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. Yamaguchi Prefecture is located at the extreme southwestern tip of the main island of Honshū. Yamaguchi has coasts facing south on the Seto Inland Sea (Seto Naikai) and west and northwest on the Sea of Japan. The narrow, twisting Kanmon Strait connects these two seas and barely separates Honshū from Kyūshū. The principal ports in Yamaguchi are Tokuyama on the Inland Sea, Shimonoseki on the Kanmon Strait, and Nagato on the Sea of Japan. Because of its lengthy coastline, Yamaguchi Prefecture has an unusually large number of lighthouses. This page includes lighthouses of the Kanmon Strait and Sea of Japan; the Eastern Yamaguchi page has the lighthouses of the Seto Inland Sea. 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 at least one Coast Guard Section Office in each prefecture, often two or more. The situation in Yamaguchi is more complicated. The Kanmon Strait lighthouses are maintained by the Moji Office, located across the strait in Fukuoka Prefecture, and the Senzaki Office in northern Yamaguchi maintains the lights on the prefecture's Sea of Japan coast. A note on the Sea of Japan/East Sea controversy: The Directory takes no side in any international dispute; it makes use of the terminology, names, and spellings as they currently exist in each area covered. The sea between Japan and Korea is called the Sea of Japan on the pages for Japan and the East Sea on the pages for Korea. 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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Shimonoseki City (Moji Coast Guard District) Lighthouses
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North Coast (Senzaki Coast Guard District) Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Shimane | East: Eastern Yamaguchi | South: Kitakyūshū Area
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Posted January 25, 2007. Checked and revised April 10, 2025. Lighthouses: 52. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.