中日两国在近代化起步时,同奉儒家伦理为正统,但近代化的命运却截然不同.本文通过对19世纪中叶上海和长崎社会风尚的考察,谈了作者对这一问题的看法.作者认为,中日两国由于社会基础不同,民间伦理具有各自不同的结构和内涵,这就导致了上海和长崎民间社会在与西方文明接触时,出现了截然不同的社会风习和伦理结构的变化. At the very beginning of the modernization, China and Japan were orthodox to Confucian ethics, but the fate of modernization was quite different.This paper talks about the author’s opinion on this issue through the investigation of the social customs in Shanghai and Nagasaki in mid-19th century The author believes that because of their different social backgrounds, China and Japan have different structures and connotations of folk ethics, which leads to the distinct social practices and ethics of Shanghai and Nagasaki civil society when they came into contact with Western civilization Structural changes.