The JFCR was founded in 1908 as the first Japanese organization specializing in cancer by Katsusaburō Yamagiwa and his supporters.

[1] The Cancer Institute and its attached hospital of JFCR were set up in 1934.

The JFCR became a full member of the Union for International Cancer Control in 1968.

[3] The research at the Institute covers a wide variety of biomedical fields, including biochemistry, cell biology, pathology, carcinogenesis, genomics, system biology, and biomedical engineering.

[6][7] The Hospital now has approximately 700 beds,[2] and in fiscal 2011 it treated 61,324 outpatients and 9,690 inpatients.