, located in a cave on a cliff to the northeast of Urasoe castle

Urasoe Castle

was an Okinawan castle, or gusuku, which served as the capital of the medieval Okinawan principality of Chūzan prior to the unification of the island into the Ryūkyū Kingdom, and the moving of the capital to Shuri....

 on Okinawa, is a mausoleum housing the remains of three rulers of the island, along with one king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom

Ryukyu Kingdom

The Ryūkyū Kingdom was an independent kingdom which ruled most of the Ryukyu Islands from the 15th century to the 19th century. The Kings of Ryūkyū unified Okinawa Island and extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands in modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture, and the Sakishima Islands near Taiwan...

 separated from the others by several centuries.

The mausoleum was established in 1261, during the reign of Eiso

Eiso

was a after Eien and before Shōryaku. This period spanned the years from August 988 through November 990. The reigning emperor was .-Change of era:* 989 : The new era name was created to mark an event or a number of events...

, before Okinawa was divided into three kingdoms

Sanzan period

The is a period of history of the Ryūkyū Kingdom that lasted from 1322 until 1429.The early 13th century saw a growth in the construction of Gusuku by a number of powerful kings leading to the emergence of three kingdoms in the 14th century: , and...

, when it was simply ruled by a network of local chieftains under the leadership of one head chieftain or "king". Eiso and two of his successors are entombed at Urasoe yōdore, in sarcophagi of a Chinese diorite

Diorite

Diorite is a grey to dark grey intermediate intrusive igneous rock composed principally of plagioclase feldspar , biotite, hornblende, and/or pyroxene. It may contain small amounts of quartz, microcline and olivine. Zircon, apatite, sphene, magnetite, ilmenite and sulfides occur as accessory...

 stone; statues of the bodhisattva

Bodhisattva

In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is either an enlightened existence or an enlightenment-being or, given the variant Sanskrit spelling satva rather than sattva, "heroic-minded one for enlightenment ." The Pali term has sometimes been translated as "wisdom-being," although in modern publications, and...

s Kannon and Jizō stand inside the cave.

More than 300 years later, King Shō Nei

Sho Nei

' was king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom from 1587–1620. He reigned during the 1609 invasion of Ryūkyū and was the first king of Ryūkyū to be a vassal to the Shimazu clan of Satsuma, a Japanese feudal domain....

 requested to be buried at Urasoe and not in the Shō family royal mausoleum of Tamaudun

Tamaudun

is a mausoleum in Shuri, Okinawa, built for Ryūkyūan royalty in 1501 by King Shō Shin, the third king of the second Shō dynasty a short distance from Shuri Castle....

. His reign had seen the invasion of Ryukyu

Invasion of Ryukyu

The invasion of Ryukyu by forces of the Japanese feudal domain of Satsuma took place in 1609, and marked the beginning of the Ryūkyū Kingdom's status as a vassal state under Satsuma...

 by forces from Japan's Satsuma province

Satsuma Province

was an old province of Japan that is now the western half of Kagoshima Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. Its abbreviation is Sasshū .During the Sengoku Period, Satsuma was a fief of the Shimazu daimyo, who ruled much of southern Kyūshū from their castle at Kagoshima city.In 1871, with the...

, and the subjugation of the kingdom to Satsuma's suzerainty

Suzerainty

Suzerainty occurs where a region or people is a tributary to a more powerful entity which controls its foreign affairs while allowing the tributary vassal state some limited domestic autonomy. The dominant entity in the suzerainty relationship, or the more powerful entity itself, is called a...

, and thus it is believed that he felt he had dishonored his family and his kingdom, and was not worthy of being buried with his ancestors.