Fukuzawa Yukichi was a Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and political theorist who is regarded as one of the founders of modern Japan and a leader of the Meiji Restoration.

He learned Dutch, then English after Commodore Perry arrived in Japan and traveled to the US and Europe as envoy for the Tokugawa Shogunate. His writings about these travels, Seiyou Jijou (Things Western), became best-sellers, and he was regarded as Japan's foremost expert on the West. His works were preeminent during the Meiji Period, and in them he emphasized the importance of understanding the principle of equality of opportunity, study as the key to greatness, and individual strength. These works greatly aided the pro-modernization forces of Japan during the period of unrest in the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate and motived the Japanese people to embrace change.

Fukuzawa's portrait appears on the 10,000-yen note and was the only figure to remain after the banknotes redesign in the early 2000s.