Before beginning to learn an European language, Dutch, at the age of twenty-one years in 1854, Yukichi Fukuzawa had studied many Chinese books for five or six years in the classical atmosphere of Confucianism. The mind of young Yukichi had been, in several respects, formed in his teens in this feudual classical atmosphere. Three persons especially made important impressions upon him: his father, Hyakusuke, his elder brother, Sannosuke and his teacher, Shozan Shiraishi. His father influenced him by the moral theory of the school of Horikawa; and his brother, one of the school of Banri Hoashi, stimulated him to learn Dutch', and his teacher, one of the school of Sorai Ogyu, stirred up an interest in history and economy in young Yukichi's mind. Of these three persons I have only taken up his father in this thesis. Yukichi wrote, in 1878, a letter and a note; the former was a letter written to his father's friend Ritsuen Nakamura, and the latter was a note given to his sons and daughters. In these sentences he drew the image of his late father, Hyakusuke, who died at the age of forty-five years in 1836, when Yukichi was only three years old. I have used his image of Hyakusuke as the key to my research into the influences of his father on him.
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