Conditions in the Old Domain and Other Writings

How did a samurai domain actually work? Fukuzawa Yukichi, who grew up a low-ranking samurai in the castle town of Nakatsu, answers with exact and often comic detail: two castes that never intermarried, bows in the rain, graded forms of address, stipends measured in rice, wives weaving cotton through the night to make ends meet, and accents so distinct that rank could be heard through a wall. Written in 1877 for "historians fifty years from now," Conditions in the Old Domain was published only after his death.

Three shorter works complete the volume: the farewell letter Fukuzawa left for Nakatsu in 1870, a manifesto of independence and equality between husband and wife; his popular 1873 explanation of Japan's switch to the solar calendar, complete with a spinning top, a paper lantern and instructions for reading a clock; and his 1875 newspaper argument against an expedition to Korea, which reflects the attitudes of its time while insisting that Japan's real danger lay in foreign debt and unequal relations with the West.

Each work is translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes and source information.