It reads ひらおちょう — Hirao 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. Hirao is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Hirao.
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平生町 is read ひらおちょう (Hirao Cho). It is a town in Yamaguchi 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.
Hirao has a population of 11,831 across 35 km², making it the 1081st largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 16th largest of the 19 in Yamaguchi.
The closest municipalities to Hirao are Tabuse Cho (4 km), Yanai Shi (6 km), Suo-oshima Cho (11 km).