Japan: Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life. Japan literacy rate for 2018 was 99.00%, a 0% increase from 2015. Japan literacy rate for 2015 was 99.00%, a 0% increase from 2010.
In 2018, adult literacy rate for China was 96.8 %. The adult literacy rate of China increased from 65.5 % in 1982 to 96.8 % in 2018 growing at an average annual rate of 10.52%.
(I'm sorry I don't know that far back for their literacy rates but this is the earliest I know)
