The indigenous beliefs of the Ryukyu Islands lack the grandeur of religious architecture.

People sense the divine in mountains, open spaces, and flowing water, and bow their hands toward the another world where their ancestors exist beyond the sea.

In their home kitchens, they worship the fire deity; in the center of the tatami room, which serves as the living space, stands a Buddhist altar where they bow before ancestral tablets. These practices and arrangements are proof that the hearts of the local people share space with invisible spirits and beings.

Nature and ancestors. Please feel the primal landscape of the Ryukyu people’s hearts, who find the divine in the very source of their own lives.

The spiritual practices and the backdrop for performing arts and crafts are rooted in the unceasing blessings of nature that enveloped all aspects of human life.

In fact, the Ryukyu Islands continued their hunter-gatherer lifestyle for over 1,000 years, even after agriculture began in Japan, a nation was formed, and the Yamato court emerged with the Great King at its head.

It’s not that they didn’t know about farming; rather, they likely saw no need to choose agriculture, which would have extended their labor hours.

Such abundant nature is also an object of awe, sometimes unleashing its fury.

This duality of gratitude and reverence likely gave rise to the diversity of deities, the varied expressions of performing arts, culture, and spiritual practices.

Songs and dances expressing people’s reverence for nature and ancestors, their prayers for warding off calamity and wishing for peace; fabrics depicting natural scenes; pottery born from the earth.

The people of Ryukyu have inherited a unique culture rooted in abundant nature and a way of life in harmony with it.

These islands, which thrived through trade between China and Japan even during Japan’s period of isolation, welcomed diverse cultures from afar.

By blending and developing new cultures arriving from across the sea with their existing traditions, they refined a distinct cultural identity.

Festivals represent the culmination of this synthesis. They also serve as rituals to affirm and strengthen the essential community bonds necessary for living in harmony with nature, flourishing richly in each region and village.

n the villages still found on the Ryukyu Islands today, people living together under the great nature and the gods honor each other’s lives and share nature’s blessings.

Amami Oshima has a saying: “Water is gift of mountain, people is gift of world.”

These islands embody a way of life rooted in the belief and cherishing of interconnectedness and mutual support between people and between people and nature.

The blessings of the mountains, the blessings of the sea—The techniques and wisdom of cooking, preserving, and fermenting To fully enjoy the diverse ingredients that change with each season.
The philosophy that calls food the medicine of life—nuchigusui.

The Ryukyu Islands hold a culinary world where nature, intellect, and philosophy intertwine and unfold.

Okinawa is one of the world’s five major longevity regions, a BLUE E ZONE,where centenarians—those living healthily past 100 years—are particularly numerous.

Supporting this longevity is a diet rooted in coexistence with nature,made possible by a long-standinghunting and gathering culture.