INTRODUCTION: Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) was one of modern Japan's first-generation intellectuals, and his varied career provided a key to the generally successful transformation of Japan during the Meiji era. Like many others of his generation, he came from an obscure samurai family, for whom life in a turbulent era gave a far greater opportunity to succeed than had been the case in a traditional setting which held each individual to a fixed pattern of familial obligations and career expectations. An intellectual, Fukuzawa made the most of the opportunity provided by the turmoil of the 1860s to study in and about the West and to contribute to the wholesale transformation of his country's institutions. The readiness with which he accepted Western ideas and the nationalistic ethos which sustained his achievement-oriented attitude, both of which are apparent in the following excerpts from his autobiography, characterized many of his contemporaries. His ideas, disseminated through writings and lectures, had an enormous impact upon the Japanese generation reaching maturity toward the end of the century.

I counted myself twenty-one years old (my exact age, nineteen years and three months) when in February of the first year of Ansei (1854) I set out to Nagasaki.

At that time there was not a single one in our town who could understand the "strange letters written sideways," nor was there even a man who had looked at the forms of those letters, though in larger cities there had been students of the Dutch language for a hundred years or longer.

But it was a few months after the coming of Commodore Perry. And the news of the appearance of the American fleet in Yedo had already made its impression on every remote town in Japan. At the same time the problem of national defense and the modern gunnery had become the foremost interest of all the samurai. Now, all those who wanted to study gunnery had to do so according to the instruction of the Dutch who were the only Europeans permitted to have intercourse with Japan after the seventeenth century.

One day my brother told me that anyone who wanted to learn Western gunnery must study gensho.

"What is gensho?" I asked.

"Gensho means books published in Holland with letters printed sideways," he replied. "There are some translations in Japanese, but if one wishes to study this Western science seriously, one must do so in the original language. Are you willing to learn the Dutch language?"

As I had had no trouble in learning Chinese, I had some confidence in myself. So I answered, "I will study Dutch or any other language. If other people can learn it, I think I can too."

And so the next time my brother had business in Nagasaki, I went with him, and there began my first study of the A B C's. Nowadays the European letters are seen everywhere in the country; they are even on the labels of beer bottles, and no one sees any strangeness in them. But to me those odd looking letters were very strange. It took me a full three days to learn the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. . . .

Nagasaki at that time was the only part of Japan in contact with the outside world through the Dutch compound. So naturally students of gunnery and foreign affairs came to Nagasaki from many different clans for first-hand information. If they wanted to visit the Dutch compound on the island of DejimaÑ the only spot in the whole country where the Dutch were allowed to resideÑYamamoto could arrange the visit. Again, if any wanted instruction on casting cannon, Yamamoto could furnish diagrams and necessary directions.

Such was his business, but really I was the one who did the work. I was a mere amateur. I had never seen a gun in operation. But it was easy to draw diagrams and to write the directions. And if more information was wanted, I could go and explain as if I had been specializing in the subject all my life. . . .

In Yedo, though the country's intercourse with foreign lands was yet at its beginning, there were constant demands for the Western knowledge from the government offices and from the various feudal nobility resident there. Consequently anyone able to read foreign books, or make any translation, secured the reward of this patronage. There was even the possibility of a poor language student being made a high salaried samurai of several hundred koku overnight.

Osaka, on the contrary, was a city of merchants devoted to internal commerce; it was hardly to be expected that anyone there wanted to be informed on Dutch gunnery or Western arts. Therefore, however much we studied, our work and knowledge had practically no connection with the actual means of gaining a livelihood or making a name for ourselves. Not only that, but the students of Dutch were looked upon with contempt by most men. Then why did we work so hard to learn Dutch? It would seem that we were simply laboring at difficult foreign texts for no clear purpose. . . .

The year after I was settled in YedoÑthe sixth year of Ansei (1859)Ñthe government of the Shogun made a great decision to send a ship-of-war to the United States, an enterprise never before attempted since the foundation of the empire. On this ship I was to have the good fortune of visiting America.

Though it had been called a warship, the vessel was a very small sailing craft equipped with an auxiliary steam engine of one hundred horsepower, which was used for maneuvering in and out of harbors. In the open sea she must depend entirely on sail. The government had purchased her from the Dutch for 25,000 ryo a few years before, and had named her the Kanrinmaru.

Since the second year of Ansei (1855), after the opening of the ports, officers had been studying navigation and the science of steamships under the Dutch residents of Nagasaki. By now, their skill and practice had made them able to venture; so the council of the Shogun had decided that Japanese officers and crew should take a ship across the Pacific to San Francisco at the occasion of our first envoy's departure to Washington. The Kanrinmaru was to act as a kind of escort to the envoy who was sailing on an American warship....

This voyage of Kanrinmaru was an epoch-making venture for our nation; every member of the crew was determined to take the ship across unassisted by a foreigner. . . .

My greatest wish was to sail somehow or other on this voyage. I thought that, as Captain Kimura was a person of high rankÑthe real head of our navyÑhe would need some personal servants with him as befitted his rank. I had to find some method of access to him and ask him to let me serve as his personal steward on the voyage.

Fortunately there was a near relative of Captain Kimura whom I knew. He was a physician in service of the Shogun, Dr. Katsuragawa who was looked up to as the patriarch of Dutch learning in Japan by all the students of the country. When I reached Yedo the year before, I had taken the first opportunity of paying my respects to him, and since then I had been in his home many times. I, therefore, begged Dr. Katsuragawa for a letter of introduction, went to Captain Kimura's house, and begged him to take me along as his servant. Luckily he responded to my request and agreed immediately that I might join the ship.

It seems to me now that his reason for granting my wish so readily must have been that for such an unusual enterprise as the voyage was to be, there were not many volunteers. Even among his own followers, there would not have been many eager to risk themselves on this strange adventure. Therefore he must have been struck by my volunteering and accepted me gladly.

It was in January, the first year of Manen (1860), when our ship, the Kanrinmaru, left Yedo from the shores of Shinagawa. The envoy was to sail on an American warship, the Powhatan, sent over specially for the official journey of the embassy.

Now our small ship, having gotten on her way out of the bay of Yedo, sailed far to the north. In winter, on the rough seas, with her diminutive steam engine of one hundred horse power, which was to be used only in maneuvering about ports, she had to face the voyage under sail. And so hard was the weather on the voyage that we lost two of the four life-boats overboard.

Storm followed storm. Waves broke over the decks continually. I remember that whenever the ship keeled over on her side, I could look up through the skylight from below and see the tops of great waves in the distance. A list of thirty-seven or thirty-eight degrees was not uncommon; we were told that if she went over forty-five degrees, she would founder to the bottom. Still, she kept her course, and fortunately had no serious mishaps. For a whole month we saw nothing but the waves and the clouds. Once we sighted a sail boat, said to be an American vessel carrying Chinese workmen over to America. That was the only thing we saw during the voyage....

And we with the entire crew of ninety-six men reached land at San Francisco after thirty-seven days. Of these thirty seven days, perhaps four or five had been fine; all the others had been stormy and rainy. The conditions on board became very bad since the weather made cleaning and drying impossible. Our Japanese sailors wore semi-foreign clothing, but had straw sandals on their feet. There must have been a supply of hundreds of pairs of these sandals on board. In America, by the generosity of our captain, each sailor received a pair of boots, and their appearance was much improved.

I am willing to admit my pride in this accomplishment for Japan. The facts are these. It was not until the sixth year of Kaei (1853) that a steamship was seen for the first time; it was only in the second year of Ansei (1855) that we began to study navigation from the Dutch in Nagasaki; by 1860, the science was sufficiently understood to enable us to sail a ship across the Pacific. This means that about seven years after the first sight of a steamship, after only about five years of practice, the Japanese people made a trans-Pacific crossing without help from foreign experts. I think we can without undue pride boast be fore the world of this courage and skill. As I have shown, the Japanese officers were to receive no aid from Captain Brooke throughout the voyage. Even in taking observations, our officers and the Americans made them independently of each other. Sometimes they compared their results, but we were never in the least dependent on the Americans.

As I consider all the other peoples of the Orient as they exist today, I feel convinced that there is no other nation which has the ability or the courage to navigate a steamship across the Pacific after a period of five years of experience in navigation and engineering. Not only in the Orient would this feat stand as an act of unprecedented skill and daring. Even Peter the Great of Russia, who went to Holland to study navigation, with all his attainments could not have equaled this feat of the Japanese. Without doubt the famous emperor was a man of genius, but his people did not respond to his leadership in the practice of science as did our Japanese in this great adventure.

As soon as our ship came into the port of San Francisco, we were greeted by many important personages who came on board from all over the country. Along the shores thousands of people were lined up to see the strange newcomers....

Our welcome on shore was certainly worthy of a friendly people. They did everything for us, and they could not have done more. The feeling on their part must have been like that of a teacher receiving his old pupil several years after graduation, for it was their Commodore Perry who had effected the opening of our country seven years before, and now here we were on our first visit to America. . . .

I have already described the generosity of our hosts and the people in San Francisco. Not only did they repair the damaged parts of our vessel, but they were thoughtful enough to build lockers in convenient places on board for the use of the crew. When the ship was ready and we were preparing to sail on the homeward voyage, we inquired how much we should have to pay for the repair of our ship and other expenses. We were met with a kindly smile. And we were obliged to sail away with our obligations unpaid.

Before we sailed, the interpreter, Nakahama, and I each bought a copy of Webster's dictionary. This, I know, was the very first importation of Webster's into Japan. Once I had se cured this valuable work, I felt no disappointment on leaving the new world and returning home again....

As I first set foot on land again, the first person I met was Shima Yasutaro, a steward of Kimura's household. During our absence, no news from homeÑnot even a rumor of any happening at homeÑhad reached us, for there was then no mail service nor even the passage of a ship between Japan and America. The actual six months had seemed six years to us. On meeting Shima as I came ashore, I besought him: "How are you after our long separation? And has anything happened at home while we were away?"

"Anything! Indeed! Something outrageous has happened!" he exclaimed, and the smile of welcome disappeared from his ace.

"Wait, don't tell me," I said. "I'll guess it. It must be some thing like an attack on our chancellor. Was it that the ronin of Mito made a raid on our chancellor's residence?"

Shima showed extraordinary astonishment. "How did you know it? Who could have told you?"

"I should have known it all along," I returned, "whether I heard it or not. By the art of fortune-telling, I guessed the world was moving towards that end."

"You do surprise me more and more," my informant came back. "It wasn't just a raid on the residence...." And he told me then what had taken place on March the third at Sakuradamon, where the Chancellor to the Shogun, Ii Kamon-no Kami, had been assassinated.

I had realized long before we sailed on the American voyage that there were signs of some disturbance. I proved to be right in my estimation, and Shima's great surprise amused me very much.

For a year now, previous to this time, the slogan gradually had been gaining currency: "Expel the foreigners!" The cry was raised and the public of Japan became conscious and perturbed. A little incident of our visit in America may indicate the tide of opinion. In San Francisco Captain Kimura bought an umbrella as a curiosity we called it komori-gasa (bat-umbrella) because of its shape and to distinguish it from the Japanese umbrella. The officers of the ship had gathered around to look at it, and were discussing what might be the result, should the captain carry this strange object out in the streets of Yedo back in Japan.

"There is no doubt about it," said one of them. "He would be cut down by a ronin before the captain could reach Nihombashi from his home in Shinsenza." So we generally decided that the only thing the captain could do with his new possession was to open it and look at it in his home. Such were the times. Any person who showed, by any will or deed, any favor to wards admitting foreigners into JapanÑindeed, any person who had any interest in foreign affairsÑwas liable to be set upon by the unrelenting ronin.

In spite of this and the general public dislike of all foreign studies, however, students in my school gradually increased after my return from America.

[from The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, tr. by Eiichi Kiyooka (New York, 1966), reprinted in William H. McNeill and Mitsuko Iriye, ed., Modern Asia and Africa (New York, 1971), 149-166]