 The proliferation of education in early-modern Japan, producing mid-nineteenth-century literacy rates comparable to those of the most advanced Western nations, resulted from a complex set of factors, including the development of mass printing, the creation of schools in the various samurai domains, and the rise of educational movements related to Japanese literature and culture that were highly critical of Chinese-style philosophy of any sort. Yet, at the base of much of this was the Neo-Confucian view, shared generally by orthodox and heterodox thinkers, that education, whether practical or discursive or both, was a necessary ingredient in the life of all persons who might hope to realize their full potential.