Affection for Children and the Strength of the Family

"Momotaro is said to have gone to Onigashima ("Demons' Island") to get the demons' treasure. What an outrageous thing to do! The treasure was precious to the demons, who were looking after it. It belonged to them. By going to get treasure that belonged to someone else, without justification, Momotaro was a wicked person who should really be called a thief... . When he took the treasure home and gave it to the old couple, he was just doing it for greed; that is utterly despicable."

This is a passage from Hibi no Oshie ("Daily Lessons for Children"), written by Yukichi Fukuzawa for his eldest son Ichitaro and his second son Sutejiro. By taking an alternative view of a well-known fairytale, children not only learn that Momotaro's greed for the treasure was bad, but also discover the joy of thinking for themselves without being swayed by existing theories.

Fukuzawa wrote many books for children all over Japan. In them, he employed various techniques to making learning accessible and enjoyable for children, such as using examples that they would find easy to understand and illustrations that would fascinate them.

Yukichi Fukuzawa emphasized the role of the home above that of the school, in terms of being the foundation for human development. One of his sayings was "The home is a school for cultivating habits; the parents are teachers of habit." As this suggests, he repeatedly stressed the importance of the home's role and responsibility, in the expectation that children would learn good habits under the natural influence of their parents amid the harmonious atmosphere of the home.

Fukuzawa saw a home full of affection and harmony as a positive thing. But he considered this quite distinct from selfish seclusionism, in which the only concern is the family's own enjoyment. His introduction to the publication of Katei Sōdan opens by explaining the title of the journal; it did not mean that the journal would only involve things inside the home to the exclusion of those outside the home. As this plainly shows, Fukuzawa's preferred view of the home was one that was always engaged with society and aware of its responsibility within it.