The demonstration was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in central Hibiya Park where anti-nuclear activists and trade unionists packed a concert hall to voice their opposition.
Academics, business people and volunteers gave anti-nuclear talks as musicians performed, before the crowds marched through the government district of Kasumigaseki to parliament.
They planned to hand petitions to anti-nuclear lawmakers, urging the government to stop its nuclear programmes.
Similar rallies were held elsewhere in Tokyo and across the rest of the nation, with local media reporting as many as 150 anti-nuclear events planned for the weekend and tomorrow.
In many tsunami-hit cities, residents dressed in black for ceremonies to mourn the victims of the disasters.
In the city of Rikuzentakata, where almost 1,600 people died and 217 people are still missing, Mayor Futoshi Toba reiterated his pledge to rebuild the city.
"We will move forward to build a beautiful city that is the pride of the nation where its citizens live happily and comfortably," he said.
Japan is still coming to terms with the disaster that ravaged its north-eastern region two years ago - the earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,000 people and several thousand are still unaccounted for.
The nuclear meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power's (Tepco) Fukushima Daiichi plant forced 160,000 people from their homes and many of them will never return.
Tepco faces a decades-long effort to decontaminate and decommission the wrecked nuclear plant after the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
All of Japan's 50 reactors were gradually shut down after the Fukushima disaster and all but two of them remain idle.
But the sweeping December victory of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party, which supports nuclear power, is a worry for nuclear power's opponents.
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