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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Shizuoka
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A sea-storm legend says a merchant ship promised its mast to Irozaki’s guardian for safe passage to Edo. That mast is said to support Ishimuro Shrine, perched in a cliff hollow above the waves.
Irozaki’s jagged rocks are underwater lava shattered by sudden chilling in seawater. Salt crystals are thought to carve the honeycomb hollows called tafoni; Ishimuro Shrine occupies one of these cliff recesses.
Local tradition dates Ishimuro Shrine to 701 and links its founding to the ascetic En no Ozunu: while training at the cape, he is said to have received a revelation to establish a guardian here.
Every April 3, the Gongen Festival prays at Ishimuro Shrine for safe voyages and good catches. Local fishing boats then parade below the cliffs, flying colorful tairyō (good-catch) flags.
The lighthouse wasn’t the cape’s first night signal: a traditional Japanese beacon burned at nearby Nagatsuro from 1636, on this notoriously hazardous shipping route.
First lit in 1871, Irozaki’s lighthouse was a wooden tower designed by British engineer Richard Henry Brunton. A typhoon wrecked it; the replacement, built in 1933, is concrete and was tiled white in 1993.
The tower is only 11m high, but its light sits 60m above sea level and reaches about 37km in white (33km in red). It alternates white and red flashes every 16 seconds.
The cape is 石廊崎, while its lighthouse is 石廊埼灯台. The Coast Guard explains that 埼 is used for flat land jutting into water on nautical charts; 崎 often suggests a mountainous spur.
