ABSTRACT
Ever since the Meiji period, 'Europe' played a major role in the development ofJapanese historiography. This influence was sometimes overt and willingly recognized, while at times one needed to read between the lines of historical scholarship in order to detect its 'European' thematic. Three complementary aspects of this influence can be differentiated: First, Europe constituted an important object of study for Japanese academic historians. In fact, when a faculty ofhistory was set up at Tokyo University in 1887, at first it was solely concerned with the European past. Academic historiography in Japan, in other words, began as the study of European history. Not least, this was due to the strong influence of the European model on the establishment of history as an academic subject in Japan. Especially the impact of German historicism was very marked; the Japanese government had commissioned Ludwig Riess, a young historian at Berlin University, to serve as first professor of history at Tokyo University. Riess, who was a specialist of English constitutional history, lectured on European history and on universal history in the fashion of German historicism (most notably Leopold von Ranke). Most of his students, consequendy, were trained to use European source materials and had studied the European past.
