Anybody who has visited Japan will have seen Fukuzawa Yukichi on nearly a daily basis, though they may not know it. His serious face and stalwart image is indeed involved in many everyday transactions. Even if you haven’t set foot even close to Japan yet, then the first few pages of a textbook on Japanese will undoubtedly present his image to you. And in both cases, he’s usually worth about £70, $110 or ¥10000.

Of course, having your face printed on the one side of a yen bill is truly a mark of a nation’s recognition for the work that one has undertaken, however awareness of Fukuzawa very rarely goes further than this, if indeed one is aware even of his presence on Japanese money. So, why is he so celebrated? What did this man borne into a family of both honour and hardship do that gives him the right to be recognised by every Japanese person every single day of their lives..?

1835. Not exactly a time noted for serenity in Japan. Nor was it a time of particular significance, until of course little Yukichi came along. The shogunate, though having been all powerful as the ruling power of the nation for a good two hundred years, was more or less on its knees, and the masses were more than agitating for something new to come along. Feudal law had been thrust upon Japan by the Tokugawa Shogunate of the 1600s, and had in many ways been heralded as a raging success. Devotion and pride were the cornerstones of the shogunate, however it was these self same attributes that meant that it had absolutely no mechanism for change, and now, in an increasingly modernising globe, Japan was soon becoming dilapidated and more importantly, impoverished. Something simply had to be done.

Being borne into a low ranking samurai family in the 1800s did not have all that many advantages. In fact, come to think of it, there probably weren’t any at all. You see, the general public had been told for centuries that if you were samurai, then you were somehow better, that your family lineage was untouchable, and more valuable to Japan. Not exactly the starting point for a healthy inter-class relationship, is it? Furthermore, transcending the gap between commoner and samurai was not a feat often accomplished, and so your rank in society more or less chained you to your destiny. What had once been heralded as a mark of power by many nations of the world, was now being seen as an isolationist shackle that did nothing more than chastise the people of Japan. And so, Fukuzawa’s family was neither respected by the upper levels of the samurai caste, nor were they appreciated by the public.

When Fukuzawa was just eighteen months old, his father unexpectedly passed away, which resulted in the only source of income for the family to be more or less stubbed out. With so many mouths to feed, the outlook was not good. The quicksand of poverty began tugging at their feet, and sure enough the stinking mire of impecuniousness was encroaching nearer and nearer to the Fukuzawa household. At that time, Japanese children were usually admitted into education at the age of four, however due to the lack of funding for the basic essentials in life, school was not something high on the list of priorities for Mother Fukuzawa. Instead, Yukichi found himself cobbling together sandals, and completing other odd jobs in order to supplement the tiny stipend that the shogunate made available to a samurai’s widow. It wasn’t until Fukuzawa reached his fourteenth birthday that education became something that the family could consider.

Observe then, the situation thus far. Fukuzawa has been told that his family is important. He has lived, breathed and digested the jingoism of the shogunate for so long, that the very essence of self-importance would be nothing more than glorified bigotry, fed intravenously into his mind. Then, to find that the family cannot even afford to send its son to school; now that must really have baked his noodle, and could perhaps have been the instigating event for what was to come.

Fukuzawa however, was never one to sit on his laurels and expect destiny to pick him up and sit him atop a throne, oh no. By 1853, Japan was still obstinately refusing entry of any foreigners into Japan, apart from at one small port on the man-made island of Dejima. His elder brother, now assuming the role of his late father, sent Fukuzawa to Nagasaki to learn Dutch in order that he could become expert on the ways of Western warfare, and learn something about the customs of the Americans. Now, you do not need to be one Hercule Poirot to realise that Dutch and the Americans were about as irreconcilable as Welsh and the French. Coupled with that, his teacher of Dutch despised his talent and natural flare (something I have come up against myself, alas…*) and so the teacher, being about as maleficent as he possibly could, span a yarn that Mother Fukuzawa was unbelievably ill, and that Yukichi would have to be at her bedside through her final hours. Seeing through the fabrication, Fukuzawa was outraged, and left his teacher. Having absolutely no money, and no way now of making any, he was stuck between the wrong language and a very hard place, and had no choice but to forge his brother’s signature, and charge the family for his expenses. With this money he set his sights high, and decided to make a beeline for the capital of Japan, Edo. And it was at this point, with a conscience that must have been emotionally battered and physically drained by past experiences, that the rest of Fukuzawa’s life unbelievably began to open up like a book.

What must be said, is that Fukuzawa absorbed knowledge like a sponge put out to dry in the baking heat. His ability to gorge on comprehension meant that against all odds, Fukuzawa was able to effectively learn both the arts and the sciences at breakneck speed. Being almost fluent in Dutch, he was able to translate books that filtered into Japan from Dejima, the first of which was a book dedicated to the ‘art’ of fort building. His interest in the sciences peaked with both chemistry and biology, and his adeptness to quantify and qualify his findings was becoming more than noticed by the top echelons of society in Japan. Not bad for somebody who didn’t cross the playground until fourteen, is it?

By the autumn of 1858, at the tender age of 23, Fukuzawa had his first real job, by way of appointment as a teacher of Dutch to the vassals of the domain of Nakatsu. A pact between the Americans and the Japanese now meant that more ports were being opened up to foreigners, and so Fukuzawa went to investigate. His findings however, came irrefutably to a halt when he realised that these bizarre white people spoke no more Dutch than he spoke Afrikaans. And it is here, as simply a mere mortal, that I would have packed up my kitbag, pulled my kimono tighter around myself, and ambled with an uncontrollable rage back to that place whence I came. Fukuzawa however, having some kind of super-human ability to overcome all obstacles, set to learning English!

The shogunate, having realised by this point that non-cooperation with the rest of humanity was not an option, had decided to send envoys to the US. Fukuzawa jumped at the chance and in the spring of 1860, he set foot in beautiful San Francisco. And it was during his one-month tour of the States that Fukuzawa obtained a copy of a Webster’s dictionary. Not so interesting you may say, but to many experts far more intuitive than myself, this has been proclaimed as Fukuzawa’s intellectual gateway to understanding modern civilisation. For, dear readers, this was what Fukuzawa began to understand. Being the brunt of societal Japan, and having seen both sides of the coin from such an early age, Fukuzawa was acutely aware of the problems that Japan was facing. He knew that the stalwart engine room of the shogunate was beginning to splutter and choke as the rust of centuries of feudal law began to strip away. In America, and indeed via subsequent tours of the majority of Europe, Fukuzawa saw something different, something that he could appreciate, and something which he came vehemently to believe was an approach to society that Japan must, at the least, observe, and at most, adopt. His first book, Conditions of the West, was immediately a bestseller, and sure enough, the seeds of revolution were becoming more apparent in Japan.

From rags to riches, it would seem that Fukuzawa’s story was passing from strength to strength. However, in no time whatsoever, the very success that Fukuzawa was experiencing, could quite easily be his undoing. You see, the shogunate was all-powerful. Unrest was bubbling under the surface of Japan’s perfectly preened façade, of course, but ultimately the shogunate still resided over Japan with the brunt of its power. And it would be utterly naïve to conceive the notion that there were not people still ready, and able, to lay down their lives for it. In fact, breakaway sects of samurais who despised the influences of Western civilisation that had begun to ooze over Japan, via conduits such as Fukuzawa, were known to mercilessly and fanatically kill those that made even so much as a nod toward Western ideas. Fukuzawa, therefore, was tiptoeing quite vulnerably across a tightrope strung over a raging sea of hungry sharks.

This did not scare him however, and never once did he falter in his quest. And finally, as the shogunate fizzled out like a firework doused in water, the new government of the Restoration asked Fukuzawa to join them, though he was stoic in his response, and declined amiably. Though obviously a rising force in the moulding of modern Japan, Fukuzawa had never had any intention to govern, and wanted not to be a part of any of it. His promulgations came better from the sidelines, and he intended it to be kept that way.

Fukuzawa’s works continued to develop. Branching out from science, he turned his might to philosophy, and the mechanics of a modern society. He brushed with women’s rights, the allegiance between Korea and China, and vested much time and effort in dragging Japan into the new century. Like a shining beacon for change, Fukuzawa managed to inform the perceptions of an entire nation without ever succumbing to politics.

So, you can see, that Fukuzawa Yukichi is a marvel. In a time when propaganda of the state was at its mightiest, in a time when platitudes were considered the nuts and bolts of society, Fukuzawa had the foresight to realise that Japan could not remain the same for eternity. His viewpoints on Western society however, have been highly criticised, generally by people who believe that Fukuzawa wanted to westernise Japan: this is most definitely not the case, for you could not find a person more patriotic to one’s country than him. What he saw in the West however, was an ability to evolve, an ability to adapt, and an ability to govern oneself not through might and dictatorial whitewashing, but in a way that served the people, that chose to educate even the poorest of people because one day, as did Fukuzawa, these could become something of a phenomenon. Some say he is not a genius as he didn’t create anything that the West had not already dealt with, however he was blazing the trail for modernity in Japan, and in a country where change and advancement against the law were seen to be treasonous still; this man was prolific. The sum of his work did not lead to any great uprising, and certainly the people of Japan did not congregate in the streets of Tokyo to herald him as their saviour, however what Fukuzawa managed to achieve was the removing of the shroud, which permitted the masses to engender their own thoughts, and decide their own conclusions.

And so, when you take out that ¥10000 bill, and hand it over for whatever it is that you may be purchasing, just give a moment to Fukuzawa Yukichi. Some call him the Oliver Twist of Japan, others go for the Pied Piper, leading the people to discovery. Still more mark his card as the Forerunner of Change. But for me, he is the proof that anything is possible, that nothing is unachievable. He is of course, the Father of Modern Japan.

* Poetic licence has been used in the self-referential comments throughout this piece. I will not pass go, I will not collect ¥200.

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