On of Yaeyama

Yaeyama people say on where the main island says utaki. An on usually has a torii at the entrance, a prayer hall and, behind a stone gate, the ibi, which is the innermost sanctuary where the god comes down. Men are generally barred from the ibi. The gods of an on protect the village and its founders and bring good harvests and safe voyages, and women have served as their priestesses.

Misaki-on stands near the Yaeyama Museum in central Ishigaki. In 1500 the armies of Chuzan and Miyako came to put down the rebellion of Oyake Akahachi, and as they sailed home a woman named Maitsuba fasted and prayed on this spot for their safe passage. When every ship reached Okinawa safely, an on was built here, and from then on Yaeyama's priestesses joined the kingdom's ranks of holy women. A stone gate crowned with a flaming jewel separates the ibi, and its design is said to echo Sonohyan-utaki at Shuri on a small scale. The prefecture designated both the building and the site in February 1956.

Miyatori-on, called Meeturu-on in the local dialect, holds the story of how the four old villages of Ishigaki began. The Yaeyama-jima Yuraiki of 1705 says that when three siblings began to worship here the crops flourished, and people gathered round them until the settlement grew into the villages of Ishigaki and Tonoshiro. Its torii, prayer hall, wooden gate, stone ibi gate and shrine line up on a north–south axis, and the red-tiled prayer hall dates from 1923. Kohamoto-on in Tonoshiro keeps the older form without a torii or prayer hall, and it marks where the brother and sister who brought rice farming to Yaeyama are said to have lived.