Did You Know . . . Tokyo Has Eight Full-Time, Full-Size, Fully Professional Orchestras? 

By Robert Markow | From the March/April 2026 issue of Strings

The names can be maddeningly alike: the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra. These are unofficially the “Big Eight,” each a distinct entity, all competing mightily for audiences.

Best-known abroad is the NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) Symphony Orchestra (a radio orchestra), which celebrates its centennial this year. But Japan’s oldest orchestra is the Tokyo Philharmonic, founded long before many of America’s major orchestras. Now in its 114th year, it is also the country’s largest and busiest. Its 160 members work on a rotating basis, performing some 400 concerts of all sorts each year. Unique in another sense is the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, the only orchestra affiliated primarily with a newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, which has the largest daily circulation in the world.

In addition to Tokyo’s Big Eight, there are some 50 additional orchestras with the word Tokyo in their title (Tokyo Academy Orchestra, Tokyo Sinfonietta, Tokyo Sinfonia, Tokyo Amadeus Orchestra, etc.). These are largely amateur, semiprofessional, school, corporate, or specialty orchestras that give only a few concerts a year, but collectively, they contribute much to Japan’s classical music scene.