Kudaka Island, in the former village of Chinen in Okinawa Prefecture, is a long, narrow island about eight kilometres around, said to be where Amamikyu, the ancestral deity of the Ryukyus, first descended and the birthplace of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Called the island of the gods, it has sacred sites known as utaki scattered across it, places where gods and ancestors are believed to visit from Niraikanai, the land beyond the sea. In the afterword Sawako Obara suggests that the gods may appear all over the island and may have kept watching over the lives and deaths of its people, whose lives and prayers have continued unbroken, though changing in form.