The first scientific literacy survey in Japan was conducted in 1948. It was the first time that a full-scale nationwide survey based on random sampling techniques was carried out in Japan, and data were collected from 16,820 men and women between the ages of 15 and 64 (by the traditional Japanese system). One of the most well-known aspects of this global landmark survey is the figures on illiteracy rates and their interpretation. The report of the survey, "The reading and writing ability of the Japanese" (1951), concluded that the illiteracy rate of the Japanese was"extremely low" at 1.7% or 2.1%. This view has been cited repeatedly in Japan and abroad and is now treated as a definite fact. However, a reexamination of the content and format of the test questions on the 1948 survey revealed that there was insufficient control of the difficulty level and that the test contained a large number of multiple-choice questions, making it problematic to simply classify those who scored zero on the test as illiterate. Therefore, we concluded that we should avoid uncritically quoting the description of illiteracy rates in this report.
