University of Tokyo

Coordinates: 35°42′48″N 139°45′44″E / 35.71333°N 139.76222°E / 35.71333; 139.76222

The University of Tokyo (東京大学, Tōkyō daigaku), abbreviated as Todai (東大, Tōdai), is a research university located in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The university has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is the first of Japan's National Seven Universities. It ranks as the highest in Asia and 21st in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2015. The University of Tokyo is widely considered to be the most prestigious university in Japan.

History

The university was chartered by the Meiji government in 1877 under its current name by amalgamating older government schools for medicine and Western learning. It was renamed "the Imperial University (帝國大學, Teikoku daigaku)" in 1886, and then Tokyo Imperial University (東京帝國大學, Tōkyō teikoku daigaku) in 1897 when the Imperial University system was created. In September 1923, an earthquake and the following fires destroyed about 700,000 volumes of the Imperial University Library. The books lost included the Hoshino Library (星野文庫, Hoshino bunko), a collection of about 10,000 books. The books were the former possessions of Hoshino Hisashi before becoming part of the library of the university and were mainly about Chinese philosophy and history.