû, Ryukyuan and Satsuma han authorities did not wish to allow these ships into Naha Harbor; thus the water off of Tomari were employed as an anchorage, and foreigners who came ashore thus did so in Tomari, and not in Naha proper. A monument still stands today at the Tomari International Cemetery marking that Commodore Perry came ashore near that spot in 1853.

References

• Plaques on-site at Tomari Port.[1]
• Uezato Takashi. "The Formation of the Port City of Naha in Ryukyu and the World of Maritime Asia: From the Perspective of a Japanese Network." Acta Asiatica 95 (2008). pp57-77.