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), 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. Smallest of the Japanese main islands, Shikoku is divided into four prefectures. This page includes lighthouses of the northern portion of Kōchi Prefecture, which faces southeast on the Pacific Ocean. Rugged and scenic, the coast of this region curves around Tosa Bay, a broad, semicircular bight of the Pacific between Cape Muroto on the east and Cape Okitsu on the south. 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 at least one Coast Guard Section Office in each prefecture, often two or more. Kōchi Prefecture has a single section office at Kōchi city. 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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![]() Murotomisaki West Breakwater Extension Light (foreground) and Outer Breakwater Light, Muroto Japanese Coast Guard Fifth Region photo (no longer online) |
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![]() Tonohama Light, Yasuda Japanese Coast Guard Fifth Region photo (no longer online) |
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Information available on lost lighthouses: Notable faux lighthouses: |
Adjoining pages: East: Tokushima | South: Southern Kōchi
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Posted April 23, 2007. Checked and revised February 2, 2024. Lighthouses: 30. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.