FUKUZAWA YUKICHI

Fukuzawa Yukichi was an author, translator, and political theorist, founder of Keio University, and one of the foremost thinkers of the Meiji Restoration. Fukuzawa studied Dutch in his youth and traveled to Edo to teach the language in 1858. He went to the United States as an envoy of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1860 and became an official government English translator upon his return. The information he collected as a translator resulted in his work Seiyo jijo (Conditions in The West, 1866). Fukuzawa produced numerous other writings that expounded his theories on civilization and current events. His portrait appears on the current 10 thousand yen banknote.