Tamaudun

Sho Shin built Tamaudun in 1501 to rebury his father, the dynasty's founder Sho En, and the tomb became the resting place of the second Sho dynasty. Stone walls close off a courtyard of 2,442 m² paved with crushed coral. Three chambers stand behind it, and their stonework copies the shape of a palace roofed with wooden boards. The central chamber held the dead until their bones were washed, and the east and west chambers then took the remains in urns, with kings and queens on the east side.

A stone tablet in the outer court records the completion in 1501 and names the people entitled to lie here. Stone lions crouch on the walls above the chambers, and both the lions and the tablet are prefectural cultural properties. The shelling of 1945 that destroyed Shuri Castle hit the mausoleum hard and wrecked the east and west chambers. Restoration took a little over three years from 1974, and in 2018 the three chambers and two stone walls were named a National Treasure.

Tamaudun sits a short walk west of the Shuri Castle gates, and it keeps the same hours all year. Visitors look at the chambers from the courtyard. Naha City runs it along with Shikinaen, and the city also manages the stone gate of Sonohyan-utaki on the castle approach.