This Institute was established in April 1978, for the purpose of research in the areas of political and economic affairs and mass communications in contemporary Japan. Today, academic research, with the growing trend towards specialization, increasingly calls for joint research among scholars, and for wide-ranging and systematic gathering of materials to support that research. This Institute aims to meet these needs by engaging in, and publishing the results of, research, holding symposiums and public lectures and collecting, coordinating and preserving materials. As an annex to the Institute, the European Documentation Centre was set up in May, 1980.