Nishimachi does one thing no other school in this guide does to the same degree. Every child studies Japanese every day, from Kindergarten upward, across nine proficiency levels, with native and heritage speakers working from Japan's own national curriculum textbooks while others follow a second-language path, and every Grade 9 student writes and presents a graduation thesis in Japanese. That is bilingual literacy as an aim rather than cultural exposure as a gesture, and it follows directly from the school's founding in 1949 by Tané Matsukata, who built it on the conviction that a second language is the first step toward understanding another culture from the inside.
The structural fact a family must plan around is that the school ends at Grade 9. There is no high school here and no diploma, so Nishimachi is a foundation rather than a destination, and every family leaves at fourteen or fifteen for somewhere else. The school is open about where its leavers go, publishing that around 30 percent continue at high schools abroad, mainly American boarding schools, and around 70 percent at international or private Japanese schools in Tokyo. In practice new entry runs from Kindergarten to Grade 8, since the school states it is not currently taking applications for Grade 9.
The families drawn to Nishimachi are usually the ones who want a child to come out of Tokyo able to read and write Japanese properly, not merely to have lived there. Often they are bicultural households, and about half the school's students hold more than one passport, which gives the place a different feel from a school built around a rotating expatriate community. The question they underweight is the one at the end: a decision about high school arrives in Grade 8, sooner than most families expect, and the strength of a child's English and mathematics at that point decides which doors are open.
We teach families remotely across roughly eight countries, and we 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 Nishimachi and no referral arrangement with any school in this guide. What we help with here is specific: the academic English and mathematics that the school requires at grade level for entry and that the next school will test at Grade 9, and, for families moving from Taiwan or Hong Kong, keeping Chinese alive in a timetable that gives its language hours to Japanese.
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.
Nishimachi is a Japanese school foundation and a non-profit, accredited jointly by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the Council of International Schools, and a member of the Japan Council of International Schools and the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools. It teaches an American-influenced, standards-based curriculum in English, referencing Common Core in English and mathematics and the Next Generation standards in science. It holds no IB or Advanced Placement authorisation, which follows from ending at Grade 9. And it publishes its fees in full, in yen, which is why this guide can carry them.
Nishimachi publishes a full fee schedule, and unusually it charges the same for every grade from Kindergarten to Grade 9. Tuition is billed in four quarterly instalments. The tables below are the school's own figures, in yen, and this guide does not convert them.
There are no grade bands here: a Kindergarten child and a Grade 9 student are charged identically, which is unusual and makes budgeting simple. The first year is the expensive one, because a new family adds ¥1,155,000 in one-time charges, most of it a building maintenance fee of ¥825,000. Attendance for any part of a quarter is charged as a full quarter. There is no school bus, so transport is a family's own arrangement, and the school does operate a scholarship program for families who need help.
Billed in four quarterly instalments of ¥782,250. Identical from Kindergarten to Grade 9.
| Item | Per year |
|---|---|
| Tuition | ¥3,129,000 |
| Education enhancement fee | ¥200,000 |
| School growth fund fee | ¥200,000 |
| Total, per year | ¥3,529,000 |
Source: the school's own tuition and fees page, 2026 to 2027 schedule. Checked September 2026. Attendance for any portion of a quarter requires payment for the whole quarter.
| Item | Amount | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Application fee | ¥30,000 | Per applicant, non-refundable |
| Registration fee | ¥300,000 | New students, one time, non-refundable |
| Building maintenance fee | ¥825,000 | New students, one time |
| School bus | None offered | Families arrange their own transport |
| Lunch | Not included | Brought from home, or an optional paid service |
| Financial aid | Available | An outreach scholarship program, need and merit based |
| Sibling discount | Not published | No discount appears on the fee schedule |
| Language support fee | Not published | No separate charge appears for language support |
For a new student at any grade in 2026 to 2027, the annual total of ¥3,529,000 plus the application fee of ¥30,000, the registration fee of ¥300,000, and the building maintenance fee of ¥825,000 comes to ¥4,684,000 before lunch and activities. Later years fall back to ¥3,529,000. Because the rate does not vary by grade, a family can multiply that figure across the years it expects to stay, remembering the school ends at Grade 9. These totals are Harland's arithmetic on the school's own figures, labelled as such.
| Grades served | Kindergarten, age five by 31 August, to Grade 9. New applications are not taken for Grade 9 |
|---|---|
| Enrollment | About 470 students, 35 nationalities, with half holding dual or multiple passports. Student to teacher ratio 1 to 7 |
| Curriculum | American-influenced and standards-based, taught in English. Not an IB or Advanced Placement school |
| Japanese | Daily for every student, at least forty minutes a day, across nine levels. Native track on Japan's national curriculum, plus a second-language track. Japanese social studies in Grades 6 to 9 |
| Class size | About 20 in Kindergarten to Grade 6, and 12 to 18 in the middle years |
| Accreditation | Jointly accredited by WASC and the Council of International Schools. A recognized Japanese school foundation |
| Admissions | Applications open 1 November for Grades 1 to 9, with a 31 October deadline for local Kindergarten. Not first come, first served |
| Entry requirement | Grade-level English and mathematics for Grades 1 to 9. The main caregiver must be proficient in English |
| After Grade 9 | About 30 percent to high school abroad, mainly American boarding schools, and about 70 percent to schools in Tokyo, per the school's own figures |
| Transport | No school bus. Moto-Azabu, central Minato, on public transport |
Where a row reads "not published," the item does not appear on the school's own fee schedule. The school's own pages give enrollment as both 468 and about 470, and this guide carries the approximate figure. All figures in yen, checked September 2026.
Nishimachi's history is unusually personal, and it explains why Japanese sits at the center of the school rather than at its edges.
Tané Matsukata opened the school in 1949 with four students on her family's property in Azabu, after seventeen years being educated in the United States and Japan both. She was the granddaughter of a Meiji-era prime minister and of a silk exporter who opened direct trade between Japan and America, and the sister of Haru Matsukata Reischauer, wife of the American ambassador. Her founding conviction, in the school's own telling, was that learning a second language is the first step toward becoming the kind of person who understands another culture from inside it rather than at a distance. Classes soon moved into the 1921 Matsukata House, designed by William Merrell Vories, which still stands on the campus.
The sequence that followed shows the idea being built into the institution. The school was recognized as a Japanese school foundation in 1955, English became the primary language of instruction in 1956, and in 1962 Japanese was made a requirement for every student, which is the decision that still defines the place. Grades 7 to 9 were added between 1963 and 1965, the school took its present name in 1966, and accreditation followed from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges in 1986 and jointly with the Council of International Schools since. It is governed by a board of trustees, with a new Head of School, Owain Phillips, taking office in August 2026.
The academic spine is a standards-based American curriculum taught in English. What distinguishes it is the Japanese running alongside, which is more substantial here than at any other school in this guide.
Kindergarten to Grade 5 works through a standards-based core in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, with the reading and writing workshop model and specialist teaching in art, music, drama, and physical education. Grades 6 to 9 move to sixty-minute periods on a five-day cycle in classes of twelve to eighteen, with humanities, mathematics, science, and Japanese, mathematics streamed into honors and standard from Grade 8, and no formal examination periods. The school references Common Core in English and mathematics and the Next Generation standards in science, and it holds no IB or Advanced Placement authorisation, which follows from stopping at Grade 9 rather than being a gap.
The Japanese program is the reason many families choose the school. Every student studies Japanese daily, at least forty minutes a day in the school's own words, and the program runs across nine proficiency levels. Native and heritage speakers work from Japan's own national curriculum textbooks, so a bilingual child continues developing real literacy rather than repeating a beginner's course, while second-language learners follow a separate path benchmarked to recognized international standards. In Grades 6 to 9 students take Japanese social studies alongside Japanese language, and every Grade 9 student writes and presents a graduation thesis in Japanese. Mandarin is not taught, so a family arriving from Taiwan or Hong Kong should plan for Chinese outside school, and a school with a bilingual Chinese track would be a different choice entirely.
A school ending at Grade 9 has no examination results or university destinations to publish. What it has instead is a record of where its leavers go next, and that is the outcome a family should ask about.
The school publishes the shape of it plainly: around 30 percent of its Grade 9 leavers go to high school overseas, mainly boarding schools in the United States, and around 70 percent stay in Japan at international or private Japanese schools in the Tokyo area. It also states that all of its graduates go on to complete higher education. Those proportions tell a family something useful, that this is a school whose families split between staying in Tokyo and sending a child abroad at fourteen, and that both routes are well worn here. A family who would rather avoid the move altogether is looking at an all-through school instead, such as The American School in Japan or Tokyo International School, and the trade is a change of school at fourteen against the Japanese program Nishimachi builds.
The school's own site refers to named lists of the high schools and universities its alumni attend, but this guide could not verify those lists from the school's own pages, so it does not reproduce school names it cannot source. Ask the admissions office for the current placement list directly, and ask two further questions while you are there: what guidance the school gives families through the Grade 8 and 9 application year, and how early that process begins. For a school built around an exit, the quality of the exit support is a fair thing to test.
Applications for Grades 1 to 9 open on 1 November for the following year, with local Kindergarten applications due by 31 October, and the school is explicit that applications are not prioritized by the date they arrive, so applying on the first day buys nothing. Selected applicants are screened from late January, in person or remotely, with interviews, and Kindergarten uses screening sessions alongside parent interviews. For mid-year entry the school usually decides within two weeks of reviewing documents. The requirement to clear is academic rather than linguistic in the usual sense: applicants to Grades 1 to 9 need English at grade level in reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension, and mathematics at grade level too. Japanese is assessed for placement rather than for entry, and prior schooling in Japanese does not guarantee a place in a first-language Japanese class.
What to plan around. The school aims for balance in each year group between boys and girls, between native English and native Japanese speakers, and across nationalities, which means a place depends partly on the shape of the cohort rather than on a child's file alone. And Grade 9 applications are not currently accepted, so a family arriving in Tokyo with a child of that age is looking at a different school, and a family entering at Grade 8 should understand they are joining for a single year before the transition.
Harland is not a school and does not replace Nishimachi. 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 this school's shape creates real work for a family: getting in, the years here, and the move at Grade 9.
To Grade 9, and no further. There is no high school and no diploma, so every family plans an exit at the end of Grade 9. In practice new entry runs from Kindergarten to Grade 8, because the school states it does not currently take applications for Grade 9. It publishes that around 30 percent of its leavers go to high school overseas, mainly boarding schools in the United States, and around 70 percent continue at international or private Japanese schools in Tokyo.
More than at most international schools in Tokyo. Every student studies Japanese daily, at least forty minutes a day in the school's own words, across nine proficiency levels. Native and heritage speakers follow a track built on Japan's own national curriculum textbooks, while others follow a second-language track, and every Grade 9 student writes and presents a graduation thesis in Japanese. Japanese social studies is taught as well in the middle years.
For 2026 to 2027 the school publishes one annual figure for every grade: tuition of ¥3,129,000 plus two annual fees of ¥200,000 each, so ¥3,529,000 a year, billed in four quarterly instalments. A new family also pays a ¥30,000 application fee, a ¥300,000 registration fee, and a building maintenance fee of ¥825,000, so a first year comes to about ¥4,684,000. There is no school bus, and financial aid exists through a scholarship program.
Yes, and about half the students hold more than one passport. The school asks that the main caregiver be proficient in English, since all communication is in English, and non-Japanese students need a dependent visa. For a child holding only a Japanese passport, the school points families to Japan's compulsory-education expectation, which attending an international school does not discharge, so a family should confirm the position with its ward office.
No. The taught additional language is Japanese, and no Chinese is offered. A family moving from Taiwan or Hong Kong who wants a child's Chinese to keep developing would need to arrange that outside school, and should weigh how much of the timetable Japanese will occupy.
Our Student Coordinator speaks with relocating families regularly, often before a posting is confirmed, and can help you think through what a school ending at Grade 9 means for your planning, and how to prepare for a grade-level assessment in English and mathematics. We work with families remotely. We start by listening.