Introduction

Abstract

During the last phase of Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), the bakufu (shogunate) sent several missions to the West. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834–1901), supposedly one of the most acclaimed ideologues in modern Japan, was one of the members of the second mission which went to Europe in 1862. Later in 1866, he published Seiyō jijō (Things in the West) based on his study of the military, education, taxation, political, economic and social systems of Europe. Fukuzawa described the Western system of civilisation in clear and simple Japanese. This book had instant success and was a best seller of the time. Moreover, it had a great influence on Meiji Japan’s thinking.¹ The enthusiastic interest in the West paralleled a swift disinterest toward Asia. In Fukuzawa’s articles of the early Meiji period, he set a high value on Western technology and culture, and he later became very critical of Confucian values and Eastern civilisation. His Datsu a ron (Theory of Departure from Asia) written three months after Kim Ok-kyun’s coup d’état in Korea (kapsin chŏngbyŏn *) aborted in 1885, is short but filled with such ideas. He states that “although Japan exists as a part of East Asia, our spirit has already departed from Asia and moved into the West. Here there remain unfortunate nations as our neighbours. One is China and another is Korea.”² In Fukuzawa’s series of articles his impatience and contempt for Asia are evident. Datsu a nyū ō (withdraw from the East, enter into the West) is the world view which had permeated modern Japan. Concurrently, Japanese foreign policy was characterised by aggression in Asia and rapid Westernisation.