This chapter examines night work and night play in nonurban settings and makes a case for the importance of the night hours in shaping the economic and social life of villages. Most histories of “nocturnalization” – the legitimate expansion of work and leisure after dark – are either city-centered or emphasize the gap between city and country. Tokugawa Japan offers a corrective to these models. In the eighteenth century, as the population grew and the economy expanded, villagers turned to by-employment and night work. As a material condition of production, darkness expanded the range of economic possibilities for farmers and fishers, and sustained their integration with interregional and urban markets. After dark, work blended with conviviality and enabled members of the rural communities to socialize and form bonds, including sexual ones. Such forms of night leisure, if performed with decorum, were acceptable and welcome aspects of village life. As they worked and played after dark, the dwellers of Japan’s rural communities performed tasks and traditions that may have been local but contributed to the global transformation of the night and the birth of the modern world.