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 lighthouses in the Amakusa Islands of Kumamoto Prefecture. The Amakusa-Shotō, as it is called in Japanese, includes a pair of large and well-populated islands totaling about 42 km (26 mi) long and 21 km (13 mi) wide, separated from the mainland portion of Kumamoto Prefecture by Yatsushiro Bay. At Hondo a narrow channel separates the two large islands, Kami Shima to the northeast and Shimo Shima to the southwest. The islands have a total population of about 120,000 and are accessible from the mainland by a series of bridges on highway 266. 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. The Amakusa Islands lighthouses are maintained by the Coast Guard Office at Kumamoto City. 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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Kami-Amakusa City Lighthouses
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Amakusa City and Reihoku Town Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Kumamoto Mainland | Northwest: Nagasaki Area
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted July 23, 2007. Checked and revised April 23, 2024. Lighthouses: 53. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.