Yan Fu

Japanese: 厳復 - げんぷく（英語表記）Yan Fu

Born: 1853
[Died] 1921
A Chinese thinker and translator in the late Qing Dynasty. A man of Fujian Province (Minhou County), he was a houguan (marquis) of Fujian Province. His courtesy name was Yuling, and his pen name was Jidao. He studied navigation at the Shipbuilding Academy in Fuzhou, and in 1877 went to England to study at the Naval College in Portsmouth. He returned to China in 1879 and was invited by Li Hongzhang to become the principal of the Beiyang Naval Academy in Tianjin, a position he held until 1891. He was treated coldly because he had not passed the imperial examinations, and was dissatisfied with this, as well as feeling a sense of crisis after China's defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, and sympathized with the reformists led by Kang Youwei and others, publishing essays such as Yuanqiang. He eventually aspired to enlighten people through translation, and translated and introduced the modern Western thought he encountered while studying abroad, including Tianyan Lun (T.H. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics), exerting a great influence on the intellectual world of the late Qing Dynasty. He was a master of classical Japanese, having studied under Wu Ru-lun of the Tongcheng school from a young age, and his translations were done in elegant classical Japanese. However, because he stuck to classical Japanese and his ideology did not stray one step from gradual reformism, he became a conservative after the establishment of the Republic of China, and even after he became president of Peking University, he supported Yuan Shikai's imperialist movement, advocated the worship of Confucius, and opposed the literary revolution, which led to a decline in his popularity. His translations include "The Wealth of Nations" (A. Smith), "The Spirit of the Laws" (C. Montesquieu), and "The Power of the People" (JS Mill, On Liberty).

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia About Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Information

Japanese:

[生]咸豊3(1853)
[没]1921
中国，清末の思想家，翻訳家。福建省候官 (閩候県) の人。字は又陵。号は幾道。福州の船政学堂で航海術を修め，光緒3 (1877) 年イギリスに留学，ポーツマス海軍大学で学んだ。同5年帰国，李鴻章の招きを受け天津の北洋水師学堂の校長となり，以後同 26年まで在任。科挙出身でないために冷遇され，その不満もあり，また，日清戦争敗北後の危機感から，康有為らの維新派に共鳴，『原強』などの論文を発表した。やがて翻訳による啓蒙を志し，『天演論』 (T.H.ハクスリー『進化と倫理』) をはじめ，留学中に接した西洋近代思潮を次々に翻訳紹介し，清末の思想界に大きな影響を与えた。若い頃から桐城派の呉汝倫に学んだ古文の名手で，翻訳も格調高い古文でなされているが，古文に固執し，思想も漸進的改良主義から一歩も出なかったため，中華民国成立後はむしろ保守派に変り，北京大学学長就任後も，袁世凱の帝制運動を援助したり，孔子崇拝を唱えたり，また文学革命にも反対の立場をとって声望を落した。翻訳『原富』 (A.スミス『国富論』) ，『法意』 (C.モンテスキュー『法の精神』) ，『群己権界論』 (J.S.ミル『自由論』) など。

出典　ブリタニカ国際大百科事典小項目事典ブリタニカ国際大百科事典小項目事典について　情報

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