As the Tokugawa period progressed more value became placed on education, and the education of females beginning at a young age became important to families and society as a whole. Marriage criteria began to weigh intelligence and education as desirable attributes in a wife, right along with physical attractiveness. Though many of the texts written for women during the Tokugawa period only pertained to how a woman could become a successful wife and household manager, there were those that undertook the challenge of learning to read, and also tackled <answer>philosophical and literary classics</answer>. Nearly all women of the samurai class were literate by the end of the Tokugawa period.
What types of advanced books did some Japanese women read?
philosophical and literary classics