is a

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') a ...

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

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 ...

. Formerly a true

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

, it is now connected to 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 ...

by a channel. As an internal body of water, it is considered

's tenth-largest lake (by area). It spans the boundaries of the cities of

Hamamatsu is a city located in western Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. the city had an estimated population of 791,707 in 340,591 households, making it the prefecture's largest city, and a population density of . The total area of the site was . Overview ...

and Kosai.

Data

The lake has an area of 65.0 km² and holds 0.35 km³ of water. Its circumference is 114 km. At its deepest point, the water is 16.6 m deep. The surface is at sea level.

Economic activity

Lake Hamana is a commercial source of cultivated

Japanese eel The Japanese eel (''Anguilla japonica''; Japanese: 日本鰻 ''nihon'unagi'') is a species of anguillid eel found in Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam, as well as the northern Philippines. There are three main species under the Anguilla genus, and ...

, ''

nori Nori is a dried edible seaweed used in Japanese cuisine, made from species of the red algae genus ''Pyropia'', including ''P. yezonesis'' and '' P. tenera''. It has a strong and distinctive flavor, and is often used to wrap rolls of sushi or '' ...

'',

oyster Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not al ...

s and

Chinese soft-shelled turtle The Chinese softshell turtle (''Pelodiscus sinensis'') is a species of softshell turtle that is native to China (Inner Mongolia to Guangxi, including Hong Kong) and Taiwan, with records of escapees—some of which have established Introduced spe ...

s. Fishers take

sea bass Sea bass is a common name for a variety of different species of marine fish. Many fish species of various families have been called sea bass. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, the fish sold and consumed as sea bass is exclusively the European ba ...

, whiting, and

flounder Flounders are a group of flatfish species. They are demersal fish, found at the bottom of oceans around the world; some species will also enter estuaries. Taxonomy The name "flounder" is used for several only distantly related species, thou ...

, among others. The lake has been developed as a resort area, with boating as a feature.

History

In ancient times, Lake Hamana was a freshwater lake. However, the

1498 Meiō Nankaidō earthquake Year 1498 ( MCDXCVIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar, the 1498th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 498th year of the 2nd millennium, the 98t ...

altered the topography of the area and connected the lake to the ocean. As a result, the water in the lake is now

. The old name for this lake is , which means "distant fresh-water lake" and later changed phonologically to . From the perspective of the capital in the

Kinai is a Japanese term denoting an ancient division of the country. ''Kinai'' is a name for the ancient provinces around the capital Nara and Heian-kyō. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kinai''" in . The five provinces were called ''go-kinai ...

, Tōtōmi is more distant than the other famous lake, or Ōmi (now

Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake in Japan, located entirely within Shiga Prefecture (west-central Honshu), northeast of the former capital city of Kyoto. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake, over 4 million years old. It is estimated to be the 13th ol ...

), the "nearby fresh-water lake." The name Tōtōmi was also used for a former

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

in which the lake is located (

Tōtōmi Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today western Shizuoka Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tōtōmi''" in . Tōtōmi bordered on Mikawa, Suruga and Shinano Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . The or ...

). At the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

two experimental

Type 4 Chi-To The ("Imperial Year 2604 Medium Tank Model 7") was one of several medium tanks developed by the Imperial Japanese Army towards the end of World War II. While by far the most advanced Japanese wartime tank to reach production, industrial and mate ...

tanks were dumped into the lake to avoid capture by

Occupation forces Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States wi ...

. One was recovered by the US Army, but the other was left in the lake. In 2013, unsuccessful efforts were made to locate the remaining tank.Takagi, Shog
Lake Hamana searched for WWII sunken tank April 17, 2013
''

The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

'' Retrieved April 3, 2016

References

Sources

This article incorporates material from the article 浜名湖 (''Hamanako'') in the Japanese Wikipedia, retrieved on December 11, 2007.

External links

* * (''Hamanako''),

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Japan) The , abbreviated MLIT, is a ministry of the Japanese government.国土交通省設置法 ...

* (''Hamanako Cycling Road''), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Japan) Hamana Landforms of Shizuoka Prefecture {{shizuoka-geo-stub