The Most Beautiful Places in Japan
122 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Japan are Itsukushima Shrine, Shirakawa-gō and Mount Fuji. The list covers 122 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Japan's beauty grows from a volcanic island chain shaped by heavy rain, steep forested mountains and a coastline cut into countless bays. On this ground two traditions meet: Shinto, which honours spirits in mountains, rocks and waterfalls, and Buddhism, which brought temples, pagodas and the art of the garden. Wooden buildings rebuilt and cared for over centuries stand within reach of the most modern cities on earth.
Mount Fuji, a near-perfect volcanic cone, rises over Lake Kawaguchi, while Mount Aso in Kyushu holds one of the largest calderas in the world. At Itsukushima the great vermilion torii stands in the sea and seems to float at high tide. In Kyoto, Fushimi Inari-taisha climbs its sacred hill through tunnels of thousands of torii gates, Kiyomizu-dera juts out over the slope on a wooden stage held up by tall pillars, and Kinkaku-ji's upper floors are covered in gold leaf above a still pond. The Arashiyama bamboo grove lines a path with stems that close overhead.
The list also keeps harder chapters of Japanese history. In Nara, Tōdai-ji shelters a giant bronze Buddha in one of the largest wooden halls ever built. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the ruined dome left standing after the atomic bombing of 1945, is kept exactly as it was. Hashima, the concrete coal-mining island off Nagasaki nicknamed Battleship Island, has stood empty since the 1970s, and the Tokyo Skytree rises 634 metres over the capital.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Itsukushima Shrine | Shinto shrine | |
| 2 | Shirakawa-gō | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Mount Fuji | Volcano | ✓ |
| 4 | Fushimi Inari-taisha | Shinto shrine | |
| 5 | Lake Mashū | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 6 | Himeji Castle | Castle | ✓ |
| 7 | Aogashima | Island | |
| 8 | Hitachi Seaside Park | Urban park | |
| 9 | Hashima Island | Abandoned mine | ✓ |
| 10 | Hiroshima Peace Memorial | War memorial | ✓ |
| 11 | Arashiyama Bamboo Grove | Forest | |
| 12 | Kiyomizu-dera | Temple | ✓ |
| 13 | Lake Kawaguchi | Lake | ✓ |
| 14 | Mount Aso | Volcano | |
| 15 | Tōdai-ji Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 16 | Mount Kōya | Pilgrimage site | ✓ |
| 17 | Kinkaku-ji Temple | Temple | ✓ |
| 18 | Tokyo Skytree | Observation tower | |
| 19 | Nijō Castle | Castle | ✓ |
| 20 | Tōjinbō | Cliff | |
| 21 | Ise Grand Shrine | Shinto shrine | |
| 22 | Kabira Bay | Lagoon | |
| 23 | Kegon Falls | Waterfall | |
| 24 | Goryōkaku | Star fort | |
| 25 | Tokyo DisneySea | Amusement park | |
| 26 | Nikkō Tōshō-gū | Shinto shrine | |
| 27 | Kintai Bridge | Bridge | |
| 28 | Tokyo Tower | Observation tower | |
| 29 | Tottori Sand Dunes | Dune | |
| 30 | Matsushima | Island |
01 Itsukushima Shrine
Japan · 15.2 km from Hiroshima34.296° N 132.320° E
Image by JordyMeow from Pixabay Itsukushima Shrine is built not on the island of Miyajima but in front of it, on the tidal flats of a shallow bay in the Seto Inland Sea.
Did you know? The Heike Nokyo, 32 decorated sutra scrolls copied by Taira no Kiyomori, his sons and other clan members, is one of the shrine's National Treasures.
02 Shirakawa-gō
Japan · 39.6 km from Kanazawa36.271° N 136.899° E
Image by JordyMeow from Pixabay Shirakawa is a mountain village in the far north of Gifu Prefecture, where the Shō River cuts a narrow valley between forested ridges below Mount Hakusan. Almost all of its 356 square kilometres is steep woodland, and winters bring snowfall that adds up to more than ten metres in an average year.
Did you know? All the roof ridges in Ogimachi run parallel to the Shō River, which gives the village its strikingly unified look from above.
03 Mount Fuji
Japan · 34.7 km from Kōfu35.361° N 138.727° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
名古屋太郎, (edited by Hannes_24 ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano on Honshu, and at 3,776 metres the highest mountain in Japan. Its nearly symmetrical cone, snow-covered for about five months of the year, stands about 100 km southwest of Tokyo and can be seen from the capital on clear days.
Did you know? Women were officially barred from the summit until 1872, yet Tatsu Takayama is on record as reaching the top in 1832.
04 Fushimi Inari-taisha
Japan · 7.5 km from Kyoto34.967° N 135.773° E
Image by Pexels from Pixabay Fushimi Inari-taisha is best known for a single image: a path climbing a wooded hillside inside an unbroken tunnel of vermilion torii gates, glowing in the filtered light under the cedars. The gates — thousands of them along the mountain trails — are gifts.
Did you know? Tens of thousands of small stone altars line the mountain paths, each set up by worshippers for their own personal Inari and engraved with its name.
05 Lake Mashū
Japan43.583° N 144.517° E
Miya.m · CC BY-SA 3.0 Lake Mashū sits at the bottom of a caldera in eastern Hokkaido, ringed by crater walls that drop about 200 metres to the water on every side.
Did you know? Sockeye salmon and rainbow trout live in the lake today, but both species were introduced by people.
06 Himeji Castle
Japan34.839° N 134.694° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Nick115 from Pixabay Himeji Castle is the finest surviving example of a classic Japanese castle, and its buildings have stood intact since the early 17th century. Its brilliant white plastered walls and layered roofs, rising in tiers above the city like a bird taking wing, have earned it the name Shirasagi-jō, White Heron Castle.
Did you know? Ikeda Terumasa's rebuilding of 1601–09 is estimated to have taken about 2.5 million man-days of labour.
07 Aogashima
Japan32.458° N 139.759° E
Soica2001 ( talk ) · Public domain Seen from the air, Aogashima looks like a volcano that has swallowed a smaller volcano.
Did you know? Volcanic activity was recorded on the island in 1652 and again in the 1670s, a century before the catastrophic eruptions of the 1780s.
08 Hitachi Seaside Park
Japan · 10.5 km from Mito36.401° N 140.591° E
Image by nyan8 from Pixabay For a few weeks each spring, a low hill on the Pacific coast of Ibaraki turns entirely sky-blue.
Did you know? At about 350 hectares the park is roughly seven times the size of Tokyo Disneyland, yet only around 60 percent of it is open to visitors.
09 Hashima Island
Japan · 20.5 km from Nagasaki32.628° N 129.738° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by JordyMeow from Pixabay Hashima, better known as Gunkanjima or Battleship Island, is a scrap of rock about 15 km from the centre of Nagasaki that was turned into one of the most densely populated places ever recorded. 3 hectares.
Did you know? Alongside the school, hospital and cinema, the miners' town also had its own pachinko parlour.
10 Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Japan · 1.3 km from Hiroshima34.396° N 132.454° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
DXR · CC BY-SA 4.0 The building now known across the world as the Atomic Bomb Dome was completed in April 1915 as an exhibition hall for the products of Hiroshima Prefecture. Its designer, the Czech architect Jan Letzel, gave it a distinctive dome that made it a landmark on the riverbank next to the Aioi Bridge.
Did you know? Despite its commercial name, before the war the hall was used mainly for art and educational exhibitions.
11 Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
Japan · 7.8 km from Kyoto35.009° N 135.667° E
Naokijp · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the western edge of Kyoto, behind the temples of Arashiyama, a narrow path runs for a few hundred metres through a dense stand of giant bamboo. The stems are mōsō bamboo, the largest of the species grown in Japan, and they rise straight and close on both sides of the lane until their crowns meet overhead.
Did you know? The stems usually stand 10 to 20 metres tall, occasionally reaching 25 metres, with a diameter of up to about 20 centimetres.
12 Kiyomizu-dera
Japan · 5.3 km from Kyoto34.995° N 135.785° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by JordyMeow from Pixabay Kiyomizu-dera, the "Pure Water Temple", stands on the slopes of Mount Otowa on Kyoto's eastern edge. It is one of the few temples in the city older than Kyoto itself as a capital.
Did you know? The hidden main statue of the eleven-headed, thousand-armed Kannon is displayed to the public only once every 33 years.
13 Lake Kawaguchi
Japan · 21.7 km from Kōfu35.515° N 138.757° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by IT-STUDIO from Pixabay Lake Kawaguchi, Kawaguchi-ko, lies at the northern foot of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture, and it is the lake that gives most visitors their first full view of the mountain across open water.
Did you know? The lake is shallow for its size: about 6.1 square kilometres in area but only some 15 metres deep at its deepest point.
14 Mount Aso
Japan · 38.9 km from Kumamoto32.885° N 131.104° E
Image by RealSprout from Pixabay Mount Aso, in the heart of Kyushu, is a volcano on a vast scale: a caldera about 25 km from north to south and 18 km from east to west, with a rim some 120 km around, so large that whole towns and farmland lie inside it.
Did you know? Lakes once filled the valleys inside the caldera; their dried beds are now known as Old Aso Lake, Kugino Lake and Aso Valley Lake.
15 Tōdai-ji Temple
Japan · 35.3 km from Ōtsu34.689° N 135.840° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by daeron from Pixabay Emperor Shōmu ordered this temple built in 743, and it wasn't primarily an act of devotion for its own sake — Japan had just been through smallpox epidemics, famine, and a failed rebellion, and Shōmu's response was to commission a nationwide network of provincial temples with this one, in the capital, as the head of…
Did you know? In 855 the Great Buddha's head suddenly fell to the ground, and donations were gathered across the empire to make a new one.
16 Mount Kōya
Japan · 38.3 km from Wakayama34.218° N 135.583° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Lianguanlun · CC BY 4.0 Mount Kōya is not a single peak but a high basin in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, a plain at about 800 metres ringed by eight summits.
17 Kinkaku-ji Temple
Japan · 2 km from Kyoto35.039° N 135.728° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by siamkop from Pixabay The ground this pavilion stands on was a private retirement estate before it was ever a temple.
Did you know? The pavilion served as the model for the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku-ji, built by Yoshimitsu's grandson Yoshimasa, who even borrowed the names of its upper floors.
18 Tokyo Skytree
Japan · 6.1 km from Tokyo35.710° N 139.811° E
Image by cegoh from Pixabay Tokyo Skytree is the tallest tower in the world, a 634 m lattice of steel that Guinness World Records certified in 2011 as the tallest free-standing tower; among all structures, only the Burj Khalifa and Merdeka 118 are taller.
Did you know? While still under construction it overtook Taipei 101 in December 2010 and then the 600-metre Canton Tower in March 2011.
19 Nijō Castle
Japan · 2 km from Kyoto35.014° N 135.748° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Moechann from Pixabay Nijō Castle is a castle built to impress rather than to fight. In 1601 Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the lords of western Japan to pay for a residence in Kyoto for the Tokugawa shoguns. The shoguns ruled from Edo, but the emperor's court remained in Kyoto.
Did you know? Builders absorbed part of the old Shinsen-en, a garden of the original imperial palace, and used its abundant water for the castle ponds.
20 Tōjinbō
Japan · 20.4 km from Fukui36.238° N 136.125° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 Tōjinbō is a kilometre of coast on the Sea of Japan where the land ends in giant stone pillars. The cliffs, about 30 metres high on average, are made of pyroxene andesite that cooled 12 to 13 million years ago, in the Miocene, and cracked as it cooled into tightly packed five- and six-sided columns.
Did you know? The tallest sheer drop, about 25 metres, encloses an inlet called Ōike, into which the sightseeing boats nose their way.
21 Ise Grand Shrine
Japan · 34.8 km from Tsu34.455° N 136.726° E
MaedaAkihiko · CC0 Ise is the most sacred place in Shinto and, in a way, one of the newest: its principal buildings are torn down and rebuilt every twenty years. The current sanctuaries date from 2013, the sixty-second time the ritual of renewal, the Shikinen Sengū, has been carried out, and the next is planned for 2033.
Did you know? Each renewal takes around 17 years from planning to completion, and the cypress timber is seasoned for years in ponds before it is dried and used.
22 Kabira Bay
Japan24.451° N 124.144° E
Tokyo-Good · CC BY-SA 4.0 Kabira Bay, on the north-western coast of Ishigaki Island in Japan's far south, is a small sheltered bay of white sand and turquoise water whose colours shift constantly with the light and with the rise and fall of the tide.
Did you know? Its first harvest in 1954 yielded 112 black pearls, all of poor colour and shape, and by 1958 the mainland technicians had given up and left.
23 Kegon Falls
Japan · 39 km from Utsunomiya36.738° N 139.502° E
Orbixx · CC BY-SA 3.0 A single column of water drops 97 metres down a sheer volcanic wall, while a curtain of a dozen thinner streams seeps out of the cliff face around it.
Did you know? At normal flow the main plunge is only about 7 metres wide, making its 97-metre drop look like a narrow white column.
24 Goryōkaku
Japan · 1.4 km from Hakodate41.797° N 140.757° E
Keihin nike · CC BY-SA 3.0 Goryōkaku is Japan's great star fort: a five-pointed citadel of ramparts and water in the middle of Hakodate, designed so that each bastion covers its neighbours with gunfire.
Did you know? The moat is up to about 30 metres wide and some 1.8 km around; it was originally fed through buried wooden pipes from the Kameda River about a kilometre away.
25 Tokyo DisneySea
Japan · 14.2 km from Tokyo35.627° N 139.888° E
CasinoKat · CC BY-SA 3.0 Tokyo DisneySea opened on 4 September 2001 next to Tokyo Disneyland on reclaimed land in Urayasu, on the shore of Tokyo Bay.
Did you know? Fantasy Springs, the 2024 expansion, cost an estimated 320 billion yen, almost as much as the original park, and covers about 140,000 square metres.
26 Nikkō Tōshō-gū
Japan · 33.6 km from Utsunomiya36.759° N 139.599° E
Jpatokal · CC BY-SA 4.0 Nikkō Tōshō-gū is the opposite of the restraint usually associated with Japanese shrines.
Did you know? Nikkō lies almost due north of Edo Castle, and tradition holds that Ieyasu wished to guard the realm from the position of the Pole Star.
27 Kintai Bridge
Japan · 34.5 km from Hiroshima34.168° N 132.178° E
Image by ChiemSeherin from Pixabay Kintai Bridge crosses the Nishiki River at Iwakuni in five tall timber arches, each rising and falling like a drumbeat, and seen from the bank the whole line has the rhythm of a ribbon laid on the water, which is close to what its name, "brocade sash", suggests. It was the answer to a stubborn problem.
Did you know? The oldest surviving construction drawing of the bridge dates from 1699, and the form seen today was fixed in the 1790s.
28 Tokyo Tower
Japan · 3.2 km from Tokyo35.659° N 139.746° E
Image by LittleMouse from Pixabay Tokyo Tower was completed in 1958 as a transmitter for the Kantō region and as a symbol of Japan's recovery after the war. 9 metres, overtook its Parisian model by nine metres to become the tallest freestanding tower in the world.
Did you know? Since 1989 lighting designer Motoko Ishii's floodlights have bathed it warm orange in the cooler months and white in summer.
29 Tottori Sand Dunes
Japan · 4.4 km from Tottori35.540° N 134.227° E
Image by jackmac34 from Pixabay 4 km deep, formed from sediment carried down from the Chūgoku Mountains by the Sendai River and shaped by the wind over about 100,000 years.
Did you know? The Sand Museum beside the dunes is described as the world's first museum devoted entirely to sand sculpture.
30 Matsushima
Japan · 20.5 km from Sendai38.356° N 141.076° E
Chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0 Matsushima is a bay on the Pacific coast of Miyagi Prefecture scattered with some 260 small islands, each a knob of rock crowned with twisted pines, which give the place its name: matsu means pine.
Did you know? Excavations show that the site of Zuigan-ji was a salt-making furnace in the Heian period, casting doubt on the temple's claimed founding in 828.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Japan?
- On our list, Itsukushima Shrine ranks first, followed by Shirakawa-gō and Mount Fuji.
- Why are there so many torii gates at Fushimi Inari?
- Each gate is donated by a person or business, often in thanks for success, and carries the donor's name on its back. Over the centuries the gifts have formed tunnels of torii along the paths up Mount Inari.
- Why does the torii of Itsukushima Shrine look like it is floating?
- The gate stands in the tidal bay off Miyajima island, so at high tide it is surrounded by water. It is not anchored deep in the seabed but kept upright by its own weight.
- What is Hashima Island?
- Hashima is a small island off Nagasaki that was covered with concrete housing and coal-mining works and became one of the most densely populated places on earth. The mine closed in 1974 and the island was abandoned; it is now part of a UNESCO site on Japan's Meiji industrial revolution.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Japan?
- In our collection, the places in Japan are most often temples (13), Shinto shrines (11), waterfalls (5) and historic gardens (5).
- How many places are on this list in Japan?
- The list covers 122 places.