, also known as Hedo Point, is the northernmost point on

Okinawa Island is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five main islands of Japan. The island is approximately long, an average wide, and has an ...

, located within Kunigami Village. A cape jutting out north from the island, it faces the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phil ...

on the west, and 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 ...

on the east. On a particularly clear day, the island of Yoron (

Yoronjima , also known as Yoron, is one of the Amami Islands.''Teikoku's Complete Atlas of Japan'', Teikoku-Shoin Co., Ltd., Tokyo, The island, 20.8 km² (8 sq. mi.) in area, has a population of approximately 6,000 people, and is administered as the ...

) in

Kagoshima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,599,779 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 9,187 km2 (3,547 sq mi). Kagoshima Prefecture borders Kumamoto P ...

can be seen on the horizon. Yoron Island is located approximately to the north. Cape Hedo is part of Okinawa Dai Sekirinzan Quasi-National Park, a prefectural park established in 1965 and re-established with the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972. In the ''Shōhō Kuniezu'', a

kuniezu The were a series of Japanese provincial land maps, created during the Edo period, which the Tokugawa shogunate ordered be created by every province. They are sometimes contrasted with , which were national maps created by the shogunate. In 198 ...

, or series of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

provincial Provincial may refer to: Government & Administration * Provincial capitals, an administrative sub-national capital of a country * Provincial city (disambiguation) * Provincial minister (disambiguation) * Provincial Secretary, a position in Can ...

land maps created during the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

(1603 – 1868), Cape Hedo appears as "Heto misaki", or "Cape Heto". The expedition of Commodore Perry (1794 – 1858) visited Cape Hedo and recorded it as "Cape Hope" in his ''

Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan The Perry Expedition ( ja, 黒船来航, , "Arrival of the Black Ships") was a diplomatic and military expedition during 1853–1854 to the Tokugawa Shogunate involving two separate voyages by warships of the United States Navy. The goals of thi ...

''. The ''Nihon Suiroshi'', a

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

guide first issued in 1892, records that the cape is also known as Cape Kunigami and is commonly used as a nautical landmark. The site has become a tourist destination, both for its location, and for the monument erected there commemorating the end of US Occupation and return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty. The monument is popularly seen as a photo opportunity by tourists; as tourism to the site has grown, a number of restaurants, souvenir shops, and other tourist facilities have appeared near the site. According to legends of Okinawan history, Okinawan king

Gihon Gihon is the name of the second river mentioned in the second chapter of the biblical Book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers (along with the Tigris, Euphrates, and Pishon) issuing out of the Garden of Eden that branched fr ...

(r. c. 1248–1260) fled the capital after abdicating the throne and disappeared into the forest. He is said to have last been seen at the cliffs of Hedo Point (Hedo-misaki), the northernmost point on Okinawa Island.

References

Tourist attractions in Okinawa Prefecture Headlands of Japan Landforms of Okinawa Prefecture Kunigami, Okinawa {{Okinawa-geo-stub

See also

References