Christian's Edition Feiqe no Monogatari (Heike Monogatari)

This is a page from the Christian's Edition Feiqe no Monogatari (commonly known as Heike Monogatari). This book is one of the earliest texts printed in the Japanese language using movable type. However, it is printed using the Roman alphabet with romanized pronunciations (Portuguese romanization) of  the Japanese colloquial language of the time. 

This book demonstrates why movable type did not become popular in Japan around the 1600's, which is because it was too expensive to create all of the glyphs commonly used in the Japanese language, which can reach over a thousand. On the other hand, the Latin alphabet contains only 26 letters, and just over 50 including uppercase and lowercase letters so it is much easier to use movable type. Wood block printing was much more prominent during this period because it was less expensive than movable type, and it allowed for more expressive cursive script.