rank no. 9-University of Tokyo

   
       The University of Tokyo , abbreviated as Todai 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, and is considered the most prestigious university in Japan. It ranks as the highest in Asia and 20th in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2012.

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 " in 1886, and then Tokyo Imperial University 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 , 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.