University of Tokyo

The University of Tokyo, called UTokyo in English and Todai in Japanese, is a public research university in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. It was chartered on 12 April 1877 by the Meiji government as the nation's first modern university, formed by merging institutions from the Edo period, among them the Shoheizaka Institute and the Tenmongata astronomical school founded in 1684. It began with faculties of law, science, letters and medicine and later absorbed the Imperial College of Engineering. Today it consists of 10 faculties, 15 graduate schools and 11 affiliated research institutes, with its main facilities on the Hongo, Komaba and Kashiwa campuses. Its alumni and faculty include many Japanese prime ministers and Nobel laureates, and its Department of Economics has employed mathematical economists such as Hirofumi Uzawa, who became a professor there in 1969.