Japanese Literature Summaries
日本語

Fukuō jiden — Summary and Characters

Family rank was my father's enemy

Author
Fukuzawa Yukichi
Published
July 1898
First appeared in
Jiji Shinpō
Form
Essay
Genres
  • Historical
Setting
  • Oita
  • Osaka
  • Tokyo
Length
209,832 characters
Reading time
About 7 hr
Orthography
Modern script and kana

About this work

The autobiography Fukuzawa Yukichi dictated to a stenographer at sixty-five. From his birth into a low-ranking samurai family at Nakatsu, through his furious study at Ogata Kōan's Tekijuku, three voyages to Europe and America, the founding of Keiō Gijuku, and on to seeing Meiji Japan through, told to the end in an unadorned voice. Called the most entertaining autobiography of modern Japan, and read to this day.

Summary

"Fukuzawa Yukichi's father was Fukuzawa Hyakusuke, a samurai of the Okudaira domain of Nakatsu in Buzen" — so the telling begins. Born at the domain's warehouse residence in Osaka and losing his father at two, the boy Yukichi went home to Nakatsu and grew up in the feudal air where nothing he did could be rewarded, because his station was low. The famous line "the system of family rank is my parent's enemy" says exactly what that anger was. At nineteen he went to Nagasaki to study Dutch learning, and in time entered Ogata Kōan's Tekijuku in Osaka, where he passed his days in furious study. The pupils were so absorbed in the original texts that they slept without using pillows, and worked off their spleen in drink and horseplay. Going up to Edo, Yukichi opened a school of Dutch learning; and visiting the open port of Yokohama he found that the Dutch he had learned was of no use whatever, and from that day he changed to English. He crossed to America in the Kanrin-maru, went round Europe as a member of the shogunate's embassy, and crossed to America again. That experience, from which he brought back the actual state of Western civilization as "common knowledge," bore fruit in Conditions in the West and the books that followed it, and in the teaching at Keiō Gijuku. His life was sought in the storm of the movement to expel the barbarians, and he lived avoiding the streets at night. He went on lecturing while the guns of the Shōgitai were heard at Ueno. He would never serve the government, and sought to make a nation independent through the independence of the single person. Even in old age Yukichi says there are three things he would still like to do: to lead the character of the people to something high and noble, to raise up religion and soften the hearts of the many, and to spend money greatly so that high learning may be studied. So long as I am sound, he says, I mean to give what strength I have.

Characters

Chapter-by-chapter synopsis

The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).

  1. 1. About This Work
  2. 2. Main Characters
  3. 3. Major Supporting Characters
  4. 4. Boyhood in Nakatsu — The Feudal System Is My Father's Mortal Enemy
  5. 5. Study in Nagasaki — Driven Out by the Elder's Son
  6. 6. Life at Ogata's School — Days Without a Pillow
  7. 7. A Dutch-Learning School in Edo, and the Shock of Yokohama
  8. 8. Three Voyages Abroad — From the Kanrin-maru to Europe
  9. 9. The Storm of Expel-the-Barbarians, and the Fear of Assassination
  10. 10. The Imperial Restoration — Lessons Did Not Stop Even on the Day of the Fighting at Ueno
  11. 11. A Life Without Office — My Later Years
  12. 12. What Runs Through This Autobiography

The opening (original text)

Childhood Fukuzawa Yukichi's father was Fukuzawa Hyakusuke, a samurai of the Okudaira domain of Nakatsu in Buzen; his mother was the eldest daughter of Hashimoto Hamaemon, a samurai of the same domain, and her name was O-Jun. My father's station was such that he could barely obtain a formal audience with the lord of the domain, so it was several degrees above a foot soldier, but it was low among the samurai — the household of a junior official, one would say today.

Fukuō jiden by Fukuzawa Yukichi (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

What I should like to bring about within my life is about these three things: to lead the character of all the men and women of the country, little by little, to something high and noble, so that we need not be ashamed of the name of a truly civilized people; to raise up religion — Buddhism or Christianity, either will do — and so soften the hearts of the many; and to spend money greatly so that high learning, material and immaterial, may be studied. However old a man grows, so long as he is free of illness he cannot simply sit at his ease; and while I am sound as I am now, I mean to give whatever strength I have.

Fukuō jiden by Fukuzawa Yukichi (Aozora Bunko)

Read the original

The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.

Aozora Bunko library card

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