Transformation and Various Aspects of Community Popular Education in Tokyo in Meiji Era Takeo Matsuda The purpose of this paper is to examine the variety and transformation of community popular education before the institutionalizatiton of social educationin in Japan, focussing on Tokyo Prefecture in the 1880s-1900s. The spread and development of activities of popular education in local areas after the 1880s formed the basis establishing social education administration in modern Japan, although the state played the most important role in this process. Positive efforts were made to promote popular education in each local area, based on the policy of the state. Social education in prewar Japan tends to be stereotyped as a means through which the state controlled people. A variety of activities were, however, independently carried out according to the special needs of each particular region, and these forms of education also envolved in aspect, especially during the period 1880-1920. In the 1880s-1900s, Tokyo was made up of a variety of regions, such as the great city- itself a continuation of the old Edo capital-, the farming regions next to the city, the mountain villages far from the city, and the islands off the mainland. This variety engendered a diverse approach to popular education in each local area. We can, therefore, examine the variety and transformation of community popular education through a case study of Tokyo.