Education And Literacy During The Tokugawa Period

At the beginning of the Tokugawa period in the 17th century, education and literacy were not prominent in everyday life. Mainly the aristocracy, Buddhist priests, and the upper reaches of the warrior class had access to private tutors. Even then, however, very few of these classes, especially the samurai, were literate. Many shoguns at the time did not care about the importance of education in society. The Samurai did not need to know how to read in order to fight off enemies, therefor it was not necessarily important to learn. For many Shoguns, it was more important to maintain peace throughout the empire than to have an intellectual military. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that education started to become important in daily