"There's a tie on the cover. Wouldn't it be about men's fashion?"

So despite being a eight and a bit life times bibliophile memory collection Akyuu never learnt English? Perhaps she knew what the book was all along and was hoping to share it with Kosuzu in secret, like post #1283020. Damn pesky kids got in the way.

Monki said:

So despite being a eight and a bit life times bibliophile memory collection Akyuu never learnt English? Perhaps she knew what the book was all along and was hoping to share it with Kosuzu in secret, like post #1283020. Damn pesky kids got in the way.

To be fair, she has to go through the whole baby/toddler phase all over again every time she's reborn and she's dying younger and younger each reincarnation too. So less time for reading than you think.

Monki said:

So despite being a eight and a bit life times bibliophile memory collection Akyuu never learnt English? Perhaps she knew what the book was all along and was hoping to share it with Kosuzu in secret, like post #1283020. Damn pesky kids got in the way.

Her 8th incarnation probably lived in the period (somewhere around in the middle of the 19th century) when Japan wasn't on good terms with the English or the Americans, so there wasn't much incentive to learn English. Heck, English-Japanese dictionaries back then were usually (if not all) horrible telephone-game translations of English-Portuguese or English-Dutch dictionaries.

Anglo-Japanese relations improved significantly by the turn of the 20th century, but by then Gensoukyou has already been locked behind the Hakurei Barrier.