An Encouragement of Learning

"Heaven does not create one man above another, nor create one man below another, it is said." With these words Fukuzawa Yukichi opened the book that taught Meiji Japan what equality, independence and learning could mean. Published in seventeen cheap booklets between 1872 and 1876, An Encouragement of Learning was read across the country as the samurai order was abolished and a modern state was built.

Fukuzawa argues that people are equal in rights though not in condition; that learning means practical knowledge, not reciting the classics; that a country is a company in which every citizen is both a guest of the government and a host who makes its rules; that "when the person is independent, the country is independent"; and that a people that only obeys and flatters will lose its country. Along the way he condemns the famous vendetta of the Akō rōnin as private justice, attacks the Greater Learning for Women and the Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, urges scholars to leave government service, champions public speaking, and ends with lively advice on doubt, money, cheerfulness and making friends.

Translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes and source information.