Abstract: Controversial – this is the notion that perhaps describes the intellectual history of Mito most accurately. Contradictions can be detected in almost every relevant concept: for example, how did a domain initially open to foreign influences in the 17th century ended up becoming associated with xenophobia due to the idea of sonnō jōi (尊皇攘夷　“revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”) at the end of the Tokugawa period? How are we to understand their initially emperor-focused attitude in history writing while belonging to the gosanke (御三家, the three domains privileged by the shogun’s government). Why and how was the most monumental history writing project in Japan, the Dai Nihonshi (大日本史, The History of Great Japan), the compilation of which covered 250 years, produced at a relatively unlikely place, in Mito, instead of a major intellectual hub, such as Edo or Kyoto? Or, on a less abstract level, how did the founder of the Shōkōkan (彰考館, the historiographical institute of Mito, their center of scholarly inquiry), Tokugawa Mitsukuni (徳川光圀), the second daimyo of the Mito domain, end up becoming well-known as the protagonist of an extraordinarily popular television series, the legendary Mito Kōmon? Most of these questions are yet to be fully explored, but they all have one thing in common: they all imply a process, change, shift, telling us the story of how the image of texts, people, and places can transform into something that can make the original version barely recognizable. My presentation intends to focus on tracing these important points and changes as determining factors in the understanding of this unique segment of Tokugawa intellectual history.