It reads なおしまちょう — Naoshima 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. Naoshima is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Naoshima.
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直島町 is read なおしまちょう (Naoshima Cho). It is a town in Kagawa 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.
Naoshima has a population of 3,026 across 14 km², making it the 1464th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 17th largest of the 17 in Kagawa.
The closest municipalities to Naoshima are Tamano Shi (5 km), Takamatsu Shi (13 km), Sakaide Shi (18 km).