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Photo: 20nana75 (squared by Juan Pablo Arancibia Medina) / CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Minamitane Town
Kagoshima Prefecture · Town
Official websiteKagoshima Prefecture page
Minamitane Town is in the southern part of Tanegashima Island and is known as the place where Portuguese people drifted ashore in 1543 and firearms were introduced to Japan. The town has JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center, where people can watch rocket launches up close. It is a rice-growing area that ships Koshihikari rice the earliest in Japan.
Key facts
Source: Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2025 Population Census (population, area and density); area from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI), Area Statistics of Prefectures and Municipalities (2025). National ranks are among the 1,741 municipalities, ordered by this site from these values.
Live information
Current weather (observed)
Places to visit
Chosen automatically, most popular first, from landmarks and cultural properties registered in Wikidata (we have not checked whether each is open). Names and descriptions: Wikidata (CC0); photos: Wikimedia Commons (photographer and license under each photo).
Neighboring municipalities
Municipalities sharing a boundary (computed from the National Land Numerical Information administrative boundaries, January 2021).
Other municipalities in Kagoshima Prefecture
The description was written for this site, picking out representative features.