Seefa Utaki
Chinen Village, Shimajiri District
The significance of Seefa Utaki in Ryukyuan history has mostly to do with migration to Okinawa Main Island and the reverence there in.
There are two dominate migration theories of the origins of the Uchinanchu,
1) Coming northeasterly following the black current up from Melanesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan. The black current is a current that flows up from the warm waters of the equator, bringing with it the warm water tropical fish and vegetation. This eased the migration of pre-historic and historic sea navigators, whose sailing technique took them all over the pacific; as far away as the Hawaiian archipelago and the Easter Islands off South America.
2) The Uchinanchu came southward from Kyushu making the original inhabitants seem closer to people from the Kyushu region of modern day Japan. Although there are pottery fragments similar to those whom first settled Japan from Korea, the direction of the first settlers of Okinawa-Hon Jima (-Hon Jima meaning main island) is concurrent with the local ancient Okinawan beliefs that people came from Kudaka-Jima. This first landing at Seefa Utaki in Chinen village, is near Minatogawa’s 18,000 year old human remains. Sefa-utaki is a sacred hill and forest where the guardian deities and Nirai gods, who bring happiness, are believed to live (Nakachi 1996: 46). The word Utaki means grove and according to Ryukyuan traditional beliefs, only women were permitted to enter, being that women are priestesses in traditional Okinawa (ie. men are unclean and not allowed to become priests). During the Ryukyu kingdom, worship was preformed by the Nuru (official Ryukyuan priestesses), led by Kikuo-gimi (Chief priestess). One a year, the king would also worship there, but being that the king was a man, he had to dress in female clothing while there.
Historically speaking, another significant use of Seefa Utaki is that the island of Kudaka was worshiped from this place. Kudaka is a little island of the eastern peninsula of Chinen. In the Ryukyuan traditional belief system, human beings were first created there. But that’s another story.
