Nagasaki Prefecture Hirado has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen:Cfa) with hot summers and cool winters.

Precipitation is significant throughout the year, but is much higher in the summer, although the relatively low latitude and its coastal location the city receives snow in small quantities but enough to "mark" the winter every year despite being in 33 ° N receives intrusions from the Arctic cold of the Siberia air combined with the humidity of the Sea of Japan.

During the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, the local Matsuura clan held the rights to trade with Korea and with Song-dynasty China.

During the Sengoku and early Edo periods, Hirado's role as a center of foreign trade increased, especially vis-à-vis Ming-dynasty China and the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC).

However, the company soon came to consider this outpost to be unprofitable, especially due to their inability to obtain Japanese raw silk for import to China.

[8] This failure to comply with strict sakoku practices was then used as one of the Shogunate's rationales for forcing the Dutch traders to abandon Hirado for the more constricting confines of Dejima, a small artificial island in the present-day city of Nagasaki.

Hirado has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral city council of 18 members.

In terms of national politics, the city is part of the Nagasaki 3rd district of the lower house of the Diet of Japan.