It reads しょうわちょう — Showa 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. Showa is marked in red.
Measured as real great-circle distance from Showa.
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昭和町 is read しょうわちょう (Showa Cho). It is a town in Yamanashi 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.
Showa has a population of 20,857 across 9 km², making it the 865th largest of Japan's 1,651 municipalities and the 15th largest of the 25 in Yamanashi.
The closest municipalities to Showa are Kai Shi (5 km), Kofu Shi (6 km), Minami-alps Shi (6 km).