Naha

Naha grew as the port of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was unified in the 15th century under the Sho kings whose palace stood on the ridge at Shuri, a few kilometres inland. Ships from the harbour traded with China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, and the kingdom paid tribute to the Ming and Qing courts; a community of Chinese scholars, shipwrights and interpreters settled at Kumemura in what is now western Naha and shaped the kingdom's administration. Pottery kilns were gathered at Tsuboya in 1682, and Naha's merchants handled the sugar, textiles and imported goods that passed through.

In 1609 the Shimazu lords of Satsuma, in southern Kyushu, invaded; the kingdom survived as a tributary of both China and Japan until the Meiji government abolished it and created Okinawa Prefecture in 1879, with Naha as its capital. Prefectural rule brought Japanese schooling and the suppression of Ryukyuan languages, and poverty pushed many islanders to emigrate to Hawaii, Brazil and Peru.

The city was destroyed twice over in 1945. An air raid on 10 October 1944 burnt out most of it, and the Battle of Okinawa the following spring left Shuri Castle and the built city in ruins, with enormous civilian loss of life across the island. Under US administration the population returned to a landscape of rubble and military camps; the street that became Kokusai-dori was rebuilt so quickly that it was called the miracle mile. Okinawa reverted to Japan in 1972, and since then Naha has rebuilt its castle, opened a monorail in August 2003 and grown into the commercial capital of the prefecture.

Naha is the centre of a culture that is Japanese but not only Japanese. The Ryukyuan languages, distinct from Japanese though related to it, are still heard from older people and survive in song, place names and everyday words. The three-stringed sanshin, its body covered in snakeskin, carries Okinawan folk music, and bars in the city's side streets have live sanshin playing most nights. Ryukyuan court dance, developed to entertain Chinese envoys at Shuri, is recognised as an important intangible cultural property.

Religion here is its own tradition: sacred groves called utaki, priestesses rather than priests at the oldest rites, and large family tombs shaped like a turtle's back built into hillsides. At the Shimi festival in spring, relatives gather at those tombs to eat and drink together. Eisa drumming and dancing fills the streets around Obon in summer, and shisa, the lion-dog figures made in Tsuboya, sit on rooftops and gateposts across the city.

Crafts are strong: bingata stencil-dyed cloth in vivid colours, Ryukyu lacquer, kasuri weaving and Tsuboya pottery. Okinawan sport has its own emphases, with karate developed on these islands and Okinawan-style sumo practised at local festivals. The city's manners are famously relaxed by Japanese standards — nuchi du takara, 'life is a treasure', is a saying people quote — but the memory of 1945 and the long presence of United States bases give public life in Naha a seriousness that visitors notice.

About 315,000 people live in Naha, in a city of only around 40 square kilometres, which makes it one of the most densely built places in Japan; the wider Okinawa Island urban area holds most of the prefecture's roughly 1.4 million people. Concrete flat blocks, built to withstand typhoons, dominate the skyline, with water tanks on the roofs and, in the older districts, red-tiled houses squeezed between them.

The economy runs on services, government and tourism. The prefectural offices, port and airport are the main employers alongside hotels, shops and restaurants, and the return of former military land — Omoromachi was built on it — has driven a good deal of the city's recent development. Wages in Okinawa are lower than the Japanese average and non-permanent work is common, though the prefecture has one of the country's higher birth rates and a young population by Japanese standards.

Days start early and run late in the heat: shops on Kokusai-dori stay open into the evening, the markets work from morning, and much social life happens in small izakaya after dark. Traffic congestion on the few main roads is a constant complaint, and the monorail's extension has only partly relieved it. The presence of United States bases elsewhere on the island, the relocation of Futenma air station, and the strain that record visitor numbers place on water, roads and housing are the issues that fill the local papers.

Okinawan cooking is a separate tradition within Japan, built on pork, seaweed, tofu and island vegetables. Okinawa soba is the everyday dish: thick wheat noodles, closer to udon, in a light pork and bonito broth, topped either with soki, a stewed rib, or with rafute, slow-braised pork belly. Goya champuru, a stir-fry of bitter melon, firm island tofu, egg and pork, is the other dish every restaurant serves, and mimiga, thin-sliced pig's ear dressed with vinegar, shows the principle that no part of the animal is wasted.

The markets explain the rest. Makishi Public Market sells parrotfish and other reef species in colours unknown on the mainland, umibudo or sea grapes, purple beni-imo sweet potato, and whole pig's faces. Tofuyo, fermented tofu cured in awamori and red koji, is eaten in slivers with a drink. Taco rice, seasoned mince, cheese, lettuce and tomato over white rice, was invented near the American bases in the 1980s and is now standard Okinawan comfort food, and A&W root beer and the island's Blue Seal ice cream come from the same period.

Awamori is the drink: a spirit distilled from long-grain Thai rice with black koji, made on the islands since the 15th century and aged in clay pots as kusu. It is usually served diluted with water and ice. Orion, brewed in Okinawa, is the beer people order first, and sanpincha, jasmine tea, is drunk cold all summer.