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 lists lighthouses of the southern part of Wakayama Prefecture, which faces southwest on the Pacific Ocean southeast of Ōsaka. The prefecture includes a large part of the scenic Kii Peninsula, which projects southward into the Pacific and is the southernmost coast of Honshū. This is a rugged and scenic coast marked by a series of major lighthouses. 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. On Honshū there is usually at least one Coast Guard Section Office in each prefecture; Wakayama has two, at Tanabe and at Wakayama City. The Tanabe office is responsible for all the lighthouses on this page. 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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![]() Kashino Saki Light, Kii Oshima, July 2023 ex-Instagram photo by jonnobilife |
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: Northeast: Southern Mie Prefecture | Northwest: Northern Wakayama
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted November 5, 2006. Checked and revised January 19, 2025. Lighthouses: 30. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.