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Saikai NPKujukushima, Nagasaki
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Before the lighthouse, whales were watched from Takari, the cape’s northern lookout. In the 1930s, 4 spotters shared a tiny thatched hut; when they saw a whale, they burned damp pine needles to send a smoke signal to the boats.
A wartime structure beneath the lighthouse is often called an ammunition store, but Hirado’s island museum identifies it as a searchlight bunker. Its 1.5 m housing held a light meant to help 2 coastal guns spot ships at night.
Ikitsuki’s long, narrow shape funnels migrating birds toward this northern tip. In spring and autumn, hawks—including Chinese sparrowhawks—cranes and flocks of smaller birds can pass close overhead.
At a 2024 night café, roasted sweet potatoes came from right beside the lighthouse. Food trucks also served aji-fry burgers, Hirado beef bowls and a blueberry farmer’s parfait—a very local menu for a cliff-top gathering.
The cape has heard a whalers’ song again: at a 2023 market beside the lighthouse, a preservation group performed Isana-tori-uta, a celebratory song passed down from Ikitsuki’s historic whaling crews, with drums.
A folk story says returning Tang envoys paused for breath on Ikitsuki, inspiring its name. But an account of their 839 return already records the island as 生属島, so the “catch your breath” explanation is a legend, not a proven origin.
At the lighthouse garden’s 2025 reopening, visitors wrote wishes on stones and stacked them into a gabion fence beside a new viewing deck—turning the refreshed cape grounds into a place people helped shape themselves.
This lighthouse has an outside staircase leading up to a viewing deck, an unusual feature among Japanese lighthouses. From the cape, clear-day views can stretch from Ikitsuki and Hirado toward the Goto Islands, Iki and sometimes Tsushima.
The landward side of the cape isn’t all cliff and concrete: Hirado’s tourism association notes a wild colony of hamayu, a coastal plant, growing in the gentle grassland around the lighthouse.
