On Japanese Men and Other Essays on the Family

In 1888 Fukuzawa Yukichi, the most influential public intellectual of Meiji Japan, decided that arguing for women's equality was not enough: it was time to "seize the men's too-high heads and press them down." On Japanese Men takes aim at the concubines kept openly by men of good family, the "free-and-easy" debauchery admired in politicians and scholars, the geisha hired to entertain a foreign guest of state, and the jokes told over sake. Virtue, Fukuzawa argues, begins between husband and wife; the household is the school of the nation; and a Japan that copies the West in everything except private conduct will never be treated as an equal.

Two shorter essays complete the volume: a lesson in how children learn from what parents do rather than what they say, and a sharp sermon to well-off fathers who pay a school to take their children off their hands.

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