Selected Essays by Fukuzawa Yukichi on Government. (Introduction and Commentaries by Albert M. Craig,, trans. Teruko Craig, ). (SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan.) xi, 230 pp. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. ISBN 978 1 2500 9661 5 .

Selected Essays by Fukuzawa Yukichi on Government. (Introduction and Commentaries by Albert M. Craig, trans. Teruko Craig). (SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan.) xi, 230 pp. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. ISBN 978 1 2500 9661 5.

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) was a major opinion leader for much of Japan's modernizing Meiji period (1868–1912), his chief concern being the preservation of Japanese sovereignty in an increasingly imperialist world. His main works of the 1870s (Gakumon no susume [An encouragement of learning] 1872–1876 and Bunmeiron no gairyaku [An outline of theories of civilization, in Craig's rendering] 1875), and the autobiography that he produced near the end of his life are available in English translation. In the intervening period he produced a stream of essays, but only a few of these have been translated. This volume is therefore to be welcomed, particularly in view of the distinguished background of both the editor and the translator.

The five essays that have been translated here span 25 years, from the people's rights agitation of the late 1870s (Bunkenron [The division of power] 1877 and Kokkairon [On a National Assembly] 1879), through the period of preparation for the opening of the Diet (Jiji taiseiron [The trend of the times] 1882 and Sonnōron [Revering the Emperor] 1888), to the period immediately afterwards (Kokkai no zento [The future course of the Diet] 1892). The last three essays originated as editorials serialized in Jiji shinpō, the newspaper that Fukuzawa began in 1882.

Craig...