Qualla: Jogashima Lighthouse

Jogashima Lighthouse: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asturio Cantabrio, CC BY-SA 4.0. A Frenchman built it. An earthquake destroyed it. Japan rebuilt it and kept the light burning. The Jogashima Lighthouse stands on the windswept southwestern tip of the Miura Peninsula, where the rocky island of Jogashima juts into Sagami Bay like a clenched fist raised against the Pacific. Completed on September 8, 1870 -- just two years after the Meiji Restoration toppled the old feudal order -- it was the fourth Western-style lighthouse ever built in Japan, and today it is the second oldest still standing. Its story is inseparable from the turbulent moment when Japan opened its ports to the world, and a handful of foreign engineers helped transform the country's coastline from a patchwork of signal fires into a modern navigational network.

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Image: Asturio Cantabrio | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jogashima Lighthouse: A Treaty Written in Light

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asturio Cantabrio, CC BY-SA 4.0. The lighthouse exists because of a diplomatic bargain. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1858, signed under pressure by the Tokugawa Shogunate during the Bakumatsu period, opened Japanese ports to foreign trade -- and with foreign ships came the demand for Wester...

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Image: Asturio Cantabrio | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jogashima Lighthouse: Ninety Seconds That Reset the Clock

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asturio Cantabrio, CC BY-SA 4.0. At 11:58 a.m. on September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck with a magnitude of 7.9, devastating Tokyo, Yokohama, and the surrounding coastline. The brick lighthouse on Jogashima was shaken apart. For the communities that depended on its light -- the fishing fleets of M...

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Image: Asturio Cantabrio | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jogashima Lighthouse: The Island at the Edge

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. World Imaging assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Jogashima itself is a small, rugged island connected to the mainland tip of the Miura Peninsula by a bridge. It sits at the very southern end of Kanagawa Prefecture, closer to the open Pacific than to the urban sprawl of Yokohama and Tokyo to the north. The coastline here is dram...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. World Imaging assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Jogashima Lighthouse: Verny's Wider Legacy

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asturio Cantabrio, CC BY-SA 4.0. Leonce Verny's work in Japan extended far beyond a single lighthouse on a windswept island. As one of the o-yatoi gaikokujin -- the hired foreign experts who helped modernize Meiji-era Japan -- Verny spent years in the country building the infrastructure of a nation in transforma...

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Image: Asturio Cantabrio | CC BY-SA 4.0