S P O T ／ SPOT-312

Sadamisaki Lighthouse

佐田岬灯台さだみさきとうだい

Shikoku tapers off to the west in one of Japan's strangest landforms: the Sadamisaki Peninsula, a knife-thin ridge barely a few hundred meters wide that runs nearly 40 kilometers out into the sea, splitting the calm Seto Inland Sea from the open Uwa Sea. Right at its tip stands the white Sadamisaki Lighthouse, first lit in 1918 and now over a century old. Architecturally it is a quietly important thing — one of the best-preserved examples of Japan's early reinforced-concrete lighthouses, with a faceted tower and crisp geometric detailing on its lantern-room railing and doorway eaves, earning it national Registered Tangible Cultural Property status in 2017. Its light reaches some 35 kilometers, far enough to touch the Kyushu shore across the Hoyo Strait, and on clear days you can see the opposite island with the naked eye. But the real draw is the pilgrimage to get there: you park, then walk 20 to 25 minutes along a cliff-edge footpath that rides the spine of the peninsula to the literal westernmost point of mainland Shikoku, marked by a stone monument. It is the kind of place where the act of arriving — earning the extreme point on foot — is as much the attraction as the lighthouse itself.