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OF
YUKICHI FUKUZAWA
Fukuzawa at sixty+hree ()
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
YUKICHI FUKIJZAWA
Revised Translation by
EIICHI KIYOOKA
With a Foreword by
ALBERT CRAIG
L.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NewYork
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since
New York Chichester, West Sussex
by Eiichi Kiyooka
O , Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
WARD, ROBERT E.; POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MODERN
JAPAN.
Princeton University Press, renewed PUP.
Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
Foreword by Albert Craig reprinted with permission from Rowman
and Littlefield.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fukuzawa, Yukichi,
[Fuku-o jiden. English]
The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa / revised translation by
Eiichi Kiyooka ; with a foreword by Albert Craig.
p.
cm.
ISBN l-l l (cloth)
ISBN l (paper)
1. Fukuzawa, Yukichi, I 2. Educators-Japan-Biogra-
phy. I. Kiyooka, Eiichi, II. Title.
LF82A '.t
dc22
First published in First translation into English (published
in Japan as The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi). New translation
into English 1 First American edition
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and
durable acid-free paper.
This book was printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c
p
CONTENTS
FOREWORD, by Albert Craig vll
ACKNOWLEDGMENT xiii
PREFACE TO THE EDITION xv
I CHILDHOOD I
II I SET OUT TO LEARN DUTCH IN
NAGASAKI 2I
III I MAKE MY WAY TO 6SAKA 39
IV STUDENT WAYS AT OGATA SCHOOL 58
v I GO TO YEDO; I LEARN ENGLISH 93
VI I JOIN THE FIRST MISSION TO AMERICA IO4
VII I GO TO EUROPE
VIII I RETURN TO ANTI-FOREIGN JAPAN I4I
IX I VISIT AMERICA AGAIN 16
x A NON-PARTISAN IN THE RESTORATION;
THE GROWTH OF A PRIVATE SCHOOL I78
XI THE RISK OF ASSASSINATION
XII FURTHER STEPS TOWARD A LIBERAL AGE
XIII MY PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY ?$l
XIV MY PRIVATE LIFE; MY FAMILY DO
XV A FINAL WORD ON THE GOOD LIFE s07
NOTES
AFTERWORD.
FUKUZAV/A YUKICHI :
THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDAIIONS
OFMEUINATIONALISM,byAIbeTtCTaig
APPENDIX I. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
APPENDIX II. ENCOURAGEMENT OF
LEARNING: THE FIRST ESSAY,
INDEX
FOREWORD
in scope or drama
Fbw historical transformations match
that of Japan during the second half of the nineteenth
century.
Rarer still are instances when one can point to a
single figure and say, here is the man who more than any
other provided the intellectual impetus for the change.
Fukuzawa Yukichi was such a man. His Arnobiographg
gives us an inside view of the formation of a new Japan.
When Commodore Perry came to ]apan in , he
found the realm of the shogun-a land that had been
secluded for more than two centuries.
The country was
divided into domains that were ruled by daimyo lords with
the support of their samurai vassals. At the center of each
domain was the castletown, with samurai and merchant
quarters, and temples and shrines, Confucian academies
and schools of swordsmanship. Spread out from the castle-
towns was a cpuntryside of peasant villages containing the
vast majority of the population.
There were also the great
cities of Edo and Osaka with their merchant houses, coastal
shipping guilds, domain offices and estates, theaters and
entertainment quarters. As a Western observer com-
mented, the Japanese were "living under conditions like
those of our chivdric age and the .feudal system of the
Middle Ages."
Then, just fffteen years after ,'s arrival, the armies
of several domains joined to overthrow the shogun's rule.
Their slogans were reactionary, but even as they vowed to
"honor the emperor and expel the barbarians," they fought
with rifes purchased from American and British mer-
chants.
The new government, established in by the
viii Foreword
samurai leaders of these armies, felt that only resolute and
radical action would prevent Japan from becoming a colony.
Within a decade the new leaders had converted the daimyo
domains into the prefectures of a centralized bureaucratic
state, begun a system of conscription, and abolished the
samurai class.
On completing the social revolution, they
went on to establish new schools, a modern army and navy,
textile mills, banks and railways, a postal and telegraph
system, and new codes of law based on Western models. In
they promulgated a constitution, and, a year later,
opened a national assembly. Responding vigorously to their
new opportunities and freedoms, the ]apanese people built
a prosperous economy and a vital new hybrid culture.
The
same Western observer wrote bemusedly in
Betwixt night and morning . . and with one great leap,
Japan is trying to traverse the stages of ftve centuries of
European development, and to assimilate in the fwinkling of
an eye all the latest achievements of Western civilization.
The country is thus undergoing an immense cultural revolu-
tiorr-for the term "evolution" is inapplicable to a change so
rapid and so fundamental.
I feel myself lucky to be an eye-
witness of so interesting an elcperiment.
Fukuzawa Yukichi's initial role in the cultural revolution
was to translate Western works and to adapt them to
]apanese needs. His early output was prodi$ous, ran$ng
from history and economics to military technology and
double-entry bookkeeping.
In order to express effectively
the unfamiliar Western ideas, he invented a new prose style
that was vigorous, colorful, and close to the vernacular. He
was also not above pohng fun at his fellow writers who,
following the Tokugawa tradition, continued to write in
Chinese. "Do they expect only Chinese to read their
works?" he asked.
Foreword ix
Fukuzawa's first works appeared at the end of the Edo
period and the beginning of the Meiji era, when informa-
tion about the West was virtually unavailable.
Indeed,
Fukuzawa himself described the Seiyd /iiri (Things West-
ern), his earliest and most infuential major work, as "a bat
in a village without birds." His writings thus became
available just when Japan's leaders were groping for policies
to strengthen their country against the Western powers and
the public eager to learn about the outside world.
His
works sold hundreds of thousands of copies-unprece-
dented numbers for that agrand reached every segment
of society. In , for example, when GotO ShOjirO, a
powerful samurai leader of the Tosa domain, met with
lbkugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, to &scuss the politi-
cal situation in Japan and the threat posed by the Western
powers, he was surprised to discover that the shogun knew
more about the West than he did.
It turned out that both
men had read the Seigl Jij6, but the shogun had read it
more carefully.
The Japanese title of the autobiography is Fukul lidet-
a self-chronicle (jidcn) by the old man (tt) Fuku [zawa]. The
title was appropriate since he dictated and amended the
work in , just four years before his death.
But the work
might just as well have been titled "Memoirs of My Youth,"
for the past that he recaptures so vividly is mainly of the
Restoration years. His story begins in the rigidly stratifted
samurai society of Nakatsu, a minor domain in northeastern
Kyushu. Born into a low-ranking samurai household, Fu-
kuzawa grew up poor and fatherless.
While he was an
exceptionally able student at a Confucian school in the
castletown, his life was not much difierent from what it
might have been had he been born decades earlier. In
I8*[, howwer, a month after Perry's second visit to Japan
x Foreword
and a month before the signing of the teaty of Friendship
that ended japan's seclusion, Fukuzawa left the cocoon of
his domain and set out for Nagasaki to study Dutch and
Western gunnery.
His odyssey had begun.
A year at Nagasaki was followed by several years at the
famous Ogata school of Dutch medicine in Osaka. Finding
an acceptance among his fellow students that he had never
known in Nakatsu, and warmed by the fatherly affection of
his teacher, these were wonderful years for Fukuzawa.
Even decades later, Fukuzawa's pleasure in recounting the
adventures of his student days in Osaka is palpable.
Flout-
ing the normal conventions of |apanese society, the Ogata
students went naked in the heat of the summer, engaged
in mock fights in the streets, drank rice wine, and pawned
their swords to cover their bills. Fukuzawa tells of how
they slaughtered a pig for a tender-hearted proprietor ofa
beef-shop, and of how they were tricked by a druggist into
dissecting a bear.
But competition at the school was fferce,
and the students spent hours copying their texts before
deciphering them with the aid of two old Dutch dictionar-
ies. "No other group of students anywhere at that time,"
he wrote, "could compare with us in hard work."
Fukuzawa was next ordered by his domain to go to Edo
to instruct Nakatsu samurai in Dutch studies.
The small
school he founded in the domain offices grew, and eventu-
ally became KeiO University, today one of fapan's great
private universities. His autobiography, however, dwells
not on the school but on his chagrin at discovering that no
one in the thriving port of Yokohama understood Dutch.
He turned with trepidation to the study of English, another
language "written sideways," and was much relieved to
discover that his "knowledge of Dutch could be applied
directly to English." Tvo years later, he took his ftrst trip
Foreword xi
abroad as a servant on a shogunal mission to the United
States.
On his return he was hired by the foreign ministry
ofthe shogunate as a translator, a position he also held on
two subsequent trips abroad, to Europe in and to the
United States in
After the Meiji Restoration in , Fukuzawa turned
from translating to original writing. In works such as En-
couragement of Learning () and An Outline of a
Theory of Ciotlizatton (), he developed his ideas of
personal independence and of the natural equality of all
persons.
All Japanese school children know the opening
line of the former work: "Heaven does not create persons
above other persons, nor does it create persons below other
persons." The words may have derived from his earlier
translation of the Declnratian of Indcpendence, yet he held
them to be a statement of a universal truth that would be
realized in Japan as its history unfolded.
Ever the practical
man, Fukuzawa also became for a time one of the largest
publishers in Japan and founded a leading Meiji newspaper.
He remained active as a politicd and philosophicd writer
until the end of his life. His Collected, Works fill twenty-
one volumes in Japanese.
On reading the Autobiography, we are struck by Fuku-
zawa s intense awareness of the gulf separating the old
Japan from the new.
He had once written that in the West
even startling new theories are founded in an intellectual
tradition that goes back more than a millennium. "But," he
remarked, "how difierent is the case of Japan! Our present
[Western-infuenced] civilization is a case of ftre changing
to water, ofnonbeing changing to being, a change so abrupt
that it can be called neither reform nor origination." And
only those of his own generation, he maintained, had
experienced both worlds first-hand; they alone could speak
xii Foreword
of the old Japan from the vantage point of the new, and
once they were gone, their unique perspective would be
lost forever.
Thus, Fukuzawa's goal in telling his story was
historical: to recreate an age that had passed away, and
within it, to describe his own personal odyssey.
ALBERT CRAIG
C ambrid,ge, Massachusett s Feb ruary
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
It seems that a translator's work never comes to an end.
Although errors had been eliminated in the past editions,
the need for improving the whole translation remained.
It
is his great happiness that an opportunity was given him to
reexamine every line of the book and to bring out what he
calls the new translation. This is a rare privilege for a
translator. Also, he rvas able to redivide the chapters and
to add the marginal titles according to the newly discovered
Fukuzawa's manuscript.
He is very grateful to Prof. Max
H. Fisch for giving him very minute criticisms on the old
translation. And, in writing the enlarged notes and index,
he received invaluable assistances again from Mr. Masafumi
Tomita, Mr. Washichi Konno, the editing staffs of the One
Hundred Year History of Kei6-gijuku, and the student
members of the Keid English Speaking Society, for which
he wishes to express his very deep appreciation.
Nor has
he forgotten the help he had had from Mr. Charles F. Bopes
and Mr. W. Bradford Smith for the first translation.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION
As it is often the custom with foreign men of learning to
leave an account of their lives for the benefit of posterity,
many members of our university had, for some time, wished
our Fukuzawa Senseir to do the same.
Some of them had
actually spoken of it to him, but Sensei had always been very
busy and had no spare time to undertake the writing. But
the year before last, in the autumn, he had occasion to tell
some of his reminiscences of the period of the Restoration
at the request of a certain foreigner. At that time, Sensei,
on a sudden thought, called in a writer of shorthand and had
the oral narrative of his life from early childhood to old age
taken down.
Later he made several corrections in the manu-
script and had it published in a serial form in his Jijishimpd,
beginning in last July and continuing till February of this
year under the title of Fukud Jiden (Autobiography of Aged
Fukuzawa).
Since these notes are simply a narrative based on his
casual memory told in order as he recalled each incident, it
is more an informal talk than an autobiography.
Therefore,
Sensei had planned to write a companion volume so as to
supply what was left out in the present one, and to make a
complete account of the beginning of our intercourse with
foreign nations, and also of the last phases of the diplomatic
steps taken by the Sh6gun's government. The general plan
of this second volume had already been made, but in Septem-
ber of last year Sensei was suddenly overcome by a severe
illness which preyented his carrying it out.
When Sensei
r Notc on D. i(l?.
recovers from his illness, he will have the second volumez
published and satisfy our present regreL
ISHIKAWA KAMMEI
Iune, fi99
liji-Shimpa
, Notc oa 9. fii7.
TITE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
YUKICHI FUKUZAWA
IT
CHILDHOOD
My father, Fukuzawa Hyakusuke, was a samurait belong-
ing to the Okudaira Clan of Nakatsu on the island of Kyi.
shu.
My mother, called O-Jun as her given name, was the
eldest daughter of Hashimoto Hamaemon, another samurai
of the same clan. In social order, my father was barely high
enough to have a formal audience with the lord. He was a
few ranks above the common soldier (ashigaru), but he was
of the lower order among the samurai. In today's society
his position would probably correspond to hanninhan,z the
lowest rank of government officials.
My father had been made "securer of the foundation"
(motojimeyakt), or in other words the overseer of the trea-
sury.r Consequently he had to spend much of his time at his
lord's storage office and headquarters.
in the city of Gat<a.
Therefore all of us children were born in Gaka, five in
all-first a boy, then three girls, and then myself, the
youngest. I was born on the twelfth of December in the
fifth year of the Tempo era (according to the modern calen-
dar, January 10, ) when my father was forty-three years
old and my mother thirty-one.
A year and a half later, in June, my father died.
At that
time, my brother was only eleven, and I was a mere infant,
r Not o D.:ll}7.
r p. iIl& ! Ibid- . Ibid.
2 Childhood
so the only course for our mother to follow was to take her
children back with her to her original feudal province of
Nakatsu, which she did.
What I seem to remember best about
We children did Nakatsu is the fact that we children
not flt lnto never quite mixed with other children
Nakatsu goclety there.
Though we had dozens of cous-
ins, and there were flocks of children in
the neighborhood, we never seemed to get along with any
of them, or play with them, as we did among ourselves.
There was no real reason for this, but, having a different
Gat<a dialect, we children grew self-conscious even in
saying "yes" and "no" to our neighbors.
Moreover, my
mother,although she was a native of Nakatsu,had accustom-
ed herself to the life of Gaka, then the most prosperous
city in Japan, and so the way she dressed us and arranged
our hair made us seem queer in the eyes of these people in
a secluded town on the coast of Kyiisht. And having
nothing else to wear but what we had brought from Gaka,
we naturally felt more comfortable to stay at home and play
among ourselves.
I must mention a very important characteristic of our
family.
My father was really a scholar. And the scholars
of the time, different from the Western scholars of today,
disdained to spend any thought on money, or even to touch
it. My father always longed for a quiet scholarly life with
his books and the noble philosophy of the ancient sages. Yet
he was forced to attend to the most worldly affairs, for it
was his duty as treasury overseer to associate with mer.
chants, and to count money, and to negotiate loans for his
lord.
Sometimes when his lord was in difficulty, my father
had to bargain with the rich men like Kajimaya and K6no.
ike of Osaka.
In this work he was unhappy, and so when it came to
Childhood 3
bringing up his children, he tried, it
Edscation rc- seems to me, to give them what he
cordlng to Con- thought was an ideal education.
For
fuclan doctrlne instance, he once sent them to a teacher
for calligraphy and general education.
The teacher lived in the compound of the lord's storage
office, but, having some merchants' children among his
pupils, he naturally began to train them in numerals: "Two
times two is four, two times three is six, etc." This, today,
seems a very ordinary thing to teach, but when my father
heard this, he took his children away in a fury.
"It is abominable," he exclaimed, "that innocent children
should be taught to use numbers-the tool of merchants.
There is no telling what the teacher may do next.',
I heard of this incident later from my mother, for I was
too small at the time to be sent with the otlers to the
teacher.
At any rate one may easily see that he was a very strict
father who never compromised on what he felt was right.
From the writings he left, I know that he was a Confucian
to the very heart.
Among the great scholars on Chinese
philosophy, my father had a particular respect for Itii T6gai,t
and was literally living the old saying, " Be true and sincerg
unashamed even in the innermost privacy."
My father's ideas survived him in his family. All five of
us children lived with few friends to visit ug and since we
had no one to influence us but our mother who lived only
in her memory of her husband, it was as if father himself
were living with us.
So in Nakatsu, with our strange habits
and apparel, we unconsciously formed a group apart, and
although we never revealed it in words, we looked upon the
neighbors around us as less refined than ourselves Even
I Notc 6 D. EB.
4 Childhood
our cousins were, we felt, not quite like ourselves. We did
not reproach them for any breach of good manners, for we
were too few to assert our superiority.
lVe simply held our
self-possession deep in our hearts and stood aloof.
I still remember that I was always a lively happy child, fond
of talk and romping about, but I was never good at climb-
ing trees and I never learned to swim. This was perhaps
because I did not play with the neighborhood children.
Thus we lived apart in that alien place
Disciplinewith- and had many lonely experiences, but
out strictness our home life was a happy one.
Though
there was no father to lord it over us,
we children never quarreled among ourselves or annoyed
our mother. It was not that our mother was strict, or that
she took particular pains in teaching us manners, but we
grew up naturally to be obedient and thoughtful. It must
have come from the memory of our father and the quiet in-
fluence of our mother.
As an instance of the discipline observed, we never had a
musical instrument like shamisez in our home, nor did we
ever think of hearing it, for that was an amusement un-
worthy of the samurai.
Likewise, it was natural that it
never occurred to us to go and see a play. In the summer
time during a festival, there would sometimes be a series of
plays lasting seven days together when the traveling actors
set up their temporary stage in the Sumiyoshi temple-yard.
Then there would always be a proclamation that the samu-
rai of our clan should not attend the plays or even go beyond
the stone wall of the temple.
Though the proclamation sounded very strict, it amounted
to a mere formality.
Many of the less scrupulous samurai
would go to the plays with their faces wrapped in towels,
wearing only the shorter of the two swords which all samu-
rai wore-thus making themselves appear like common
Childhood 5
people. These disguised samurai broke over the bamboo
fence of the theater, whereas the real common people paid
their fees.
When the management tried to stop the intrud-
ers, they would utter a menacing roar and go striding on to
take the best seats.
Among the many samurai families of middle and lowclass,
ours was perhaps the only one that did not see the plays.
Though all women love the theater, my mother never let
herself mention it, and we children never asked a question
about it.
Sometimes after a warm day we might go out to-
gether for a stroll in the cool of the evening. As we walked
along, we would see the canvas of the temporary theater
come into view, but we would never speak of the plays that
were being staged. Such was our family.
As I have mentioned, my father was unhappy in the
worldly duties which it was his lot to perform.
He might
have broken with his master and gone to seek his fortune
elsewhere, but he did not entertain such an idea. Apparent-
ly he submitted to the distasteful position and the small
stipend, and buried his discontent in his heart. Perhaps it
was because he knew that it was impossible to overcome
the rigid customs of the time.
There is a story that makes me sorry for him.
When I
was born, I was found to be a rather thin but big-boned
child, and the midwife said that I would grow up to be a fine
man if only I was fed plenty of milk. This made my father
very glad.
This is a good child," he often said
When he grows to my mother. "When he gets to be
up,I will make ten or eleven years old, if all goes well,
a prle$ of him I shall send him to a monastery and
make a priest of him."
I:ter, after the loss of my father, my mother often told
me that she never understood why he wanted me to be a
6 Childhood
priest.
"But," she would say, " if your father were still liv-
ing, you would be a priest of some temple by now."
Years later, when I came to understand better, I realized
that this wish of my father's was a result of the feudal
system of that time with the rigid law of inheritance: sons
of high officials following their father in office, sons of foot-
soldiers always becoming foot-soldiers, and those of the
families in between having the same lot for centuries with-
out change.
For my father, there had been no hope of
rising in society whatever effort he might make. But when
he looked around, he saw that for me there was one possible
road to advancement-the priesthood. A fish monger's son
had been known to become a Buddhist abbot.6
I believe I am not far from the truth
Feudalism is my
in thinking that this may have been my
father's mortal father's reason for directing me to the
enemy priesthood.
I am filled with heart-pity
when I think that he should have lived
the years of his life in the fetters of the feudal
system, and died before any of his desires had been fulfilled.
He had determined to put his son in a monastery so that he
might have some wider field of thought and life which had
been denied to himself. When I think of this, I realize his
inward suffering and his unfathomable love, and I am often
moved to tears.
To me, indeed, the feudal system is my
father's mortal enemy which I am honor-bound to destroy.
But despite my father's wish, I did not become a priest.
Nor did I do any studying at home as he would have en-
couraged me to, for there was nobody to force me to do so.
My brother, who had taken my father's place in the family,
was still a young man; my mother was obliged to do all the
house-work, feeding and clothing the five of us children by
.
Note on p&
Childhood 7
herself, as she did not have enough means to hire a servant.
Naturally, our education was neglected in the busy rush ol
daily work.
It was not unusual for the young sons of the Nakatsu clan
to study Chinese classics such as Lun-yt, thesayingsof
Confucius, and Ta-hsiieh, a book of ethics, but such studies,
were never really encouraged by anyone.
I suppose there
is no child in the world naturally fond of study; so perhaps
I was not the only one to take advantage of a parent's leni-
ency, and to profess a dislike of books.
However, when I was foufte€n or fif-
At fourteen or teen years old, I found that many of the
fifteen, I turtr my boys of my age were studying these
nind to learnlng classics; and I became ashamed of my-
self and willingly started to school.
It
was embarrassing in the beginning, for I was a young man
of fifteen beginning with the oral reading of Mencius, while
other boys of my age were discussing the books of Chinese
philosophy (Shih-ching and Shu-ching).
The system followed there was that the advanced stu-
dents gave lessons in oral reading to the new students early
in the morning, and then later they all had an open discus-
sion of the subject.
Perhaps I was somewhat talented in
literature, for I could discuss a book with the older student
who had taught me the reading of it earlier in the morning,
and I was always upsetting his argument. This fellow
knew the words well, but he was slow to take in the ideas
they expressed. So it was an easy matter for me to hold a
debate with him.
I changed school two or three times, but I studied most
under the care of a master named Shiraishi.?
Under his
guidance I made rapid progress, and in four or five years I
r Notc oa p. f,[.
8 Childhood
had no difficulty in studying a good part of the Chinese
classics.
Shiraishi Sensei placed special emphasis on the classics,
and so we gave much of our time to the study of Lun-yt,
Mencius, and other books of ancient sages' Especially, as
our master was fond of Shih-ching and Shu-ching, we often
listened to his lectures on these books.
Also M6ng-ch'iu,
Shih-shuo, Tso-chuan, Chan-kuo-ts'e, Lao-tzu, and Chuang'
tzu. As for historical books, we had Shih-chi, Ch'ien-hou
Han-shu, Chin-shu, Wu-tai-shih, Yiian-ming Shih-lteh, etc.E
Of all the books I read at Shiraishi's
f read Tso-chuan school, Tso-chuan was my favorite.
eleven times over While most of the students gave it up
after reading three or four volumes out
of the fifteen, I read all-eleven times over-and memorized
the most interesting passages.
Thus in the course of time
I became zenza, or senior disciple who had the privilege of
giving occasional lectures.
Shiraishi Sensei belonged to the school of Kameie; in fact,
he worshipped that master of sound philosophy, and rather
despised the delicately literary, and did not encourage the
writing of lyric poetry among us.
There was, at that time,
a certain poet and satirist, Hirose Tans; of him our
master would disparagingly say that he could not write a
line of perfect Chinese and was but a trifling poet in Japa-
nese.+ Likewise, of another literary contemporary, Rai
Sany6," he would say, " If his writings are called 'literature,'
then anybody's scribblings might be literature too.
A man
may stammer, but his meaning will be understood!" Fol-
lowing our master, we disciples soon learned to think little
of those he denounced.
My late father was like Shiraishi, for although he was in
. Chinese was the scholar's language in Japan iust as Latin was in Europc.
E Note oo p. e p. ro Ibid. I I lbid.
Childhood 9
Osaka, and Sany6 lived in KyOto, not far away, they never
exchanged courtesies.
My father, however, did become a
friend of another scholar, Noda Tekiho. I do not know
what kind of man this Tekiho was, but if my father made a
friend of him while avoiding Sany6, this Tekiho must have
been a scholar of true worth. At any rate, as Kamei Sensei
had established his own theory in opposition to the
School, his disciples were often at odds with scholars of
other groups.
Besides these studies at school, I was
I with very clever at doing little things with
was clever
my hands my hands, and I loved to try inventing
and devising things.
When something
fell in the well, I contrived some means to fish it out. When
the lock of a drawer failed to open, I bent a nail in many
ways, and poking into the mechanism, somehow opened it.
These were my proud moments. I was good at pasting new
paper on the inner doors of the house, which are called sio-
ji.
Every so often when the old lining of the shdji turned
gray with dust, it had to be taken off and new white paper
pasted on the frame. I used to do all this work for our
own house, and sometimes one of our relatives hired me out
to help him do the rvork in his house. I was proud to do all I
was asked, for I was quick and clever at little jobs of every
kind.
As I grew older, I began to do a greater variety of things,
such as mending the wooden clogs and sandals-I mended
them for all my family-and fixing broken doors and leaks
in the roof.
As we were poor, it was necessary that some
member of the family should look to keeping the house in
repair. I bought a Iarge needle and changed the covering
of the tatami-the thick mats that are used to cover the
floors. Also I knew how to split bamboo and put hoops
around buckets and tubs.
10 Chitdhood
Later, I began to earn money by making wooden clogs
and fitting out swords.
I never learned to polish the blade,
but I could lacquer the sheath, wind the cords around the
handle, and somehow put on the metal fittings. I still have
a short sword which I fitted out myself, though of course it
is of poor workmanship as I look at it now. I learned these
arts from various acquaintances among the samurai who
were practising them to add to their living.
For any work in metals it is very
I was ourprlsed necessary to have a good file; I had a
by a saw-0le difficult time in making one for myself.
I knew how to make an ordinarY file
from a steel bar, after a fashion, but the fine file for sharpen'
ing saws was beyond my art.
Years later, when I first came
to Yedo,* I was surprised at the sight of a boy, an appren-
tice to a blacksmith, making a saw-fiIe. I still remember
the place. It was at Tamachi on the right-hand side of the
street as I entered the city. The boy had the fileonapiece
of leather on an anvil, and was chiseling away at very fine
notches as if he never realized there was any wonder in it.
I stopped and watched him, thinking what a great city of
industry this must be where even a youngster could make
a saw-file such as I myself had never dreamed of making.
This was the first shock I received on coming to the city.
Thus ever since my childhood, besides my love of books,
I have been accustomed to working with my hands.
And
even yet, in my old age, [ find myself handling planes and
chisels, and making and mending things. But these are
only common, homely things, devoid of art. I possess little
of what people call "good taste." I care nothing for the
kind of clothes I wear or the kind of house I live in.
I do
not even see why one must wear one garmerfi over the other
'oIThc prcrcot city of T6ly6. It ru rcarncd rool rict tho Inperial Rcroratioa
rEOE.
Childhood ll
in a certain way. Still less do I understand why fashions
in dress should change every year. In this awkward, com-
mon-place life of mine, if I might claim any one taste, it
would be the sword, for I do know what constitutes good
workmanship in sword fitting.
I believe this raste came
from my early work in it though my skill was never more
than that of an amateur.
I was always unconcerned with the way of society, and it
was my inborn nature to act always in my own way. Since
all the samurai of small means kept no servants, they were
obliged to go out and do their own shopping.
But according
to the convention among the warrior class, they were
ashamed of being seen handling money. Therefore, it was
customary for samurai to wrap their faces with hand-towels
and go out after dark whenever they had an errand to do.
I hated having a towel on my face
I carry r tine and have never worn one. I even used
bottle in Drord togooutonerrandsin broad daylight,
dayligbt swinging a wine bottle in one hand,
with two swords at my side as became
a man of samurai rank.
"This is my own money," I would say to myself.
'I did
not steal it. What is wrong with buying things with my
own money?" Thus, I believe, it was with a boyish pride
and conceit that I made light of the mock gentility of my
neighbors.
lVhen guests were expected at our house, I often cooked
burdocks and radishes to help my mother in the kitchen.
But as soon as the guests arrived, I disappeared into a closet.
I did not like to see them lazily eating and drinking and
talking nonsense.
I often wished they would hurry and go
away, but of course they never did. So I would take my
supper early, drink my wine-for I was fond of it-and crawl
into sorne little closet in which we kept our bedding, for that
12 Childhood
was the only refuge I had in the small house. I would stay
there, lying on the pile of bedding until the guests were all
gone.
Then I would crawl out and spread my bed in the
usual corner of the room
My brothert8 had many friends who used to come in the
evening and discuss the questions of the day. Sometimes I
listened to them, but being yet a youngster, I was never
allowed to join in. Frequently the subject of the conversa-
tion turned to Rekko of Mitot{ and Shunga[<u of Echizen,ts
two great men whom all the scholars of the nation honored.
As Rekk6 of Mito was a close relation of the Sh6gun,rG
respect for him was very deep.
In mentioning him in con-
versation, people did not speak his name directly. Scholars,
in scholarly language, would call him "Mito-no Roko" (The
venerable aged lord of Mito) while the unlearned would
call him "Mito-no Goinkyo Sama" (The honorable retired
lord of Mito), always careful to use the honorific title
"Sama." Inspired by all this, I too believed that he was the
greatest man in the world.
Then there was Egawa Tarozaemon,rT also much respect-
ed as a great man.
Again, as he was hatamoto, ot an
irnmediate retainer of the Sh6gun, everybody referred to
him, even in private conversation as " Egawa Sama." Once
I heard my brother mention to his friend that this great
man, Egawa Tarozaemon, was a hero of modern times, for
his self-control was such that he was able to live through
the winters in summer clothing.
" H'm, I can do that myself," I thought as I listened.
And
after that, without disclosing my intention to anybody, I
began to sleep on the floor rolled up in only one quilt. My
mother was much worried when she learned this.
" What nonsense is this ? " she said. " You will take cold ! "
r! Norc oD p rt Ibid. t' Ibid. !!
Ibid. rc p. r? Ibid.
Childhood 13
But I went on and endured the cold until spring. I was
fifteen or sixteen years old then, eager to try everything
that others did, and happily I had a strong constitution.
As I have suggested, Chinese classics were then the basis
of all learning. Naturally, my brother was a thorough
scholar in Chinese, but he was peculiar
in one respect-he
studied mathematics according to the teaching of Hoashi
Banri,rE a scholar of Bungo province.
This teacher, though he was a noted scholar in Chinese,
had a new theory that the gun and the abacus* were to be
considered important instruments for the samurai, and that
itwas wrong to leave the abacus, or rather finances, to
lower officials, and the gun to the common soldiers.
This
theory had spread to Nakatsu and my brother was one
of the several younger men who had
Conversation stgdied mathematics and attained some
with my brother ability in it. In this he differed from
the usual scholars; otherwise, he was a
strict follower of the Chinese, believing to the core in their
moral teachings. One day I had an amusing conversation
with him.
"Yukichi, what do you intend to be in the future?" he
asked me.
"Well, Sir, I would like to be the richest man in Japan,"
I answered, " and spend all the money I want to."
He made a wry face and gave me a piece of his mind.
So
I asked him in return: " What do you want to be ? "
He answered gravely in stilted Chinese phrasing: "I will
be dutiful to my parents, faithful to my brethren, and loyal
to my master until death."
" H'm ! " I exclaimed. And there the conversation ended.
That was rny brother.
t A rinple but eficicnt qlculating irstruneDt with may rlidiog bcadg on I board.
rt Notc oa D.
14 Childhood
He sometimes had queer ideas. " I was born the eldest
son," he once said to me, "and I am now the head of the
family. But I should like, if it were possible, to become an
adopted son of some very difficult family with the most
headstrong parents. I would prove that an adopted son can
live with any parents and be good and obedient."
His opinion was that all troubles arising between parents
and an adopted son came from the wilfulness of the son.
But I had an entirely opposite opinion.
" I should hate to be
an adopted son," I said. "Why should I serve people as
parents who are in truth not parents at all?"
So our ideas differed. When this conversation took place,
I was sixteen or seventeen years old.
My mother was an unusual woman who thought individ-
ually on certain matters. In religion she did not seem to
have a belief like that of other old women of the time.
Her
family belonged to the Shin sect of Buddhism,re yet she
would never go to hear a sermon as was expected of every-
one in that sect. Nor would she worship Amida Buddha,
because, as she said, "I feel rather shy in worshipping before
Amida Sama. I can't bring myself to do so." Yet she
never missed paling respects to the graves of her husband
and her ancestors on a certain day in each month, or taking
a bagful of rice to the temple.
The bag which my mother
used for so many years is still preserved in my family.
She never worshipped Buddha, but she had many friends
among the priests-not only the priest of the temple to
which her family belonged, but also novices from different
parts of the country who were studying at my school.
Mother loved to treat these novices with tasty dishes when'
ever they came to visit me, and I have no reason to think
that she was against religion in any way.
It Notc o!
t. :tao.
Childhood t5
My mother was fond of doing kindnesses to all people,
especially of making friends among the classes beneath her
own, the merchants and farmers. She had no objection
even to admitting beggars, or even the outcast eta (the
slaughterers of cattle and dealers in leather who were a
separate class by themselves2o).
My mother never showed
any sign of slighting them and her way of speaking to
them was very respectful. Here is an instance of my
mother's charity, which I remember with both affection
and distaste.
There was a half-witted beggar wo-
Mymother'r man in Nakatsu who called herself
cherity "Chie," but nobody knew who gave her
that name.
She was a miserable crea-
ture, ragged, tattered and dirty, with long filthy hair swarm-
ing with vermin. Nobody wanted to come near her. Many
a time on a fine day my mother would call the beggar
woman in and make her sit on the grass in the yard; then
she would tie her own sleeyes behind her back to keep them
out of the way and bare her arms.
Thus prepared, she
would begin to catch the little creatures in the beggar
woman's hair. I was always called on to help, and was
ordered to stand by with a stone to crush the little creatures
that mother pulled from the beggar's hair.
After catching fifty or a hundred or as many as could be
found, my mother and I would brush our clothes and wash
our hands with rice-bran.
Then she would give the woman
a bowl of rice for her patience in sitting still. I suppose
this was a pleasure to my mother, but how I hated it ! Even
now it makes me uncomfortable to think of it.
One day when I was twelve or thirteen years old, I ran
through the room in one of my mischievous moments and
to Note on p.
3,
16 Childhood
stepped on some papers which my
I step on some brother was arranging on the floor.
pap€rs, then on Suddenly he broke out in disgust:
a sacred charm "Stop,youdunce!"
Then he began to speak solemnly.
"Do you not see what is writtert here?" he said. "Is this
not Okudaira Taizen-no Tayfi-your lord's name?"
"I did not know it," I hastily apologized.
"I am sorry."
"You say you did not know," he replied indignantly.
" But if you have eyes, you should see. What do you think
of trampling your lord's name under foot ? The sacred code
of lord and vassal is . . ."
Here my brother was beginning to recite the samurai
rules of duty.
There was nothing for me to do but bow my
head to the floor and plead: "I was very careless, please
forgive me."
But in my heart there was no apology. All the time I
was thinking: "Why scold about it? Did I step on my
lord's head ? What is wrong with stepping on a piece of
paper ?
"
Then I went on, reasoning in my childish mind that if it
was so wicked to step on a man's name, it would be very
much more wicked to step on a god's name; and I deter-
mined to test the truth,
So I stole one of the charms, the thin paper slips, bearing
sacred names, which are kept in many households for avoid-
ing bad luck.
And I deliberately trampled on it when
nobody was looking. But no heavenly vengeance came.
"Very well," I thought to myself. "I will go a step
further and try it in the worst place." I took it to the
choarba (the privy) and put it in the filth. This time I was
a little afraid, thinking I was going a little too far.
But
nothing happened.
" It is just as I thought !" I said to myself. " What right
Childhood L7
did my brother have to scold me?" I felt that I had made
a great discovery! But this I could not tellanybody,not
even my mother or sisters.
When I grew older by a few years, I
What the god became more reckless, and decided that
Inari really was all the talk about divine punishment
which old men use in scolding children
was a lie.
Then I conceived the idea of finding out what
the god of Inari2t really was.
There was an Inari shrine in the corner of my uncle's
garden, as in many other households. I opened the shrine
and found only a stone there. I threw it away and put in
another stone which I picked up on th-e road. Then I went
on to explore the Inari shrine of our neighbor, Shimomura.
Here the token of the god was a wooden tablet.
I threw it
away too and rvaited for what might happen.
When the season of t-he Inari festival €ame, many people
gathered to put up flags, beat drums, and make offerings of
the sacred rice-wine. During all the round of festival
services, I was chuckling to myself: "There they are-
worshipping my stones, the fools!"
Thus from childhocd I have never had any fear of gods
or Buddha.
Nq have I ever had any faith in augury and
magic, or in the fox and badger which, people say, have
power to deceive men. I was a happy child, and my mind
was never clouded by unreasonable fears.
Once a queer woman came to our town from Osaka. She
was about thirty years old, a daughter of Dempojiya Matsu-
emon, the chief of the stevedores whq worked for the clan's
storage office where my father used to be.
This woman
came to our house and claimed that she knew the magic of
Inari. She said that if any person would hold a gohei, a
rr Notc oo p. itll.
18 Childhood
ceremonial wand, while she prayed, the spirit of Inari would
descend upon the person and the gohei would begin to move.
I stepped forward-I think I was fifteen or sixteen then-
and said: "Let me hold it.
It would be fun to see what it
feels like to have Inari Sama inside me."
The woman looked at me scrutinizingly and shook her
head.
"No," she said, "this young man will not do."
" You said any person would do," I insisted. " Why can't
vou trv the magic
"" til',nilTmr*i:T:"HT.i iT:
My revolt l.
happy in Nakatsu was the restriction of
gainst feudalism rank and position. Not only on official
occasions, but in private intercourse,
ancl even among children, the distinctions between high
and low were clearly defined. Children of lower samurai
families like ours were bbliged to use a respectful manner
of address in speaking to the children of high samurai fami-
lies, while these children invariably used an arrogant form
of address to us.
Then what fun was there in playing
together ?
In school I was the best student and no children made
light of me there. But once out of the school room, those
children would give themselves airs as superior to me ; yet
I was sure I was no inferior, not even in physical power. In
all this, I could not free myself from discontent though I
was still a child.
Among men of official rank, the dis-
for tinction was still greater.
Once my
Reprlmanded
Dene mode of brother sent a letter to the chancellor
address of the lord, and addressed the outside
cover in the scholarly style : " Sama
Kashitsuji," using the classical Chinese term.
The letter
came back with an order to change it to " Satna O-toritsugi
Childhood 19
Shir," a much humbler mode of address. Seeing this I cried
to myself, " How foolish it is to stay here and submit to this
arrogance !" And I was determined then to run away from
this narrow cooped-up Nakatsu.
Among our cousins there were some good scholars and
some who took much interest in the ways of society.
All of
them, being samurai of low rank, would often complain of
the despotic atmosphere of the clan. But I was always stop-
ping them, for by then I had grown to understand some-
what of the world and society. "Never complain of Naka-
tsu as long as you stay here," I would say. " Complaining
does not improve things.
Better go away or stay here and
stop complaining."
One daywhile reading aChinese book,
Never rhow loy I came upon these ancient words:
or anger ln the "Never show joy or anger in the face."
face These words brought a thrill of relief as
if I had learned a new philosophy of life.
Since then I have always remembered these golden words,
and have trained myself to receive both applause and dis-
paragement politely, but never to allow myself to be moved
by either.
As a result, I have never been truly angry in my
life, nor have my hands ever touched a person in anger, nor
has a man touched me in a quarrel, ever since my youth to
this old age. Only once I had a bitter experience.
Some twenty years age-long after I had become a man,
and had come to have a school of my own--one of my
pupils was hopelessly dissipated; and though I gave him
assistance in many ways, even in the means of living, he
would not give up his dissolute life.
One night-I do not
know where he had been or what he had been doing-he
came back drunk and gay. I ordered him to sit up all night
and reflect upon his actions. But when I returned a few
minutes later, he was snoring.
20 Childhood
"Shameless wretch!" I cried, catching him by the arm
and shaking him. He was soon awake, but I gave him a
good shaking which I thought he well deserved.
But later,
as I thought of it, I was sorry, for I had allowed my hands
to touch a man in rage, and my remorse was like that of a
priest who broke the commandments. I have never forgot-
ten that feeling.
Notwithstanding this priestly fastidiousness, I was fond of
talking-more so than the average-and in everything I did
I liked to be quick and active, and I was never behind any-
one in anything.
But there was one thing that I never
indulged in. That was the boyish argument in which one
would become excited and go on arguing until he won by
out-talking the other. I rvas willing to discuss a subject, but
when my opponent grew heated, I would evade his point,
thinking to myself, " Why does this fool love to make so
much noise?"
Outwardly I was living peacefully enough, but always in
my heart I was praying for an opportunity to get away.
And
I was willing to go anywhere and to go through any hard.
ship if only I could leave this uncomfortable Nakatsu.
Happily, a chance sent me to Nagasaki.
u
I SET OUT TO LEARN DUTCH
IN NAGASAKI
I counted myself twenty-one years old (my exact age,
nineteen years and three months) when in February of the
first year of Ansei (f) 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 in-
struction of the Dutch who were the only Europeans per-
mitted 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.
t The native manner of countin* a man's age adds one year at the New Year inrtud
oI at his birthday.
Therefore, Fukuam, who was bom in Decembcr. had bccome
two years old il le lhan a rironth,
22 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
'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 Naga-
saki,r I went with him, and there began my first study of the
A B C's.
Nowadays the European letters are seen every-
where in the country; they are even on the labels of becr
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 alpha-
bet. But I must leave the account of this study, and tell
something of how I lived in Nagasaki.
The true reason why I went there was nothing more than
to get away from Nakatsu.
And so I would have been glad
to study a foreign language or the military art or anything
else if it only gave me a chance to go away. Therefore, it
was nothing of the homesick feeling usual to a youngster
leaving home that possessed me. I still remember how I
swore to myself that like a bullet shot out of the gun's
muzzle I would never come back.
This was a happy day for
me. I turned at the end of the town's street, spat on the
ground, and walked quickly away.
In Nagasaki I first lived as a sort of dependant in K6ei-ji,
a Buddhist temple in the street called Okeya-machi. I was
taken to this temple by one Okudaira Iki, a son of the chan-
cellor of our feudal lord, who was a relative of the priest.
r Noie on p,
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki 23
Okudaira Iki was also boarding in this temple as a guest,
studying the Dutch language and gunnery.
A little later,
his teacher in gunnery, Yamamoto Monojir6, took me as an
"eating guest'r in his house. This was the beginning of
my activity in the world.
Though I was supposed to be a kind
Begioning ny of free boarder, I did all sorts of work
ilrenuoor llfe in the household. The master had poor
eyesight, and I used to read to him the
essays of contemporary scholars on the problems of the age.
I also gave lessons to his son, a youth of eighteen or nine-
teen.
Not very bright, but as the son of a scholar, he had
to be taught to read the Chinese classics.
Yamamoto was a poor man, but being a local official of the
Yedo government, he lived extravagantly with many friends
and followers, and he had gone heavily into debt. Becausc
of this, I took on another duty.
This was to negotiate post-
ponement of his debts and to contract new debts. Of the
man servant and the maid in the house, the man would
often fall ill and I had to take his place. I would draw water
from the well, sweep the house in the mornings, and wash
the master's back in his bath. His wife was fond of
animals; she kept many cats and lap dogs in the house, and
bigger dogs in the yard.
I took care of them also. I had
taken in hand every kind of work from the highest to the
Iowest.
By and by my master began to think a good deal of me,
for he had found me a youth full of energy yet very well
behaved. Finally he asked me to become his adopted son.r
However, I tell him that I had already been adopted
by my uncle Nakamura.
I might say here that ever since
t Sho&Lalu io Jopanc*, a dcpcndat with no ynrticulrr oblirtionr Fulunn'r
rorl in Yamamoto hourchold ma nody yoluntrry,
I Notc or tl 3{1.
24 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
childhood,before I could knowanything about it, I had been
promised to my
uncle's family as his heir in the future.
When Yamamoto learned my situation, he said, "If that
is the case, you should consider all the more coming into my
family.
I will do all in my power to look after your future."
He used to express his wish at many different times.
Like all the specialists on gunnery of the time, Yamamoto
had a collection of books as his own private property-all of
them hand-written copies-and part of his income came
from charges on lending out these books or from selling
handwritten copies made from them.
However, as he had
poor eyesight, I was given the charge of all this work.
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 infor-
mation. If they wanted to visit the Dutch compound on
the island of Dejima-the only spot in the whole country
where the Dutch were allowed to reside-Yamamoto could
arange the visit.8 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 specializingin the sub-
ject all my life.
Now, it was rather strange to see that Okudaira Iki and I
had exchanged places. He had placed me in Yamamoto's
household as a dependenl But now I had come to occupy
something of a position in the field of gunnery while Iki was
I Notc on p.3,ll.
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki 25
still the same student.
And that was the cause of the break
between us.
My chief concern was, after all, the Dutch language. I
often went to the interpreter's house, and sometimes to the
house of the special physicians who practiced " Dutch medi.
cine." And little by little, after fifty or a hundred days, I
came to understand something of the Dutch language.
Iki,
on the other hand, had never really learned it, as a spoiled
son of a high official never does. And though he was not
really a man of deep malice, he was after all a self-willed
aristocrat trained in the Chinese morality.
He must have been planning to make me his life-long
follower after helping me in myeducation.
Now that he had
found me flying ahead of him, he decided that I should be
sent home to Nakatsu. He was nearly ten years my senior,
but he was like a child in his thinking, which was a great
misfortune to me.
Iki's father, Yohei, was the old chan-
Itbecame dif- cellor in our clan. We called him with
flcdt to stey ln much respect "Go-Inkyo Sama" as he
Nagertl was then in retirement.
[t seems that
Iki had urged his father to send an out-
ragus order to my family for my return. My brother hd
just left for Osaka to assume the official post which my
father had occupied twenty years before, and my mother
was living alone at home as all my sisters had married..
The only relative living near was a cousin of ours, Fujimoto
Gentai, a doctor and a scholar, who had a true sympathy
for my mother.
One day Iki's father, the retired chancellor, called our
cousin into his presence and ordered him to write a letter.'
"Yukichi's presence in Nagasaki hampers my son's
I Notc on p.
tlll.
26 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
career," he told Fujimoto.
"You must write him that his
mother is ill and needs him at home."
Such a direct order from the chancellor could not be
evaded. Fujimoto, after letting my mother know about the
scheme, wrote me the letter which formally requested my
return because of my mother's " illness." But on a separate
sheet he explained the transaction and enjoined me to have
no anxiety about my mother's health.
I grew very indignant, for what baser act could there be
than to command a subordinate to tell a lie?
I wanted at
first to break out and challenge Iki in a great argument.
But my better judgment told me that it was useless to
quarrel with the son of a chancellor. I should only be the
loser in the end, and it would be wiser to look out for my
own safety. So I went to Iki with a show of surprise and
anxiety.
"I am very much troubled," I said.
"A letter has just
come from home with news that my mother is ill. She has
always been a very healthy woman, but it seems that one
can never tell. I am quite worried because I am so far away
from home." I pleaded the poor homesick boy; Iki ex-
pressed his "surprise " and "sympathy."
"You must be anxious to go home at once," he said.
'It
will be best for you to do so. But then, after your mother's
recovery, I will see that you return here to go on with your
work." He put on the most sympathetic tone, and perhaps
was inwardly enjoying the smooth effect of his scheme.
"I will take your advice," I said, "and if you have any
message for your honored father, or if you have anything to
send him, I will gladly take it with me."
When I called the next morning, Iki gave me a letter for
his father and another to Ohashi Rokusuke, a cousin of my
mother's, saying that the latter would be helpful in securing
the permit to return to Nagasaki.
Then as if he meant that
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki 27
I should read this message, he handed me the letter without
sealing it. I made the politest of leave-takings and returned
to my lodging where I opened the unsealed letter. The note
read: "Because of his mother's illness, I am sending Yu.
kichi home at his own urgent request.
But when his mother
recovers, you are to arrange for his return to Nagasaki, as
he is still in the course of his studies, and it is proper that
he should continue them."
This idiot's game ! I grew more indignant than ever. I
called him "fool" and "monkey," and cursed him with all
the vocabulary at my command.
Then I took leave of the Yamamoto
Yedo is my family.
Even to them I could not tell
destination the truth, for if the truth were made
public, and the disgrace put on lki, I
should be the one to suffer most. I simply said that my
mother was ill, and took my leave. But I had not, for one
moment, thought of going back to Nakatsu; I was deter-
mined to make my way to Yedo, for I believed that was the
city where the young and ambitious should go to make their
start.
By good fortune there was a student from Yedo, named
Okabe Ddchoku, among my new acquaintances.
As I
believed he was a broadminded and trustworthy friend, I
revealed to him all that had passed.
"I am running away," I said finally. "I am too angry to
go meekly home. But I don't know anybody in Yedo. You
told me your father was a practicing physician there.
't he take me in as a dependent ?
I don't know much
about medicine, but I am sure I can roll pills and do such
simple work. Please send me to your father."
"Go to him, by all means!" he exclaimed, angry with
sympathy for me. " I will write a letter for you. And you
will have no difficulty in finding him, for he has his house
28 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasoki
in Nihombashi, Himonochd in Yedo.
Don't worry but go
right to him!" He wrote the letter, and I thanked him
heartily.
" If the truth were found out," I continued. " I'd be sent
to Nakatsu anyhow. So please keep it a secret until I get a
safe distance away. It wilt take me perhaps ten or fifteen
days to get as far as Osaka.
About that time, you may tell
Iki that Nakamura Yukichi (my name then) has gone to
Yedo. That will be a good joke on him."
I met a merchant fromNakatsu bythe
I part with my name of Kuroganeya Sdbei, returning to
compenion our town, and I set out with him as if
to that destination. The first day we
walked about eighteen miles and reached Isahaya in the
evening under a fine March moon.
Here I broke my purpose
to my surprised companion.
"Well, Kuroganeya, I have decided I don't want to go
home now. Take my box with you, and take it to my home,
will you ? I don't need more than one or two changes of
clothing. Now I am going to Shimonoseki for a boat to
Osat<a, and then to Yedo."
The honest merchant looked thunderstruck.
" What madness is this ?
" he cried. "A young master like
you to think of traveling so far alone?"
"Oh, don't be excited. What's the matter with a man's
moving from Nagasaki to Yedo? As the saying goes, any.
one but a dumb can ask his way to the capital."
" But what will your mother say ?
What shall I tell her ? "
"Just give her my love; I'm not going to die, or anything.
If you tell her Yukichi has gone to Yedo, she'll under-
stand."
So I gave him my box and the letters which Iki had given
me to take back to Nakatsu.
" ['m going first to Shimonoseki," I went on, " to take the
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki 29
boat for Osaka, but I don't know the place.
Can you tell me
a gdfunayados there?"
Since he saw he could not dissuade me, honest Kurogane.
ya tried no further. "You might go to Sembaya Sugue-
mon's; I know the man very well."
The real reason why I inquired about a funayado was that
since I had so little money-even after selling a Dutch dic.
tionary called Yakken,o I had left from my expenses only
twobu and two or three shu1-I thought Kuroganeya's name
and recommendation might be of some future help to me
I took the local ferry and crossed the sea of Amakusaa to
Saga.
The fare was five hundred and,eighty nwn. The bay
was very calm and we reached the opposite shore the next
morning comfortably. From Saga I went on to Kokura in
entire ignorance of the road and the towns through which
I was to pass. I simply kept walking to the east, asking the
way as I went along. Thus following a route through the
province of Chikuzen, I think I must have passed the vicinity
of Dazaifu, but to this day I do not know exactly what road
I took.
Three days and two nights were spent in crossing the
island.
It was not at all easy to find a room for the night
either, as I must have made a pretty odd figure, wandering
alone, seemingly poor and without an obvious purpose. The
innkeepers were afraid of me; the better inns turned me
down, and I had to look for less reputable places. But some-
how I passed those two nights and reached Kokura on the
third day.
On the way I made up a false letter of
I forge a letter introduction to Sembaya, using Kuro-
ganeya's own name, the rvhole in a very
formal style: " The bearer of this Ietter is a son of the
3 Note on p.
3,il. c p. 7lbid. ! Ibid.
30 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
Honorable Mr. Nakamura, a member of the fief of Nakatsu.
I have often been honored by his patronage. Serve this
young master in every way possible."
In Kokura I had to walk around all over the town looking
for an inn which would give me accommodation.
Finally
one lodging house took me in, but it was a pretty shabby
one. And I was put in a room where there was already a
man sleeping. During the night I found to my discomfort
that this man was a helpless invalid, unable to take care of
himself. He was probably not a guest but a member of the
proprietor's family.
I still remember vividly what an un.
comfortable night it was.
Early the next day I took the ferry across to Shimono-
seki where I sought but Sembaya'sfunayado, and delivered
my document. It was evident that the proprietor was a
good friend of Kuroganeya's, for he merely glanced at the
letter and took me in with every sign of good will.
The
boat fare to Osaka was one bu and two shu, but I did not
have enough to pay for the food on board. I proposed to
settle my bill after reaching Osaka where I was to meet my
brother. This, too, Sembaya gladly agreed to arrange for
me. The letter proved to be a rather useful idea.
In crossing the strait from Kokura
Crossing the we had had something of a narrow
Straits of escape.
As we were about in the middle
Shimonoseki of the channel, the wind blew up and the
sea became choppy. The sailors seemed
much alarmed and called on me to help them. I did join in,
pulling the ropes and carrying things around, and enjoyed
the excitement.
But when I told the hostess in Sembaya what had hap-
pened, and showed her how my clothes were wet with
spray, she looked much concerned and said, "That was
dangerous!
If those men were real sailors, it would have
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasak, 3l
been all right. But they are really farmers. In this idle
time, some of them take to ferrying for side-work. But the
farmers don't know the sea. They often have sad mishaps
even in a little wind. You are lucky to have come through
safely."
I felt a belated scare, and then understood why those men
had looked so alarmed and called on me for help on the sea.
It was March, the season of sight-seeing.
In the boat for
Osaka were all kinds of travelers-a foolish-looking son of a
rich man; a grandsire; some geisha. gay and
richly dressed, and other women of questionable reputation;
farmers; priests; rich and poor; all sorts, crowded together
in the narrow boat, drinking, gambling, clamoring over any
nonsensical matter.
Among them sat I, forlorn and quiet,
like a priest doing penance.
After a voyage of some days in the Inland Sea, the boat
came to Miyajima. I had no business, but as long as I was
there, I went along with the others to see the famous shrine.
All the passengeni had the usual round of good times on
shore and came back drunk.
I longed to drink too, but
having not even a mon to spare, I walked back to the boat to
eat the meal provided on boaid. Naturally the captain did
not feel very kindly towards me, and he stared at me as I was
eating the boat's fare. [n the same way I saw the sights of
Kintai Bridge in Iwakuni without really wanting to.
We next reached Tadotsu, near which is the shrine of
Kompira.
It was eight miles to the shrine from the port,
they told me. I might have gone along; but again, without
any spending money, what was the use ? I stayed on board
while all the others went. They turned up the next morn-
ing, every one of them drunk and happy. I was furious, but
what could I do?
After fifteen days of this highly unpleasant voyage, early
one morning we anchored at Akashi.
Although I had been
32 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
told that the boat would sail the next
I travel on land day if the wind should be right, and that
from Akashi we would reach Osaka in a day or so, I
thought I had put up with the company
long enough.
"How far is 6saka from here?" I asked. They told me
about thirty-eight miles.
"All right," I said.
" I shall walk there. Captain, will you
come to the Nakatsu Storage Office for my bill ? I shall pay
you there what I owe you. And will you bring my baggage
with you?"
But the captain insisted on my paying the full fare on the
spot, or else continuing with him on to 6saka. In the bundle
which I carried tied in a square of cloth were two changes
of silk garments and some books.
"Look here," I said.
"I am leaving my best clothes and
some books with you. The books may not be of much value
to you, but the clothes are worth the fare I owe you. I
might put in my swords too, but a gentleman can not travel
without his swords. I shall be at the storage office before
you arrive anyway. Come any time, and receive your
money."
" I know your office all right," returned the capthin, "but
I don't know you.
You will have to remain a passenger as
was arranged till we reach 6saka and I can collect your fare.
It doesn't matter how long it takes or how much food you
eat on the way."
I humbly pleaded with him, but his voice grew louder and
louder. Then a strange man, who seemed like a merchant
from Shimonoseki, came up and said he would settle the
question for us.
" This is not quite fair of you, Captain," he began, ,, to put
the screws on the young gentleman.
He is willing to leave
his clothes with you in good faith, isn't he? As a samurai,
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki 33
word. If not, I shall be responsible for
he will be true to his
him. All right, young Sir," he said turning to me. " You
may walk off on shore as you wish."
At his generous interference, the captain was at last
satisfied.
I thanked him heartily as if I had seen a Buddha
come down into hell to rescue a victim. I then made off
into the open country, free and foot-loose.
The thirty-eight miles from Akashi to Osaka I walked in
a single stretch, for my remaining money-some sixty or
seventy mon it my purse-would have been barely enough
to pay for food without a thought of lodging.
Somewhere
on the road, I stopped at a food-stand on the left-hand side of
the way, and drank some two goe of wine at fourteen mon
a gd and ate a dish of boiled bamboo shoots and five or six
bowls of rice. Then again I walked on, through what towns
and by what roads I cannot tell. I am not even sure whether
I passed through I(dbe or not.
When I was approaching Osaka, I was ferried across many
rivers.
These are somewhat recognizable to me now, for as
we travel by train today, we pass over many bridges on the
western side of the city. Fortunately a samurai was exempt
from toll. But soon the day was over, and in the dark
moonless night passers-by were few. I hardly dared inquire
the way anyhow, for if a man passed in a lonely spot, I was
more afraid of him than eager to find out which road to take.
I did feel helpless, for though the short sword I wore was a
fine one by the swordsmith Sukesada, the long sword was
thin and light, not of much use in an actual fight.
But then, as I learned, Osaka was not especially noted for
murders, and I had no great cause to be afraid.
However, a
lone traveler on a daik, strange road cannot well help feeling
some chills run up and down his spine, and looking with a
t Notc on p?
34 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
certain security to the sharp objects on his side. But as I
think back over it, it seems to me that I was really the one
to be feared rather than the one to be afraid.
Our storage office was in D6jima, near
Osaka at last a bridge called Tamae.
This I had
known since mychildhood from hearing
my mother talk about our old home. So I did not have grear
trouble in locating my brother's lodging. But I did have a
pair of sore feet when I reached my destination at about ten
o'clock that night.
Once in Osaka, I met my brother at last; I also saw many
older people who remembered me from my childhood there.
I had gone back to Nakatsu at the age of three and now I
was twenty-two, but there were some old people around the
storage office who found in me even now resemblances to
my infant features.
Among them was the wife of a work-
man, my wet-nurse, and an old man named Buhachi, one of
the faithful servants of our family-he had served my father
before, and he was serving my brother now. The day after
I arrived I was walking with him in D6jima Street.
"Well, Sir, I remember the night you were born.
It
happened in the night, and I went for the midwife. The old
dame midwife still lives over there in that street. When
you were big enough, I used to carry you around in my arms,
and I took you sometimes over to the wrestling ring to
watch the practice."
He pointed out to me the house of the old midwife and the
wrestlers' practice-arena.
It all came back to me as we
walked along and I could not keep back the tears that were
prompted by dear memories. I could not think I was on a
trip; it was just as if I had come home after a long abserrce.
At our first meeting my brother asked why I had come so
suddenly. I told him exactly what had taken place, for there
was nothing I should hide from my own brother.
He then
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasak 35
assumed his guardian's right and objected to my plan: " I
cannot let you go on your proposed career to Yedo, because
though Nakatsu is nearly on a line from Nagasaki to Osaka,
I see you avoided the town in your journey.
" If I were not
here, your going on to Yedo without taking
Ieave of mother might be excusable.
But as I am here and
I have met you, I cannot think of allowing myself to be a
partner in disrespect. She herself might not think much
about it, but I cannot permit myself. Therefore, stay in
Osaka. I am sure there will be just as good a teacher here
as in Yedo."
So I stayed with my brother in Osaka and in a little while
found out that there was a good teacher of the Dutch
language named
My own particular talent seems to
Some episodes be in doing all kinds of humble work.
from While I was in Yamamoto's house, I did
Nagasaki days all kinds of work in his household.
I
do not recall ever saying, "I cannot do
this," or " I don't want to do that." When the great earth-
quake occurred in that district, I happened to be drawing
water at the well just after finishing a lesson in Chinese
with Yamamoto's son. I was carrying a pair of large water-
buckets swung from the ends of a pole across my shoulder.
I remember just as I made a step towards the house, the
ground began to move, and I was much shaken as my foot
slipped under the heavy weight.
The Buddhist temple called K6ei-ji, where I first stayed
when I went to Nagasaki,was one of the largest in the town,
with three minor temples connected with it.
The head
priest had just returned from Ky6to and he was going to pay
his formal respects to the local officials of Nagasaki.
rc Notc oo.D.3lil.
36 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
Among my odd duties I was hired out to be his attendant.
The priest was wearing an enormously long robe, and when
he alighted from his palanquin at the gate of the magis-
trate's office, I picked up the train of his robe and followed
him slowly as he walked in all his dignity.
It must have
been a funny sight. When the priest went on his round of
New Year calls among the parishioners, I again followed
him. While he was being received indoors I waited at the
entrances, and a kindly host would often send out a tray of
zdni (rice-cake soup) and different delicacies which I enjoyed
heartily.
Once I took part in a strange prank.
On the evening
of the spring equinox, by an old custom of Nagasaki, the
mendicant friars walked around the streets blowing conch
shells and reciting som'e kind of incantation. This corre-
sponds to Tdky6's "bad luck expelling" at the New Year.
People would bring out money or rice to these mendicants
whenever they stood at the door to pray away bad luck and
pray in happiness.
There was a neighbor next door to Yamamoto's by the
name of Sugiyama Matsusaburd (brother of Sugiyama Toku-
sabur6) who was fond of practical jokes.
He came to me on
the day of the equinox and said, " Let's go around to-night.
What do you say ? " I was ready for it at once. So we
borrowed a shell somewhere, and hiding our faces in hoods,
we started out. He would blow the conch as we passed
along and when we came to a house entrance, we would stop
while I broke into a droning chant of some odd phrases from
M6ng-ch'iu and other Chinese books I had memorized in
school.
"6-j*-kan-y|!
Ten-chi-gen-h6!" Our "prayer" worked.
We found that offerings came freely, and once back home
again, we took the contents of our bowl and bought rice.
cake and duck and feasted at ease.
I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nogasaki 37
In Nagasaki my first teacher of the
Teacher and pupil Dutch language was a certain Matsu-
change places zaki Teiho.
He was one of the medical
students sent there by his master, the
lord of Satsuma,rr who was a foremost advocate of Dutch
culture and especially of the study of Dutch medicine.
Matsuzaki gave me first the letters of the alphabet with
the pronunciation of each in Japanese ideograph. It was
bewildering. I could hardly believe these ABC's to be signs
of a language.
But after a while I began to be familiar with
them, and found myself able to understand something of
the language. I realized then that my teacher was not
overly brilliant in his strange subject. I thought: "He
hasn't much of a brain. If it were Chinese instead of Dutch,
our position would be reversed. If I learn Dutch as well as
I know Chinese, I would not have to bow to this fellow.
Some day I shall turn on him, and teach him Dutch."
Such was a mad dream of the young beginner.
When I
entered the student household of Ogata in Osaka, I had
already had a year's start in the Dutch language. So in two
or three years I had passed the eighty or ninety school-mates
and become one of the senior students. The chances of life
are very strange. The same Matsuzaki came about this
time from Nagasaki and entered the Ogata school.
I was conducting one of the lower classes then, and Matsu.
zaki was ordered to join it.
So the teacher and the student
had exchanged places in these few years, and my rnad dream
had come true. Of course I could not tell this to anyone,
but I could hardly suppress my sudden delight. I took it out
in drinking to myself in honor of the secret exultation.
The soldier's passion for fame, the politician's coveting of
high office,and the rich man's accumulation of wealth: these
!r Not€ on D.
38 I Set Out to Learn Dutch in Nagasaki
may seem, philosophically speaking, worldly and foolish
vanities. But these vanities are not to be made light of , for
the very scholar who ridicules them may have the same vain
ambition himself.
UI
I MAKE MY WAY TO OSAKA
In accordance with my brother's decision, I gave up all
thought of going to Yedo.
It was in March of the second
year of Ansei-the year of the Rabbit ()-when t
entered Ogata's home-school.
In Nagasaki my manner of studying had necessarily been
irregular. I studied under many teachers-indeed, under
anyone who was kind enough to help me. One of them was
an interpreter named Narahayashi; another a doctor of the
same name.
I also went to an affiuent physician named
Ishikawa Osho, but he, being a very noted doctor, would not
teach a humble student like myself. I went to his medicine
room and asked one of his assistants to give me help in the
foreign writing. So it was here in Osaka that I really began
my systematic study of the Dutch language; and my pro-
gress was fast, for with so much spirit and interest I believe
I was one of the best students.
A year passed quickly, but at the
Brother and I following New Year time a great mis-
both fall sick fortune befell my family.
My brother
on his duty as official of the feudal head-
quarters in Osaka was taken with severe rheumatism. For
a long time his ailment dragged on. Sometimes he seemed
to grow better, then he would again come down with the
pain. He grew worse until he was not able to use his right
At the same time a friend in the school, Kishi Naosuke,
became ill with typhoid fever.
As he had always been very
kind to me, I thought I must help him at a time like this.
Another student, Suzuki Giroku, came in also to take care
of the sick fellow, for they were from the same province.
Together we nursed him day and night for three weeks, but
his case was particularly hard one.
He was not to recover.
a
We decided to have the body cremated in accordance with
the Buddhist rites of his own Shin sect and later sent the
ashes back to his home.
When this extra care and work was all over, one day I
suddenly became ill. I had a high temperature and felt very
badly. It was certainly not like an ordinary cold.
As all
my school friends were students of medicine, one of them
examined me and said I had contracted Kishi's typhoid fever.
Then our teacher, Ogata Sensei, heard of it, and came to
visit me in my brother's quarters in the storage office where
I lay. He decided that I had really developed typhoid fever,
and a bad case of it.
I shall not forget his kindness, for he
Ogata Sensei'r said, "I will come every day to see you
great kindness and give you as much advice as possible.
But I am going to ask some other doctor
to direct the use of medicine, because when a doctor knows
his patient too well, he is apt to be anxious and do too many
things, trying one medicine after another, and then suddenly
remembering some other medicine, giving that too; and
in that way he may miss what should be the proper treat-
ment.
You cannot escape this fault as long as you are
human."
It will be seen that the relation between teacher and
student of the time was of the intimate, father-and-son kind.
When Ogata Sensei felt it difficult to treat my illness, his
I Make My lYay to Osaka 4l
was the same feeling that he would have felt toward his own
son.
This has changed nowadays with the increase of
students and the teacher-student relation has turned into
something of a public affair; and I fear even the little
regard for each other will grow less and less as the new
school system progresses. But when I was in Ogata's school,
I could not but feel that I was a member of his family.
So a doctor named Nait6 Kazuma was called in, and he
with Ogata Sensei gave me every treatment known to
medicine then, but my illness proved to be very serious.
In
a few days I became unconscious, and for a week I was in a
dangerous condition, but fortunately I was able to overcome
it. When the crisis had passed, I recovered quickly, and in
April I was well enough to be out again in the streets. I had
the vitality of a strong young man.
All this while my brother was still
Brother and I go suffering from his rheumatism.
Yukichi fukuzawa autobiography pdf to word document: Fukuzawa, Yukichi, , Educators -- Japan -- Biography, Intellectuelen, Buitenlandse invloeden, Enseignants -- Japon, Educators, Japon -- Biographie, Japan Publisher New York: Columbia University Press.
With
home together two invalids in the quarters, we were in
a sad plight. But happily my brother's
term of omce came to an end, and we were both happy to
take advantage of it to go home by the Inland Sea boat and
recuperate,
A few weeks in Nakatsu, and I was regaining my strength
daily. My brother was not entirely well yet, but on the way
to recovery.
And so I decided to go again to Osaka to
continue my study there. I arrived in August, full of life
and spirit again. I rented a section of the officer's quarters
in the storage office, cooking my own food in the earthen-
ware boiler all by myself, and resumed my attendance at
the Ogata school every day. I had started a regular routine
again when the great blow fell.
On about the tenth of September, as I recall, a letter from
home reached me with the sudden newsof mybrother's death
on September third, and with instructions to return home at
42 I Make My Way to Osaka
once.
I was shocked ,but shihata-ga-nai(it had to be). I took
passage in all haste and, with a favor-
Brother's rleath- ing wind, reached home quickly. By
I am obliged to the time I arrived, however, everything
stay home had been concluded: the funeral services
and the arrangements for the future.
My relatives had taken me back from my uncle Nakamu-
ra's family and had made nre the head of our own branch.
My brother had left a daughter, but as a woman cannot
be the heir, it had been decided that the logical thing was for
me to succeed in the Fukuzawa family.
I was not asked for
my consent. They simply told me when I returned that I
was the master of the house.
In thus becoming the head of the house, I had legally
become a son to my brother. Therefore I had to follow the
rule of fifty days of mourning. Besides, I owed certain duties
to our lord according to the position of my family in the
feudal system.
But my mind was thinking of things many
thousands of miles away, and I could never think of keeping
myself in Nakatsu. Yet the orders of the clan were strict. I
obediently carried out every act of filial and feudal obliga-
tions.
I had determined to go to Osaka again, but in the atmos.
phere of Nakatsu, it was difficult even to reveal my wishes
openly.
All the men in town, including my near relatives,
hated anything Western.
One day when I was visiting one of my uncles, I intimated
my wish to continue my studies in Dutch. He broke out in
a furlr, thundering over my innocent head:
" What crazy thoughts are these in your mind ! Now that
you have become responsible in the honorable service of
your family, your duty is here-to serye your lord with all
fealty and banish all other thoughts.
Outrageous that you
should think of studying Ran-go (Dutch) ! "
I Make My lloy to Osaka 43
Then he took an insinuating tone and said something
first blow,
about a pretentious wrestler who falls under the
which I understood as meaning I should know where I
belonged.
Though I tried not to let people know my inner intentions,
when they were so often in my thoughts, I would let hints
slip out of my mouth.
In the small town with its circulat-
ing talk, all of our neighbors came to know of my purpose.
An elderly friend of my mother who lived a few doors away
from us-I still remember her well, a Madame Yae-came
one afternoon, and in the way of neighborly gossip, she said,
"[ have heard that your Yukichi is going to Osaka again.
But you would not let him go away, would you?
If you do,
it would be madness!"
So it was told everywhere, and in all Nakatsu there was
no one who had any sympathy with my view. Truly I was
like the "deserted boat on a desolate shore," which may
sound like a line from a theatrical romance. But I did not
see any romance in my situation then.
I thought it over many times and
Mother'g perfect decided that there was but one hope for
mderstending me: to go to my mother with my wish.
If she alone would consent to my going
away to continue my studies, I need fear nothing.
I would
go. So one day I went and talked over with her all that
was in my mind, saying, " Now that I have already studied
Dutch both in Nagasaki and in Osaka, I am confident that
if I go on with it, I can make something of myself. If I stay
here in Nakatsu, I shall never be able to distinguish myself.
And I do not wish to let myself rot away in this Nakatsu.
Now, Mother, will you not give me your permission to go to
Osaka again ?
You told me that my father intended to
make me a priest. Can you not imagine that I have become
a priest and have left home?"
44 I Make My Way to Osaka
At this time all my sisters were married,r and now that
my elder brother was no more, my mother-now over fifty-
had only a little granddaughter of three years, left by my
brother.
My leaving home then would take away the last
of her family except this little girl who would share the
home. But my mother was quick to resign herself to all
circumstances.
"Well, Yukichi," she said, "you may go."
" If you say so, Mother, I have nothing to fear. I don't
need to care what people say."
"'Well," she went on, " your brother now is gone, but that
isbeyond our help.
Anyone might be taken-you, too,
while away. But we shall not talk about death. I shall
wait here, so you may go wherever you wish."
She understood perfectly.
A debt of forty But the problem on hand was how to
setl
; we pay the debts left by my brother. The
everythln8 amount that had accumulated during
his illness was about forty ryd,2 which
was an enormous amount for the meager means of our
family.
Unless we paid this bysomedrastic measure at once,
we would probably never pay it. So we decided to sell every-
thing in our household. And my father's large collection
of books was something, we thought, we could fall back on.
There were over fifteen hundred volumes in the collec-
tion, among them some very rare ones.
For instance, there
were Chinese law books of the Ming dynasty, entitled Shang-
yti T'iao-li, or in Japanese pronunciation, J6 Yu Jo Rei, in
sixty or seventy volumes. These books which my father
had been wanting for a long time were acquired on Decem-
ber the twelfth in the fifth year of Temp6. On that same
day while he was still happy in the glow of his new acquisi-
I Notc on p I lbid.
I Make My Way to Osaka 45
tion, a boy was born in his household, and that was myself.
My father took the second syllable of the title, Jd Yu J0 Rei,
and named me Yukichi.
This story I knew from its
frequent repetition by my mother.
But my mother and I had decided to sell everything. We
began with the paintings and hahemozo* which were the
easiest objects to sell. A small hahemono with Rai Sany6's
calligraphy was sold for two bu. Taigadd's painting of a
man under a willow tree was sold for two ry6 and two Dz.
There were other specimens of calligraphy by Sorai and
Tdgai, but they brought in only a very little sum.
Then
we sold the swords. One of them, a good sword by Tensh6
Sukesada, two and a half feet long and very well fitted,
brought us four zyd. Finally we came to the books.
However, there was nobody in Nakatsu who would give
anything much for rare books. Then I remembered my old
teacher, Shiraishi, now a household scholar of the lord of
Usuki in the province of Bungo.
He had been driven out of
Nakatsu after a quarrel.E I went then to Usuki with our
books, and through my old teacher's intervention, I was able
to sell the entire collection to the clan of Usuki, and
acquired the large sum of fifteen ryd in one block. Then
wedisposedofour trays, cups, and drinking vessels.
All of
them were mere odds and ends, not of much value, but we
had to bring out everything under the roof to make up for
the required forty ryd. At last we were able to pay off our
debts entirely.
There were a few things that we did not sell. My father
had treasured his series of Chinese ethics (I-ching), thirteen
volumes, which ItO Tdgai, the scholar he most respected,
had annotated carefully in his own hand.
In the catalogue
of his books, my father had written, "These thirteen
A hrnging
'. Notc rcroll of r picturc or of callignphn
oaD. ga:L
46 I Make My Way to Osaka
volumes of Ethics with T6gai Sensei's notes are a rare
treasure. My descendants shall preserve them generation
after generation in the Fukuzawa family." When we saw
this inscription, standing out like a testament in his writing,
we had no heart to sell them.
They remain today preserved
in my household.
Then there is a pair of china bowls which were left unsold.
A second-hand shop-keeper said he would take them for
three pun. This pun was a unit of the paper money issued
by our clan. Three pun in hard cash was only eighteen
mon. That was too little. I thought that eighteei tfion
would not help us much anyway, and we kept the bowls.
Now, forty years afterwards, the bowls are still among my
possessions; I use them to hold water for my brushes.
While in Nakatsu, I was tempted to
I am tempted to do a piece of literary thieving.
Oku-
literary thieving daira lki, the son of the chancellor, had
just returned from Nagasaki. I called
on him to inquire after his go-kigen, honored health, as a
matter of duty. While talking with me, he brought out a
Dutch book and said it was a recent work on fortification
that he had brought from Nagasaki.
I was much impressed
by it, for while books on medicine and physical sciences had
naturally been used in Ogata's school, I had never seen any
work of this kind. Moreover, it was only a few years after
the coming of Perry, and the paramount issue of the nation
then was national defense. I wished I might have a chance
to read the book, but of course Iki would never lend a book
to me to read.
" I bought it cheap," said Iki, "only twenty-three ryA."
What a price!
It made me feel forlorn.
Suddenly a scheme came to my mind. "This is a wonder-
ful book, Sir." I said as if casually. "It would not be
possible for anyone to read much of it in a few days, but
I Make My llay to Osaka 47
would you mind letting me keep it for a little while-for
three or four days ?
I should be very happy if you would let
me go over the table of contents and the illustrations."
"All right," said the unsuspecting Iki. "You may take it
for a few days."
Fortune from Heaven!
Yukichi fukuzawa autobiography pdf to word free
The autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa by Fukuzawa, Yukichi, Publication date Pdf_module_version Ppi Rcs_keyI took the book home, made ready
an ample supply of paper, ink and birds'quills, and began
copying the text from the very title page. It was about two
hundred pages long. Of course, all was done in secret in a
room in the rear portion ofour house where people seldom
came. I kept on, day and night, as fast as my strength
allowed.
At that time I had the duty of guarding the gate of the
lord's castle.
My relief came every second or third day
after being at the post for twenty-four hours. On duty, of
qourse, I had to give np the copying during the day service,
but when night came and the gate was closed, I took out
the bmk and set to work in the guards' house all through
the night until the time came to open the gate in the
morning.
Though I was careful, walls have eyes and ears," as
the ancient proverb says.
I was constantly afraid ofbeing
discovered. Iki might send for his book. If my procedure
should be exposed, Iki, as the chancellor's son, would not
stop with simply demanding his book back, but might put
me in a difficult position. The suspense was unbearable. I
had never been a thief, but then and there I understood and
had sympathy for their feelings.
Finally, after twenty or thirty dayg the copying was
done-illustrations and all.
But I needed to check it for
accuracy with the help of someone who could read the
original with me. Curiously enough, there was one man in
Nakatsu who knew the Dutch alphabet, and he was an
acquaintance of my family. When we lived in 6saka, this
48 I Make MY WaY to Osaka
man, Fujino Keizan, then a young student of medicine, had
lodged with us.
So I went to him, believing that he could
be trusted.
"I am telling you a great secret," I said, and told him all
about how I came to copy the foreign book. He was glad
to help me.
"It would be nicer," I went on, "to work in the day time.
But if our work should be discovered, it would be a calamity
to both of us.
So I am coming in the evening. It is going
to be hard work, but will you watch the book while I read
my copy to you, and tell me whenever there is a mistake
in my copy."
So we spent three or four nights together and finisher! the
work.
I was having the sensation of carrying off some treasu.'ed
jewel from a legendary castle.
I took back the book to the
good gentleman, thanking him for his kindness. I had taken
good care of the book, so there was no possibility of his
suspecting anything. I said with all my heart: "This is a
wonderful book, Sir. Because of your generous 'shadow,'
I was able to have a glimpse of the wonders it contains.
If
this were to be translated into Japanese, how much it would
mean to our coast defense. I bring it back with my
heartiest thanks. A poor student like me can never hope
to own such a book." '
The incident was closed, and I breathed relief. I do not
remember exactly how long it took me to finish the work,
but it was over twenty days and not quite a month.
Within
this period I had made the essence of the treasure my own,
and the owner had not the least suspicion. It was quite like
a thief stealing unseen into some vault of treasures.
All the while my mother had been anxious about my
c Note on p,
I Make My Way to Osaka 49
health. " What are you doing ?" she often would ask.
,,You
will take cold if you go on working like that without having
any sleep at all. There is a limit to things even if hard work
is a virtue."
"No, Mother," I would reply. "I am just copying a book.
I won't get sick by this much work. I know how much I
can do."
Now I was ready to go to Osaka.
And
A petition to in applying for a permit to leave home,
rtudy gunnery I was to use a most ridiculous subter-
under a physi- fuge. While my brother was living, I
cian could go anywhere at any time with
only his sanction, but now that I had
become the head of the family with certain duties to the lord,
I had to obtain a permit for going "abroad."
I wrote my petition without consulting anyone, for I knew
better than to talk to my relatives.
When I submitted the
petition, the friendly secretary spoke to me privately.
"This will not be accepted," he said gravely, "because in
this clan there has not been any precedent of a samurai
leaving his duty for the purpose of studying Ran-gahu
(Dutch learning)."
"Then what shall I write?" I inquired.
"Well, you might say that your purpose is the study of
gunnery.
That has a precedent."
"But," I added, "I am goingtoOgata'sschool. AndO-
gata is a practicing physician. I am afraid it is rather out
of the course <lf things to go to a medical man for gunnery.',
"But we cannot do anything withour precedent," kept on
the friendly secretary. "It does not matter whether your
statement is true to fact or not.
It has to be gunnery.',
So I rewrote my petition, and in due course, was formally
permitted to leave for studying "gunnery" under Master
Ogata of Osaka. From this may be guessed the state of
50 I Make My Way to Osaka
things at the time. And I am sure my clan was not the only
one to grant such a roundabout permit.
Any other clan of
the time would have done the same. It was still the age of
Chinese studies and anything Western was to be frowned
upon. Btrt since the Perry expedition, one subject in the
culture of the West, the gunnery, came to be recognized as
a necessity. This was my one way of escape to study the
civilization of the West.
Ihe permit granted, I was preparing
Mother's illness to sail on the coastal boat when sud-
denly my mother was taken ill.
I was
much alarmed. I consulted several doctors of the town and
did all I could to nurse her. Finally we traced her illness
to " worms," and for that aiknent, doctors said, semencina
was the best remedy-at that time santonin was not known.
It was a costly medicine and there was but one shop in Na-
katsu where it was sold. But it was no time to think of the
cost eyen though it was not easy for us, after paying our
debts, to give up two shu or one bu the prescribed
medicine.
I could only trust in Heaven for her recovery and
nurse her day and night. Whether the medicine was effec-
tive or not-for it was only a country remedy-in about
two weeks'time my mother was well again.
At last I had to decide the day of my departure. When
the day came, only my mother and sisters bade me farewell
and prayed for my safe journey.
No other relative or
acquaintance paid any attention to my leaving. I went on
board the boat feeling like an outcast. My home broken
up, my brother dead-there in the nearly empty house like
an old temple, all its familiar objects sold away, and with no
friends to visit her, my mother was to live alone with her
little grandchild in the worst poverty.
As I thought of all
this, I, the usual happy-go-lucky fellow, was for once broken
by the sorrow of leaving home.
I Make My Way to Osaka 5l
As soon as I reached Gaka, I made
Ogata Sensei's my way to Ogata Sensei, and told him
great kindness; all that had passed since I had left his
f become his household three months before.
And
depcndant as I would not hide anything from him
any more than I would from my own
father, I told him of my brother's death, how we had paid
our debts by selling our belongings, and finally I showed
him the copy of the book on fortification, and confessed
how cleverly I had got away with it.
Sensei laughed and said, "Well, you perhaps did do
something which may be thought reprehensible, but at the
same time it certainly is a useful piece of work." Then
looking at me kindly, he went on, "You have grown much
stronger, haven't you ?
You look much better than you did
when you left."
"Yes, Sensei, last spring I did give you much cause for
anxiety, but I am well again now. No more signs of any
trouble."
" That is good," he replied. " Now I think I judge rightly
that you are without means to pay your expenses.
I wish
to help you, but I do not want to appear to be partial to
you." Then taking up my copy of the book, he went on,
" I shall give you the work of translating this book."
So from that time I was taken into Ogata's household as
a translator. In a physician's household it is quite custom.
ary to keep apprentices for the medical work, but to keep
a translator of a foreign book rvas certainly not very usual.
It really meant that I was to be a free boarder, or
guest," through the kindness of Ogata Sensei and his wife.
Therefore it was not very important whether I really did
this translating or not.
But as the old saying puts it, ,,a
truth is often born of a lie." I really translated t}te whole
book.
52 I Make My Way to Osaka
It was in November of the third year
Student ways; of Ansei () when I joined Ogata's
my student-household. This was really the
shameful habit beginning of my school life, for until
then I had come as a day student while
living in our feudal headquarters.
OgataSensei's school was
the most progressive one of the time, and its students were
all active and promising men. But on the other hand they
were a pretty rough and reckless crowd, or, as was often
said, they were of the kind " not to be stopped by one or two
strands of rope." Into this free-living set I plunged with all
the vigor in me and soon adapted my life to their reckless
ways.
I must say at che same time that in many respects
I was somewhat different from the rest of the students.
To begin with the shortcomings, my greatest weakness
lay in drinking, even from my childhood. And by the time
I was grown enough to realize its dangers, the habit had
become a part of my own self and I could not restrain it.
t
shall not hold back anything, for however disagreeable it
may be to bring out my old faults, I must tell the truth to
make a true story. So I shall give, in passing, a history of
my drinking from its very beginning.
My use of the rice-wine was not a formed habit; I was
born with it. Though very faintly, I still remember how I
used to cry whenever my mother shaved my head, because
it hurt when she scraped the top of my head.
Then she
would say, " I will give you a little sip of the wine, so let me
scrape you a little more." Then I kept still and let her go
on. Thus began my early taste for wine.
As I added more years to my age, I was pretty well be.
haved in most respects, but in drinking I was a boy without
any conscience. I would do anything for the sake of having
a taste of it.
I have no excuse to make even if I should be
called a coward on this point.
I Make My llay to Osaka 53
When I went to Nagasaki at the age of nineteen, I was
already an accomplished drinker. Yet I gave up drinking
entirely for a year. Though I was ever quivering with the
desire, I could not by any means allow myself to indulge in
it, for then my long-cherished wish had been fulfilled and I
was there to pursue my studies.
For a whole year I was a
man dead to all indulgences.
It would have been easy to steal a nip in the kitchen when
the master, Yamamoto, was having a party, or I could have
run out to one of the cheap drinking-shops and taken my
drink from a corner of the " square measure."* But I never
allowed myself to do so, for I knew that this wrong-doing
on my part would some day be discovered.
When I left
Nagasaki the next year, however, I stopped at the first town
on the road and drank till my one year's thirst was satisfied.
My Nagasaki master, Yamamoto, had, of course, believed
that I was a teetotaller. Some years later, on my way to
Europe, when our ship called at Nagasaki, I visited my old
master in the harbor city.
After expressing my gratitude
for his kindness to me as a young student, and telling him
about my new venture abroad, I confessed that my being a
teetotaller was a lie. Then I showed him my true self, for
we drank together, and I heroically, till he and his good
wife were thoroughly surprised.
So I admit my love of drinking, and
Do not turn red realize that I fell into many bad habits
by through it, and have often abused my
toucbing blood health by an excess of it.
But otherwise
I may claim to have been a pretty clean
man. In my life with the boisterous and freeJiving
students, and after I was married, even in associating with
' Propcr way ir fint to mm the ricc-winc and drinL it &om a cup. But a lowly
mrlmea rould rip it right out of the mcuuring vcs*l u ihe wine ir pourcd froo
th.
54 I Make My Way to Osaka
various men of the world, I always kept myself within the
prescribed limit of the well-behaved man. Yet I was not
"puritan" or moralist-I knew quite well the inside life of
the hidden quarters of our society. By simply listening to
my friends talking together, I could easily learn about
things I had never seen.
For instance, although I do not know how to play the
game of go, Japanese chess, yet whenever my friends in the
school would play it, I was always sitting near the
go-board, criticizing their moves like a seasoned expert-
"There!
That move of your black was wrong. You see
? Ah, you
you lost again, and don't you see your next move
are a fine player!"
My remarks flowed on despite my blissful ignorance.
This was safe as long as I was on the winning side and
finding fault with the loser, which was not difficult to deter-
mine from the expressions of the players.
But I never let
myself get drawn into an actual game. Whenever I was
challenged, I would say, " I haven't any time to waste in a
game with you." My reputation as a go player became
greater all the time, but after nearly a year, by some little
chance, my "skin of pretence" was once pulled off, and I
was left to the mercy of their oaths and execrations.
So in this way I had learned all about the gay quarters,
but I myself was of " iron and stone." In short I was one
who "did not turn red by coming in contact with blood."
I am convinced that I was brought up to be like this in my
family.
In Nakatsu we as a family of five children were
reared by our mother alone, inmune from the knowledge of
anything that was not reputable, and we had a world of our
orvn. Even when I left home, I carried the self-respect
learned there, and it remained with me. I was not restrain-
ing myself particularly; I was thinking that my attitude
toward life was what it ought to be.
I Make My llay to Osaka 55
There are people whom we call hunshi, "bigoted saints,"
who are good through fear and the stupid inability to act.
They, of course, resent the immoral behavior of others who
give free play to their desires.
These persons complain
when no one is present to refute them, but they are too
afraid to come near any actual encounter with the less
virtuous world. So they go around frowning on life and
shunning friendships. On the contrary I never hesitated to
talk on any subject with my friends, and often made fun of
their follies.
" You are the dullest bunch of fellows I have ever seen,"
I would tell them.
"You go out to make love to the pro,
fessional love makers, and come home a failure! I don't go
at all, but once I should go there, I could show you I would
be a hundred times more of a success than you ever could
be. You aren't made to be gallants anyway. This trying
to learn the ABC's of gallantry at your age makes me
will never be much of rhen after all."
suspect you
While my friends had to accept my hits, their foolish
pastimes were a continual source of amusement to me.
My
love of drinking brought many experiences in the course of
my life'
The very day I entered the ogata
I put dorn a school,a 'student approached me and
fellow student asked me where I was from. That was
the beginning of our conversation.
"[,et's have a drink together," he said, "to mark our new
friendship."
"Gladly," I replied.
"I am a pretty good hand at drink-
ing myself, though I shouldn't say so perhaps on the first
occasion. But I have to tell you the truth; I can't spare any
money just now. I've just come from Nagasaki, and it's
even doubtful whether I have enough to pay my expenses
here.
But it certainly is kind of you to ask me."
56 I Make My Way to Osaka
"Don't talk nonsense," ho returned. "You know very
well that you need money to drink with. You must have
something to spare."
" If I haven't, I haven't."
The fellow walked away with an angry glance.
The next
day when I saw him, I spoke to him.
" I'm wondering what became of your invitation yester-
day. I am more thirsty this morning."
He muttered something in a bitter tone and walked away.
I waited two or three months till I learned the way of
things at the school and made some friends.
Then one day
I stopped that same fellow and had it out with him.
"You remember," I began, "when you first met me, you
tried to get a drink out of me. I knew very well you were
trying to take advantage of a new student, for a new student
usually has some money. So I didn't let you fool me. And
the next day I reminded you.
What did you say then?
Remember? Because it was I, Yukichi, I was able to turn
it off. I was ready then, if you had been as insolent as you
were before, to knock you down and drag you to the master's
presence. Perhaps you noticed my determination; you
backedoff like a coward. You are a disgrace to the school!
You are the kind people call 'the worm in a lion's belly.' I
tell you right now, don't try that trick of yours again on a
new student.
If you do, I'll consider it my own affair. I1l
drag you right away to our master and ask him to judge you.
Remember now!" I think I broke down his bullying for the
rest of the school.
I become Jr&r. Later on, by the time I had advanced
chd in my studies, many of the older stu-
dents had gone back to their homeq
and I was left to become juhuch6,'monitor of the students.
r Noe o 9.S{il.
I Make My lVay rc Osaka 57
However, this highsounding title did not mean any au-
thority.
According to the custom of the school, the jukuchi
was to preside in the upper class when they read the most
difficult texts. But in daily life I was just one of the
students, studying the foreign texts and, between studies,
fuining the others in all sorts of activities which were apt to
go too far to be commendable.
So it was quite natural if I rarely stopped to think that I
should lead an exemplary life in order to inspire the rest of
the student-body, or imagine that any act of mine in raising
the moral standard of the school would be an act of loyalty
to my master.
No such sage-like idea ever existed in my
head then. But I was the sort who never took advantage
of the weak or coveted the possessions of others, clean in
behavior, never ashamed of myself in the "face of Heaven
and earth." So while I was leading a rough and tumble life,
there was in me something different from the rest of the
crowd.
I wanted all the students to be like myself, to think
and act as I did. That was my youthful pride, and I believe
it did bear fruit. It might have done harm also, because
after all I was merely an active young man with no very
definite purpose. So whatever good I may have done in the
Ogata school was an incidental by-product, hardly to be
credited to myself.
ry
STUDENT WAYS AT OGATA SCHOOL
I was still yery poor after I had been made the monitor,
but I was beginning to find my living somewhat easier.
My
mother and little niece back at home were living on the
small stipend that our family received from the clan, and I
was able to board openly in my teacher's household as I was
now the monitor of the students. Moreover, there was the
rule that each new student should give two shu to the
monitor besides presenting the usual gift of money to the
teacher.
So if it happened that there were three new
students in a month, my income would amount to one Dz
and trvo shu; if. there were five, two bu and two slz-a neat
sum for a student's pocket money. And most of this went
to drinks. Then, as my mother sent me clothing of home-
spun cotton from time to time, I did not need to buy any.
Therefore whenever there was any money in my purse,
I thought first of drinking.
I am afraid many a young
student learned because of me to spend his allowance in
drinking.
Our way of drinking was very crude. When we did not
have much money, we would be contented to buy three or
five gd of wine and have it in the dormitory. When we felt
rich-which meant we had as much as one or two shu to
spend-we would go to a restaurant for a carouse.
That
was a great luxury which did not happen often. More
Student Ways at Ogata School 59
frequently we went to the chicken-restaurants. Still oftener
we went to the cheapest place-the beef-stand.
There were only two places where they served beef ; one
was near Naniwa Bridge, and the other near the prostitute
guarters of Shinmachi-the lowest sort of eating places.
No
ordinary man ever entered them. All their customers were
gorotsuki, or city bullies, who exhibited their fully tattooed
torsos, and the students of Ogata's school. Where the meat
came from and whether it was of a cow that was killed or
that had died, we did not care. They served plenty of boiled
beef with wine and rice for a hundred and fifty mon.
Cer-
tainly this meat was often tough and smelled strong.
Although the majority of the students were samurai who
could have worn the two swords of their rank, most of them,
about fifty or sixty students, had pawned their swords so
that there were perhaps only two or three pairs in the whole
dormitory. Among these were my own, because I had not
then, nor have I since, pawned any of my property.
Yet we
had no difficulty, for the few pairs of swords were like our
common property, and anyone wore them who wished to
appear in formal dress. On ordinary days we went around
with only one sword so as not to lose entirely the dignity
belonging to samurai'
osaka has generalry a warm climate,
The unclothed and there was no difficulty for poorly
ctudeuts dressed students in the winter time.
In
the summer, indeed, we found it almost
necessary to live without clothes. Of course, in class atrd
in the dining room, we wished to appear somewhat respect-
able, so we wore something-usually the haoi, or loose
overgarment next to the bare body. That was an odd
sight-how a person of today would laugh to see it!
The floor of the dining hall was of bare boards.
So it was
out of reason for us to kneel on these at dinner. We wore
60 Student Ways at Ogata School
our sandals in on the floor and ate standing. At first we did
pass around the rice tub like well-mannered people, but that
did not last long. Gradually we were all pressing around
the big rice container, helping ourselves like so many devils
at an infernal feast.
Our food was very simple.
On the days of the month
containing the numerals one and six-that is, on the first,
the eleventh, the twenty-first, and on the sixth, the six-
teenth, and the twenty-sixth-we had boiled onions and
sweet potatoes I on the days with numerals five and those
formed with ten, bean-curd soup;on the days of threes and
eights, soup.
Therefore we generally knew what
was coming for dinner,
I recall some of the incidents of our
Nudeness brings nakedness in those summer days. One
many adventures evening five or six of us had obtained a
generous amount of wine. One of the
group suggested that we take it out on the roof-porch, the
open porch on the housetop used for drying laundry.
But
just as we were climbing out, we discovered our teacher's
maids already there enjoying the evening breeze. If we
went out while they were there, certainly talk about us
would be circulated later on. Then Matsuoka Y[ki, bolder
than the others, stepped out and declared he would get those
women off the porch.
He climbed up, without one stitch of
clothes on.
"A warm evening, isn't it?"
With these words he stretched himself out on the floor.
This was too much for the maids. A bit confused, they
scurried away. As soon as they were out of sight, Matsu-
oka called down to us in Dutch that all was well. "Come
on up, old chaps, and take care of that wine."
There is another incident in connection with our nudity,
and it was a terrible blunder on my part.
One evening I
Student lUays at Ogata School 6l
heard a woman's voice calling my name from the tower
floor. "What could the maid want at this ungodly hour?"
I thought, for I had just lain down after a hearty bout. But
if I was called, I could not very well lie quietly. I jumped
up, and without stopping to put any clothes on, I strode
downstairs and stood before the woman.
"What do you want?" I shouted.
Before I could get the words out of my mouth, I to
the spot.
It was not the maid, but our teacher's wife! I
could not run, nor could I kneel or bow before her, naked as
I was. I was helpless. Madame Ogata then perhaps felt
sorry for my plight. She walked away without saying
anything. I could not bring myself to call on her the next
morning to say how sorry I was for my misdeed the night
before.
So the incident passed without an apology, but I
have never forgotten it. A few years ago when I had occa-
sion to be in Osaka again, I visited the old Ogata house, and
recalling what had once happened at the foot of that samc
staircase' I fert again t#fftlii;"."",
?:*:il:,:t
Sanitation is oll the disorder and the careless slovenli-
but disregarded ness of the school.
In our dormitory we
had such unexpected articles as small
braziers and boilers, and we used to do much informal cook-
ing about our desks. But being always short of utensils, we
often used the wash-basin and other such things for the pre-
paration of food. If, for instance, a friend were to give us
some noodles on a summer day, we would ask our teacher's
maids to cook them for us in the kitchen, and then we would
cool them in our wash-basin with water from the well.
As
for a sauce, why, with some of the rvhite sugar stolen from
the medical supply room where it was especially kept, we
could make a pretty good flavoring. And so, for wash-
ing vegetables, for dressing fish, for any purpose, the one
62 Student l(ays at Ogata School
faithful wash-basin came in. We never thought it strange.
There were other things to give the fastidious qualms.
Lice, along with the students, were permanent residents of
the dormitory, and no one could escape their intimacy.
Whenever a man took off his clothes, he could easily catch
five or ten of them.
In warmer weather, we sometimes felt
them crawling out from under our collars. Once a fellow
made them the subject of his discourse:
" The louse resembles the roast potato," he said, " because
both of them have prosperity in the winter season and
decline in the spring. They disappear entirely for two
months in summer with the flea taking their place.
So in
September, when the new potato€s come, again appears the
louse."
I once tried a new method of killing the pest. I said that
the method the laundresses used often-that of pouring
boiling water on the clothes-was too trite; I would show
how to kill them off with one single operation. So I took
my underwear to the roof-porch one frosty winter night, and
let both the creatures and the eggs freeze to death in the
cold.
But I could not claim the invention; someone had
suggested this to me.
As may be easily imagined, there were few among us who
dressed decently. Yet at every festival time, when a street
fair was held, we all sauntered out as we were. The crowd,
in it, would cry out, " Here come the
especially the girls
students!" and hurry back out of our way.
They looked
upon us as if we were eta* or some unclean people. And
certainly we often did what no one but
A pig is slaugh- the eta would think of doing.
tered One day the proprietor of our favorite
beef-shop bought a pig, but the man,
t Slaughtercrs of cattle and dealers in leather who belonged to the lowest ltratum
of the social ordcr, ar outcast.
See Dote oD J4zcrai o\ g,
Student Ways at Ogata School 63
being a softhearted fellow, could not force himself to kill it.
So he came to us.
" All right," said our spokesman. " But what will you give
us if we do it? "
"Well, Sir, er-"
"Will you give us the head?"
" Yes, Sir."
So the crowd set out.
Being medical students, they knew
that the easiest way of securing death was by suffocation.
They tied the pig's four legs together and threw it into the
river nearby. And for their reward, they did bring back the
decapitated head, and borrowing an axe, cut the head up into
sections. Then the would-be medical men had a fine time
studying the brain, eyes, and so forth.
After the scientific
investigation was over, they cooked up the pieces and ate
them. No wonder the beef-shop keeper and others thought
we were like the *o'
,n day a druggist of Dosh.-machi
A bear ig dis. came to us with an introduction from
sected a doctor of Chinese medicine. He
requested us to demonstrate the dissec-
tion of a bear which he had just received from the forest of
Tamba.
This was a lucky chance, and seven or eight of the
students interested in anatomy went. I did not go as I was
not a medical student, but I heard what happened at the
dissection.
The students were making their dissection with gusto-
" This is the heart "; " Here are the lungs " ; etc.
When they
came to the liver and took it out, someone made way with
it. And both the druggist and the doctor suddenly left with
a simple "Thank you." Then the crowd understood that
the druggist's only desire was to secure the bear's gall-
bladder intact, as that had been an old staple of healing, and
knowing that the Ogata students were most skillful in dis-
64 Student Ways at Ogata School
secting, he had come to them to have this done under the
guise of general anatomical study.
Therefore he and the
old doctor left as soon as the liver was taken out from the
carcass.
When this imposition was reported in the dormitory, the
crowd, eager for a rumpus, decided to make something out
of it. Among us was a ready talker and stubborn debater,
named Tanaka Hatsutar6 (who now lives in Kanazawa). So
he was made the chief speaker.
I was appointed to draft
the letter. Another student, Numata Umpei, because of his
good handwriting, copied the letter. Then the other officers,
such as one to escort the messenger, another to intimate his
preference for quicker method than quiet argument, were
chosen. So six or seven men prepared to present our protest
to the druggist and the doctor.
Not naked as we usually were, we dressed ourselves
formally for the occasion h hrcri-hahama, full skirt and
overgarment, and wore our two swords.
Our argument was
based on the honor of the medical profession, such as that
was, and to that none could make a rejoinder. The result
was that the druggist and the doctor were completely
humiliated; we got not only their apology but five shd of.
wine and a chicken and a fish; another feast of victory made
lively our sleeping hall.
However, we did not always catry our
Theater going in side through.
Once w€ were caught in
dirgulse an embarrassing corner. Every so often
the police officials went to inspect the