Naha’s Shuri Castle Main Hall in Final State of Restoration; Work Expected to be Completed in June

The Yomiuri Shimbun

2:00 JST, February 20, 2025

NAHA — The Seiden main hall of Naha’s Shuri Castle, which burned down in 2019, is receiving its final coating in a symbolic red color inside a temporary structure, and the process was shown to the press on Tuesday.

All the work to restore the castle has been dubbed the “restoration of the Reiwa era,” which began in 2019.

Lacquer craftspeople use brushes to carefully coat the hall’s irimoya roof and exterior walls with Kushimagiri bengara, a natural red pigment produced in Okinawa Prefecture.

Commercially available pigments were used during the previous restoration work in 1992, which was called the “restoration of the Heisei era” (1989-2019).

To re-create the Kushimagiri bengara pigment, the restoration project team referred to literature from the time of the now defunct Ryukyu kingdom.

The pigment is made from a type of bacteria, which generates iron oxide, that is extracted from a river with brown water in the northern part of Okinawa’s main island.

The pigment is expected to tint the main hall in a red color that is deeper and more muted than the Heisei-era restoration.

According to Shimizu Corp., which was contracted to do the work in a joint venture group, the coating process will be completed by June. Then, the temporary structure will be removed to unveil the red main hall in summer or later.