· 2009
Yukichi Fukuzawa rose from low samurai origins to become one of the finest intellectuals and social thinkers of modern Japan. Through his best-selling works, he helped transform an isolated feudal nation into a full-fledged international force. In Outline of a Theory of Civilization, the author's most sustained philosophical text, Fukuzawa translates and adapts a range of Western works for a Japanese audience, establishing the social, cultural, and political avenues through which Japan could connect with other countries. Echoing the ideas of Western contemporaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, Fukuzawa encouraged a grassroots elevation of the individual and national spirit, as well as free initiative in the private domain. Fukuzawa's bold project articulated thoughts that, for him, bolstered the material evidence of Western civilization. He argued that the essential difference separating Western countries from Japan and Asia was the extent to which citizens acted like free and responsible individuals. This careful new translation, accompanied by a comprehensive critical introduction, highlights the truly transnational aspects of Outline of a Theory of Civilization and its status as a foundational text of modern Japanese civilization. Approaching Fukuzawa's progressive thought with a fresh eye, these scholars elucidate the monumental and peerless quality of his work.
· 2007
In his country's swift transformation from an isolated feudal state to a full-fledged member of the modern world, Fukuzawa played a leading role: he was the educator of the new Japan, the man who above all others explained to his countrymen the ideas behind the dazzling material evidence of Western civilization. Dictated by Fukuzawa in 1897, this book vividly relates his story and prepared him to write "Seiyo Jijo" (Things Western), the book which made him famous.
· 2013
The intellectual and social theorist Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote An Encouragement of Learning (1872–1876) as a series of pamphlets as he completed his critical masterpiece, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1875). Closely linked, the two texts illustrate the core tenets of Fukuzawa’s theoretical outlook: freedom and equality as inherent to human nature, independence as the goal of any individual and nation, and the transformation of the Japanese mind as key to moving forward in a rapidly evolving political and cultural landscape. Fukuzawa called for the adoption of Western modes of education to help Japan emerge as a modern nation. He believed human beings’ treatment of one another extended to a government’s behavior, echoing the work of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and other Western thinkers in a classically structured Eastern text.
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