It is widely believed that a majority of Japanese had acquired literacy by the end of the early modern period. In other words, during that period Japan transitioned from a largely illiterate society to a literate one. It is the aim of this chapter (and the entire volume, in fact) to assess exactly what this means by looking at empirical data for particular classes, regions, genders and occupations and to judge whether or not this holds up as a generalization.

Of course, for the warrior class who stood atop early modern Japan's social hierarchy the acquisition of scholarship and martial skills was an indication of their elevated status, so the warriors comprised a largely literate social strata. Also, since antiquity, court aristocrats had the central historical function of being the bearers of culture and learning. The Buddhist clergy were also a lettered class owing to their activities researching, studying and teaching religious doctrine using written script.

But what of the wider society? How extensively and under what circumstances did farmers, merchants, craftsmen and other non-elite people become literate? And what methods should we use to determine the level and extent of popular literacy in early modern Japan? This paper represents an empirically based investigation of these questions.

This chapter will analyze a selection of 36 historical documents from the Katsuragawa Myōōin Monastery in Ōmi Province that date to the period between late medieval and early modern Japan. These 36 documents include contracts (kishōmon), rules of inheritance (okibumi) and the like, upon which many villagers had written personal marks such as ciphers (kaō), abbreviated ciphers (ryakuō) or other marks beneath where their names appeared in order to certify that they understood the content of the document.

Making direct connections between marks on documents and levels of literacy, however, is fraught with problems and requires caution. Roles and social status of individuals within a village, the social organization of villages within particular time periods, the historic context of villages within regions, the circumstances of the composition of documents all require close examination. The fact that the 36 documents with confirming personal marks are scattered between the years 1313 and 1713, and that such a small set of examples comes from such a long period raises questions as to the validity of signature percentages, so the various ciphers and other confirming marks on each individual document must be looked at carefully.