Tenson-byo and Tenpi-gu, Naha那霸天尊庙・天妃宫

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Japan · Okinawa Prefecture · Naha City · Present address 1-25-1 Wakasa; the historic original site was in Kume Village

First built

c. 1424 · Dated by reckoning for the "six-hundredth-anniversary" observances held in 2024; the present buildings were rebuilt in 1975. The stone gate at the Upper Tenpi-gu site was designated a Naha City historic site on 8 April 1977.

Heritage status

Naha City Designated Historic Site (Stone Gate of the Former Tenpi-gu, 1977)Constituent Cultural Property of a Japan Heritage Site

Overview

The Tenson-byo and Tenpi-gu in Naha are administered by the Kume Sosei-kai, a general incorporated association, and are the wellspring of Daoist belief in Okinawa. From the fourteenth century, Fujianese immigrants known as the "Thirty-six Surnames of Kume" settled in Kume Village and brought with them the cults of the Thunder Department and of Mazu: the Tenson-byo enshrines the Celestial Worthy of the Nine Heavens Who Responds to the Primordial and Universally Transforms with Thunder-Sound (the presiding deity of the Thunder Department), a remarkably rare instance in Japan of a Thunder Department deity as the principal object of worship, and also houses a Guandi shrine and a Dragon King hall; the Tenpi-gu enshrines the Heavenly Consort (Mazu). Its founding is dated to around 1424 (as calculated for the six-hundredth-anniversary observances held in 2024). Historically there were an Upper Tenpi-gu (near the present Kume Tenpi Elementary School) and a Lower Tenpi-gu (around the present Higashimachi Post Office); both were destroyed in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, and the two were merged and rebuilt at Wakasa in 1975. The stone gate that survives at the site of the Upper Tenpi-gu is an arch built in Okinawa's distinctive dry-stone masonry technique, similar in method to Unjo Castle, and is estimated to date from the fifteenth century; it was designated a Naha City historic site in 1977 and is a constituent cultural property of a Japan Heritage designation.

Highlights

• Celestial Worthy of the Nine Heavens Who Responds to the Primordial and Universally Transforms with Thunder-Sound
• Brought by the Thirty-six Surnames of Kume immigrants
• Stone gate at the Upper Tenpi-gu site (city-designated historic site)
• Merged and rebuilt in 1975