The American School in Japan opened in 1902 in rented rooms at the Kanda YMCA, which makes it one of the oldest international schools in Asia and the anchor of Tokyo's American lineage. Its main campus sits in Chofu, in western Tokyo, on about fourteen acres beside a park, with fields, theatres, and room the central wards cannot offer, and a separate Early Learning Center for the youngest children sits in Roppongi. That geography is the first real decision a family makes here: ASIJ trades a central address for space, and more than a thousand children a day ride its buses as a result.
The second thing to know is what ASIJ is academically. It is an American, Advanced Placement school issuing its own diploma, not an IB school, so a family choosing between Tokyo's lineages is choosing a system here, not a flavour. And a point specific to Japan, which this guide sets out properly below: attending an international school does not discharge Japan's compulsory-education obligation for a Japanese-national child, though it does not affect Japanese university entrance, because ASIJ's accreditation preserves that. Neither fact bars anyone from applying, and ASIJ states plainly that there are no citizenship requirements.
Families come to Tokyo from across Asia, and the questions they bring about ASIJ are usually about scale and commute rather than curriculum. Whether the Chofu campus is workable from a central address, what the bus means for a young child's day, and how a school of this size feels after a smaller one. For a family arriving from Taipei there is a further question, since most Tokyo international schools run the IB and ASIJ does not: whether the American, Advanced Placement path is the one they want, or whether they have defaulted to the best-known name.
We teach families remotely across roughly eight countries, and we already work with families in Japan, though our Japan experience to date is in Kansai rather than Tokyo. We are not a school, we have no affiliation with ASIJ and no referral arrangement with any school in this guide, and that is what lets this page set the facts out plainly. What we help with is the readiness an English-medium American school assumes at entry, the writing and analysis its Advanced Placement courses reward, and, for a family staying long-term in Japan, keeping a child's Japanese growing alongside the English.
The orienting facts, each drawn from the school's own materials and checked in September 2026. Figures are the school's own, in Japanese yen, and are not converted.
ASIJ is a non-profit school corporation governed by a board, co-educational and day-only, with an American college-preparatory program taught in English. It states that it is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools. It offers Advanced Placement rather than the International Baccalaureate. And it publishes its fees in full, in yen, which is why this guide can carry them.
ASIJ publishes a full fee schedule. Tuition is billed annually and is due in full on invoice, in yen by bank transfer, with an instalment plan available to families paying individually. The tables below are the school's own figures for the 2026 to 2027 year, and this guide does not convert them.
A new family pays three one-time charges on top of tuition: ¥50,000 to apply, ¥300,000 to register, and a building maintenance fee of ¥1,525,000, all non-refundable. An annual capital assessment of ¥250,000 applies every year. So a first year is close to two million yen above the headline tuition before the bus, and ASIJ states it offers no financial aid to new applicants. Employers can sponsor fees through the school's corporate contribution program, which is worth asking about before a posting is finalised.
Billed annually, due in full on invoice.
| Grade band | Per year |
|---|---|
| Nursery and Pre-Kindergarten | ¥3,143,000 |
| Kindergarten to Grade 5 | ¥3,498,000 |
| Grades 6 to 8 | ¥3,699,000 |
| Grades 9 to 12 | ¥3,826,000 |
Source: the school's tuition and fees page, 2026 to 2027 schedule. Checked September 2026. Students joining late in the year are billed by academic quarter.
| Item | Amount | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Application fee | ¥50,000 | Per application, non-refundable |
| Registration fee | ¥300,000 | One time, non-refundable |
| Building maintenance fee | ¥1,525,000 | One time, non-refundable |
| Capital assessment | ¥250,000 | Annual, non-refundable |
| Bus | ¥390,000 per year | Optional. Prorated by quarter |
| Devices | Family provides | An iPad in Grades 4 and 5, a MacBook from Grade 6 |
| Financial aid | None for new applicants | The school's own statement |
| Corporate sponsorship | Available | Employers may sponsor fees through the school's program |
For a new Grade 9 student in 2026 to 2027, tuition of ¥3,826,000 plus the application fee of ¥50,000, the registration fee of ¥300,000, the building maintenance fee of ¥1,525,000, and the annual capital assessment of ¥250,000 comes to ¥5,951,000 before the bus, devices, meals, and trips. Adding the bus brings it to ¥6,341,000. Later years fall back to tuition plus the ¥250,000 capital assessment. These totals are Harland's arithmetic on the school's own figures, shown so a family can see the real first year rather than the tuition line alone.
| Grades served | Nursery to Grade 12. Kindergarten runs at both campuses |
|---|---|
| Campuses | Chofu, western Tokyo, about fourteen acres, kindergarten to Grade 12. Roppongi, Minato, the Early Learning Center |
| Enrollment | The high school reports 585 students. A current whole-school total is not published on the school's own pages |
| Community | More than 50 nationalities. About half the families are American, and close to half are bicultural with an American and a Japanese parent |
| Curriculum | American and standards-based, leading to the ASIJ diploma. Advanced Placement, the AP Capstone, Syracuse University courses, and online courses. Not an IB school |
| Advanced Placement | 386 students sat AP examinations. The current list of AP subjects sits in the school's high school profile rather than on its web pages |
| Accreditation | WASC accredited, and a member of the National Association of Independent Schools, per the school's own statement. The term length is not published |
| Admissions | Applications open in November for the following August. Decisions from late February through summer. New enrollment runs at 15 to 20 percent a year |
| Eligibility | No citizenship requirement. One parent must be fluent in English, and the student must live with a parent in Tokyo |
| Transport | The school's own bus network to Chofu, used by more than a thousand students daily. Routes are not published |
Where a row reads "not published," the fact does not appear on the school's own pages. Directory sites and third-party fact sheets publish whole-school enrollment figures that disagree with each other. None is the school's own, and this guide follows the school. All figures in yen, checked September 2026.
ASIJ's history is longer than any school in this guide, and it explains both its standing in Tokyo and the unusual bicultural shape of its community.
The school opened in 1902 as the Tokyo School for Foreign Children, in rented rooms at the Kanda YMCA, and took its present name in 1920 on the recommendation of the American ambassador. It moved several times through Tsukiji, Shibaura, and Meguro, survived the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, closed through the war years from 1941 to 1946, and settled at the Chofu campus in 1963, where it has been since. That continuity through a century of disruption is part of what a Tokyo family is buying: an institution with roots, not a recent arrival.
ASIJ is a school corporation under Japanese law and a non-profit, governed by a board of directors and trustees. Its mission, in its own words, is fostering a community of inquisitive learners and independent thinkers, inspired to be their best selves and empowered to make a difference, and it describes itself as an independent, co-educational day school serving students of all nationalities with an American-style college preparatory education. The community reflects the long history: more than fifty nationalities, about half the families American, and close to half bicultural with one American and one Japanese parent, which makes it less an expatriate enclave than that description might suggest. Eric Niles became Head of School in 2025.
ASIJ teaches an American, standards-based curriculum in English across all three divisions, leading to its own diploma. In the senior years it offers more ways to take work at university level than most American schools abroad.
The high school diploma requires four years and twenty-two credits, and a student builds toward it through Advanced Placement, the AP Capstone Diploma, university courses taken for credit through Syracuse University's Project Advance, online courses through the Global Online Academy, and the school's own advanced and advanced-topic courses. That range matters: a student can take university-level work in several forms rather than only through AP examinations. The school reports 386 students sitting AP examinations, and it groups its most advanced offerings together rather than publishing a single AP subject count on its web pages, so a family for whom particular AP subjects matter should read the school's high school profile or ask directly. It is not an IB school, so a family that wants the International Baccalaureate is looking at a different Tokyo school, such as Tokyo International School in central Minato or, for a family with a son, St. Mary's International School.
On Japanese, which matters for any family staying in the country, ASIJ teaches the language from the elementary years and runs two tracks, one for heritage speakers and one for Japanese as a foreign language, with AP Japanese available in the senior years and a required semester studying Japan. That is real provision with a heritage pathway rather than cultural exposure, though ASIJ is an English-medium school and full Japanese academic literacy is not its aim for a non-heritage child. English support runs in Grades 1 to 8 for multilingual learners, with no separate fee published, and the school is direct that a high level of English is needed to succeed and that one parent must be fluent. Learning support covers mild learning needs across the grades, reviewed case by case.
ASIJ publishes where its graduates have been accepted rather than how many went where, and the distinction is worth holding when reading it.
The school's recent acceptances span the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Asia, and include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley, and UCLA, alongside Keio, Waseda, Sophia, International Christian University, Osaka, and Nagoya in Japan, and Imperial, University College London, the London School of Economics, Edinburgh, and St Andrews in Britain. The Japanese destinations are worth noticing, since they show the path back into the Japanese system that the school's accreditation keeps open.
ASIJ presents this as a list of institutions where students have been accepted, explicitly not limited to those named and not a count of matriculations, so a family cannot tell from it how a typical cohort distributes. And the test-score data a family often wants, SAT and ACT ranges, sits in the school's high school profile rather than its web pages, along with the detailed AP results. Ask the school for the current profile rather than relying on a figure from a directory, and read the acceptance list as evidence of reach across several university systems rather than as a promise for any one student.
The process begins with an inquiry and an online application, and rests on documents rather than a single entrance examination: school reports and transcripts, teacher recommendations, and for middle and high school applicants a mathematics teacher, an English teacher, and a counselor or principal. The school accepts a range of standardised tests taken within eighteen months, though not language-proficiency tests for that purpose, and reviews each applicant holistically against its philosophy, the balance of each grade, and the places available. Applications for an August start open the previous November, decisions begin in late February or March, and offers continue through the summer, with January entry also possible.
The competitive reality is worth stating plainly. New enrollment runs at roughly fifteen to twenty percent of the school each year, so places open at every grade, but ASIJ does not publish grade-by-grade waitlists or a pool mechanism, which means a family cannot judge its odds at a particular entry point from the website. Applying early in the cycle is the practical answer, and asking admissions directly about the year group in question is worth doing before committing to a Tokyo posting. Placement follows the school's convention: apply for the grade the child is currently in for an August start, or the grade just completed for January.
Harland is not a school and does not replace ASIJ. We are a 1-on-1 tutoring academy, and we work with families in Japan and across roughly eight countries remotely, in the three places the schooling decision creates real work for a family: getting in, the school years, and university.
Yes. ASIJ states there are no citizenship requirements to apply, and Japan does not bar Japanese nationals from international schools. What a Japanese-national family should understand is separate: attending an international school does not discharge Japan's compulsory-education obligation, so a ward-office notification is expected. University entrance is not affected, because ASIJ's accreditation preserves Japanese university-entrance eligibility.
Advanced Placement, not the IB. ASIJ runs an American, standards-based curriculum leading to its own diploma, with AP, the AP Capstone Diploma, university courses through Syracuse, and online courses. It reports 386 students sitting AP examinations. The full list of AP subjects sits in the school's high school profile rather than its web pages.
For 2026 to 2027 the school publishes annual tuition of ¥3,143,000 for nursery and pre-kindergarten, ¥3,498,000 for kindergarten to Grade 5, ¥3,699,000 for Grades 6 to 8, and ¥3,826,000 for Grades 9 to 12. A new family also pays one-time fees of ¥50,000 to apply, ¥300,000 to register, and ¥1,525,000 as a building maintenance fee, plus an annual capital assessment of ¥250,000. The bus is ¥390,000 a year. There is no financial aid for new applicants.
The main kindergarten to Grade 12 campus is in Chofu, in western Tokyo, on about fourteen acres beside a park, and the Early Learning Center for nursery to kindergarten is in Roppongi, central Minato. ASIJ runs its own bus network to Chofu, which more than a thousand students use daily, at ¥390,000 a year. The school does not publish route maps.
New enrollment runs at about 15 to 20 percent of the school each year, so places exist at every grade but are competitive. Applications for an August start open the previous November, decisions begin in late February or March and continue through summer, and there is no single entrance examination. One parent must be fluent in English and the family must live in Tokyo.
Our Student Coordinator speaks with relocating families regularly, often before a posting is confirmed, and can help you think through the American and IB choice, what the Chofu commute means in practice, and how to prepare a child for an English-medium school. We work with families remotely. We start by listening.