Introduction

Recent research on early modern Japan (roughly the Tokugawa period, 1603– 1868) has documented a proliferation of schools of all kinds and a moji shakai (lettered society) deeply penetrated and administered by written materials. This makes it easy to believe that in one way or another people came to be able to read and write. However, the history of early modern society is more than a story of the broadening and deepening of written communication. It is essential to consider two contrary possibilities.

The first is the existence of groups that did not depend primarily on written documents at all. For example, in a number of religious sects and in the arts, oral transmission was the primary means of communication. Since ancient times, oral means of communication have continued to thrive alongside written media, and there have continued to be ways for those who could not read or write to communicate orally.

The other exception to the enlargement or extension of written communication was reduction or changes in it, even limits or bans placed on certain forms of literacy. For example, Chinese studies, which in the early modern period was essential training for the leadership group above the middle level, underwent changes after Meiji, then saw its importance diminish and eventually disappear. Similarly, Dutch studies, which had been at the center of Western studies for technocrats during the Tokugawa period, was replaced by English following the opening of the country, and went almost entirely out of existence as technical training for elites.

As a result, schools for Chinese language and culture, Dutch language and Dutch studies suffered sharp reductions. In such ways the notion of what literacy means can change according to time, location and class. Sometimes this can include the possibility of restrictions and outright bans on certain forms of written expression by political authorities. In this chapter we will focus on an example of the latter case: how opportunities for the written transmission of Christianity were both restricted and dramatically transformed during the early modern period.

In sixteenth-century Japan the arrival of Jesuit missionaries led to the establishment of a systematic school system for the training of priests.