Fukuzawa Yukichi's Historiography

Abstract:Fukuzawa Yukichi's historiography has very profound on the family academic context and excellent apprentice education. With the effect of the western historical, there is a profundity Japanese traits. On the one hand, he based on the too much superstition upon the Western civilization and import the conception of history of civilization, which adapted the 18th century fundamental realities of Japanese. On the other hand, he reserved the features Eastern historical, which used to serve the government constantly. He was the first to act the Western humanism history into the view of the mass and the doubtful view about ancient history in the Asia, WHICH was against the feudalism in the Eastern world initiatively.There is still a sharply and complex contradiction in his historiography. In the early period, he standing by the opposite of virtue and strongly supporting the historical view of evolution. He considered the objective historical process was from junior to senior development and the process is irreversible. As a result, he still was on the law of the development. In the later period, as the Meiji government spokesmen, he could not shake off from the fundamental limitations of its own history and combined with the endless pressure from the real existence. In addition to admire for Western civilization too much, made his historiography inevitably shrouded in the shadow of imperialism. By this time, Fukuzawa beginning to contemplate the human history with the law of the jungle.Fukuzawa Yukichi's historiography was born in the particular period of history, when Western powers carved up the world. So it contains a strong national feelings of revenge. Meanwhile, it had a very great impact among countries in the East, where oppressed like Japan. All in all, it is a historical achievement of his success, which also determines that his final defeat.