Utinda

Naha, the capital of Okinawa, was once a small isle adjacent to the main island. Surrounded by the sea, water wells here could only draw brine most of the time, a major problem for its inhabitants.

The issue only grew bigger following the Japanese annexation of Okinawa in 1879, which brought more and more settlers to the prefectural capital. To obtain drinking water, people put buckets under rocky cliffs, a kind of natural spring known in the local language as hiijaa.

While a number of such hiijaa sites are known across Okinawa, many of them have either been reduced to tiny streams or nothing but historical markers. Utinda in the Yamashitachō district of Naha, however, retains much of what these springs once were, offering a chance to glimpse the traditional Okinawan way of life.

Streaming out of a tall cliff, the spring water of Utinda once poured into Lake Man below like a small waterfall. It was such a scenic sight that many poems sang of it, while locals and foreign merchants alike constantly fought and argued over the water that it supplied.

Some time later, around the late 19th century, local women would collect the water in a few huge buckets every day to peddle it around in the growing city of Naha. It continued to be a profitable trade until a water supply system was finally installed on the island in 1933.

Okinawa was taken over by the U.S. government following the Pacific War, which heralded the arrival of rapid development. Landfills connected the former island of Naha to the main island. Urban residential districts started to pop up. Utinda withstood this development and was left alone as is, though the water only seeps through the cliff face today, streaming down in thin trickles. However small it has become, it still stands there, a half-forgotten witness of Okinawa's past.