Yukichi Fukuzawa as a Marginal Person

2019/03/19

I am Shigehiko Ioku, and I have just been introduced. I am humbled and deeply honored to have the opportunity to give a lecture in such a splendid setting today. It is quite embarrassing to speak in front of so many people who are well-versed in Yukichi Fukuzawa, but since this is my assigned role, I will carry out my mission.

Now, the title of my lecture today is "Yukichi Fukuzawa as a Marginal Person." Some of you may find the word "marginal" unfamiliar. If you look it up in a dictionary, it says things like "peripheral" or "on the boundary." In other words, the purpose of this lecture is to look at Yukichi Fukuzawa from the perspective of a person on the boundary line, or a person who crossed over boundary lines.

Yukichi Fukuzawa was a marginal person in many senses. Born in 1835 and died in 1901. Exactly in the middle, in 1868, the Meiji Restoration occurred, and he lived for 33 years each in the early modern and modern eras. He was also born on the periphery of the samurai class as a low-ranking samurai, and was therefore familiar with the activities and ways of thinking of the common people. Academically, he started with Chinese studies, then studied Dutch studies at Ogata Juku, and later went to Edo to study English studies, becoming well-versed in both Eastern and Western learning. As for academic fields, he entered through the humanities with Chinese studies and studied medical sciences, a science field, at Ogata Juku. After that, he visited the West three times at the end of the Edo period and observed Western society and culture extensively.

In other words, he spanned both the early modern and modern eras, and both the samurai and the commoners. By "commoners" here, I mean the general populace. In the past, the status system of Japan's early modern period was called "shi-no-ko-sho" (samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants), but recently it is considered that there was not much distinction between farmers, artisans, and merchants, so I think the division into "samurai and commoners" is now common. Standing on the boundary between the humanities and sciences, and between the East and the West—or crossing those boundaries—he learned diverse values and ways of thinking, acquired a broad perspective, and from there constructed creative thinking and came to advocate the importance of the "independence and self-respect" through the clash of diverse opinions.

However, this kind of view is probably nothing unusual for Fukuzawa researchers. For example, Takeshi Ishida, who studied under Masao Maruyama, quotes a passage from Max Weber's work on ancient Judaism in the first chapter of his book "Law and Politics in the History of Modern Japanese Thought," titled "Cultural Contact and the Development of Creative Thinking: The Case of Yukichi Fukuzawa."

"In the respective centers of every rational culture, there has almost never been a case where a completely new religious idea was established. ... It is in the peripheral regions of cultural zones that rational prophecy and various reformist new formations were first conceived."

In other words, innovation arises from the periphery, not the center. Based on this idea, Ishida tried to capture Yukichi Fukuzawa—who was positioned on the periphery of the samurai class and the periphery of Eastern culture, achieved contact with Western culture, and constructed creative thinking from there—as a figure who brought about innovation in Japan's intellectual history.

Ishida's book was published in 1976, which is exactly the year I entered university. I am not sure if my grasp of research history is accurate, but I think the late 1970s to early 1980s was an era when new methods were being sought, as people were no longer satisfied with Marxist historiography, which had dominated Japanese historical studies after the war.

In a class I took as a sophomore, we did a group reading of Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." It was also around this time that social history was proposed by Yoshihiko Amino and my mentor, Professor Nobuhiko Nakai. Furthermore, I believe it was around this time that the so-called "marginal man hypothesis" was put forward in the fields of economic history, business history, and commercial history. In other words, as seen in the book "Innovative Behavior of Edo Period Merchants" by Yotaro Sakudo and others, the idea is that those who brought about innovation in commerce and its management were figures like Takatoshi Mitsui and Masatomo Sumitomo, who were on the boundary between the samurai and merchant classes, knew both worlds, and had a broad perspective. The "status periphery" theory later proposed by Nobuyuki Yoshida and others in the field of early modern Japanese history probably came from a similar inspiration.

My specialty is "Japanese early modern-modern economic and business history." Usually, when saying "early modern and modern," a middle dot is used between them in Japanese, but when I write papers or other texts, I make it a point to connect early modern and modern with a hyphen. The implication is to think of the early modern and modern eras as being precisely connected. Using a middle dot gives the impression that the connection between the early modern and modern is severed, so while ordinary researchers of early modern or modern history rarely do it, I prefer to connect them with a hyphen. This is not to follow Yukichi Fukuzawa, but rather to follow Professor Akira Hayami, who taught me during my undergraduate and graduate years, and to think of the early modern and modern as continuous eras—that is, to think across the early modern and modern.

Among these, my research focuses on indigenous industries that have developed continuously from the early modern to the modern and contemporary eras, particularly brewing industries such as sake and soy sauce brewing. Since there are aspects there related to Yukichi Fukuzawa's marginality, I would like to introduce a part of that.

The sake brewing industry in the era when Yukichi Fukuzawa lived was the most major industry among Japan's industrial sectors. This may come as a surprise to some, but for example, in the industrial products seen in the 1874 Prefectural Product Tables—though almost all were handicrafts in this era—the production value of alcoholic beverages was first, far ahead of second-place cotton textiles, third-place soy sauce, and fourth-place raw silk.

Also, this might be unnecessary to mention, but Yukichi Fukuzawa himself was very fond of alcohol. In his later years, he reportedly quit out of concern for his health, but it seems he drank quite a lot when he was young.

Furthermore, many of his disciples were children of sake brewers. The same goes for soy sauce brewing, but since sake brewing was an industry that required a great deal of money to operate at a certain scale at the time, it was inevitably managed by wealthy families. Children from such families were entering Keio University in large numbers. Therefore, there were many children from sake brewing and soy sauce brewing households around Yukichi Fukuzawa.

In the 1880s, Yukichi Fukuzawa repeatedly mentioned the sake brewing industry in his book "Jiji Shogen" (Comments on Current Events) and the newspaper he founded, "Jiji Shimpo." In "Jiji Shogen," published in 1881, he cited the case of the sake brewing industry in Chita District, Bishu (Owari Province), and described the sake brewing reform of Kyuzaemon Morita in 1838.

Although he wrote Chita District, Bishu, Aichi Prefecture already existed in 1881, but it was still common to refer to places by their old province names like "Bishu." Even around the late 1890s, mail would sometimes arrive addressed as "Owari Province, [Place Name]," and it was an era where the custom of using old province names was still generally accepted.

By the way, Kyuzaemon Morita's household is the family home of Akio Morita of Sony. His family home managed sake, soy sauce, and miso brewing businesses, which are still active today, but Akio Morita left this family home to found Sony.

Specifically, what did Kyuzaemon Morita's sake brewing reform in 1838 involve? It was to polish the rice and further distinguish between brewing vats and storage vats. It seems the distinction between vats for brewing sake and vats for storing it was not clear before then, and by distinguishing the two, he made the sake less prone to spoilage. Along with that, Kyuzaemon Morita carried out a reform during the Tenpo era to increase the amount of brewing water to create a refined taste. In other words, until then, the amount of water was small, so it seems it was a relatively thick, viscous sake, but by increasing the amount of water, he gave it a clean taste.

Through these reforms, it is written in "Jiji Shogen" that the quality of the sake "became top-tier in the nation, except for brewing in places like Itami." Yukichi Fukuzawa stated that if sake had been brewed nationwide using the pre-reform methods, sufficient sake tax revenue would not have been obtained, and by now it would have resulted in a loss of 34 million yen for the national treasury. This would have been about half of the national revenue at the time.

In this way, Yukichi Fukuzawa highly evaluated Kyuzaemon Morita's sake brewing reform, but at the same time, he stated the following:

"The fact that this reform of method benefited the national interest is indeed clear, but at the time of implementing the reform, not a single phrase of logic was used, and not a single principle was known... One should utilize the principles of learning... and only be satisfied after illuminating it with the principles of chemistry and binding the matter of sake brewing within those rules." "The purpose of physical jitsugaku (science) is to know these principles and utilize them in the path of production. ... It should be known that the wealth or poverty of a nation depends on whether or not this production is viewed as a matter of learning."

In this way, he appealed for the fusion of theory and practice, and the fusion of Japanese things like sake brewing with Western science, saying that sake brewing reform is not just about the results being good. It must be something that can be explained scientifically. Yukichi Fukuzawa evaluated Japan's sake brewing industry, especially Morita's reform, but on the other hand, he also directed such harsh guidance toward them.

Next, in the editorial "The Situation of Sake Brewers" published in "Jiji Shimpo" over two days on July 9 and 11, 1883, Yukichi Fukuzawa stated that it is easiest to "rely on the sake tax" to increase national wealth, and while sake brewers as a whole certainly do not like the sake tax increasing, if the government becomes well-versed in the circumstances of sake brewers and collects taxes in a way adapted to the actual situation, they would accept it even if the tax amount increases. Specifically, he stated that one method is to improve the way the dimensions of sake brewing vats are measured. Another is to conduct inspections after removing impurities in the vats called "ori" (lees).

The sake tax at the time was levied on the brewed volume, which was, so to speak, an external measure. In other words, it was a system where tax was applied to how much was brewed, rather than to the profits of the sake brewers. When officials measured that brewed volume, they would measure the vat dimensions larger than they were, or measure the brewing volume when the lees—impurities generated during sake brewing—had not been removed and the volume was greater than the actual amount of sake, which drew backlash from sake brewers. Therefore, he said that these problems with the conventional way officials measured the brewed volume must be improved.

Furthermore, as a third point, he also mentioned postponing the timing of paying the sake tax. Specifically, he advocated changing the current three times—April, July, and September—to June, August, and October, respectively. April overlaps with the period when payments for raw materials occur. And since sake is brewed during the winter, as you know, funds are tight in April when the sake brewed until spring has not yet been sufficiently sold. Therefore, he stated that the deadline should be postponed to June, when products have been sold and funds are plentiful, avoiding that period. Behind these claims was the circumstance that the sake tax was doubling and doubling at the time, and a sake brewers' meeting opposing the sake tax increase had been held the previous year.

Furthermore, in the "Jiji Shimpo" dated July 12 and 13 of the same year, 1883, he published an editorial titled "Sake Brewing Should Be Protected." This called for protecting good sake brewers from those who commit bad acts such as counterfeiting, imitation, smuggling, and tax evasion, stating, "The reason there were no people attempting counterfeiting or imitation in the past... is due to having received the protection of the law." In other words, in the early modern period, for example, sake brewing in Itami was protected by the system of the Konoe family, who were the lords, but after the Restoration, such systems disappeared along with the abolition of the lordship system, and the sake brewing industry had fallen into a state of lawlessness, so to speak.

Therefore, he argued that appropriate laws should be established to protect good sake brewers, following the monopoly license and trademark regulations currently practiced in Western countries. He stated that since the sake brewing industry is the best source of tax today, accounting for the largest part of the Japanese government's revenue excluding land tax, or even having the prospect of surpassing it, the protection of its business cannot be delayed for even a day. Note that the Trademark Ordinance was enacted the following year, in 1884. Also, in 1900, the sake tax surpassed the land tax to become the number one national tax.

In addition, in an editorial titled "Sake Brewing Improvement in Chita District, Bishu" in the "Jiji Shimpo" dated December 15, 1885, it is mentioned that around the spring of 1883, over a hundred sake brewers in Chita District petitioned the Ministry of Public Works and invited Saburo Utsunomiya, the Chief Engineer of the Ministry. It says they learned the "principles of chemical machinery." In this editorial, he states, "Brewing is originally a matter of pure learning," and "The reason it must be researched from a scientific standpoint is what Mr. Utsunomiya earnestly advised." He then introduces that in the autumn of 1883, Magozaemon Ito and others established the Sake Research Institute. This Magozaemon Ito was a very influential sake brewer at the time, located around Kamezaki at the base of the Chita Peninsula.

In this way, stories of Chita District, Bishu appear several times, and many children of sake brewers from this area also entered Keio University. To begin with, Chita District in Bishu—around the current Chita Peninsula—was a region where the brewing industry was very active. Due to the maritime climate, which was relatively warm and humid and suitable for the moderate action of microorganisms important for brewing, sake brewing, soy sauce brewing, miso brewing, and vinegar production were widely practiced. Today, in Handa, Chita, there is a company called Mizkan, Japan's largest vinegar manufacturer, which produces more than half of Japan's vinegar. Although the number of brewers has decreased considerably in recent years, it was a region where the brewing industry was very active.

There was a person named Hatsusaburo Yoshida who traveled around drawing bird's-eye views of various places in pre-war Japan. Looking at the pictures of the Chita Peninsula area drawn by Hatsusaburo Yoshida, truly numerous sake factories, soy sauce factories, and miso factories are depicted. The Chita Peninsula was so active in the brewing industry that Yukichi Fukuzawa often brought up stories of Bishu, partly because children came to Keio University from there.

As described above, regarding the sake brewing industry—the leader of Japan's indigenous industries that had continued to develop since the early modern period—Yukichi Fukuzawa argued for fair tax collection on one hand, and on the other, advocated for protecting sake brewers through the enactment of trademark regulations and for brewing based on scientific evidence. In other words, he advocated for the fusion of Japanese industry, which had been operated based on experience, with the theories of Western science—the fusion of Japanese tradition and Western science.

Next, involving an episode that is a bit interesting or even heartwarming, I would like to introduce the interaction between soy sauce brewer Goryo Hamaguchi and Yukichi Fukuzawa.

Goryo Hamaguchi was ten years older than Yukichi Fukuzawa and was the seventh-generation head of Yamasa Corporation. Michio Hamaguchi, the current chairman of Yamasa in Choshi and a Keio University alumni, is the great-great-grandson of Goryo Hamaguchi. During the era when Goryo was the head, he recognized the economic development of the provinces (rural areas) as well as the Edo market, and he worked to develop provincial markets. Goryo Hamaguchi was excellent as a manager, recording the highest brewing volume in the store's history, but the story of how he saved many lives by setting fire to rice sheaves to guide people to high ground during the great earthquake (Ansei Nankai Earthquake) and tsunami in his hometown of Wakayama in 1854 was arranged by Lafcadio Hearn, given the title "Inamura no Hi" (The Fire of Rice Sheaves) by Tsunezo Nakai, and became very famous by appearing in pre-war state-designated textbooks.

I hear that the story has now returned to elementary school textbooks, but what surprised me was hearing from a student when I went to a German university for an intensive lecture that the story is in German junior high school textbooks. I had heard that this story was known overseas, but I thought it was at most within Asia; hearing that it is known even in Germany, this story may now be world-famous.

However, saving many lives is amazing in itself, but his greatness does not stop there. While the people he saved were struggling with their lives afterward, he built and gave houses to those who lost them in the tsunami, procured and gave farm tools to farmers who lost them, and undertook a major project to build a great embankment (Hiromura Embankment) at enormous personal expense to prepare for future tsunamis. At that time, he employed many villagers and paid them wages. There is even a story remaining that he poured so much of Yamasa's money into it that the people at the store were worried that "the business might not be able to survive." This embankment is still active today and successfully prevented a tsunami during the Showa Nankai Earthquake that occurred about 90 years later.

Because Goryo was such a person, he was revered as a living god by the local people. He himself stubbornly refused, saying "Please don't say such things," but he was deeply beloved by the locals. When he died abroad in America in 1885, Yukichi Fukuzawa grieved greatly and sent a letter to his son Ichitaro, who was in America at the time, saying, "Mr. Hamaguchi devoted himself to the world and to people from a young age. I am unbearably sad." He then went to Yokohama Port with Kaishu Katsu and others to receive the remains.

At the end of the Edo period, Goryo Hamaguchi established a school called Taikyusha in his hometown of Hiromura, Wakayama. This has now become the municipal Taikyu Junior High School and the prefectural Taikyu High School. After the Restoration, he established an English school called Kyoritsu Gakusha—which no longer exists—and tried to invite Yukichi Fukuzawa as a teacher, but Yukichi Fukuzawa declined. He said, "An English school in Wakayama is still too early. First, provide education in Japanese," but I believe it was essentially a difference in direction between Hamaguchi, who tried to contribute to human resource development in the regions, and Yukichi Fukuzawa, who tried to raise people in the center.

In fact, after the Meiji Restoration, Hamaguchi was recognized by Toshimichi Okubo and entered the government in a position equivalent to today's Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, establishing modern postal systems such as the stamp system, but he resigned in three weeks and returned to Wakayama, thereafter devoting himself to local education and politics.

By this time, the head of Yamasa had been passed to the next generation, but Goryo Hamaguchi ordered English texts to be used at the English school from Yukichi Fukuzawa upon its opening. Then, the following reply came back from Yukichi Fukuzawa: "Regarding the order for 30 ryo, for 120 copies, since you have given me a large order, I have worked my hardest and am delivering 156 copies with a 30% discount in goods. ... I am giving you 36 copies as a free bonus in goods. That is, a 30% discount off the list price."

I think it is a very witty and interesting letter. In other words, Goryo Hamaguchi ordered 120 textbooks from Yukichi Fukuzawa for 30 yen, but he sent 156 copies. He was saying it was effectively a 30% discount. I think such a witty response also came from the marginality of the Fukuzawa family, who grew up hearing stories of Osaka merchants from childhood in a household positioned on the periphery of the samurai class.

Regarding stories related to money, there is one very interesting episode between Yukichi Fukuzawa and Ichizo Kobayashi, who later founded Hankyu Railway and the Takarazuka Revue. Ichizo Kobayashi was a student who spent his life enjoying theater every day without hardly coming to school. He belonged to the literary club and published literary magazines, but at one point, he ran out of money for publishing, so he visited Yukichi Fukuzawa to try to borrow some. To this, he flatly refused, saying, "You must not do things like publishing by borrowing money from others. I have no money to lend you." As Ichizo Kobayashi was about to leave dejectedly, he said, "Wait a moment. I have no money to lend you, but I have money to give you," and gave him what I believe was 10 yen in the currency of that time. Ichizo Kobayashi was so moved that he could not stop crying; there are such episodes that are quite cool, if I may say so.

In addition, when it became necessary to join the booksellers' guild in 1869, Yukichi Fukuzawa registered under the trade name "Fukuzawaya Yukichi." Could this not be called a name that symbolizes his marginality?

Of course, not everyone who stood on the boundary of their own culture and came into contact with a different culture was able to reach creative thinking. Ishida, introduced at the beginning, states in his book, "Other than Yukichi Fukuzawa, and sensitive literary figures like Soseki and Kafu who later utilized their experience of contact with different cultures in their eyes to sharply observe both Japanese and Western cultures, many examples cannot be found." The fact that he could come into contact with a different culture and utilize that opportunity developmentally shows just how excellent Yukichi Fukuzawa was.

On the other hand, Ishida also states the following: "Has there ever been an example of successfully conducting creative cultural contact between a powerful country, or a country generally said to be more developed, and a country said to be lagging behind?" In response to this question, I thought of several foreigners who came into contact with Japanese culture during the era when Yukichi Fukuzawa lived.

For example, Matthew Calbraith Perry. That Perry who made Japan open its doors came to Japan in 1853 and 1854, but he did not just forcefully make Japan open up. He was observing Japanese society with sharp eyes. In his book "Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan," he states the following:

"The Japanese artisans are as expert as any artisans in the world, and if the inventive power of the people were allowed to develop more freely, the Japanese would not long remain inferior to the most successful industrial nations. With their curiosity to learn the results of the material progress of other nations and their quickness in applying them to their own use, if the degree of the government's exclusionary policy isolating these people from communication with other nations were less, they would soon reach the level of the most favored countries. Once the Japanese possess the past and present skills of the civilized world, they will join the competition for the success of future mechanical industry as powerful competitors."

Japan at the time did not even have the first letter of the word "machine," but just as Perry predicted, Japan achieved rapid industrialization after this and eventually grew to be called an economic superpower. I also always thought of Perry as a person who very forcefully made Japan open up, but after learning that he said such things, I became a complete fan of Perry. However, Perry himself was suffering from illness at the time and died at the age of 63 in 1858, five years after his first visit, before he could utilize this opportunity for the next stage in any way. It was just before the Treaty of Amity and Commerce was concluded.

Next, let's look at Robert Fortune, a British botanist who visited Japan twice after the opening of the country at the end of the Edo period. He traveled around the world collecting plants and transplanting them to other places, but he can be said to be a person who did a great job that remains in world history, especially bringing tea from China to India and making India a major tea-producing region. Fortune brought many plants back from Japan to his home country and transplanted them, a representative example being the kumquat, a citrus fruit. In his book "Yedo and Peking: A Narrative of a Journey to the Capitals of Japan and China," he says the following about Japan:

"I have never seen plants for sale cultivated on such a large scale anywhere else in the world. ... The skill in making bonsai... is based on one of the most universal principles of plant physiology. ... If a national character that loves flowers proves the height of human cultural life, the lower classes of people in Japan appear much superior compared to the same class of people in England. ... When the Japanese people find something useful for their country's progress, they quickly adopt foreign methods."

Regarding bonsai, of course, Japanese people at the time were not doing it based on scientific theory but based on experience, and it just happened to be rational as a result. Japanese people were advancing bonsai without knowing such Western theories, and from the perspective of someone like Fortune who knew Western theories, it must have appeared that they were doing things that matched the theories as a result.

In that sense, it can be said that he felt the same way Yukichi Fukuzawa felt about Japan's brewing industry. In Yukichi Fukuzawa's case, he was dissatisfied that theory did not accompany experience and evaluated them harshly, but Fortune evaluated it favorably, looking at it with the feeling that "the logic is not there, but what they are doing is amazing, isn't it?" And regarding the point that Japanese people quickly adopt useful foreign methods, it can be said that he felt the same as Perry.

In addition, many foreigners who visited Japan from the end of the Edo period to the early modern period left records in Japan, and Edward Sylvester Morse, an American zoologist known for discovering the Omori Shell Mounds, cannot be forgotten.

He highly evaluates Japan in his books, especially the high level of Japanese artisans' skills and handicraft techniques, the high level of Japanese culture, and the cleanliness in terms of hygiene. How highly he evaluated Japanese culture can be known from his detailed record, the book "Japan Day by Day." He brought various benefits to Japanese academic societies and was even decorated by the state. His collection of Japanese folk tools and other items can be seen at the Peabody Essex Museum near Boston, USA.

Also, as an example of some creation or innovation occurring on the Western side through contact with Japanese culture, I must mention Japonisme, which became a major trend in 19th-century Europe triggered by the opening of Japan and its exhibits at World Expos. This is also very important, but due to time constraints, I will limit myself to mentioning it.

As described above, I think my talk today is by no means unusual, but seeing the current state of the world where people tend to be biased toward one way of thinking and no longer try to recognize diverse perspectives, I spoke because I thought it would be meaningful to re-recognize the importance of the broad perspective coming from Yukichi Fukuzawa's marginality, recognizing diverse values, and constructing new ways of thinking through the clash of diverse opinions. Also, on the occasion of Yukichi Fukuzawa's birthday, I think we were able to remember his personality through several episodes.

Thank you for your attention.

(This article is based on a commemorative lecture given at the 184th Yukichi Fukuzawa Birthday Commemorative Meeting held on January 10, 2019. Regarding cited literature, some notations have been modified for readability.)