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  • Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio University,

  • was a radical and at the same time, a profound and reflective thinker.

  • He is well known for contributing greatly to the making of modern Japan,

  • but the majority of what he advocated has not yet been realized until today,

  • and it is no exaggeration to say that his life was filled with discouragement and setbacks.

  • Fukuzawa held a lifelong hope for the people of Japan.

  • In his autobiography written in his later years,

  • Fukuzawa noted that Japanese people lacked full recognition

  • and practice of the sciences ofnumber and reason

  • and the doctrine ofindependence,” which he considered to be of paramount importance.

  • In other words, his hope was for a society that can continuously produce people

  • who have the ability to think logically,

  • who can think for oneself, and take action based on that understanding.

  • He believed that only at the hands of such people can society become affluent and civilized.

  • Fukuzawa was a man of the Enlightenment

  • Born into a low-ranking samurai family,

  • Fukuzawa was keenly aware of the humiliation felt by those who were looked down upon,

  • as well as of the disparity in access to information.

  • To inspire, through scholarship,

  • those who were inhibited by their social rank from advancing themselves,

  • Fukuzawa began to write books and published them one after another.

  • Among these books, the Encouragement of Learning is one of the most celebrated.

  • Written in easy to understand terms, the book was, according to some accounts,

  • bought by one in 160 Japanese people, becoming an immediate bestseller.

  • He also wrote a vast number of books for children on world geography,

  • science, morals, calligraphy, and letter writing.

  • He held the opinion that one must write in simple terms no matter how complex the topic is;

  • the most trivial matters can be written in the most complicated way;

  • and one must never be fooled by difficult texts.

  • Fukuzawa was a man of dedication

  • During the Edo Period in Japan, it was common to study the West through Dutch literature,

  • but one day in 1859, Fukuzawa realized the importance of English.

  • The following day, he quickly shifted his studies from the Dutch language and started to teach himself English.

  • That year, he volunteered his services to the government envoy dispatched to the United States,

  • and this opened his eyes to the world.

  • He held firmly to his belief that it was only through learning could a country advance.

  • Despite a raging battle in Edo in May 1868, which threw the city into a state of chaos,

  • Fukuzawa continued to give a class in economics amid the sound of gunfire.

  • He believed that keeping the torch of scholarship burning was more important

  • than the major political change that was to take place with the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

  • Fukuzawa was a man of action

  • There is a telling anecdote about Fukuzawa that during the time

  • he was proactive in trying to rid Japanese society of the traditional class system,

  • he would go out of his way to wear clothes worn by the lower classes

  • and would purposely lay around on the floor when meeting people of high rank.

  • Fukuzawa believed that in order to become independent,

  • people must develop the habit of expressing their opinions.

  • Along with his students, he trained hard in delivering Western-stylespeeches

  • and built a dedicated hall in which Fukuzawa initiated the art of public speaking in front of a large crowd.

  • From there, Western-style public speaking spread throughout the country

  • and played a significant role in the Freedom and People's Rights Movement of Japan.

  • Fukuzawa was adamant that the management of Keio remain in the private domain.

  • This was putting into practice his belief of not being dependent on the government

  • and living a life of personal independence.

  • Yukichi Fukuzawa was one of the most dedicated educators and ardent enlighteners of his time.

  • His unfinished legacy lives on at Keio University where knowledge and wisdom is cultivated for tomorrow.

Yukichi Fukuzawa, the founder of Keio University,

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