The Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, founded in 1968 at the University of Pennsylvania and since 1984 located at Columbia University, is an international research and liaison center designed to serve all scholars, regardless of nationality, whose main area of study focuses on pre-modern Japan. The overall purpose of the Institute is to encourage both individual and collaborative research on all aspects of Japanese civilization relative to the medieval period, centuries which, until the 1970s, had been relatively neglected among Japanese and Western scholars alike. The facilities of the Institute are available to all scholars and students of medieval Japan from any academic institution.

The logo of the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies is the monogram (kaô) of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1305-1358), which was selected for the Institute in the year of its founding by the late Professor Atsuyoshi Sakakura of Kyoto University.