On the Imperial Household

"The Imperial Household is a thing outside political society." With that sentence Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of Keio Gijuku and the most widely read writer of Meiji Japan, opened his case for a constitutional monarchy seven years before Japan had a constitution.

Writing in 1882, as the first political parties formed and a national assembly was promised, Fukuzawa predicted bitter party strife, scandal and violence, and argued that the throne must never take sides. Kept above politics, it could do what no elected cabinet could: hold the people's loyalty, calm party quarrels, keep the army out of politics, pardon and reward where the law can only punish, and protect learning and the native arts, from the tea ceremony to swordsmithing, that a government of budgets would let die. He spares neither the popular-rights activists nor the conservatives who wrapped themselves in the imperial name.

Translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with the editor's preface of 1882, a translator's note, endnotes and source information.