The shrine is dedicated to Minamoto no Tametomo, Shunten, Shō En, Shō Kei, Shō Tai. The first fought in the Hōgen Rebellion before making his way to Okinawa and siring there the future king Shunten, as told in Ryūkyū Shintō-ki and Chūzan Seikan, a tale that was exploited during the Meiji period and after to help legitimize the annexation of the kingdom and its reconfiguration first as the Ryūkyū Domain and subsequently as Okinawa Prefecture. The three Shō Dynasty kings were, respectively, the founder of the dynasty, ruler during the kingdom's golden age, and its last king.
Background
In 1889, the governor of Okinawa requested the establishment of a kokuhei chūsha, not only "to cultivate the spirit of reverence and respect", but also on the grounds that this would be "invaluable in the government of the prefecture". Naminoue Shrine was proposed as the candidate. In 1910 it was proposed a new prefectural shrine be established in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the ascension to the throne of the Meiji emperor. Four years later there were similarly unsuccessful proposals to establish a prefectural shrine in the grounds of Naminoue-gū. In 1915 the prefectural government proposed to the Home Ministry the foundation of a shrine dedicated to Shō Tai, Amamikyo and Shinerikyo; this was rejected on the grounds that the central figures of the Ryukyuan creation myth were not part of the Shinto pantheon.
Establishment
In December 1922, the prefecture submitted another proposal for a prefectural shrine. With old Shuri Castle as the location, the submission was approved by the Home Ministry on 31 March 1923. The main hall of the castle, then in a state of some disrepair, was to be demolished to make way for the haiden. Despite the appeal of Higashionna Kanjun to the mayor of Shuri, work was already underway when Kamakura Yoshitarō approached Itō Chūta to help save the site. The pair visited Okinawa together before the prominent architect, a member of the Committee for the Preservation of Ancient Shrines and Temples, declaring the castle the "representative work of Ryūkyūan architecture", intervened to secure an emergency designation under the Historical Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments Preservation Law. Demolition was halted. Itō proposed the main hall be used as the shrine haiden, thus qualifying it for funds for repair under the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law. On 24 April 1925, as "Okinawa Jinja haiden", it was designated a Specially Protected Building. This ostensibly benign episode of heritage preservation might also be viewed as a violent colonial "appropriation" of the palace of the Ryūkyū Kings, paradigmatic "marker of prior independence", for relocation within the "ideological universe" of State Shinto and service of the "emperor-centred Japanese nation state".
After 1945
The shrine and most of the rest of the castle were destroyed during the Battle of Okinawa, and five years later, the University of the Ryukyus was established on the former castle site in May 1950. Under United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands Proclamation 16 of 1952, concerning land with uncertain ownership, the shrine grounds were transferred to the administration of Shuri City, which two years later was merged into Naha. In 1960, a proposal to rebuild the shrine on a plot to the east of the former castle main hall was vetoed by the University. The following year a temporary shrine was erected by the entrance to Bengadake, construction work continuing into 1962. In 1969 a tenancy agreement for the land occupied by the temporary shrine was agreed with Naha City by the Association for the Realization of the Reconstruction of Okinawa Shrine. As of 2016, Okinawa Shrine is one of eleven shrines overseen by the Okinawa Prefecture Shrine Agency, a branch of the Association of Shinto Shrines.
