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Story & Photographs by Stephen Mansfi eld

Route 58, the road that exits Naha, snaking a northern

course to the city of Nago and be-yond, begins as an enjambment of fast food franchises, bars, and malls for shopping and entertainment.

Once past the town of Yomitan, known for its rustic pottery kilns, the road acquires more rural fea-tures. When hibiscus, bougainvil-lea, heliconia, fi cus, and fl ame trees come into view, you know you are

fi rmly in the subtropics. Route 58 takes me and a rented

scooter along the broad seafront of Nago City. It’s diffi cult to imagine that such a small coastal settlement, with its old buildings, narrow streets and mom-and-pop stores, hosted the G8 Summit in 2000. This pleas-

�Motobu, Okinawa Prefecture

antly laconic town is probably better known as the home of Orion Beer, a much-loved brew in these parts.

Premier Sights of Nago Just around the corner from the brewery, Nago Museum is one of those endearingly small, unfussy institutions that conform to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s com-ment on the National Museum Cardiff: a “museum that deserved to be in a museum.” Every inch of space in the old cement building—built on the remains of town hall—is packed with antique textile looms, pottery, taxidermy, agricultural tools, wooden canoes, and domestic items.

In ancient times, Nago developed building styles based on Chinese models. I had come to see a more re-

cent piece of architecture, the Nago City Hall. Completed in 1981 by a highly innovative group of then-young architects, known collectively as Team Zoo, the result was a vision that design scholar Dana Buntrock has described as a “primitive, pas-sively cooled structure that is far from institutional.”

A roof planted with grass tops off

To the Enchanting Indigo Forest

34 AUGUST 2012

a concrete and orange-striped lattice structure of breezy outer walkways, corner patios, and platforms sup-porting potted plants. Fifty-six talis-manic shisa, lion-dogs of Okinawa, sit on wall protrusions like gargoyles on a Gothic cathedral.

It’s fi tting that Nago’s premier sight is not a manmade structure but a banyan tree: Hinpun Gajumaru at

over 300 years old is the symbol of the city. The green environs of Nago owe much to 18th-century scholar Sai On, chief minister to King Sho Kei. On’s enlightened forestry man-agement policies, ban on the build-ing of dugout canoes, and efforts to prevent soil erosion and improve irrigation helped protect the region’s old-growth trees.

Mushroomy MotobuNago sits on the edge of the knobby, mushroom-shaped Motobu Pen-insula, an area of forest, sugarcane, mango, acerola and pineapple plan-tations that many consider to be the most ecologically intact region of mainland Okinawa.

Ocean Expo Park and the extraor-dinary Okinawa Churaumi Aquari-

35AUGUST 2012

Getting ThereANA serves Naha with daily fl ights from Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and other locations across Japan.

tropical regions of Southeast Asia and India, the Ryukyu-ai (Ryukyu indigo) grows well in the warm to steamy Okinawan climate.

The Dyer’s HandReturning along Route 84, I follow a small wood sign at the side of the road that points to Aikaze, studio and craft retreat of indigo artist Masanao Shiroma. Locating Aikaze at the top of a steep, crumbling road that winds through the dense Yan-baru Forest is an experience in itself.

The area, closer to jungle or rain forest than woodland, is one of the most pristine natural environments on the island, with a wealth of fl ora and fauna that makes it a veritable botanical garden.

As I shook hands with Shiroma, I noticed his fi ngers were stained green, the result of recent contact with Ryukyu-ai. Offering to show me where the plant grew, I followed him into the undergrowth, keeping a stealthy eye open for serpents. I needn’t have worried. “Snakes loath the scent of the plant,” Shiroma reas-sured me, “so they stay away.”

Spirits and Enchanting Forest Extensive boiling of hemp, base material for the cloth, softens it for weaving. Long and repeated dipping of the material into the indigo dye vat results in a deep blue. Ryukyu-ai leaves can also be applied to the fab-ric for a beautiful gray dye. Serving as a fermentation agent, awamori—very strong Okinawan liquor—is poured into the solution. The material is fi nally rinsed repeatedly in cool, running water.

Stencils are cut and placed on a textile or a textile is knotted or folded

with a small object to create the designs. I watched the fi nal stages of the process, intrigued, as the green-ish material, taken from the vat and hung from a clothesline, turned blue in a process known as aerial oxidiza-tion.

I stood there transfi xed by this vis-ible transformation of coarse fi ber into art as the green surroundings of Aikaze, tinted by this open-air ex-hibition of transparent screens and hangings, turned into an enchanting indigo forest.

um is, perhaps, Motobu’s main draw card for many tourists. It’s easy to see why. Highlighting the marine life of the Kuroshio Current, the larg-est tank contains a whopping 7,500 cubic meters of water, enough to provide a spacious habitat for shoals of manta ray and shivers of whale shark, the largest of their kind in the world. The diorama of endlessly circling fi sh holds viewers in thrall, making it diffi cult to walk away.

Viewed from the park, the bril-liant ocean surfaces of the peninsula deepen from translucent blues to an indigo replicated in the tones of the island’s distinctive aizome textile. Native to the tropical and semi-

36 AUGUST 2012

名护建筑叹奇观

本部半岛尽丰饶

森林深处遇染工

心灵手巧源天然

冲绳县本部半岛

37AUGUST 2012