Yuza, Japan

Yuza, Japan: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Yuza is a town in Yamagata Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast of Honshu. It is one of 68 submarine cable landing points distributed across Japan, a country served by 51 submarine cables in total. A single submarine cable lands at Yuza, connecting it to the broader submarine cable network that spans the Japanese archipelago.

The cable landing at Yuza supports a domestic corridor, linking Yuza to another point within Japan. Rather than serving as a gateway to intercontinental routes, Yuza functions as a terminal for an intra-national connection, enabling regional connectivity within the Japanese island system.

Cables Landing at Yuza

The Yuza-Tobishima cable is the sole submarine cable landing at Yuza. Spanning 31 kilometres, it connects Yuza to Tobishima, another location within Japan. The cable received its ready-for-service (RFS) designation in 2022 and was recorded as a draft system at that time. As a short domestic cable, it represents a direct link between the Yamagata Prefecture coastline and an offshore Japanese destination, serving the specific connectivity needs of that corridor.

Regional Context

Within Japan's network of submarine cable landing points, Yuza hosts one cable, placing it among the more modestly served terminals in the country. Landing points such as Shima, with 12 cables, Maruyama with 9, and Chikura with 8 serve as considerably larger hubs within the national cable geography. Yuza sits alongside other single- or lower-count landing points, fulfilling a focused, localised role rather than acting as a major aggregation point for international or interregional traffic.

Network Role

Yuza operates as a single-cable terminus, connected exclusively through the Yuza-Tobishima cable to another domestic Japanese endpoint. This configuration positions Yuza as a point of dedicated local access rather than a multi-cable hub capable of routing diverse international or inter-island traffic streams. The short 31-kilometre span of its cable underscores its purpose as a near-shore domestic link.

In the broader Japanese submarine cable graph — which spans 68 landing points and 51 cables, with an average cable length of 5,696 kilometres — Yuza represents the segment of the network dedicated to short-haul, intra-national connectivity. Such landing points, while limited in cable count, extend the reach of submarine infrastructure to communities and offshore locations that would otherwise rely solely on terrestrial or wireless connections.