Japanese university database
830 universities arranged by the prestige ladder international students know — imperials, top nationals, Sokei-Jori, Kaneoka-Chihiro, 5S, and regional schools, tier by tier.
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830 universities · 280,000+ researchers indexed (header totals from the 2026-06-12 snapshot). Each figure has a different source — listed below.
- 1
Former Imperial 7 schools
The seven former Imperial universities — Japan's research peak.
- 2
Top national 5 schools
Elite non-imperial nationals: Institute of Science Tokyo, Hitotsubashi, Kobe, Tsukuba and Yokohama National.
- 3
Sokei-Jori 4 schools
Top private group: Waseda, Keio, Sophia and Tokyo University of Science, known for reputation and research depth.
- 4
Kaneoka-Chihiro 4 schools
Kanazawa, Okayama, Chiba and Hiroshima: leading regional national research universities.
- 5
Selective private 5 schools
Distinctive selective privates such as ICU, Tsuda, Japan Women's, Tokyo Woman's and APU.
- 6
GMARCH 6 schools
Tokyo upper-mid privates: Gakushuin, Meiji, Aoyama, Rikkyo, Chuo and Hosei.
- 7
Kankan-Doritsu 4 schools
Kansai's private four: Kansai, Kwansei Gakuin, Doshisha and Ritsumeikan.
- 8
5S national 5 schools
Saitama, Niigata, Shinshu, Shizuoka and Shiga: upper regional national group.
- 9
Regional national 27 schools
Regional national universities outside Kaneoka-Chihiro and 5S, best compared by field and city.
- 10
Specialist national 39 schools
Field-focused nationals: foreign studies, arts, technology, women's national, and similar schools.
- 11
Public 102 schools
Prefectural / municipal universities — strong in select fields.
- 12
Nitto-Komasen 4 schools
Tokyo mid-tier privates: Nihon, Toyo, Komazawa and Senshu.
- 13
Sankin-Koryu 4 schools
Kansai mid-tier privates: Kyoto Sangyo, Kindai, Konan and Ryukoku.
- 14
Kanto private 115 schools
Tokyo-area privates outside Sokei-Jori, GMARCH and Nitto-Komasen, best compared by field and city.
- 15
Kansai private 61 schools
Kansai privates outside Kankan-Doritsu and Sankin-Koryu, including women's and applied schools.
- 16
Tokai private 41 schools
Privates around Aichi, Shizuoka, Gifu and Mie, separated from the other-private bucket.
- 17
Private med/dental/pharma 104 schools
Privates centered on medicine, dentistry and pharmacy, grouped by field rather than region.
- 18
Specialist private 42 schools
Single-field privates (sports · fine arts · welfare, etc.).
- 19
Other private 232 schools
Privates outside fixed groups, regional buckets and medical/specialist buckets.
Where each figure comes from
- Names, aliases, location
- MEXT's national university registry (Reiwa 6 edition) plus each school's official site. Aliases are name variants curated in-house (short forms, kana, romaji).
- Hensachi band, ladder tier
- An in-house editorial rating set (2026-06-11 edition, 830 schools) compiled from publicly reported entrance-exam results and published hensachi figures — reference values, not official ones. Schools we have not rated show “No hensachi data” on the card.
- Academic staff and department counts
- The academic-staff figure is counted live from our professor database on page load; upstream sources are KAKEN / CiNii / researchmap and official faculty listings, and it is the same figure a university’s own page reports. “Departments on record” counts rows on the department catalog — faculties, graduate schools, and institutes — including rows with no indexed faculty yet, and it merges neither a faculty with its twin graduate school nor a major with its parent unit. A university’s own page reports “Indexed academic units”, a different measure: it counts only units with indexed faculty and folds majors into their parent, so it is usually smaller than the figure on this card. The site-wide totals at the top of the page come from the 2026-06-12 snapshot.
- English-degree-program labels
- This catalog does not show G30 or English-degree-program labels because it has no traceable, per-university official source for them. Check each university’s official admissions pages directly.
- Entrance routes, faculty lists, department navigation
- Sources include official university admissions and faculty pages, Knowledge Station’s entrance-exam index, and the NIAD directory. Please confirm the latest requirements on each university’s official website.