Fukuzawa Yukichi as Media: Representation, Politics, and the Korean Question

More than ten years ago, I was watching Sazae-san and saw an episode titled "Father Buys Green Onions." I recall it being a story where Namihei is initially furious at being asked to buy green onions on his way home from work, but later, Katsuo's classmate Hanazawa-san spots him walking with the onions sticking out of his shopping bag, which starts a rumor. Indeed, until not so long ago, a dignified father was not supposed to return home carrying something like green onions.

Seeing this reminded me of a certain memoir. In April of Keio 4 (1868), Shoda Heigoro (who would later become a great industrialist at Mitsubishi) visited Keio University to enroll and was astonished when he ran into Fukuzawa Yukichi returning from an outing. Fukuzawa had his hair styled like a commoner, wore a student-style haori coat, and was carrying a bunch of green onions.

Fukuzawa was buying green onions quite consciously. He was showing himself as someone who held common sense—such as acting according to one's social status, or how a man or a schoolteacher should behave—in contempt and did not give it a second thought. Fukuzawa knew that by doing so, he would influence those around him and eventually turn freedom and equality into everyday realities.

When writing, Fukuzawa also wrote with an awareness of his "observed self," anticipating when, by whom, and how his writing would be read. He knew the difficulty of writing for children, yet he also knew that changing children would change the future. Therefore, even if scholars mocked him, he wrote many books for children.

The awareness of the "observed self" is also important when interpreting the newspaper Jiji Shinpo. Fukuzawa did not write editorials intending them to be evaluated by future generations as the treatises of a great thinker. They were written with the intention of turning Japan even slightly toward the positive under the circumstances of that day, with the expectation that they would become trash the next day.

Fukuzawa called the ideal to strive for "Civilizationism." "Civilization" is a state where every "individual" is independent and respected, and communication is revitalized to the maximum extent; he sought to bring society even slightly closer to that state. If one recognizes this, the consistency of Jiji Shinpo becomes visible. Why Fukuzawa suddenly put so much passion into Kabuki in the pages of the paper during the year the National Diet was established, why he was so earnest about donations during major disasters, why he shifted from attacking Christianity to tolerating it, and why he wrote "Datsu-A Ron" (Leaving Asia). "As Media" signifies a completely new way of interpreting Fukuzawa, one that aimed for "Civilizationism" by making the most of his "observed self."

Fukuzawa Yukichi as Media: Representation, Politics, and the Korean Question

Takeyuki Tokura

Keio University Press

476 pages, 4,950 yen (tax included)