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Iriomote Ishigaki NP, Okinawa
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At nearby Niiran Kan Toi—not on the pier itself—Taketomi’s Yuunkai welcomes gods believed to arrive from Nirai Kanai carrying grain seeds. Women priests lead ritual songs there on the 8th day of the 8th lunar month.
Islanders crossed slowly in ita-funi, hollowed-log canoes, with the wind behind them, singing yunta work songs and ayo ritual songs. At harvest, the pier became a landing place piled with straw bags of rice.
The farmers’ rice crossing predates the present pier: Taketomi people cultivated paddies on Iriomote to produce tribute rice under the Yaeyama poll-tax regime, which began in 1637 and ended in 1902.
Completed in 1938, this was Taketomi’s first modern pier: 105 m long and 4.4 m wide, built of roughly stacked limestone with concrete sides. Its widened, sloping tip let boats load at low tide.
Tiny iidako octopuses dig burrows in the sand and wait to catch minamisunagani (smooth-handed ghost crabs), while bluefin trevally zip through the shallows after small fish—a lively little food chain beside the pier.
