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The Izu Islands: 7 Live Cameras in Japan

A chain of volcanoes running south from Tokyo Bay. Seven cameras, from the seafloor vents off Ito to Aogashima. Every island here is administratively part of Tokyo.

What you can see

The Izu Islands are not a scattering of islands. They are a single volcanic chain along the edge where the Philippine Sea Plate goes down, and the islands are simply the parts of that chain that reach above water. All of them belong to Tokyo Metropolis, even the ones 350 km out.

This page runs north to south. The Higashi-Izu volcano group is the only one on the mainland, near Ito in Shizuoka. There is no single mountain here — small craters are scattered across the land and the seabed alike, and in 1989 an eruption offshore built a new submarine cone called Teishi Knoll.

Then the islands. Izu-Oshima is one volcano from shore to shore; its 1986 eruption took every resident off the island. Niijima is made of white rhyolite, quarried for building stone for centuries. Kozushima has a written record of the eruption that built Mount Tenjo in 838. Miyakejima erupted in 2000 and then kept venting volcanic gas for so long that islanders lived elsewhere for more than four years. Hachijojima is two volcanoes grown together, and Aogashima is a caldera with another cone standing inside it.

All seven are Japan Meteorological Agency volcano-monitoring cameras, refreshing a still image every two minutes. They are not scenery cameras: the framing is fixed on the crater or the edifice and never moves.

Cameras you can watch now: 7

All 7 are still images. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

Assume cloud. There is nothing but ocean around these islands, so moist air runs straight into them and sits on the mountains. Through the rainy season and summer you can open all seven and get seven white rectangles.

Winter is the season. After the northwest monsoon has blown through, the air dries out and you get island outlines and open sea. And because Hachijojima and Aogashima are much further south, they hold daylight longer — if you are looking in the late afternoon Japan time, start from the southern end.

Time of day: early morning. Steam and gas show up white and dense when the air is cold, and thin out as the sun gets up. By afternoon, air lifted up the slopes often turns to cloud that hides the summit specifically.

Late summer into autumn is typhoon season, and these islands are on the track. The picture goes dark and raindrops smear the lens. That is less a view than a way of checking how rough it is out there.

Where The Izu Islands is

Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.

To find other cameras, go to the camera list. You can narrow all 172 cameras by format, region, subject and provider.
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