tenment and Saying Good Bye to Asia" Yukichi
             refrains from directly calling his countrymen backward shamans but the overall impression is that
             he fervently believes this. Several quotations give an indication of his ideas: "We have never lost
             our indepence because the cycle of peace and turmoil has ever been concerned with foreign
             powers, and the nation has been able to bask in the security of closing the country from the rest
             of the world." (2)This reference to Japan's closeted existence, according to Yukichi, is a cause
             of "...the outward manifestations of [Japanese] civilization seem to move forward, but the spirit
             of its people, the very essence of our civilazation, definitely moves backward."(3) Yukichi also
             criticizes East Asians in general for being "autocratic", "not knowing how to progress", when
             faced with civilization they are only able "to refer back to Confucianism" and the most telling of
             all: East Asians "cannot survive as independent nations with the onlsaught of Western civilzation
             to the East." The tone of his article belies his position as a man who considers himself Japanese
             but cannot decide whether he hates his culture or loves it. In a curious parralell, the Italian writer
             Niccolo Machiavelli is faced with a similar dillemma: he loves his country in his heart, but his
             mind tells him major reformation is needed. Unfortunately there is not space to elaborate on this
             comparison further but Fukzawa writes in the same conflicted way Machiavelli does: just when
             his own reasoning leads him to conclude his country is doomed to subservience he steps in, pen
             in hand, to save his beloved nation. This point is critical in understanding Yukichi's viewpoint.
             He is not eurocentric (with the implications of hidden racism) because he also fears the
             incursions of the West into the East. Yukichi's mind realizes that Western ideas like empirical
             science and notions of progre...