The nation of Japan, known in Japanese as Nihon or Nippon (日本), occupies an archipelago off the east coast of Asia. The four main islands are Hokkaidō in the north, Honshū (the largest) in the center, Shikoku in the south, and Kyūshū in the southwest. The country includes thousands of other islands of all sizes; among them the Ryūkyū (Nansei) Islands are a long chain extending to the southwest and including the large island of Okinawa, and the Nanpō Islands are another long chain extending south into the Pacific Ocean. Much of Japan is mountainous but the coastal regions are densely populated and urbanized; the country's population is about 126 million. Japan is divided into 47 prefectures. This page includes lighthouses of the urban prefecture of Ōsaka, including the Ōsaka metropolitan area. Ōsaka is the third lagest city in Japan with a prefectural population nearing 9 million, but Ōsaka prefecture is the second-smallest prefecture in area. Ōsaka Prefecture faces west on Ōsaka Bay, the easternmost basin of the Seto Inland Sea (Seto Naikai), which separates Honshū from Shikoku. It is a coast crowded with port facilities. These industrialized facilities continue westward through the city of Kōbe in Hyōgo Prefecture. Since port areas are typically closed to casual visitors, information on the many harbor lights of Ōsaka is rather scarce. In Japanese the word for a lighthouse is tōdai or toudai (灯台). The words saki and misaki are for capes and headlands, hana ("nose") is a promontory, hantō is a peninsula, shima (also spelled sima or jima) is an island, bae is a reef, iwa or shi is a rocky reef, amase or se is a shoal, wan is a bay, nada is a sound or basin, kaikyō is a strait, kawa is a river, and kō or minato is a harbor. Lighthouses in Japan are operated and maintained by the Japanese Coast Guard's Maritime Safety Agency. There is usually at least one Coast Guard Section Office in each prefecture; the lighthouses on this page are maintained by the Ōsaka Coast Guard Office. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. JCG numbers are the Japanese Coast Guard's light list numbers. Admiralty numbers are from volume M of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 112.
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses: |
Adjoining pages: South: Northern Wakayama | West: Kōbe and Akashi
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Posted December 22, 2006. Checked and revised February 2, 2025. Lighthouses: 29. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.