Qualla: Lake Hamana

Lake Hamana: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tdk at Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. For thousands of years, a sandbar held back the Pacific. Lake Hamana sat behind it, a closed freshwater system fed by streams draining the Mikatagahara plateau, separated from the ocean by a narrow strip of sediment. Then, on September 20, 1498, the Meio Nankaido earthquake, estimated at magnitude 8.2 to 8.4, struck along the Nankai Trough. The resulting tsunami tore through the sandbar, ripping open a channel roughly 200 meters wide. Seawater poured in. In a geological instant, Lake Hamana was no longer a lake in the traditional sense. It became a brackish lagoon, a hybrid world where freshwater and saltwater mix, and it has remained that way for more than five centuries.

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Image: Tdk at Japanese Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lake Hamana: An Earthquake Rewrites the Map

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Buaidh, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before 1498, Lake Hamana was entirely landlocked, connected to the inland river system but sealed off from the open ocean. The Meio Nankaido earthquake changed the coastline of central Japan in a single afternoon. The breach it created, known as the Imagire Inlet, has never close...

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Image: Buaidh | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Hamana: The Eel Capital of Japan

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aimaimyi, CC BY-SA 3.0. The brackish waters that the earthquake created turned out to be ideal for something no one could have predicted: farming eels. In 1891, an entrepreneur named Kurajiro Hattori from Tokyo's Fukagawa district determined that Lake Hamana's warm climate and the meeting of fresh and s...

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Image: Aimaimyi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lake Hamana: Thirty-First Stop on the Tokaido

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fg2, Public domain. Long before eels made it famous, Lake Hamana was a landmark on Japan's most important highway. The Tokaido road, connecting Kyoto with Edo (modern Tokyo), passed directly along the lake's southern shore. Maisaka-juku, the 30th of the Tokaido's 53 post stations, sat on the eastern...

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Image: Fg2 | Public domain

Lake Hamana: Tanks, Torii, and Tides

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit しんかわな, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lake Hamana's modern history carries its own surprises. At the close of World War II, the Japanese military dumped two experimental Type 4 Chi-To medium tanks into the lake to prevent their capture by American occupation forces. The U.S. Army recovered one, but the second remains...

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Image: しんかわな | CC BY-SA 3.0