Another nice path of Yanbaru. I think this will conclude this collaborative thread #FootpathFriday / #EADays #JEArchéo #JEA2025. I have more photographs of Yanbaru paths of course, but I fear I am becoming a little bit redundant… There are some parts of Yanbaru easily accessible to the public (even children) for instance in the park around Nangusuku (Nago Gusuku). They even have charcoal kilns ! I’d recommend to wait for november though, when the habu season is over.

Ah, bamboo! Another plant you’ll learn to hate really quickly when surveying Yanbaru… They invade the ridge paths like the ferns. Of course they don’t look terrible in this picture. When they are terrible, I’m too busy cutting my way through to take any pictur And they cut holes in your waterproof boots! All things considered, ridge paths are quite a bit of hell, better stick in the valley and walk the streams.If your boots are still all right.
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In fact when the horse paths became too deep, they made another one 1 metre on the right or the left. Generally there is a human footpath just next to the horse paths (on top of it you would say) because that’s not easy to pass a horse going the opposite way on such narrow paths, so humans would better walk elsewhere. So you can find two horse paths (different depth) + one human path going the same way. Yanbaru’s highways.
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Another horse path, please appreciate the height of the walls. Or maybe their depth, since they were dug...A lot of the paths were cut after the Japanese annexation, at the end of the 19th century : the Ryūkyū Kingdom was really strict about access to Yanbaru. But even limited, there was access and so, necessarily, paths. I mean we found paths with the kingdom’s landsurvey markers along them, so obviously, some date back to the kingdom.
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This is another ridge path, same area, no horse, for comparison. Very well conserved, probably used until more recently. Most of Yanbaru’s paths have been used till WWII. Then the US put their jungle warfare training thing there and access was denied. Also, Okinawa’s population drastically decreased with the war so people just concentrated on the good valley fields on the coast and even the parts that were outside the fences were abandoned.
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Another survey, even older, february 2018, where we had horse paths ! Lots of them. Please appreciate this first one, that is not very deep indeed, but whose symmetry is vaguely satisfying. As you can see this is a ridge path, but instead of being flat, the repeated passage of horses (to carry bamboo and firewood) has dug it, giving it a nice U shape (it’s currently being filled a bit by almost 80 years of forest deposits…)
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OK, that’s not a path, that’s a stream. But you can’t make a thread about a Yanbaru survey without putting one or two photographs of gorgeous streams, whether it is Footpath Friday or not. Moreover, it answers the question “why the hell would you walk in a stream ?” : as you can see, absolutely no vegetation to clear to be able to progress ! You can just walk and look for historical remains while appreciating the landscape.
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Another slope path, after clearing, quite weathered. As you can see the hills in Yanbaru might not be very high, but they are very steep, we’re always very happy to find an old path. Not only because archaeological remains concentrate along old paths, but also just because it eases the progression so much. There is much difference between cutting your way in the vegetation in the wild and cutting your way in the vegetation on an ancient path…
#EADays #JEArchéo #JEA2025 #Okinawa #FootpathFriday