It reads みなまたし — Minamata Shi. 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. Minamata is marked in red.
Minamata is a city located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. It is on the west coast of Kyūshū and faces Amakusa islands. Minamata was established as a village in 1889, re-designated as a town in 1912 and grew into a city in 1949. As of March 2017, the city has an estimated population of 25,310 and a population density of 160 persons per km2. The total area is 162.88 km2.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Minamata.
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水俣市 is read みなまたし (Minamata Shi). It is a city in Kumamoto Prefecture.
市 means "city" and is read shi. A city. 市 is read shi and is the most consistent of the municipal suffixes.
Minamata has a population of 23,155 across 163 km², making it the 834th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 19th largest of the 45 in Kumamoto.
The closest municipalities to Minamata are Tsunagi Machi (4 km), Ashikita Machi (11 km), Izumi Shi (15 km).