Yoshikawa is a crater on Mercury, near the north pole. It was named by the IAU in 2012 after the Japanese novelist Eiji Yoshikawa.
S band radar data from the Arecibo Observatory collected between 1999 and 2005 indicates a radar-bright area along the southern interior of Yoshikawa, which is probably indicative of a water ice deposit, and lies within the permanently shadowed part of the crater.
Radar-bright deposits near the north pole. Yoshikawa is above center.
Yoshikawa is south of the slightly smaller Vonnegut crater.
References
^"Yoshikawa (crater)". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS Astrogeology Research Program.
^Chabot, N. L., D. J. Lawrence, G. A. Neumann, W. C. Feldman, and D. A. Paige, 2018. Mercury's Polar Deposits. In Mercury: The View After MESSENGER edited by Sean C. Solomon, Larry R. Nittler, and Brian J. Anderson. Cambridge Planetary Science. Chapter 13, Figure 13.2.
^PIA19411: Water Ice on Mercury, NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
^John K. Harmon, Martin A. Slade, Melissa S. Rice, 2011. Radar imagery of Mercury’s putative polar ice: 1999–2005 Arecibo results. Icarus, 211, p37-50. doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2010.08.007
