Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, Main prefectural library in Minami-Azabu, Japan

The Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library opened in 1973 in Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park in Minami-Azabu, in a reinforced-concrete building completed in 1972 with five floors above ground and two below, 23,196.21 square metres of floor space and 916 seats. About 350,000 of its roughly 1.88 million volumes stand on open shelves, and business, legal and medical information is concentrated on the ground floor.

It opened in 1973 as a new central facility replacing an older library that had served the city since the early 1900s. The change reflected growing demand for library services and better facilities in the post-war period.

The library's name and role date from 1973, when it took over part of the Hibiya Library's holdings. Its special collections include the Tokyo Metropolitan Library's roughly 243,000 items in the Special Collections Room on the fifth floor, and the Urban Tokyo Information Corner on the ground floor gathers Tokyo administrative materials.

The library stands inside Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park in Minami-Azabu, with 916 seats and 350,000 books on open shelves. Business, law and medical material, plus the Tokyo city-information corner and basic reference shelves, are all on the ground floor, where the service counters are also gathered. Floors 2 and 3 hold open-access reading rooms for social and natural sciences, then humanities; a canteen is on the fifth floor.

The library holds one of the city's largest collections of magazine and periodical titles that cover a wide range of topics and interests. Many international language materials sit alongside Japanese publications, creating a space where different reading traditions coexist.