This work has been prepared with a view to the needs of those who are giving instruction or supervising the work in arithmetic in the elementary schools.
Yoshio Mikami was an authority on wasan, native Japanese mathematics, and published multiple works on the topic in different languages. A colleague of David Eugene Smith suggested he work with Mikami to produce this volume.
It was not written for a large audience, but was intended to teach mathematics of everyday currency. The Treviso became one of the first mathematics books written for the expansion of human knowledge.