Social History of Literacy in Japan

Richard Rubinger has a PhD in Japanese studies from Columbia University and is a full professor at Indiana University. He has published numerous articles and chapters in books on his specialty: the history of Japanese literacy and education. He is also an experienced translator having translated the work of Motoyama Yukihiko with Jurgis Elisonas and others and Siebold’s Daughter, a translation of Yoshimura Akira’s Fuon Shiihoruto no musume.

• List of Contributors; Preface to the English Edition; Chapter 1: Estimating Literacy in Pre-Modern Japan, by Kimura Masanobu (translated by Richard Rubinger); Chapter 2: “'Illiteracy”' Among Heian Period Aristocrats, by Suzuki Rie (translated by Richard Rubinger); Chapter 3: Learning and Literacy Among Ikkō Ikki Adherents, by Ohto Yasuhiro (translated by Richard Rubinger); Chapter 4: Literacy and Orality in Support of Christian Beliefs in Early Modern Japan, by Kimura Masanobu (translated by Richard Rubinger); Chapter 5: Personal Marks and Literacy Among Early-Modern Japanese Farmers, by Umemura Kayo (translated by Richard Rubinger); Chapter 6: Literacy in Early Modern Wakasa and Echizen Regions, by Yakuwa Tomohiro (translated by David Nelson); Chapter 7: Education of Provincial Merchants in Early Modern Aizu: Evidence from the Keiseikan Diary, by Ohta Motoko (translated by Charles Andrews); Chapter 8: Literacy in Ozenji Village in the Early Nineteenth Century, by Ohto Yasuhiro (translated by Gregory Johnson); Chapter 9: Early Meiji Literacy: The Case of Wakayama Prefecture, by Kawamura Hajime (translated by Terence Jackson).

"A welcome and important collection of Japanese scholarship on literacy in Japan, with case studies that range across society and through history, from Heian to early Meiji. The textured empirical evidence helps to clarify, and dispel, some of the common generalizations about who could read and write what in Japan before modern times." — Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Columbia University, US