Kano Bunko has long had a reputation as one of the country's leading major collections of Japanese and Chinese classics. Dominating the 180,000-strong collection in both quantity and quality are the Edo period manuscripts, rare copies, woodblock printed books, and antique maps, spanning from literature and language studies to history, topography, the arts, Japanese mathematics, and herbal pharmacology. This microfilm release contains approximately 53,000 books, mainly manuscripts and printed books from the Edo period. It enables not only the study of individual works, but greater understanding of the connections between genres, the use of script in printed books, and through the illustrations, the historical background; making this a set of historical sources that opens up new horizons in the study not only of the Edo period literature, but the Edo culture as a whole, and is simultaneously vital for empirical research. Certain to be a game-changer in Edo studies.