The is a

strait A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean channe ...

between the

Japanese islands The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, ''Nihon rettō'') is a group of 6,852 islands that form the country of Japan, as well as the Russian island of Sakhalin. It extends over from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East China ...

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

and Awaji. The strait connects

Seto Inland Sea The , sometimes shortened to the Inland Sea, is the body of water separating Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū, three of the four main islands of Japan. It serves as a waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan. It connects to Osaka ...

and

Osaka Bay Osaka Bay (大阪湾 ''Ōsaka-wan'' ) is a bay in western Japan. As an eastern part of the Seto Inland Sea, it is separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Kii Channel and from the neighbor western part of the Inland Sea by the Akashi Strait. ...

. The width of the Akashi Strait is approximately 4 kilometers, and maximum depth is about 110 meters. The fastest tidal current is about . The 1.5-kilometer strait is one of the important points of the Seto Inland Sea and is at the mouth of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. The surrounding waters around Akashi Strait is a known fishery area. The Akashi Strait is designated as an international shipping channel by the Maritime Traffic Safety Act in Japan. The

Akashi Kaikyō Bridge The is a suspension bridge which links the city of Kobe on the Japanese island of Honshu to Iwaya on Awaji Island. It is part of the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway, and crosses the busy and turbulent Akashi Strait (''Akashi Kaikyō'' in Japane ...

, an almost four-kilometer-long

suspension bridge A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck (bridge), deck is hung below suspension wire rope, cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridg ...

, crosses the strait. It links the city of

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

(the capital of

Hyōgo Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and has a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to the southeast, an ...

) on Honshu Island to Iwaya on Awaji Island (also within Hyōgo Prefecture). Its longest span measures nearly two kilometers. After 10 years of construction it was finally opened to traffic on 5 April 1998. At the time of its opening in 1998, it was the world's longest suspension bridge. The

Great Hanshin Earthquake The , or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995, at 05:46:53 JST (January 16 at 20:46:53 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had ...

occurred beneath the Akashi Strait and struck on 17 January 1995 with

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

7.2. The

Nojima Fault is a fault that was responsible for the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 (Kobe Quake). It cuts across Awaji Island, Japan and it is a branch of the Japan Median Tectonic Line which runs the length of the southern half of Honshu island. The fa ...

, which cuts across Awaji Island, is responsible; a surface trace about 10 kilometers long appeared on the island due to the earthquake. The Nojima Fault is a branch of the

Japan Median Tectonic Line , also Median Tectonic Line (MTL), is Japan's longest fault system. The MTL begins near Ibaraki Prefecture, where it connects with the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line (ISTL) and the Fossa Magna. It runs parallel to Japan's volcanic arc, passing ...

which runs the length of the southern half of Honshu.

References

{{Reflist Straits of Japan