by Hiroshi HIYAMA / Kyoko HASEGAWA

A major fire devastated a historic Japanese castle on the southern island of Okinawa on Thursday morning, destroying large parts of the World Heritage site’s complex, local authorities said.

The Shuri castle is a key part of a complex dating back to the Ryukyu Kingdom, and is believed to have been in use from around the 1400s. Most of the current structures are reconstructions based on original plans and photos of the old castle.

The fire was brought under control by early afternoon, a local fire department spokesman told AFP, adding that the blaze had consumed more than 4,800 square metres (51,667 square feet) of the castle complex.

“All the (three) main buildings have burnt down, with nothing left behind,” Daisuke Furugen, another official with the Naha fire department, told AFP.

On the scene, a local fire spokesman said the blaze had proved extremely difficult to control.

“The radiant heat was very strong. Firefighters had serious difficulty approaching it,” he said in comments shown on national broadcaster NHK.

It was not yet clear what caused the blaze, which was reported to authorities around 2:40 am. There were no reports of injuries.

The fire started in the elaborate main building of the complex, a grand red structure with traditional tiling on the roof, and spread quickly to nearby buildings.

Television footage showed large orange flames engulfing the castle before sunrise, with daylight revealing the extensive damage done to the site. In some cases little more than charred and smoking wood was left behind.

‘Symbol of Okinawa’
“I am extremely saddened by this. I am utterly in shock,” Naha Mayor Mikiko Shiroma told reporters.

“We have lost our symbol.”

“Naha city will make our greatest possible efforts to do everything in our power” to deal with the fire and its aftermath, she pledged earlier, during an emergency meeting on the fire.

The national government pledged it would make “all efforts” to rebuild the site.

“It’s sad. It’s hard to put the feeling into words,” a local resident told NHK.

“I feel hollowed out… It’s been a symbol of Okinawa.”

Officials’ preparations related to an ongoing festival at the site had been ongoing until 1:00 am, hours before the blaze erupted. But it was not clear whether there was a link to the fire.

The complex was largely destroyed during World War II, when the headquarters of the Japanese army was dug underneath the monument.

But it was extensively restored, with the work on the main hall based on scale drawings and photographs taken before the destruction, as well as extensive archaeological excavation.

‘A great monument’
The complex reopened as a national park in 1992.

Thanks to the faithful nature of the reconstruction, the site along with the remaining ruins was registered along with other Ryukyu sites in the region as a World Heritage Site in 2000.

“Five hundred years of Ryukyuan history (12th-17th century) are represented by this group of sites and monuments,” the entry on the UNESCO website explains.

“The ruins of the castles, on imposing elevated sites, are evidence for the social structure over much of that period, while the sacred sites provide mute testimony to the rare survival of an ancient form of religion into the modern age.”

The reconstructed main hall of the Shuri castle in particular is praised as “a great monument symbolising the pride of the Ryukyu people”.

The facility’s Shurei-mon Gate, with its striking red-tiled roof, was featured on a special banknote issued in 2000 when the G8 summit was hosted in Okinawa.

And the Olympic torch relay for next year’s Tokyo Summer Games was due to pass by the site as it travels around the country in 2020.

Japan is dotted with historic castle complexes, most of which are careful reconstructions of original buildings.

Several have suffered damage from natural disasters in recent decades, including Kumamoto Castle in southern Japan, which was badly affected by a series of devastating earthquakes.

© Agence France-Presse

by Jerome TAYLOR

Hong Kong on Thursday confirmed it had plunged into its first recession since the global financial crisis as months of seething pro-democracy protests and the US-China trade war exact a heavy toll on the financial hub.

The semi-autonomous Chinese city has been upended by nearly five months of huge, often violent, pro-democracy demonstrations with little end in sight as Beijing and city leaders adopt a hardline approach.

Clashes between protesters hurling bricks and petrol bombs at police wielding tear gas and rubber bullets have become a weekly occurrence, hammering the city’s once-solid reputation for stability and safety.

The unrest has hit the city’s tourist and entertainment industries hard, compounding economic woes that were already being caused by the global trade war.

Figures released by the government on Thursday showed gross domestic product shrank 3.2 percent in the third quarter compared with the previous period, when it saw a 0.4 percent drop.

That means the city is experiencing a technical recession, with two back-to-back periods of contraction.

It is the first time the city has witnessed a recession since early 2009 at the height of the financial crisis.

Year-on-year GDP also shrank 2.9 percent, its sharpest drop in a decade.

Hong Kong’s economy was already facing strong headwinds at the start of 2019 as it was hit by the US-China trade war, battering a city that is hugely reliant on the world’s two largest economies.

In the first quarter the city was growing at a lacklustre 0.6 percent.

But the protests that erupted in June only made matters worse.

Plunge in mainland tourists
Last week Financial Secretary Paul Chan warned it was “very likely” the city would end the year in a full-blown recession.

Overseas visitors have fallen by as much as 40 percent, especially from mainland China which accounts for 80 percent of the city’s tourists.

Retail figures in August fell 23 percent on-year, their worst decline on record. September’s retails figures will be released Friday and are expected to show an even steeper 30 percent drop according to Bloomberg News.

Earlier this week chief executive Carrie Lam, who has record low approval ratings, said tourist arrivals at the beginning of October fell by as much as 50 percent.

The period — known as Golden Week — is usually a boom time for mainland Chinese travellers as it coincides with a lengthy national holiday.

Hong Kong’s monetary authority cut its benchmark interest rate on Thursday, after the Federal Reserve’s latest reduction, a move it has to do given the city’s currency is pegged to the US dollar.

HSBC followed suit by lowering its prime lending rate for the first time in 11 years, illustrating the shockwaves coursing through the city’s economy.

“We hope that it will bring some relief to our customers and maybe a little bit of sunshine to the gloomy economic outlook,” HSBC’s Asia-Pacific advisor George Leung told reporters.

Officials have taken some comfort from the fact that neither the trade war nor the political unrest appears to have caused any major capital flight while the dollar rate, deposit level and exchange rates have remained largely stable.

Lam and Beijing have shown little appetite to meet protester demands, or to find a political solution, choosing instead to wait out a movement that has remained stubbornly resilient and appears to maintain significant public support despite the economic hardship.

“Even after an eventual calm is restored, it will likely take a long time for tourism-related sectors to recover,” Tommy Wu, a senior economist with Oxford Economics, told Bloomberg News.

© Agence France-Presse