As one of the most rapid and earliest nations to achieve "western-modernisation", much of Japans success stems from its fruitful literacy history in the Tokugawa Shogunate, as well as later influences by Western educational ideals, and consequent economic and democratic conflicts in Japan. Locally written, put together by Japanese historians, this book seeks to inform English readers of how education and schooling contributed to the unique Japanese modernisation and industrialisation unlike other East Asian nations. These historical insights can be applied to crises in the formal and systemised education, and also form the basis of potential solutions to controversies faced by formal education in Japan and other nation states. A book that bridges the information gap on the Japans history of education would certainly be useful to Japanese education-centric historians and researchers.