The nation of Japan, known in Japanese as Nihon or Nippon (日本), is divided into 47 prefectures. This page includes lighthouses of the urban prefecture of Ōsaka, including the greater Ōsaka metropolitan area. Ōsaka Prefecture faces west on Ōsaka Bay, the eastern end 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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![]() Tannowa Kō Light, Sennan Japanese Coast Guard photo |
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![]() North Breakwater Light, Kansai International Airport, Izumisano Creative Commons photo by OpenCage.info |
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![]() Kishiwada West Breakwater South End Light, Kishiwada Japanese Coast Guard Region Five photo |
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![]() Senboku East Breakwater Lighthouse, Tadaoka Japanese Coast Guard Ōsaka Office photo |
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![]() Gaiko South Breakwater Light, Ōsaka Japanese Coast Guard Region Five photo |
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 May 25, 2022. Lighthouses: 29. Site copyright 2022 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.