It reads かしままち — Kashima Machi. 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. Kashima is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Kashima.
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嘉島町 is read かしままち (Kashima Machi). It is a town in Kumamoto 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.
Kashima has a population of 9,624 across 17 km², making it the 1153rd largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 29th largest of the 45 in Kumamoto.
The closest municipalities to Kashima are Mifune Machi (6 km), Mashiki Machi (7 km), Kumamoto Shi (9 km).