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 in the western half of Shizuoka Prefecture, which faces south on the Pacific Ocean southwest of Tokyo. Shizuoka includes some of Japan's best known and most scenic coastlines; the arrowhead-shaped Izu Peninsula shelters Suruga Bay with the famous cone of Mount Fuji on the northern horizon. 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. Shizuoka has two Coast Guard offices: at Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula and at Shimizu on Suruga Bay. This page describes lighthouses of the Shimizu Coast Guard District, which includes Suruga Bay beginning with Izu City at the base of the Izu Peninsula. 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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Suruga Bay Lighthouses
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![]() Miho Saki Light, Shimizu Japanese Coast Guard Shimizu Office photo |
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Southwest Coast (Pacific Ocean) Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: East: Eastern Shizuoka | West: Aichi
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Posted November 5, 2006. Checked and revised August 2, 2023. Lighthouses: 31. Site copyright 2023 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.