This book examines how culturally specific aspects of Japanese preschool children's narrative discourse skills develop and eventually lead to literacy. It discusses how language shapes and is shaped by culture-specific experiences, analyzing how young Japanese children develop narrative structure and how Japanese parents guide their children in the acquisition of culture-specific styles of narrative and literacy. The book is based on research involving 20 preschool children ages 4 and 5 years and their mothers. Data consisted of children's and mothers' monologic narratives that were elicited by a neutral researcher; mother-child interactions, with a focus on mothers' utterances when they verbally interacted with their children during narrative elicitation; and mother-child interactions in the context of book reading activities. Part 1 of the book provides a theoretical and ethnographic background to the study. Part 2 analyzes the personal narratives told by Japanese preschool children and adults. Part 3 studies mother-child narrative discourse interactions, not only in Japan, but also in North America, using categories of meaning that emerge from the data. Part 4 examines the relationship between sociocultural background and young Japanese children's literacy development. (Contains approximately 400 references.) (SM)