State-financed university in Tokyo, the largest and most prestigious university in Japan.
It was founded in 1877 and modeled on Western universities. It was destroyed in the great earthquake and fire of 1923 and reorganized following World War II. Today it has faculties of agriculture, economics, education, engineering, law, letters, medicine, pharmacology, and science, as well as a college of arts and sciences and a graduate school. Among its many research units are centres for the study of molecular and cellular biology, earthquakes, solid-state physics, cosmic radiation, oceanography, and Asian culture.