Scholars agree that the turning point in the global history of the night occurred when public illumination enabled the expansion of daytime activities after dark. In the case of Japan, the modern transformation of the night is commonly associated with the Meiji era, when gas lamps and Western-style lighthouses were introduced. Because Tokugawa Japan lacked any kind of public illumination, it is an unlikely candidate for inclusion in a global history of the transforming night. This technological bias can be corrected with a history of everyday (and everynight) life. An array of early modern sources indeed reveals that many of the features associated with the global transformation of the night – regulation, production, consumption, fantasy, and sociability – were in fact firmly in place in Japan before the age of public illumination. A journey into early modern Japan after dark complicates the parameters by which we measure historical change, enriches the history of the global night, and compels us to rethink the ways in which we write history