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), 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. Located at the southwestern end of the Japanese archipelago, the island of Kyūshū is divided into seven prefectures. This page includes those lighthouses of Kumamoto Prefecture that are on the mainland of Kyūshū. Most of the prefecture's lighthouses are in the Amakusa Islands, which lie to the southwest separating Yatsushiro Bay from Ariake Bay. Also included on this page are several lighthouses on Ariake Bay that are located in Fukuoka and Saga Prefectures, respectively. Fukuoka and Saga have many other lighthouses on their northern coasts, and those lighthouses are listed on the Fukuoka and Saga pages. 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 at least one Coast Guard Section Office in each prefecture, often two or more. Kumamoto Prefecture has one station, at Kumamoto City. However, the last seven lighthouses on this page are maintained by the office at Miike in neighboring Fukuota Prefecture. 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.
|
|
Yatsushiro Sea Lighthouses
|
|
Ariake Sea Lighthouses
|
|
Fukuoka Prefecture: Ariake Sea Lighthouses
|
![]() Chikugo Light, Yanagawa Japanese Coast Guard Miike Office photo |
Saga Prefecture: Ariake Sea Lighthouses
|
Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: South: Kushikino Area | Southwest: Amakusa Islands | West: Nagasaki Area
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted July 23, 2007. Checked and revised April 15, 2024. Lighthouses: 22. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.