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 Chiba Prefecture, located on the east coast of Honshū within a short drive of the Tōkyō metropolitan area. Chiba includes the Bōsō Peninsula, which projects southward separating Tōkyō Bay on the west from the Pacific Ocean on the east. Chiba includes some densely populated urban areas but it also includes a surprising length of wild and scenic coastline. 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 one Coast Guard Section Office in each prefecture, sometimes two. Chiba prefecture has Coast Guard offices at Chōshi for the Pacific coast and at Chiba City for the west coast and Tōkyō Bay. 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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Chōshi Coast Guard District (Pacific Coast) Lighthouses
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Chiba Coast Guard District (Cape Nojima, Sagami Bay, and Tōkyō Bay) Lighthouses
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![]() Awa Shirakama Kō Light, Minamibōsō, March 2023 ex-Instagram photo by lifemaker_gaia |
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:Ω
Adjoining pages: North: Ibaraki | West: Tōkyō and Kanegawa
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted September 25, 2006. Checked and revised November 18, 2024. Lighthouses: 48. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.