Gokoku-ji (Okinawa) 2.22

Gokoku-ji is a Buddhist temple in Naha, Okinawa. Established in 1367, the temple served as a major national temple for the Okinawan kingdom of Chūzan and the unified Ryūkyū Kingdom which would follow. It is perhaps most well known for its associations with Christian missionary Dr. Bernard Jean Bettelheim and with the 1853-1854 visits by Commodore Matthew Perry to Okinawa.HistoryThe temple was first founded in 1367, by a Japanese monk from Satsuma province by the name of Raijū and with the patronage of the royal government of Chūzan, as a companion to the Naminoue Shrine already located on the bluff, overlooking the beach and ocean.Loochoo Naval MissionCenturies later, in 1846, the temple was taken over by the doctor and Christian missionary Bernard Jean Bettelheim, who occupied it for seven years, driving off Buddhist worshipers and the temple's rightful occupants. Working as a lay medical missionary under the auspices of the Loochoo Naval Mission, when Bettelheim's ship, HMS Starling, arrived at Naha, the Okinawan port master protested that he should not be allowed to disembark. HMS Starling's captain wished to honor this request, but Bettelheim made his way ashore anyway and ended up being offered shelter in the Gokoku-ji for that night; he would not leave for seven years. Turning away worshipers and monks alike by suggesting that they were trying to observe his wife, Bettelheim boarded up the temple's sanctuary and threw out much of what he called "the heathen furniture of idolatry".