This paper investigates the relationship between history and national identity, specifically how “golden ages” in a nation’s past are used for nationalist ends. Using discourse analysis, it examines how two types of popular historical venues, museums and textbooks, present Japan’s Heian period (794-1185) and explores what this reveals about Japanese national identity formation. The Heian era has a mixed legacy, making it an interesting case study of nationalist uses of history. The study concludes that there seem to be two major discourses of the Heian era in contemporary Japan: a literary discourse celebrating the epoch’s aesthetics and a historical discourse that is less enthusiastic. The first is far more prevalent, but it depicts certain facets of the Heian period, like differing gender norms, that apparently challenge the nationalist narrative of public history venues. The second discourse endeavors to rehabilitate the Heian era as another “respectable” piece of the master Japanese historical narrative. The presence of a strong literary discourse of the Heian that runs gainst some Japanese elites’ aims renders the Heian period an unappealing choice as a “golden age”, despite its achievements.