Sakima Art Museum

Michio Sakima grew up in Kumamoto, where his family had evacuated, and first came to Okinawa in 1954, when the island still lay stripped to white limestone. His ancestors' land had become part of a US military base, and he built a collection with the rent from it: Kathe Kollwitz and Georges Rouault among others. In 1983 he met the painters Iri and Toshi Maruki, who wanted their Battle of Okinawa series to stay in Okinawa. Sakima recovered part of his family's land and opened the museum on it on 23 November 1994.

The Marukis painted The Battle of Okinawa from the testimony of people who had lived through the ground war, and those people sat as models. The main panel measures 400 cm by 850 cm and has hung in the third gallery since the museum opened. The couple argued that most Japanese thought of war as air raids, and that a ground war, which only Okinawa experienced inside Japan, destroys people in a different way. Smaller works from the series, among them Chibichiri-gama and Shimuku-gama from a Yomitan triptych, rotate through the rooms.

The building takes its cue from the family's turtleback tomb in the garden, which is about 270 years old. A staircase on the roof has six steps and then twenty-three, and it lines up with the setting sun on 23 June, Okinawa's day of memorial. The museum names the themes of its collection in pairs such as life and death, and humanity and war. Temporary shows change through the year, such as a Rouault exhibition from 3 September to 23 November 2026.