Chapter Fukuzawa Yukichi, Uno scritto di commiato da Nakatsu

Overview & Synopsis

At the age of 36, following a brief visit to his hometown, Fukuzawa Yukichi drafted A Letter of Farewell from Nakatsu. It was 1871 and Fukuzawa had already gained extensive experience, not least through his travels abroad, from which he drew the observations for the drafting of Conditions of the West (Seiyō jijo) that gave him notoriety with the Japanese public. A Letter of Farewell from Nakatsu is considered to be an essential work in the development of his thought, as it anticipates - albeit in an extremely concise form - many of the themes that were to be the cornerstones of his later works. These themes encompass the patriarchal family structure, the dynamics between men and women, and the traditional approach to knowledge and learning, all of which he believed needed to be drastically reconsidered. Fukuzawa’s vision for Japan's future rested on its capacity to embrace the new civilisation introduced by the ‘West’. However, he did not envision this transformation as a blind adoption of a foreign model. Instead, he saw it as a process of modernisation that could simultaneously preserve the valuable aspects of Japanese tradition.