Ishigaki Submarine Cable Landing Station

The ruins of a submarine telegraph cable landing station on the southwestern coast of Ishigaki Island (石垣島) overlooking Nagura Bay (名蔵湾). Known locally as Denshin-yā (電信屋), or “telegraph house”, it was built in 1897 as a relay on the military cable linking mainland Japan, by way of Kagoshima, Amami Ōshima, and Okinawa Island, to Keelung in Taiwan. Japan annexed Taiwan following the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Army Ministry laid the cable to support surveillance and colonial administration, establishing a Provisional Taiwan Telegraph Construction Department (臨時台湾電信建設部) in 1896 before the line passed to the Ministry of Communications (逓信省) in 1898. The reinforced-concrete and brick building, its walls still pocked by strafing from American aircraft during World War 2, was designated an Okinawa Prefecture historic site in 2021, but little has been done to restore or maintain it.