When I was a student, there wasn't a single thing we did that was unrelated to others. It was all for the Emperor, or parents, or the country, or society—everything was other-centered, which means that all educated men were hypocrites. When society changed, this hypocrisy ceased to work, and as a result, self-centeredness was gradually imported into thought and action, and egoism became enormously over-developed. Instead of the old hypocrites, now all we've got are out-and-out rogues. Do you see what I mean by that?
Sōseki Natsume, Sanshirō
egoism, enlightenment, fin-de-siecle, freedom, individualism, japan, literature, meiji, modern, novel, political-liberation, politics, self-centeredness, social-hegemony, tradition, turn-of-the-century, western