Hey! Did you know that you can read M. William Steele's translation of Yasegaman no setsu 瘠我慢の説, Fukuzawa Yukichi's seminal tribute to not knowing when to quit, online? Well, you can!

Steele gives it the English title On Fighting to the Bitter End; another one I've seen is Spirit of Manly Defiance. Steele's is better, I think, and closer etymologically too: gaman 我慢 now means something like "perseverance, patience, self-control, ability to endure adverse circumstances," but originally it meant something more like "pride," while yase[ru] means to lose weight or (of soil) to become farmed-out and barren. So the compound taken as a fuzzy whole means to insist on persevering for prideful reasons despite lacking the resources to effectively do so: fighting to the bitter end.

On the other hand, the reason Fukuzawa recommends yasegaman is to preserve one's manliness, so "spirit of manly defiance" isn't that bad — it just doesn't have the gritty brutality of the original title.

Anyway, Fukuzawa's argument is that a man never surrenders, even if he knows he's beat. It is a general argument, but it is constructed specifically to criticize Katsu Kaishū 勝海舟 for peacefully surrendering Edo castle to Saigō Takamori 西郷隆盛 at the end of the Boshin War rather than forcing Saigō into a battle of attrition until the whole of eastern Japan was razed to the ground. To war-war, Fukuzawa argues, would have been better than the jaw-jawing that took place instead.

[...] I knew as well as Katsu that the weakened bakufu had no chance of victory. Nonetheless, I also knew that, in order to maintain Japan's martial spirit, the time was not right to make calculations over questions of victory or defeat. [...] Katsu [...] had already adopted a defeatist position, and without engaging the enemy gave orders for the ruling authority of the Tokugawa family to dissolve itself. He earnestly sued for peace, saying that people would be killed in military action, and property needlessly destroyed. While he sought to soften the loss of life and wealth, he cannot escape blame from harming Japan's warrior spirit of dogged endurance [yasegaman no shifū 瘠我慢の士風] so vital to the make-up of the country.

Loss of life and property are temporary misfortunes, but to maintain the fighting spirit is an eternal necessity.

There are two prongs to Fukuzawa's argument: (1) surrender is strategically wrong — and unjapanese — weakening the country and rendering it more vulnerable to potential aggressors in the future; and (2) surrender is morally wrong, in the same way that it would be wrong not to do everything you can to extend the lives of your dying parents even if the odds are a thousand to one against you succeeding. (Obviously, Fukuzawa is not a fan of euthanasia.)

Enomoto Takeaki 榎本武揚, on the other hand, earns praise for his role in founding the Republic of Ezo:

Many Tokugawa retainers and men from pro-bakufu groups in other domains joined his cause. Under his leadership, they followed his orders to advance or retreat. Whether during naval battles in the northern seas or at the siege of Hakodate, many of these men fought bravely to their death. Their story exemplifies the tradition of the Yamato spirit (Yamato damashii); it would seem that Katsu and Enomoto were not living in the same age.

Eventually, though, Enomoto made his peace with the new regime and even served in government, a turnaround of which Fukuzawa did not approve:

If the spirits of the dead exist in the world below, they must be crying out in great anger at this injustice.

Japan's Ben Franklin, everybody.