Medium post 2

In “Goodbye Aisa”, Fukuzawa Yukichi argued that it was the time for Japan to “leave” Aisa and “join” other western countries. Yukichi did not mean that Japan needed to geographically leave Aisa. What he really meant was that Aisa was too weak and fell backward compared to western countries, and Aisa was no longer the domination power over the world, so Japan, as the first one contacted with advanced western civilizations, had duty to lead its neighbors such as China and Korea back to the top of the world. To achieve such objective, Yukichi thought Japan needed to give up ancient eastern traditions and completely turned to a western country in every aspect. Different from Japan looking forward for a dramatical change, China and Korea refused to accept advanced western civilizations and still dreamed about their dominance power in the past centuries. Therefore, Japan was the only country that had chance to lead the backward Aisa to rise again. At this point, what Yukichi thought was still Japan leading its neighbors to prosperity, which represented friendly attitude of Japan towards other countries in Aisa. However, such idea was changed after Japan underwent Meiji restoration.

After Meiji restoration and several wars against China and Russia, Japan’s national strength had risen to a new height, which was enough to compete with powerful western countries like the UK and France. As the result, imperialism started to emerge in Japan. In “The Way of Subjects”, the author argues that now Japan was a powerful country, and the western world had no superior over Japan, so it was the time to show power of the Emperor to the whole world. As the dominance power in Aisa, Japan built its empire including Korea, parts of China, and Southeast Asia, but Japan was not satisfied with only being the dominance power in Aisa. Instead, Japan wanted to build its empire much bigger and compete with western power which was the learning object of Japan in the past 50 years. It was just like the student learning from teacher and replacing teacher after being fully fledged. In this process, Japan showed its great ambition to compete with advanced western powers and superior over other countries in Aisa. Yukichi’s idea was no longer fit for the growing Japanese Empire. Japan was no longer the student need to study modestly. It showed its arrogance to both western and eastern countries and needed ideas in “The Way of Subjects” to satisfy its great ambition.