Encounter with «Moral science» in Late Nineteenth-Century Japan

The term «moral science» was used in universities and academies prior to the emergence of the expression «humanities and social sciences». However, its connection with the modern eastern Asian context has not yet been sufficiently investigated. This paper tries to fill the gap with a case study on its import and appropriation by late nineteenth-century Japan to its socio-cultural sphere, having lacked the framework of classifying the sciences into «moral» and «physical» ones. The study achieves this by examining the activities of Meirokusha, a learned society created in 1773 to promote Western studies, and the writings of one of its leading members, Yukichi Fukuzawa, who tried to understand Francis Wayland’s Elements of Moral Science (1835), a famous American textbook in his time.