Qualla: Inubosaki Lighthouse

Inubosaki Lighthouse: Introduction

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abasaa, Public domain. It took 193,000 bricks to build Inubosaki Lighthouse, and every single one of them was a first -- the first red bricks ever manufactured in Japan. Standing 31.5 meters tall on the windswept tip of Cape Inubo in Chiba Prefecture, this cylindrical tower has guided ships along the northeastern approaches to Tokyo since 1874. Its creator, a Scottish engineer named Richard Henry Brunton, trusted so little in the untested Japanese bricks that he doubled the thickness of the walls. A century and a half later, those doubly thick walls still stand, a monument to both caution and ambition at the edge of the Pacific.

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Image: Abasaa | Public domain

Inubosaki Lighthouse: A Shipwreck's Demand

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Suikotei, CC BY-SA 4.0. The story of Inubosaki Lighthouse begins with disaster. On October 6, 1868, the Tokugawa navy warship Mikaho slammed into the rocks of Cape Inubo during a typhoon, killing 13 crew members. Japan had only recently opened to the West under the provisions of the Anglo-Japanese Treat...

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Image: Suikotei | CC BY-SA 4.0

Inubosaki Lighthouse: The Father of Japanese Lighthouses

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit t.kunikuni, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Meiji government turned to Richard Henry Brunton, a civil engineer born in 1841 in Kincardineshire, Scotland, who had arrived in Japan under contract to modernize the country's coastal navigation. Over his career, Brunton designed and constructed 26 lighthouses stretching fro...

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Image: t.kunikuni | CC BY-SA 2.0

Inubosaki Lighthouse: A Lens of Extraordinary Power

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aspere, CC0. What made Inubosaki Lighthouse exceptional was not only its construction but the glass at its summit. The tower was fitted with a first-order Fresnel lens, the largest and most powerful classification of lighthouse optics. A first-order lens stands nearly four meters tall and can...

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Image: Aspere | CC0

Inubosaki Lighthouse: Brick, Mortar, and Earthquakes

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 663highland, CC BY 2.5. At 31.5 meters, Inubosaki is the second tallest brick lighthouse in Japan, surpassed only by the Shiriyazaki Lighthouse in Aomori Prefecture -- another Brunton creation. The tower's double-walled construction proved prescient in a country where earthquakes are a fact of life. In ...

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Image: 663highland | CC BY 2.5

Inubosaki Lighthouse: First Light of the Day

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maga-chan, CC BY-SA 2.5. Cape Inubo holds a special place in Japanese geography: it is one of the easternmost points of the main island of Honshu, making it one of the first places on the mainland to greet the sunrise. The city of Choshi, which surrounds the cape, is a fishing port where the Tone River m...

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Image: Maga-chan | CC BY-SA 2.5