Contents -- Figures, Maps, and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Literacy in Early Tokugawa Villages -- Signatures, Ciphers, and Seals -- Rural Culture and the Rise of Provincial Literati in the Eighteenth Century -- The Expansion of Popular Literacy in the Nineteenth Century -- Direct Measures of Popular Literacy in the Nineteenth Century -- Epilogue: Illiteracy in Meiji Japan -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author.