Abstract
In 1862 the first Japanese government mission was sent to London and was despatched to other European cities to negotiate diplomatic issues with Britain and other western powers. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901), a 27-yearold interpreter attached to the mission, took advantage of this opportunity to meet well informed persons in order to discuss the British parliamentary system, political parties, freedom of the press and other matters. Recalling these discussions, Fukuzawa wrote:
I raised queries about what constituted common sense for them [Britons] … and they might have thought my questions foolish. However, these were about the facts that I could not understand at all by reading. for instance, it was a capital crime in Japan for more than three people to group into a political association. But in Britain there exist political parties in bright sunshine [excuse the poetic licence!] and they contend for power. British citizens are at liberty to comment on and even to blame the government’s policy. It is more than a thousand wonders and beyond comprehension that they permit such licentious outrage and keep the country in order.2
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References
Fukuzawa Yukichi, ‘Introduction’ to his five-volume Works (Tokyo, 1897). Cf. Fukuzawa’s Autobiography, revised translation by E. Kiyooka (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). Both are included in his complete works, Fukuzawa Yukichi Zenshu, 21 vols (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958–71). The quote is from vol. I, pp. 27–8 (the author’s translations are used throughout the chapter).
The sale of 250000 copies is more remarkable if we take into account that the population of the country then stood at slightly above 30 million. Cf. Miyaji Masato’s editorial note in Rekishi Ninshiki (Historical Perceptions): Nihon Kindai Shiso Taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), p. 73; A. Hayami, ‘Population changes’, in M. Jansen and G. Rozman (eds), Japan in Transition from Tokugawa to Meiji (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England, 2 vols (London: J. W. Parker and Son, 1857–61); François P. G. Guizot, General History of Civilisation in Europe (English translation) (Oxford, 1837); Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no Gairyaku (translated by D. Dilworth and C. Hurst as An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica Monograph, Sophia University, 1973)).
Ishizuki Minoru, Kindai Nihon no Kaigai Ryugaku-shi (History of study abroad in modern Japan) (Kyoto: Minerva, 1972); Ishizuki Minoru, ‘Overseas Study by Japanese in the Early Meiji Period’, in A. W. Burks (ed.), The Modernizers: Overseas Students, Foreign Employers, and Meiji Japan (Boulder: Westview, Press, 1985).
Carmen Blacker, The Japanese Enlightenment: Study of the Writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). On the other hand, Blacker’s studies on the shadowy side of modernizing Japan include The Catalpa Bow: a Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975).
Patriotism and concern for the destiny of the nation were shared both by the modernist/progressive camp and by those of the nationalist/romanticist camp. The former believed in the universal progress of civilization, the latter rejected the idea and stuck to the peculiarities of the Japanese/East. But both were alternative intellectual reactions against the military expansionism, overwhelming industrial capitalism and civilization of Western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The logical consequence of this is that we may not be dealing with the peculiarities of the Japanese experience, but with some comparable trajectory of latecomer nations in the industrializing and modernizing world. Compare with Kondo Kazuhiko, Bunmei no Hyosho Eikoku (Civilized Britain as Represented in Modernizing Japan) (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1998).
University of Tokyo (ed.), Tokyo Daigaku Hyakunen Shi (100 Years of the University of Tokyo), 10 vols (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1984–87).
G. G. Zerffi, The Science of History with an introductory letter by K. Suyematz (London: privately printed, 1879), 773pp; G. G. Zerffi, ‘The Historical Development of Idealism and Realism’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Old Series, V (1877)–VIII (1880); Frank Tibor, Egy Emigrans Alakvaltasai: Zerffi Gusztav Palyakepe 1820–92 (1985); Japanese translation Aru bomeisha no henshin by Nishizawa Ryusei (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 1994); Margaret Mehl, ‘Suematsu Kencho in Britain, 1878–86’, Japan Forum, vol. 5, iss. 2 (1993), pp. 173–93.
Shigakkai (ed.), Shigakkai Hyakunen Shoshi 1889–1989 (A Short History of the Shigakkai) (Tokyo, 1989).
Cf. I. Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy 1869–1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 19.
Tanaka Akira has compiled the definitive edition of Kume Kunitake, Beio Kairan Jikki (‘Observations during the Round Visits to America and Europe’) (originally waso 100 vols, 1878; Iwanami Bunko edition in 5 vols, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1978).
Ludwig Riess continued to criticize the ‘high-flown’ arguments of some Japanese historians/intellectuals, and encouraged ‘uncommitted’ compilations of documents and fact-based research. He contributed to Shigaku Zasshi from 1889 to 1902. The pursuit of fact-based documentation bore fruit: Dai Nippon Ishin Shiryo Kohon (DNISK) was compiled and published by the Department of National History and later the Institute of Historiography (established 1929) of Tokyo Imperial University. For DNISK, or ‘one of the greatest historiographical triumphs of mankind’, see C. D. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1980), pp. 549–52.
Shibata Michio, ‘Nihon ni okeru Yoroppa rekishigaku no juyo’ (The Reception of European Historical Studies in Japan), in Iwanami-koza Sekai-rekishi, vol. 30 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971); Yamanouchi Yasushi, ‘The Reorientation of Historical Studies: Japan’, in G. C. Iggers and H. T Parker (eds), International Handbook of Historical Studies, Contemporary Research and Theory (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).
This phase of Shakai Seisaku Gaku (social policy studies) is described in K. B. Pyle, ‘Meiji conservatism’ in M. B. Jansen (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5 The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 705–10.
The decade after the First World War saw a rapid expansion of higher education: in 1920 students at high schools and universities comprised 1.6 per cent of the age group, in 1930 3.0 per cent, and in 1940 3.7 per cent. They still represented the cream of the nation. Tsutsui Kiyotada, Nihon gata ‘Kyoyo’ no Unmei (The demise of Japanese ‘humanities’) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995), p. 111.
Maruyama Masao, author’s introduction to the English edition of Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), especially p. xxiv; Maruyama Masao, Nihon no Shiso [Japanese Thought] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1961).
M. B. Jansen, in his introduction to The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume5, pp. 41–3, epitomizes the arguments of the opposing two groups. But I emphasize that the Rono-ha predated the Koza-ha and the latter emerged against the once prevalent former group. See P. Duus and I. Scheiner, ‘Socialism, liberalism and Marxism 1901–1931’, in P. Duus (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 6, The Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 654–710; Nini Jensen, ‘The debate over Japanese capitalism’, in I. Nish (ed.), Contemporary European Writing on Japan (Ashford: Paul Norbury 1988), pp. 68–76.
Yamada Moritaro did this intending to astound the imperial censor: see his preface to the Iwanami Bunko edition (1977) of Nihon Shihonshugi Bunseki (Analysis of Japanese Capitalism). The difficulties of another Marxist economist, Otsuka Kinnosuke, who was among the Koza-ha collaborators, between 1933 and 1945, is described by Tsuzuki Chushichi, ‘Tenko or Teiko: The dilemma of a Japanese Marxist between the wars’, in S. Henny and J. P. Lehmann (eds), Themes and Theories in Modern Japanese History (London: The Athlone Press, 1988).
H. S. Hughes, The Obstructed Path (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).
The collaboration of the four and others see Yamanouchi Yasushi, Narita Ryuichi and J. Victor Koschmann, Soryokusen to Gendaika (Total War and Modernization) (Tokyo: Hakushobo, 1995);
Sakai Naoki, Brett de Barry Nee and Iyotani Toshio, Nashonariti no Datsu-kochiku (Nationality Deconstructed) (Tokyo: Hakushobo, 1996).
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Kazuhiko, K. (2002). The Modernist Inheritance in Japanese Social Studies: Fukuzawa, Marxists and Otsuka Hisao . In: Daniels, G., Tsuzuki, C. (eds) The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600–2000. The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373600_9
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