The largest wildland fire to burn in Japan in decades spread amid dry, windy conditions in late winter 2025. As of March 3, it had consumed an estimated 2,100 hectares (8.1 square miles) of forested land near Ofunato, a small port city approximately 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Tokyo.
Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA) said the fire ignited by 1 p.m. local time on February 26. Three days later, on March 1, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of smoke billowing from the blaze. A thick plume lingers near the coast and appears to cast a shadow over the Ofunato area, while some smoke drifts east over the Pacific Ocean.
By March 1, the day this image was acquired, the fire had burned through an estimated 1,200 hectares (4.6 square miles) of forest, making it the country’s largest blaze in over 30 years. A 1992 fire on the northern island of Hokkaido burned 1,030 hectares, a fire agency spokesperson told The Japan Times.
Wildfires frequently occur in Japan between January and May, when the air is drier, but they tend to be much smaller in size than the one burning in early 2025, according to news reports. However, conditions were unusually dry leading up to this event. Ofunato received only 2.5 millimeters (0.1 inches) of precipitation in February 2025, the lowest monthly total for February in a record going back to 1964. Strong winds that fanned the flames and steep terrain that challenged containment efforts also contributed to this fire’s growth, experts told news outlets.
In addition to burning through forested land, the fire damaged dozens of structures and prompted officials to issue evacuation orders to more than 4,500 people, said FDMA. According to news reports, more than 2,000 firefighters from across the country were deployed to combat the blaze.
References & Resources
- Fire and Disaster Management Agency (2025, March 3) Damage caused by forest fires in Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, and the response of firefighting agencies (12th report). Accessed March 3, 2025.
- Japan Meteorological Agency (2025, March) Ofunato Monthly Climate Statistics. Accessed March 3, 2025.
- The Japan Times (2025, March 1) Japan battles biggest wildfire in decades. Accessed March 3, 2025.
- The Japan Times (2025, March 3) Why the latest Iwate wildfire is so difficult to extinguish. Accessed March 3, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey . Story by Lindsey Doermann .
