The Intellectual Origins of Fukuzawa Yukichi: Focusing on the Dialogue with J.S. Mill

2025/06/17

This book, which I have recently published, primarily examines Fukuzawa's issues of jitsugaku (science), utility, and liberty, while keeping Edo-period thought in mind and focusing on Mill, whom Fukuzawa praised for aiding the global public interest, based on intellectual connections with Wayland, Guizot, Buckle, and Spencer. It is an attempt at what Fukuzawa calls "living two lives in one body." It is well known that "jitsugaku (science)" means science. Regarding political science, it is a matter of establishing political science as a science. After the war, Masao Maruyama published a famous essay conscious of the helplessness of pre-war political science, but this is an appeal for the necessity of political science as a science in Fukuzawa's work, which Maruyama, a Fukuzawa scholar, did not point out. Fukuzawa's recognition of Confucianism as political science and Confucian scholars as political commentators is a verification of how he sought to divide roles between scholars as practitioners of science and politicians as practitioners of art, liberating political science from political discourse while reading Mill's logic and other works. In history as well, Fukuzawa attempted to establish its scientific nature through the introduction of statistics and the theory of remote and proximate causes by Buckle, a follower of Mill. Reading Mill's theory of utility is beneficial for understanding Fukuzawa's grasp of utilitarianism. I have included some of Fukuzawa's handwritten notes in photographic plates, providing an opportunity for readers themselves to directly experience the dialogue between Fukuzawa and Mill while reflecting on the idea that "though competing for profit was a taboo for the ancients, to compete for profit is to compete for reason." Thus, I reconsidered the independence of the individual and the independence of the nation from the perspective of liberty.

Historically, the independence of the individual was learned from Guizot, a point also noted by the great writer Goethe. While interesting, theoretically, it seems he gained conviction from Mill's theory of individuality in addition to Wayland. At the national level, Mill's theory of foreign policy, which relates to both theories of civilization and imperialism, brought to light whether it could serve as a logical basis for considering Fukuzawa's discourse on Ryukyu, Ezochi, and further, Taiwan and Korea. This is also an essay verifying how Fukuzawa developed Mill's theory of nationality, which he considered a principle. I would be pleased if my book could serve as a starting point for reconsidering what Fukuzawa's understanding of Western thought was, including traditional thought, even if it is limited in terms of intellectual sources. I also think it would be interesting to look at the diagrams and compare the styles of Fukuzawa's handwritten notes.

The Intellectual Origins of Fukuzawa Yukichi: Focusing on the Dialogue with J.S. Mill

Toshimitsu Anzai

Keio University Press

278 pages, 2,640 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.