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Fukuzawa Reconsidered: Gakumon no susume and Its Audience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) is quite possibly the best-known, most widely studied, and most frequently quoted writer of the early Meiji period. More of his writings have been translated into English than those of any other nonliterary Meiji writer. So much attention is given to Fukuzawa that he often appears as the Meiji intellectual. One recent textbook describes him as nothing less than “the most influential man in Meiji Japan outside government service.” In another description he is portrayed as “one of the most remarkable” of men, one of that small number of men who move history through their own personal power, and “the man who above all others” explained Western material and spiritual culture to Meiji Japanese. Overall, scholars have been only slightly more reticent in describing Fukuzawa's importance than he himself was. In his own view, the reforms undertaken in the early Meiji period were influenced by himself to such a degree that it was appropriate to say “If I did not chiefly initiate them, I think I may have been indirectly influential in bringing them about.”
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References
1 Fairbank, John K., Reischauer, Edwin O., Craig, Albert M., East Asia Tradition and Transformation New Impression (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), p. 530Google Scholar.
2 Blacker, Carmen, “Foreword” in Yukichi, Fukuzawa (Kiyooka, Eiichi, trans.), The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa (New York: Schocken, 1972) [hereafter Autobiography], p. vGoogle Scholar.
3 Dilworth, David A., “Introduction” in , Dilworth & Hirano's, Umeyo translation of Gakumon no susume, An Encouragement of Learning (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1969) [hereafter EL], p. xGoogle Scholar.
4 Cited in note 2 above.
5 Harootunian, Harry D., Toward Restoration (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970), p. 325Google Scholar. A somewhat revisionist stance is to be found in Craig, Albert M., “Fukuzawa Yukichi: The Philosophical Foundations of Meiji Nationalism” in Ward, Robert (ed.), Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968)Google Scholar. On the Japanese side, Tōyama Shigeki has gone to considerable effort to debunk certain claims made in Autobiography; see his Fukuzawa Yukichi: Shisō to seiji no kanren (Tokyo: Tōkyō dai-gaku shuppan kai, 1970)Google Scholar [hereafter FY].
6 Masafumi, Tomita, “Gakumon no susume” in Tomita, & Shunichi, Tsuchibayashi, (eds.), Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1959). HI, p. 642Google Scholar. [Hereafter this collection is referred to as FZ.] Tomita assumes that the address was the work of Fukuzawa alone, with Obata listed as a courtesy. Because subsequent sections attributed to Fukuzawa alone do not contradict any ideas found in the first pamphlet, I have followed convention and treated the work as his alone.
7 For sources of circulation data, see the discussion in note 12 below.
8 Tomita (n. 6 above), pp. 647–48 gives the dates for each.
9 The fourth pamphlet, “Gakusha no shokubun o ronzu,” published in January 1874, proclaims the need for scholars to be independent of the government. For a discussion of this debate, see Fisher, Jerry K., “The Meirokusha” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974), pp. 140–75Google Scholar. Fukuzawa's statement of his reasons for writing (in the fifth pamphlet, also issued January 1874) sounds rather like an afterthought. It should also be noted that even when not writing for his Meirokusha counterparts, Fukuzawa was not entirely successful in writing in a style appropriate to elementary school-level readers; this is indicated by the fact that some of the illicit versions were simplified. See Tomita (n. 6 above), pp. 644–46.
10 This preface, “Gappon gakumon no susume jo” is not included in EL; but it is given in most standard editions of the text, including that reproduced in the Iwanami Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū (n. 6 above) and the edition I have used most often (Fukuzawa [Washichi, Konno, ed.], Gakumon no susume Tokyo: Iwasaki shoten, 1950)Google Scholar. (The Konno edition also includes drafts of two pamphlets which were not published.)
11 See “Minkan keizai roku jo” in FZ, IV, p. 302.
12 The origin of this figure is an intriguing one, and investigation of it raises serious doubts about the quality of scholarship done on Fukuzawa. The following sources, to indicate just a few, accept this figure as hard fact requiring no qualification or question: Blacker, C., The Japanese Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1964) [hereafter JE], p. 11Google Scholar and p. 141, note 17; FY, p. 47; Masao, Itō, Fukuzawa Yukichi ronkō (Tokyo: Yoshi-kawa kōbun kan, 1969) [hereafter FYR], p. 19Google Scholar; Kiyooka “Notes” in Autobiography, pp. 364–65; Dilworth & Hirano, “Introduction” in EL, p. xi; Konno “‘Gakumon no susume’ kaidai” in Konno ed. (n. 10 above), p. 123; Junjirō, Amakawa, “The Spirit of Capitalism in Meiji Japan: The Economic Ethics of Fukuzawa Yukichi,” Kwansei Gakuin Daigaku Annual Studies 17 (1968), p. 110Google Scholar. Most of these see this circulation as being achieved between 1872 (publication of the first pamphlet) and 1901 (Fukuzawa's death), but Amakawa makes the even more extraordinary claim that this circulation was achieved between 1872 and 1876. Of sources cited thus far, only East Asia (n. 1 above), p. 531 gives a reasonable figure.
Although most of the scholars cited above give the 3.4 million figure without stating a source, apparently regarding it as “common sense” beyond challenge, Blacker does give a source, in Fukuzawa's own hand, found by his son in a collection of miscellaneous papers (“Gakumon no susume” in “Fukuzawa zenshū shogen”; see FZ, I, p. 38; for Tomita's comments on this note see FZ, I, p. 612). While this source does indeed indicate the possibility of a 3.4 million figure (based on sales of roughly 200,000 for each of the 17 pamphlets), there are several reasons for doubting this figure. First, Fukuzawa was making a speculative, not a declarative statement. Second, it was in a jotted recollection prepared when Fukuzawa was well along in years (those same years in which he produced his Autobiography, with its many errors and exaggerations). Third, the item was used as a part of an advertising campaign for the first Fukuzawa zenshū, which went so far as to claim an even more extraordinary circulation of 7.49 million (by adding the recollected figure to the projected figure for the zenshū); see FZ, I, p. 612. Fourth, all other available evidence concerning the circulation of Gakumon points to a much smaller circulation.
There are numerous references to Gakumon in other writings by Fukuzawa; nowhere else does he claim circulation even approaching the 3.4 million figure. In 1877, in “Minkan keizai roku jo,” he claimed 590,846 total with 182,890 (31%) from the first pamphlet; see FZ, IV, p. 302. In 1882, in “Hanbatsu kajin seifu ron,” he claimed 800,000 total with 200,000 (25%) for the first pamphlet; see FZ, VIII, p. 117. In 1890, in “Kokkai no zento,” he still claimed only “something more than a million total”; see FZ, VI, p. 55. Therefore, if the figure from 1897 is accepted as accurate, Gakumon had to sell in the space of only 6 or 7 years (1890–97) almost 2 1/2 times as many copies as it had sold in the previous 18 years (1872–90). There is no evidence for such an explosion in sales. Tomita observes that Keiō had stopped publishing it after it lost certification as a text and sales began to flag in 1881. Moreover, when Nakajima Seiichi, who had got the rights from Keiō, brought out a new edition, it had poor sales. According to Tomita, no new editions were brought out until the 1898 zenshū; see FZ, III, p. 649. Thus there is every reason to be suspicious of the 3.4 million claim, and no basis whatsoever for the claim made by Dilworth & Hirano (n. 3 above, p. XI) that the work “went through seventeen printings—a total of 3,400,000 copies—in Fukuzawa's own lifetime” or for any other claim that the work was popular beyond the early years of Dilworth, Meiji. & Hirano, give as their source Shinzō, Koizumi, Fukuzawa Yukichi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1966), p. 28Google Scholar; but Koizumi makes no such claim, saying instead that “Fukuzawa himself calculated that 3.4 million might have circulated had all seventeen been combined.”
Though seemingly a trivial point, the matter of this circulation figure not only demonstrates the degree to which both Western and Japanese scholars have been all too uncritical of the sources on Fukuzawa and have tended to ignore any material that does not fit some preconceived image; it also illustrates fabrication of explanations their own sources do not support.
13 This is based on an examination of the entries for Saikoku risshi hen and Self Help in the National Diet Library catalogue. See also Sangū Makoto, “‘Saikoku risshi hen’ oyobi sono ruisho ni tsuite,” Gakutō, XLIII, 2 (Feb. 1939), pp. 20–25.
14 JE, p. 11.
15 Craig (n. 5 above), p. 107.
16 Tōyama, FY, p. 47. This attribution is also made in FYR, p. 140 and Ki, Kimura, Bunmei kaika (Tōkyō: Shibuntō, 1966), p. 211Google Scholar.
17 Daikichi, Irokawa, Meiji no bunka, (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1971), p. 64Google Scholar.
18 FYR, p. 140. In Seiyō jijō the phrase is given ten no hito o shōzuru wa okuchō mina dōittetsu ni te; in Gakumon it is ten wa hito no ue ni hito o tsukurazu hito no shita ni hito o tsukurazu to teri. Itō also notes that this phrase appears in a section that follows Francis Wayland's The Elements of Moral Science and might be from it. My own guess is that Fukuzawa sought to start Gakumon with a catch phrase embodying the “heaven” theme to match the first line of Saikoku risshi hen (ten wa mizukara tasukuru mono o tasuku: “Heaven helps those who help themselves.”).
19 This desire is very evident in Kimura's Bunmei Kaika (n. 16 above), which was first published in 1946. Since then, it appears to have become part of the generally accepted Fukuzawa lore.
20 I have followed the text as given in Meyers, Marvin, Kearn, Alexander, & Cawelti, John G., Sources of the American Republic, (Chicago: Scott Foresman, 1960), I, pp. 137–38Google Scholar.
21 In the first pamphlet, he does talk about fighting for principle at the risk of one's life. His later exposition indicates that what he meant was martyrdom.
22 “Gakumon,” FZ, III [hereafter “GS”], p. 33. Although I usually used Konno Washichi's edition (see n. 10 above), for convenience I give references to the standard Iwanami edition.
23 In fact, as of the date of the first Gakumon, the only real change involving class privileges was that samurai had been granted permission to go about without swords and to cut their hair (9 Aug 1871). All other changes were in the future.
24 “GS,” p. 33.
25 The earlier theme was not entirely abandoned. Fukuzawa returned to it again in pamphlets 2 and 13.
26 Various scholars, including Blacker (JE: p. 162, no. 18) and Itō (FYR) have noted Fukuzawa's reliance on Wayland; but they have said little about where he stood in the nineteenth-century Anglo-American political spectrum.
Of the several editions of Wayland's popular text, I have relied on that edited by Joseph L. Blau (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963) [hereafter Blau]. I think the term “reactionary” justified because of the specific relation between the contemporary politics and Wayland's rejection of the Jeffersonian tradition of his youth for a formulation closer to that of Thomas Hobbes; see Blau, “Introduction,” pp. xxxii–iii.
27 Letter, Jefferson to James Madison, 30 Jan. 1787, reproduced in Sources (n. 20 above), I, p. 155.
28 Blau, pp. xxxii–iii.
29 The specific parallels in wording are well documented in part II, “Fukuzawa no moraru to Wayland no ‘shushinron',” in FYR; there, the relevant portions of Wayland are given in English and Japanese, along with the related portions of Gakumon.
30 None of the sections of Gakumon takes rights (kenri) as its formal subject, a characteristic the work shares with Wayland's. I believe a wordor line-count would show just how great the difference in relative emphasis is. The argument appears in section 6, published February 1874.
31 “GS,” pp. 70–77, and esp. 73–75. Fukuzawa uses the English word “martyrdom.” FYR, pt. 2, pp. 53–61 compares this section to Wayland's text.
32 FY, pp. 107–17, 128–29.
33 See Becker, Carl, The Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1942), pp. 224ffGoogle Scholar.
34 Saburō, Ienaga, Ueki Emori Kenkyū (Tōkyō: Iwanami shoten, 1966), p. 85Google Scholar.
35 This is the argument of section 2; “GS,” pp. 36–41, esp. 39.
36 Fukuzawa in fact claims to have thought it a good thing that his han had not been involved, calling it a “fortuitous blessing arising purely from indecision and lack of common purpose”; see Fukuzawa, (Blacker, C., trans.), “Kyūhanjō,” Monumenta Nipponica, 9 (1953), p. 323Google Scholar.
37 This is the argument of section 7; “GS,” pp. 70–77. esp. p. 73.
38 Fukuzawa presents this first as the idea of contemporary intellectuals, but at the end of the section he endorses it himself; see “GS,” p. 113.
Fukuzawa was never too enthusiastic about the idea of a representative body, despite the picture presented in his Autobiography (“A single editorial moves the whole nation,” pp. 319–21); and when he did belatedly climb on the bandwagon of agitation for a parliament, his arguments in favor concerned national security, not rights. See Masanao, Kano, Nihon kindai shisō no keisei (Tokyo: Shin hyōron sha, 1956), pp. 186Google Scholar–87; this chapter is easily the best treatment of Fukuzawa's thought to be found, although Kano too is in error concerning the circulation of Gakumon.
39 These passages are consecutive portions of the original Gakumon no susume and represent the first paragraph of it. I have made my own translation because I feel that the Dilworth-Hirano translation (EL, p. I) was done with a preconceived notion of Fukuzawa's intentions, and often gives equivalents that are too modern or have inappropriate associations. At the sacrifice of style, I have tried to be literal in both meaning and nuance. This portion is found in “GS,” pp. 29–30.
40 “GS,” p. 33. It is also possible that Fukuzawa was not really considering commoners at all here.
41 Smiles is discussed extensively in my “The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought” [hereafter “S-MM”] (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974), pp. 64–108Google Scholar. See also Travers, Timothy H. E., “Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic” (Ph.D. diss., Yale, 1970)Google Scholar, or Bendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1963)Google Scholar.
42 The literature on Tokutomi in Japanese is too voluminous to cite. In English, see “S-MM,” pp. 201–40 or Duus, Peter, “Whig History Japanese Style: The Min'yūsha Historians and the Meiji Restoration,” Journal of Asian Studies, III, 3 (1974), pp. 415–36Google Scholar.
43 Fukuzawa explicitly uses the term “middle class” (written in katakana) in Gakumon and observes that among the elements of the middle class, only the scholars are supporters of civilization and national independence; see “GS,” pp. 60–61. In Bunmeiron no gairyaku, he locates progress in a portion of the samurai class; see Yukichi, Fukuzawa (Dilworth, David A. & Hurst, G. Cameron, trans.), An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1973), pp. 69–70Google Scholar.
44 (Note 36 above), p. 324.
45 A theme in section 4.
46 A theme in section 10.
47 ”GS,”p. 33.
48 Tokutomi often made this point, especially in his Shōrai no Nihon; see “Shōrai no Nihon” in Tokutomi Sohō-Yamaji Aizan, Vol. XL in Nihon no meichō (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1971), esp. pp. 148ffGoogle Scholar.
49 Scheiner, Irwin, Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970), p. 197Google Scholar.
50 See note 23 above.
51 Fukuchi Shigetada, Shizoku to samurai ishiki (Tokyo: Shinjūsha, 1956), pp. 236–38.
52 See “S-MM,” pp. 214–16.
53 “Saikoku risshi hen dai yon hen jo” in Meiji shisōka shū. Vol. XIII of Nihon gendai bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1968), p. 90Google Scholar.
54 A starving samurai was supposed to keep up a pretense of honor by chewing a toothpick.
55 In his proposal for merit promotion, Sorai argued: ‘Through the study of history also we may see, as clearly in a mirror, that men of intelligence and talent have all come from below; rarely have they come from hereditarily privileged families”; quoted in Tsunoda, Ryusaku, Wm. Bary, Theodore de, Keene, Donald (eds.), Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1964), I, pp. 423–24Google Scholar.
56 This quote is from a portion of “Jiji shogen” reproduced in Fukuchi, (n. 51 above), pp. 236–38. Other instances of similar views are cited in FYR, pp. 178–79.
57 FYR, pp. 178–79.
58 See Shōrai no Nihon (n. 48 above), pp. 149–50.
59 EL, p. 23.
60 Quoted in Masao, Maruyama, “Chūsei to hangyaku” in Jiga to kankyō, Vol. VI of Kindai Nihon shisōshi kōza (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1960), pp. 390–91Google Scholar; the original is in section 11 of Gakumon.
61 See EL, pp. 71–74.
62 “Fukuzawa shi no shakai kizoku shugi,” Kokumin no tomo, No. 224 (1894)Google Scholar summarized in Itō, Meiji, p. 27. This comment was not signed, so it can only be attributed to Tokutomi; but it is in line with his comments elsewhere.
63 For the history of the Jitsugokyō, see Ishiicawa Ken (ed.), Nihon kyōkasho taikei, (Tōkyō: Kōdansha, 1969), V, pp. 13–58. Curiously, not a single work on Gakumon has investigated Fukuzawa's explicit reference to the Jitsugokyō.
64 Ishikawa (n. 63 above), pp. 188–89.
65 This is a point made in section 4, which was aimed at his adult colleagues in the Meirokusha. In section 10, he makes a similar point in terms of younger students.
66 Section 17, “Jinbōron,” “GS”, pp. 138–44.
67 For a discussion of these concepts in the Anglo-American tradition, see Richard M. Huber, The American Idea of Success (New York: McGraw Hill, 1971), pp. 160ff.
68 Both the Seikyōsha and Min'yūsha groups sought to speak for smaller, rural businessmen who were not benefiting from the policies that enriched the seishō. In this connection see Masanao, Kano, “‘Inaka shinshi’ tachi no ronri,” Rekishigaku kenkyū. No. 49 (1961)Google Scholar and “Kokusui shugi ni okeru shihon shugi taisei no kōsō,” Nihonshi kenkyū, No. 52 (1961)Google Scholar.
69 For the lore concerning Keiō, see Moriteru, Ozaki, Nihon shūshoku shi, (Tōkyō: Bungei shunjū, 1967)Google Scholar.
70 For example, see FY, p. 54; this is a basic theme throughout Tōyama's book.
71 Tokutomi has already been cited. In addition, Itō's collection of (FYR) records similar comments by Yamaji Aizan (p. 53), Uchimura Kanzō (p. 149) and Kitamura Tōkoku (pp. 55ff.); Takayama's praise is reproduced pp. 90ff.
72 This association is discussed in Ienaga, Ueki Emori Kenkyū, pp. 82ff; the texts are given pp. 171–73. This connection was apparently made by Yanagida Izumi, who thought the songs “somehow” (nan to naku) reminiscent of Gakumon or Sekai kunitsukushi.
73 The government order is partially quoted in Maeda Ai, “Meiji risshin shusse shugi no keifu,” Bungaku, No. 33 (1965) [hereafter “MR”], p. 14.
74 Ienaga (n. 72 above), p. 85.
75 Eisai shinshi is dealt with by Maeda Ai in the article cited above (n. 73), which called my attention to the existence of this genre in early Meiji Japan. Going beyond Eisai shinshi, I examined all juvenile and school publications held by the Meiji bunko at Tōdai; I have discussed this genre of magazine in “S-MM,” pp. 131ff.
76 The relative distribution of themes in Eisai shinshi is discussed in the appendix, ”Eisai shinshi Contributors and Contributions,” in “S-MM,” pp. 529–31. However, because this distribution is based on themes derived from Gakumon, Saikoku risshi hen, and possibly other sources, it understates the frequency of study-for-wealth-and-hon-or as a theme because this formula comes primarily from Gakumon. Due to the fragmentary nature of the Meiji bunko holdings in other magazines, no counts were made; but the distribution seemed similar. Here I have limited the discussion to themes derived from Gakumon.
77 Eisai shinshi, No. 24 (1877), P. 2.
78 These justifications are discussed in Saburō, Ienaga, Nihon dōtoku shisō-shi, (Tōkyō: Iwanami shoten, 1952), p. 103Google Scholar.
79 “MR,” p. 17.
80 Education in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1965), p. 312Google Scholar.
81 Tomitarō, Karasawa, Gakusei no rekishi (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1955), pp. 163–67Google Scholar summarizes most of the available evidence on class composition.
82 “MR,” p. 17.
83 Late Meiji themes are dealt with in “S-MM,” pp. 324ff.
84 “S-MM,” pp. 223–26.
85 A composition from Eisai shinshi (5 July 1879), quoted in “MR,” p. 16.
86 This problem is discussed in “S-MM,” pp. 131–35.
87 “MR” has theme-counts; the content of these themes is discussed in “S-MM,” pp. 168–76.
88 This is Maruyama Masao's approach, as quoted and discussed in FY, p. 13.
89 After I completed this essay, my attention was drawn to several recent critical works on Fukuzawa which stress many of the same points I have made in my analysis of Gakumon no susume. See Yasu-kawa Junosuke, Nihon kindai kyōiku sbisd kōzō (Tokyo: Shin hyōron, 1970) and Hirota Masaki, Fukuzawa Yukichi kenkyū (Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppan kai, 1976). Yasukawa's interpretations of Fukuzawa have produced a minor ronsō. I hope this signals that convention and hyperbole may give way to more critical scholarship.