It reads ひらいずみちょう — Hiraizumi Cho. This is one of the harder names in the country: small municipalities are exactly where Japan's nandoku chimei (難読地名, "hard-to-read place names") live.
This place is one of 1,651 in Chimei, our Japan city game. Read the kanji, then pin it on the map.
Play Chimei →Every dot is one of Japan's 1,651 municipalities, plotted at its real coordinates. Hiraizumi is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Hiraizumi.
Booking links are affiliate links — they cost you nothing and help keep Nihoner free.
These are affiliate links. Nihoner may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
平泉町 is read ひらいずみちょう (Hiraizumi Cho). It is a town in Iwate Prefecture.
町 means "town" and is read chō / machi. A town. 町 is read either chō or machi — which one is local convention, and it varies by region. This is one of the classic traps in Japanese place names.
Hiraizumi has a population of 7,178 across 63 km², making it the 1241st largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 26th largest of the 33 in Iwate.
The closest municipalities to Hiraizumi are Ichinoseki Shi (6 km), Oshu Shi (18 km), Kanegasaki Cho (24 km).