

Yokohama National University (YNU) is a public national university based in the city of Yokohama, in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture. Its roots reach back to 1876 with the founding of a local normal school for teacher training, but the modern institution was formally constituted in 1949, when postwar education reforms combined four separate schools — two teacher-training normal schools, an economics college, and a technical college — into a single national university. The consolidation reflected the nationwide restructuring of Japanese higher education carried out during the Allied occupation era.
Today the university is organized around a set of undergraduate colleges and graduate schools spanning education, economics, business administration, engineering science, and urban sciences, the last of which was added in 2017. This disciplinary mix gives YNU a comparatively broad profile for a mid-sized national university, pairing social-science and business programs with substantial engineering and applied-science offerings. The main Tokiwadai campus occupies a green, hilly site in Yokohama at roughly 35.47°N, 139.59°E, placing the university within the wider Greater Tokyo metropolitan region.
As of May 2020 the university enrolled about 9,600 students, including roughly 7,300 undergraduates and 2,300 postgraduates, making it a moderately sized institution by Japanese standards. YNU is regarded as a selective national university and is especially well known for the employment outcomes of its graduates; surveys of corporate recruiters have ranked it among the leading universities in the Greater Tokyo and Kōshin'etsu regions for graduate hiring. The independent aggregator EduRank places it around 35th nationally among Japanese institutions and in the mid-800s worldwide, reflecting a solid research and teaching standing both within Japan and internationally.
Acceptance rate is an EduRank estimate — modelled from comparable institutions for universities that do not publish an official figure (2026). Verify with the university before applying.
Key Facts Location: Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan Founded: 1949 Enrollment: Over 6,000 students Undergraduate Enrollment: Approximately 4,000 Graduate Enrollment: Around 2,000 Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 10:1 Notable Programs: Engineering, Business Admini…
Yokohama National University is located in Yokohama, Japan.
Yokohama National University is located in Yokohama, Japan.
You can visit the official website at https://www.ynu.ac.jp/english/.