fukuzawa yukichi and the changing japanese society

The life of Fukuzawa Yukichi, former samurai and later a self-made scholar/merchant and president of Keio University, testified to the transformation of Japanese society in the 19th and 20th centuries after Japan was forced to open up to the outside world.

1. The samurai in Japanese society

Historically, the samurai occupied hereditary aristocratic status in Japanese society. They could not intermarry with the commoners, at least in theory. They spoke a language different from that of commoners. Furthermore, as Hopper points out, they themselves were divided into different categories. Some of them on higher levels of the samurai class enjoyed a comfortable life, while others, like Fukuzawa Yukichi's father, was a petit samurai and could hardly make ends meet. This led to the deviation of many samurai families from the ideal practices. Ideally, the samurai were not supposed to learn arithmetic, which dealt with numbers that the merchants, a lower class, used, but Yukichi's father had to deal with trade by working at a storehouse in Osaka that belonged to the Okudaira daimyo from Nakatsu in northern Kyushu.

Similar to the Fukuzawa family, many lower samurai families tried to "supplement their incomes by setting up home workshops and producing such items as straw sandals, umbrellas, decorative hair ribbons, oil lamps, and the festive items used in the New Year's celebration: clay dolls, papier-mache tigers, and self-righting toys." 70 or more of samurai in some domains worked part or full time in merchant and artisan shops. (McClain, 120) Lower samurai women often had to spin for self and sale. (Hopper, 5) The samurai's income was fixed by the daimyo and shogun in the early 1600s and rarely increased after that, to be paid out in rice, which the samurai would then sell at the market to get cash stipends. The insignificant rise of the price of rice over the centuries contrasted with the growth of merchant wealth in Japan. Furthermore, in order to pay their growing financial expenses, the daimyo sometimes would cut the samurai's stipend by 20-30 per cent. The daimyo were often heavily loaded with obligations to the shogun, who, to prevent disloyalty from the daimyo, ordered all daimyo to reside in Edo every other year in order to control the latter. The daimyo therefore had to have a separate residence for his family there. Adding to the expenses of the daimyo were payments they needed to make to the shogun for the weddings and funerals of his family members, and banquets to entertain the shogun should he come to visit. (McClain, 121) Thus the daimyo often shifted his financial trouble to the lower levels of the samurai.

2. Lower level samurai and social change.

Given the social position of the lower samurai, they were forced to go into business and trade, and sometimes marrying into merchant families. The rigid class structure also meant they would never have any hope to advance into the upper level of the samurai class, and the difference between the lower and upper level samurai was distinguished not only through income, but also through speech and education. Given such circumstances, many lower level samurai were deeply resentful of their social status. And when the opportunity came, they would want to change. In a way, they were part of the back bone in Japanese society that would endorse change after the Meiji Restoration.

3. Fukuzawa Yukichi and Western learning.

From what is mentioned above, Fukuzawa Yukichi's early interest in Western learning, first Dutch, and then English, could be seen as a deviation from the samurai norm, but also a very natural one, given the fact that he was born into a lower level samurai family, and his father died when he was very young. Being the second boy, he, by Tokugawa feudal standards, could not be the head of the household or inherit his father's property. Being resentful of the differential treatment of different samurai in education, Western learning also provided Yukichi with a chance to learn that he would not otherwise get from traditional Chinese learning. His study of Dutch learning, and later, the English language and visits to America and Europe could all be seen from the point of view of a lower class smurai, second son, as the unconventional responses to a rigid Japanese social system, and unexpected opportunities provided him by the onset of Western learning in Japan.