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. Nagasaki Prefecture occupies the northwestern side of the island and includes many islands offshore in the East China Sea and Korea Strait. This page includes lighthouses of the southern part of the prefecture, including the city of Nagasaki itself, the Nomozaki Peninsula to the south, and the Shimabara Peninsula to the southeast. There are separate pages for the Sasebo area to the north, for the island of Tsushima halfway between Kyūshū and South Korea, for Iki Shima in the Tsushima Strait to the northeast, and for the Gotō Islands, an archipelago in the East China Sea west of Nagasaki City. All these territories are included in Nagasaki Prefecture. 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. Most of the lighthouses in the area covered by this page are maintained by the Coast Guard office in Nagasaki City but lighthouses of Ariake Bay are maintained by the office at Miike in Fukuoka 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.
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Shimabara Peninsula Lighthouses
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Nagasaki City Lighthouses
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Saikai City Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Sasebo Area | South: Amakusa Islands | East: Kumamoto Area | West: Gotō Islands
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Posted August 6, 2007. Checked and revised April 30, 2024. Lighthouses: 49. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.