Suzuki and Subaru, also Japanese, were ranked fourth and fifth respectively in the survey of cars between three and 10 years old.
South Korean carmaker Hyundai shared sixth place with Japan’s Mazda and Mitsubishi.
By contrast, Land Rover was the least reliable marque surveyed.
Other luxury car brands, including Audi, Jaguar and Mercedes, were also among the 10 least reliable.
“They need to do better,” said What Car?’s editor in chief, Chas Hallett, insisting these marques’ poor reliability would be “surprising to many”.
“Reliability is so important to motorists, especially when times are tough.”
“Japanese carmakers really do deliver on reliability and Honda is exceptionally good at this,” said Mr Hallett, pointing out that this was the seventh year in a row when Honda topped the ranking.
US carmaker Chevrolet was the only non-Asian marque to rank as one of the 10 most reliable used cars.
Some 22% of Chevrolets break down at least once each year.
By comparison, the worst performing Japanese brand was Nissan, with a failure rate of 25%, just ahead of South Korea’s Kia at 26%.