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Yambaru NP, Okinawa
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In the Ungami regatta, six dragon boats race across the bay in separate youth and veteran rounds. At Shioya’s shore, women wade waist-deep into the water and drum to welcome the crews.
Shioya Bay’s Ungami has been handed down for roughly 500 years and is now shared by seven nearby districts. Its prayer-focused and dance-focused ceremonies alternate each year; Japan designated it an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1997.
Shioya’s name recalls salt-making: salt from pans at Shioya and nearby Miyagi Island supplied local households until the Meiji era. The bay’s shore was once part of everyday kitchen life, not just a place to fish or travel.
At the Ungami’s final beach rite, a male ritual specialist acts out catching a dolphin after prayers for abundant harvests. It’s a vivid, easily missed moment in a ceremony that links community hopes to the sea.
Shioya once did double duty as port and government center: it was the district seat from around 1695 until 1908, while tribute goods gathered there travelled by boat via Unten Port to Naha and Tomari.
Miyagi Island sits across Shioya Bay’s entrance, with a coral reef offshore. The island partly screens the inlet, so the water can look more like an inland lake than open sea.
Shioya Port gets a lyrical cameo in the classic Ryukyuan dance-drama “Hanauri no En,” first performed in 1808: a song praises its boats arriving and departing without pause, echoing the bay’s busy harbor past.
The Okinawan song “Endo no Hana” is linked to Shioya through lyricist Eiji Kinjo, who taught at the local elementary school when composer Chōhō Miyara set the words to music in 1924. A village monument keeps the connection alive.
