This October, I was fortunate to attend and participate in a workshop entitled ‘The Foundation of Education in Premodern East Asia: Studying, and Studying with, Topical Encyclopedias’ at Columbia University. In my two years in the Japanese literature graduate program at Columbia, I’ve become increasingly interested in the role of educational texts in literary culture in premodern Japan, and I had come to feel that educational texts have particularly important implications for the reception of cultural material from China; this groundbreaking workshop was an incredible opportunity for me to hear the thoughts of Professors Kônoshi Takamitsu and Saitô Mareshi on this topic, and has helped me a great deal in trying to refine my own ideas. The interactive format of the workshop, which challenged us to approach problem points in a text by means of premodern topical encyclopedias and commentaries, really brought to life the kinds of methods by which literati would actually have engaged with texts; both professors also provided thought-provoking discussion of the centrality of resources like topical encyclopedias in literary contexts throughout East Asia. I was left with a new perspective on the concrete methodology of literary education, and also with a great deal to mull over regarding the spread of Chinese learning and the ways in which encyclopedias and commentaries created a network of interconnected cultural information above and beyond specific texts.