Fukuzawa Yukichi

Fukuzawa Yukichi (Japanese福 沢 谕 吉Fukuzawa Yukichi, born January 10, 1835 in Osaka, † February 3, 1901 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese author, translator, and political philosopher. He is regarded as one of the great intellectuals of the Meiji Restoration, which played a decisive role in the modernization of Japan.

Life

Fukuzawa Yukichi was born in 1835 as son of the ruler of Nakatsu (now in Oita Prefecture ) serving impoverished samurai family in Osaka. Since the end of the 18th century there were in the Princely House Okudaira a strong interest in the so-called Holland Studies ( Rangaku ). 1853, shortly after the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who demanded the opening of the country, Fukuzawa was sent to Nagasaki, where there were good opportunities in the environment of the VOC trading post Dejima, to study the language, culture and technology of the Dutch. A year later, he moved to Osaka in order to perfect his language skills in the famous Tekijuku School of the doctor and Holland- Kund Jewellers Ogata Kōan on. In 1858 he was sent to the Edo residence of the Princely House Okudaira. Here he taught the samurai (ie civil servants) in the Dutch language.

The following year, Japan opened three ports to foreign vessels, and Fukuzawa traveled to Kanagawa, to see the stranger again. To his astonishment, saying almost all English instead of Dutch, so he began to learn the English language. Since that time were hardly any tools, progress has been modest.

As one of the first Japanese to 1860, he traveled to the United States in 1862 as a translator and member of a government delegation to Europe. His experience with the West and his newly acquired knowledge about the West he held 1866-1869 in " conditions in the West," Seiyo Jijo (西洋 事情), fixed. In these best-sellers Fukuzawa described for a everyday institutions such as hospitals, railway stations, post offices, etc., on the other hand, he added his descriptive remarks a Japanese translation of " Chambers ' Political Economy ' in, an economic textbook that influenced his very own ideas. It represents a kind of bridge between his studies of Holland sciences and his first normative -Enlightenment works, which he wrote at the beginning of the 1870s, full in the first decade of the Meiji Restoration - and which were accompanied by many other Enlightenment, Western-influenced activities.

He held on while away from political life and government appointments; for he began in 1868, with the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, his ideas to publish in various newspapers, became a member of one of the first intellectuals Communities of Japan, the Meirokusha, founded the Keio Gijuku (庆 应 义 塾), a private school with a public character, guided by the model of the English public schools. Tradition has it that he exhorted his students in the riots in 1868, to study, rather than to engage with the sword for the new state. He wrote two of his greatest works: " call for science," Gakumon no susume (学問 の すゝ め), published 1872-1876, and " Outline of a Theory of Civilization", Bunmeiron no gairyaku (文明 论 之 概略), 1875 Especially. these two works, but the other early writings Fukuzawas formed the backbone of the Japanese Enlightenment movement in the late 1860s and into the 1870s. Your content - Western economics, philosophy and politics - and the other books on liberal Western society theories were taught in his school, which received university status in 1890 ( Keio University ). Fukuzawa himself became in the 1880s and 1890s gradually from liberal nationalists for reconnaissance, perhaps even to the ultra-nationalists, and called for the departure of Japan from the rest of Asia. In 1901 he died at the age of 66 years.

A portrait Fukuzawas today adorns the Japanese 10,000 yen note, the largest banknote of Japan.

Comments

Writings

• An autobiographical account of life. Übers by Gerhard Linzbichler in community work with Hidenao Arai, among others Tokyo: Keio University Gijuku, 1971.
• Clothing, Food and Living in the West. Übers by Yvonne Guckelsberger. Berlin: Mori- Ôgai Memorial, Humboldt University, Berlin, 2008.

Swell

• Carmen Blacker: The Japanese Enlightenment. A study of the writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Cambridge 1964.
• Albert M. Craig: Fukuzawa Yukichi. The Philosophical Foundations of Meiji Nationalism. In: Robert Edward Ward ( ed.): Political Development in Modern Japan. Princeton, New Jersey, 1968, pp. 99-148.
• Norio Tamaki: Yukichi Fukuzawa, 1835-1901. The Spirit of Enterprise in Modern Japan. Basingstoke, Hampshire [ et al ] 2001.