Tokyo Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
49 free Tokyo trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Tokyo is a city that keeps rebuilding itself: it burned in 1657, fell in the 1923 earthquake, was firebombed flat in 1945 and each time came back bigger. This quiz walks through that story, from Ota Dokan's castle and Tokugawa Ieyasu's shogunate to the day Edo became the 'Eastern Capital', the arrival of Commodore Perry, the Meiji-era railways and the postwar economic miracle that made the Tokyo Stock Exchange briefly bigger than New York's. Then it tours the modern city: the 23 special wards and the islands 1,850 km away that are still technically Tokyo, Skytree's carefully chosen height, Tokyo Tower's borrowed silhouette, Shibuya Crossing and the loyal dog Hachiko, Shinjuku Station's 3.59 million daily passengers, the Yamanote loop, Senso-ji, Meiji Shrine, Toyosu fish market, Akihabara and Harajuku, and Michelin's verdict on the food. Sport and screen get their turn with the 1964 and 2020 Olympics, the Yomiuri Giants' Big Egg, Godzilla and Lost in Translation. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Tokyo and its landmarks, districts and events, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Japan quiz for the rest of the country.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sushi style became the fast food of Edo, today's Tokyo, in the 1820s?
Nigiri
Nigiri is traditionally credited to chef Hanaya Yohei around 1824, and it was soon sold from street stalls all over Edo.
Q 02The name Tokyo literally means what?
Eastern Capital
Tokyo means 'Eastern Capital', the name chosen in 1868; China's Beijing and Nanjing likewise mean 'Northern Capital' and 'Southern Capital'.
Q 03Which shogun made Edo the seat of his government in 1603?
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Tokugawa Ieyasu, named shogun in 1603, governed from Edo while the emperor stayed in Kyoto as nominal ruler; his dynasty held power there until 1868.
Q 04Who fortified Edo with a castle in 1457, on the site of today's Imperial Palace?
Ota Dokan
Ota Dokan built Edo Castle in 1457 and was assassinated in 1486 at the residence of his own lord, Uesugi Sadamasa.
Q 05Which American commodore's 1853 arrival ended Japan's seclusion and set Edo on the road to Tokyo?
Matthew C. Perry
Commodore Matthew C. Perry's 'black ships' anchored off Uraga in July 1853; the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa then opened Shimoda and Hakodate to American vessels.
Q 06Which religious group released sarin nerve gas on three Tokyo subway lines in March 1995?
Aum Shinrikyo
Aum Shinrikyo's guru, Shoko Asahara, was hanged in July 2018 with six other cult members, more than 23 years after the attack.
Q 07What caused most of the deaths in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake?
Fire
Fire caused about nine in ten deaths: the quake struck at 11:58 am as households cooked lunch, and one firestorm killed tens of thousands at a single refuge.
Q 08Which architect's Imperial Hotel seemed to survive Tokyo's 1923 quake unscathed?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's hotel had in fact been damaged, and it was demolished in the late 1960s; its entrance and lobby were rebuilt at the Meiji Mura museum.
Q 09Which line, opened in 1927, was Tokyo's first subway?
Ginza Line
The Ginza Line's first stretch opened on 30 December 1927; Tokyo's second subway line, the Marunouchi, did not follow until 1954.
Q 10In 1943, Tokyo City merged with Tokyo Prefecture to form what?
The Tokyo Metropolis
Tokyo City and Tokyo Prefecture were abolished on 1 July 1943 and merged into the Tokyo Metropolis (Tokyo-to), which is why Tokyo has a governor and assembly rather than a city mayor.
Q 11Which general planned the March 1945 incendiary raid on Tokyo, the most destructive single air attack in history?
Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay removed most of the B-29s' guns to carry more bombs and sent them in low at night; about 100,000 people died.
Q 12Which district's Kaminarimon gate, hung with a giant lantern, leads to Senso-ji?
Asakusa
Asakusa's lantern weighs about 700 kg, and the gate's official name, Furaijinmon, honours Fujin and Raijin, gods of wind and thunder.
Q 13Which Tokyo special ward holds the National Diet Building and the Imperial Palace?
Chiyoda
Chiyoda means 'field of a thousand generations', a name inherited from Chiyoda Castle, another name for Edo Castle, whose grounds now hold the Imperial Palace.
Q 21Which Tokyo shrine enshrined Class A war criminals in 1978?
Yasukuni Shrine
Emperor Hirohito, who had last visited Yasukuni Shrine in 1975, privately objected to the enshrinement and never went back.
Q 22Which Tokyo station did Guinness World Records rank the world's busiest in 2022?
Shinjuku Station
Shinjuku Station has well over 200 exits, and Guinness counted about 2.7 million passengers a day passing through it in 2022.
Q 23Which JR loop line circles central Tokyo in about an hour?
Yamanote Line
The Yamanote Line gained its 30th station, Takanawa Gateway, in 2020, the first new stop on the loop since Nishi-Nippori opened in 1971.
Q 14Which World War II battleground, famous for a flag-raising photograph, is officially part of Tokyo today?
Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima lies about 1,200 km south of central Tokyo, yet it belongs to Ogasawara village, and Japan's Self-Defense Forces run an air base there.
Q 15What is the highest mountain within Tokyo's boundaries?
Mount Kumotori
Mount Kumotori, 2,017 m, on the border of Tokyo, Saitama and Yamanashi, is Tokyo's highest point; Mount Fuji, about 100 km southwest, lies in Shizuoka and Yamanashi.
Q 16Tokyo's latitude of about 35.65 degrees north puts it further south than which of these cities?
Rome
Tokyo lies south of Rome (41.90), New York (40.71) and Beijing (39.91), which surprises people who picture it as a northern city.
Q 17Which novelist ran a Tokyo jazz bar called Peter Cat until 1981?
Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami ran Peter Cat with his wife Yoko; his 1987 novel Norwegian Wood, set in late-1960s Tokyo, made him a literary star in Japan.
Q 18Tokyo Skytree stands 634 metres tall; why that number?
Its digits spell Musashi
Its digits spell Musashi, the region's old name (6, 3 and 4 read mu, sa, shi), and the builders wanted a height people would easily remember.
Q 19Which Tarantino film features Tokyo's House of Blue Leaves?
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Kill Bill: Volume 1's House of Blue Leaves fight took eight weeks to film, six over schedule, and part was shot in black and white to avoid an NC-17 rating.
Q 20Tokyo Tower, completed in 1958, was modelled on which Paris landmark?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower inspired Tokyo Tower's lattice design, but the Tokyo copy is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety rules.
Q 24The first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 between Tokyo and which city?
Osaka
The Tokaido Shinkansen linked Tokyo and Shin-Osaka on 1 October 1964, nine days before the Olympics opened, covering the 552.6 km route in four hours.
Q 25Which fish set Tokyo's 2019 New Year auction record?
Bluefin tuna
Bluefin tuna went for 333.6 million yen to Kiyoshi Kimura, owner of the Sushi Zanmai restaurant chain.
Q 26Senso-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple, is dedicated to which figure?
Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion
Legend says two fisherman brothers pulled a statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, from the Sumida River in 628.
Q 27Meiji Shrine, dedicated in 1920, honours Emperor Meiji and whom?
Empress Shoken
Meiji Shrine enshrines Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shoken, who died in 1914; it sits in a 70-hectare forest grown from trees donated from all over Japan.
Q 28Which airport in Ota ward handles most of Tokyo's domestic flights?
Haneda
Haneda handles most domestic flights; Narita, 60 km east in Chiba, opened in 1978 after years of farmer protests and a raid that wrecked its control tower.
Q 29The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the first Games staged where?
In Asia
Tokyo 1964 was the first Olympics held in Asia; the Games were also the first telecast live overseas by satellite and the first from which apartheid South Africa was excluded.
Q 30Why were the 1964 Olympics held in October rather than summer?
To avoid heat, humidity and typhoons
To avoid heat, humidity and typhoons, the Games opened on 10 October; two years later Japan made that date a national holiday, Health and Sports Day.