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.
Hokkaidō, the northernmost of the four main islands of
Japan, is very roughly triangular in shape, facing north on the Sea
of Okhotsk, southeast on the Pacific Ocean, and west on the Sea of Japan.
It is separated from Honshū to the south by the Tsugaru Strait and from
Russian Sakhalin to the north by the Sōya Strait, often known in the West as the La Pérouse Strait.
Japan is divided into 47 prefectures. The entire island of Hokkaidō forms a single prefecture, making it by far the largest of the 47. The prefecture is divided into nine administrative regions, called subprefectures in English. The subprefectures of Hokkaidō are similar in size to the prefectures in the other main islands.
This page covers lighthouses of eastern Hokkaidō including the subprefectures
of Nemuro, Kushiro, and Tokachi. The easternmost land in Japan, this coast
faces east on the Pacific Ocean. In the north the narrow and twisting Nemuro Strait separates Hokkaidō from the Kuril Islands.
The southernmost Kurils, including Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and
the Khabomai Islands, are claimed by Japan but have been occupied by Russia since the end of World War II in 1945.
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. Lighthouses in Nemuro Subprefecture are the responsibility of the Nemuro Coast Guard office and those in Kushiro and Tokachi Subprefectures are maintained by the Kushiro 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.
- General Sources
- Lighthouse-Japan.com - Hokkaidō
- A site with excellent photos and text in Japanese.
- Misty's
Japanese Lighthouse Tour - Hokkaidō
- Photos and brief notes in English.
- Form of a Lighthouse
- Another site with many photos of lighthouses in northern Japan; cited below as FOAL.
- Lighthouse Visits
- Another good source of lighthouse photos.
- Online List of Lights - Hokkaidō - Northeast Coast and Southeast Coast
- Photos by various photographers posted by Alexander Trabas. Photos for this area were provided by Jim Smith.
- Nemuro Coastal Lighthouses
- Posted by the Nemuro Coast Guard Station, this page links to pages for the major lighthouses. Another page links to pages for the breakwater lighthouses.
- Nemuro Lighthouse Photo Album
- Additional photos posted by the Nemuro Coast Guard Station.
- Kushiro Lighthouse Photos
- Photos posted by the Kushiro Coast Guard Station.
- Lighthouses in Hokkaido Prefecture
- Photos by various photographers available from Wikimedia.
- Japan: Modern Lighthouses
- Historic postcard images posted by Michel Forand.
- Google Maps
- Satellite view of eastern Hokkaidō.
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Kushiro Saki Light, Kushiro, September 2022
ex-Google Maps photo by Yosuke Matsuno

Tokachi Otsu Light, Toyokoro, December 2021
Instagram photo by pikotang_lighthouse
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