Margaret Mehl examines the way in which government interests, indigenous traditions of scholarship, impulses from the West and the rise of the modern nation-state combined to shape the modern academic discipline of history in Japan. The focus of her study is on the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo.

This research institute was originally a government office established to compile an official national history to legitimize the new imperial government, which replaced shogunal rule in 1868. When the Office moved to the Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1888, its leading members helped establish history as an independent academic discipline.

Particular attention is given to the relationship between history and political ideology, German influence and the importance of history for national identity.