National Diet Library
Born in 1948 as a "citadel of popular sovereignty," Japan's national library holds 12 million volumes — and anyone can walk in.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Tokyo offline.
One of the world's largest libraries, it was created after WWII to keep democracy informed, with a scope comparable to the US Library of Congress. Eight specialized collections include original personal papers of Meiji-era statesmen and a 30-million-page microform archive of WWII occupation documents from GHQ and SCAP. Despite its legislative mandate, the general public outpaces Diet members as its biggest user group by a factor of eight.
What to look for
- Original document archives of Meiji statesmen — Itō Hirobumi, Iwakura Tomomi, and others — in the Modern Political and Constitutional History Collection (around 300,000 items)
- The microform collection of roughly 30 million pages of GHQ and SCAP occupation documents; the originals sit in the US National Archives
- Rare Books among the eight specialized holdings, alongside Maps and Music collections
Located in Nagatachō directly adjacent to the National Diet building; the general public is welcome without legislative credentials.
National Diet Library is one of 35 sights worth the detour in Tokyo, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Tokyo pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Tokyo
- Mode Gakuen Cocoon TowerA 50-story school curved like a cocoon — white aluminum and dark-blue glass, criss-crossed by diagonal white lines — that beat 150 rival proposals and won Skyscraper of the Year.
- Tokyo SkytreeAt 634 metres, the height isn't random — 6-3-4 spells "Musashi," the ancient name for this exact corner of Tokyo.
- Tokyo TowerA third of its steel came from US tanks scrapped after the Korean War — Japan's postwar recovery, painted orange and bolted into the sky.
- Akihabara (Electric Town)The black market that outgrew itself and became Japan's otaku capital.
- Tokyo National MuseumOne in ten of every artwork Japan has ever officially designated a National Treasure lives here.
- Yasukuni ShrineKamikaze pilots swore they would "meet again at Yasukuni" — 2,466,532 names are enshrined here, fourteen of them convicted of Class A war crimes at the Tokyo Trial.