50 free Tokyo trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Tokyo called before 1868?
Edo
The name means 'estuary', from the settlement's spot where the Sumida River meets Tokyo Bay.
Q 02The name Tokyo literally means what?
Eastern Capital
It follows the East Asian habit of putting the character for 'capital' in a capital's name, as in Kyoto, Beijing and Nanjing.
Q 03Which shogun made Edo the seat of his government in 1603?
Tokugawa Ieyasu
The emperor stayed in Kyoto as the nominal ruler while the Tokugawa ran the country from Edo for 250 years of peace.
Q 04Who fortified Edo with a castle in 1457, on the site of today's Imperial Palace?
Ota Dokan
He was assassinated in 1486; the fortress passed to the Uesugi, then the Hojo, before Ieyasu inherited it after the 1590 siege of Odawara.
Q 05Which American commodore's 1853 arrival ended Japan's seclusion and set Edo on the road to Tokyo?
Matthew C. Perry
He forced open the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate; the resulting inflation and unrest helped topple the last shogun in 1867.
Q 06The Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 killed an estimated how many people in Edo?
100,000
A saying held that 'fire and quarrel are Edo's flowers'; the disaster prompted the city's first formal firefighting brigades.
Q 07On what date did the Great Kanto Earthquake strike?
1 September 1923
It hit at 11:58 am with lunch fires burning; the quake and firestorm killed an estimated 105,000 in Tokyo and levelled Yokohama.
Q 08The 1923 earthquake wiped out what share of Japan's economic output?
37 percent
Concrete buildings survived far better than timber and brick, which pushed the city toward earthquake-proof construction.
Q 09The Ginza Line, opened in 1927 between Ueno and Asakusa, was the first underground railway where?
Outside Europe and the Americas
It remains the oldest metro line in Asia.
Q 10In 1943 the city merged with its surrounding prefecture to form what?
The Tokyo Metropolis
That is why Tokyo is governed like a prefecture, with a governor and assembly rather than a single city mayor.
Q 11The US firebombing of 9-10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, is described as what?
The deadliest bombing in history
About 16 square miles burned and some 100,000 civilians died, more than at Dresden, Hamburg or either atomic bombing as single events.
Q 12How many special wards make up central Tokyo?
23
They formed Tokyo City until 1943; each now calls itself a 'city' in English but works more like a London borough.
Q 13Which special ward holds the National Diet Building and the Imperial Palace?
Chiyoda
Shinjuku is the administrative centre where the metropolitan government sits, and Shibuya the commercial hub.
Q 21Up to how many people can cross Shibuya Crossing during a single green light?
3,000
It is called the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, with foot traffic that barely drops even at midnight.
Q 22Shinjuku Station, the world's busiest, handled how many passengers a day in 2018?
3.59 million
Guinness certifies the record; the complex has more than 200 exits.
Q 23The Yamanote Line, which loops around central Tokyo, has how many stations?
30
All but two connect to other lines, and the 34.5 km loop takes about an hour to ride round.
Q 24The first Shinkansen line opened in 1964 between Tokyo and which city?
Q 14Tokyo's most distant island, Minami Torishima, lies how far from the city centre?
1,850 km
It is Japan's easternmost point; Okinotorishima, also Tokyo, is the southernmost.
Q 15What is the highest mountain within Tokyo's boundaries?
Mount Kumotori
It rises 2,017 m in the mountainous west; Fuji itself is about 100 km southwest and belongs to other prefectures.
Q 16Tokyo's latitude of about 35.65 degrees north puts it further south than which of these cities?
Rome
It also lies south of New York and Beijing, which surprises people who picture it as a northern city.
Q 17The Greater Tokyo Area had how many residents as of 2025?
33 million
The city proper passed 14 million in 2023; the metro area is the world's third most populous.
Q 18Tokyo Skytree stands 634 metres tall; why that number?
It spells 'Musashi', an old name for the region
In Japanese numeric wordplay 6 is mu, 3 is sa and 4 is shi; the height was raised from a planned 610 m to claim the record.
Q 19Tokyo Skytree was completed on which unusual date in 2012?
29 February
It opened to the public on 22 May 2012 as the tallest tower in the world.
Q 20Tokyo Tower, completed in 1958, was modelled on which Paris landmark?
The Eiffel
At 333 m it was 9 m taller than its Parisian model, yet weighed about 3,300 tons less; it is repainted every five years.
Osaka
The 552.6 km Tokaido route opened just before the Olympics, and the network now spans nearly 3,000 km.
Q 25Tokyo Station opened in which year?
1914
Its red-brick Marunouchi facade faces the Imperial Palace; the Yaesu side faces the other way.
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 from the Sumida River in 628.
Q 27Meiji Shrine, dedicated in 1920, honours Emperor Meiji and whom?
Empress Shoken
It sits in a 70-hectare forest in Shibuya ward, planted from trees donated across Japan.
Q 28The Tokyo Imperial Palace grounds are built on the site of what?
The shogun's castle
The 1.15 sq km site became the Imperial Residence in 1948, and its East Garden opened as a public park in 1968.
Q 29The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were the first Games staged where?
In Asia
They were also the first telecast live overseas by satellite, and the first to exclude apartheid South Africa.
Q 30Why were the 1964 Olympics held in October rather than summer?
To avoid heat, humidity and typhoons
The 2020 Games ignored the lesson and were held in the July-August heat, then postponed by a pandemic.