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The Development of Economic Thought in Meiji Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Chuhei Sugiyama
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Extract

Some people would no doubt be surprised to learn of a man like Kaiseki Sata who in the early days of Meiji zealously asserted that ‘every expedience is an evil and every inexpedience a benefit’, and that umbrellas, lamps, railways, steamships and other similar innovations could only be harmful. But others whose personal knowledge and experience of such things as the noise and polluted air of big cities, the growing toll of road accidents and the horrors of the atomic bomb have convinced them that too much so-called civilization does not secure human happiness might be more inclined to sympathize with him. In fact, Sata merely represented the feelings of men in the street, by no means small in number, who, accustomed to the traditional way of life under the Shogunate, were either implicitly or explicitly opposed to the new government or at least unable to adapt themselves to the new way of life which made its appearance so suddenly. To Sata anything brought in from abroad seemed harmful, for he feared that innovations might lead to the impoverishment of those who lived by traditional trades and so land the whole nation in misery. He never ceased to write and lecture on this topic, and even went as far as to petition the government to stop the importation, and discourage the use, of any foreign commodity whatsoever. However, because his influence was extremely small compared with that of the notorious motto 'Civilization and Culture', and because his attitude was seen as a mere feudal reaction to what was inevitable, his was after all a voice crying in the wilderness1.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , July 1968 , pp. 325 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

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2 The rather symbolic experience Fukuzawa had at Yokohama which he visited in 1859 to see the changing town may be cited here: ‘I had been striving with all my powers for many years to learn the Dutch language. And now that I had reason to believe myself one of the best in the country, I found that I could not even read the signs of merchants who had come to trade with us from foreign lands… Those signs must have been either in English or French—probably English, for I had had inklings that English was the most widely used language. A treaty with the two English-speaking countries had just been concluded. As certain as day, English was to be the most useful language of the future.… In my disappointment my spirit was low, but I knew that it was not the time to be sitting still’. Fukuzawa, Y., Fukuō fiden, Tokyo, 1899, English translation by Kiyooka, E., Tokyo, 1934, revised edition, 1960, p. 98.Google Scholar

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