The Port of Tokyo is the seaport of Japan’s capital, spread across the reclaimed islands and wharves at the head of Tokyo Bay where the Sumida River meets the sea. It handled about 4.7 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containers in 2024, ranking 45th in the world in Lloyd’s List’s One Hundred Container Ports, and it has a cargo capacity of around 100 million tonnes a year. Its first terminal opened in 1925, it was opened to international trade on 20 May 1941, and in 1967 it became home to Japan’s first container terminal; today it is one of the largest seaports in Japan and in the Pacific basin.
4.7 Million TEU: Where Tokyo Ranks in 2024
The headline number is the container count. Lloyd’s List figures, as compiled on Wikipedia, give the Port of Tokyo 4.70 million TEU in 2024, up from 4.57 million in 2023. That was enough for 45th place worldwide, between Algeciras in Spain and the Bremen ports in Germany. For scale, Shanghai, the world’s busiest container port, handled about 51.5 million TEU in 2024, roughly eleven times Tokyo’s total, and Busan in South Korea handled about 24.4 million.
Tokyo’s own curve is remarkably flat. It stood at about 3.36 million TEU in 2004, dropped to 3.81 million in the 2009 recession after 4.27 million the year before, and reached its highest level in the Lloyd’s List series, about 4.92 million, in 2014. Since then it has moved within a narrow band between about 4.26 million (in 2020, the first pandemic year) and 4.70 million.
Containers are only part of the tonnage. In 2007 the port handled 90.81 million tonnes of cargo in total, and its annual capacity is put at around 100 million tonnes. More than 30,000 people work in port services, which handle upwards of 32,000 ship calls a year. Tokyo also shares its bay with other large ports, including Kawasaki and Yokohama a short way down the western shore.
1925, 1941, 1967: The Dates That Made the Port of Tokyo
The port’s forerunner was Edo Minato, the harbour that served as the distribution point for goods supplying the people of the shogun’s capital. Under the Tokugawa shogunate it was closed to foreign trade, and when Japan opened to the West in 1859 it was neighbouring Yokohama, not Edo, that became the treaty port. In 1853 the shogunate’s engineer Egawa Hidetatsu began building a line of island batteries, the daiba, to protect Edo from Commodore Matthew Perry’s warships. Eleven were planned and six finished; only No. 3 and No. 6 survive, and No. 3 was opened as Daiba Park in 1928. The name lives on in Odaiba, the much larger artificial island that grew up around them.
In the Meiji period engineers improved the Sumida River estuary by dredging channels, using the spoil to reclaim land at Tsukishima and Shibaura. The decisive push came after the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, which became the starting point for a full-scale terminal construction project, and the first terminal, Hinode, opened in 1925. Shibaura and Takeshiba followed, and on 20 May 1941 the Port of Tokyo was formally opened to international trade.
After the Second World War, rebuilding Japanese industry made the port a priority. The Toyosu coal terminal and the Harumi terminal were among the first projects. Then came containerisation. In 1967 Nippon Container Terminals became the port’s, and Japan’s, first container terminal operator, and the first container ship to call at a Japanese port that year was handled by it. That single change turned Tokyo into a major international trading port.
15 Berths and 4,479 Metres at Oi, Aomi and Shinagawa
Today the port has three public container terminals covering 1,504,718 m², with 15 berths and 4,479 m of quay between them. Their sizes differ sharply:
- Oi Container Terminal: seven berths, 945,700 m² and 2,354 m of quay, by far the largest.
- Aomi Container Terminal: five berths, 479,079 m² and 1,570 m of quay, on reclaimed land near Odaiba.
- Shinagawa Container Terminal: three berths, 79,939 m² and 333 m of quay. Opened in 1967, it is the oldest container terminal in Japan.
A fourth, private berth run by Kamigumi adds 260 m of quay. Beyond containers, the port’s numbers show what a capital city consumes. Two foodstuff terminals at Oi, for marine products and general foodstuffs, opened in February 1999 with five berths, 1,060 m of quay and 359,000 m² of storage. Five general cargo terminals handle bulk goods, timber, construction materials and logs, with 900,000 m² of storage, 3,500 m of quay, room for 200,000 m³ of timber and 210,000 tonnes of logs. Two roll-on/roll-off terminals with 1,200 m of quay can hold 22,000 cars and handle up to 3.5 million vehicle units a year.
Toyosu, where the post-war coal terminal was built, now also feeds the city in another way. The Toyosu Market, built on reclaimed land in the bay to replace the Tsukiji fish market, opened on 11 October 2018 and became the largest wholesale fish market in the world. Its move was delayed by two years after toxic substances were found in the soil and groundwater, left by the gas plant that had occupied the site; the metropolitan government spent a further 3.8 billion yen pumping out groundwater through hundreds of wells before the opening went ahead.
52 Metres of Clearance: Rainbow Bridge, Gate Bridge and the 2020 Cruise Terminal
Two bridges define the port’s shipping lanes, and their measurements matter as much as their looks. The Rainbow Bridge, officially the Tokyo Port Bridge, was built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries between 1987 and 1993. It is 798 m long with a main span of 580 m, links Shibaura Pier to the Odaiba waterfront, and carries the Shuto Expressway’s Daiba Route on its upper deck and the Yurikamome transit line, a local road and footpaths on its lower deck. Its air draft, the height available to ships passing under it, is 52 m.
That figure eventually forced a new passenger terminal. International cruise ships had used the Harumi Passenger Terminal, inside the bridge, since 23 May 1991, but as ships grew larger, post-Panamax cruise liners could no longer clear the span, and some had to tie up at cargo berths at Shinagawa and Oi instead. In 2015 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced a new terminal on reclaimed land at Aomi, outside the bridge. The Tokyo International Cruise Terminal was finished in June 2020, but its planned opening on 14 July 2020 was postponed when cruising stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic. It finally opened on 10 September 2020, with a 430 m quay and a single berth; long-term plans extend the quay to 680 m for a second berth. The training sailing ship Nippon Maru called on 26 August 2020 as the first arriving vessel, and on 2 March 2023 the German cruise ship Amadea became the first foreign-flagged ship to call.
Further out, the Tokyo Gate Bridge crosses the channel between Wakasu and the Central Breakwater. Construction began in 2002, and the bridge opened on 12 February 2012, a year later than scheduled, as part of a new four-lane ring highway; the estimated cost of the Stage II section including the bridge was 113 billion yen. Its design had to satisfy two limits at once: high enough for large ships to pass beneath, but low enough not to interfere with aircraft using nearby Haneda Airport. The name was chosen from 12,223 public suggestions, though its two facing truss sections have earned it the nickname Dinosaur Bridge.
79.3 Per Cent: The Landfill Island Split Between Koto and Ota
The newest land in the port is made of rubbish. The Central Breakwater was first built in 1973 and has been used ever since as a disposal site for Tokyo’s waste, forming two artificial islands, the Inner Landfill and the Outer Landfill. Together they covered 377 hectares in 2011 and are expected to reach 989 hectares when complete.
For about four decades, two of Tokyo’s special wards argued over who owned them. Koto Ward said its residents had put up with the garbage trucks hauled through their streets; Ota Ward pointed to the nori seaweed farmers from Ota who had once worked those waters, and to the islands’ proximity to Haneda Airport, which lies in Ota. On 3 October 2019 the Tokyo District Court awarded 79.3 per cent of the landfill to Koto and 20.7 per cent to Ota, and Ota declined to appeal. After 532 public proposals, Ota named its western share Reiwajima on 1 June 2020, while Koto kept the name Sea Forest for the eastern side.
The Central Breakwater is a good summary of the port as a whole: much of it stands on reclaimed ground that was once open water in Tokyo Bay, which held about 249 km² of reclaimed land in 2012 and covered about 922 km² in its narrower definition in 2012 and is still slowly shrinking as reclamation continues. For the wider shape of that bay, see our guide to Tokyo Bay; for the older treaty port a short way down the shore, read about the Port of Yokohama; and for the city the port was built to feed, turn to our profile of Tokyo, the capital of Japan.