ABSTRACT
Fukuzawa Yukichi's understanding of self-government and citizenship represents a profound counterpoint to that model. Yukichi was devising a concept of citizenship by coming from one kind of political thinking that he deeply admired and then seeking to implant it in a vastly different tradition of political thinking of which he was both critical and inextricably immersed. Many of the critiques that Yukichi leveled at such western political ideas and practices as minimal citizenship, conflict-of-interest politics, and the belittling of moral instruction were much like the Aristotelian and Jeffersonian precepts that modern political scientists so often bypassed and scorned. Even more problematic is the moral obtuseness of the individualist ideology, especially when viewed from an East Asian perspective. Aristotle, Confucius, and Jefferson agreed, then, on the priority of good government. The Confucian way had little or no counterpart to the richness and importance in Greek thought of the idea of citizenship.
