Shuri Castle main hall to reopen on Nov. 23 after restoration
The project is estimated to cost some ¥12 billion, with final interior work and fire-prevention preparations still underway.
Visitors will be able to enter Shuri Castle’s restored main hall in Okinawa Prefecture on Nov. 23. Preparations for reopening include finishing the interior decorations, putting up guide plates and improving protection against fires.
Restoration work began in November 2022 and reached completion in September, ahead of the remaining preparations. The project’s estimated cost is some ¥12 billion. The state will host a ceremony marking its completion on Nov. 22.
The Okinawa prefectural government said donations collected domestically and internationally amounted to about ¥6.2 billion by the end of September. That money has helped fund the hall’s interior decoration and the preservation of traditional artisan techniques.
The hall now has sprinklers, a system for automatically reporting fires and earth leakage circuit breakers. A third-party committee appointed by the prefectural government did not establish the cause of the earlier fire, but said an electrical problem may have been responsible.
The committee also identified extensive use of wood in the hall and neighboring buildings as a possible contributor to the fire’s spread. The blaze began early on Oct. 31, 2019, destroyed nine buildings, including the main hall, and took some 11 hours to extinguish.
