Despite the great interest in and the availability of enormous literature about education in Japan this book is a translation of the first work written in Japanese on the history of literacy in Japan. The authors are each accomplished scholars of Japanese educational history and each provides solid empirical evidence and original analyses of literacy in their own particular specialty from Heian aristocrats to religious sects in the medieval period to Christian believers in the sixteenth century to a variety of farmers and merchants in early modern times. The book is unique in the sense that literacy in Japan is analysed with a high degree of methodological sophistication backed by empirical evidence in the form of signatures or personal marks on documents on so many topics.